Blogs as Persuasion

According to scientifically validated studies, the 6 keys to persuading readers are:

Reciprocity: You’re more likely to say yes to someone you owe.

Scarcity: You’re more likely to say yes to something if it’s less available.

Authority: You’re more likely to comply with someone who appears as an authority figure.

Consistency: You’re more likely to do something if it’s consistent with what you’ve done before.

Liking: You’re more likely to say yes to someone you like.

Consensus: You’re more likely to do something if most others are doing it too.

Of course, these keys will shift depending on the content, context, and medium of persuasion. In blog posts, for example, authority, liking, and consistency all apply. Authority, I would argue, is the most important of these three keys when it comes to blog posts. If we consider it synonymous with credibility, authority provides a layer of ethos to the post, which makes readers more likely to take the blogger seriously. It marks the writer as a trustworthy and reliable source of information. It may be more complicated to assert this authority though. Unlike in the example study referenced in the video linked above, readers can’t necessarily see the blogger and consider them an authority figure based on their clothing. Therefore, bloggers need to establish credibility through their voice and background. They will need to write in an assertive and confident way, a way that suggests they know what they’re talking about, and include any information about themselves, such as experience or education, in relation to the topic, so readers can gauge their expertise.

A great example of this is Zanna Van Dijk’s blog on sustainability, which I discussed in this week’s community blog post. As explained in that post, Zanna has a lot of credibility due to her immense experience with sustainable practices; her position as an ambassador for Vivo Life, a progressive eco brand; and her act of co-founding a sustainable and ethical swimwear brand. Especially if readers are familiar with Zanna’s YouTube channel and Instagram, on which she regularly posts content relating to veganism, ocean plastic, ethical fashion, and other sustainability-related topics, they can see she is a reliable source for this kind of information, and she shows how she implements the practices she preaches into her daily life.

Additionally, for a blog post to be successfully persuasive, the writer should be likeable. According to the video, people generally like others who are similar to them, who compliment them, and who cooperate with them. Given that blogs are typically more personal than traditional essays, this is an important quality for bloggers to include in their writing. On the flip side, however, blogs are still less personal than one-on-one conversations, so not all of these elements are possible to achieve. Blogger can’t exactly give their audience compliments (other than shallow generalized ones that don’t mean much, like “you look beautiful today!”), but they will likely attract people similar to them based on the topics they write about or the voice they use that resonates with readers. This particular element of persuasion is difficult, if not impossible, to do with intention. Bloggers will just have to trust that the right audience will come to them naturally. Perhaps they can’t make people like them, but they can attract the people who would already like them anyway.

Going back to Zanna’s blog, we can see she makes herself a very likeable person through the voice she uses in her posts. She always includes a catchy intro, often involving an interesting anecdote or a funny comment, which immediately engages the reader by exposing them to a bit of her personality. She also always adopts a very positive attitude, despite the grim nature of some things she shares regarding pollution and the state of our planet. I imagine this attracts many readers as well, who may not come across such uplifting and hopeful content about the climate crisis very often.

Consistency, arguably, could also apply to blog posts. Authors will have no way of knowing if the actions they’re trying to persuade readers to take will be consistent with what those readers have already done in the past, but, like I just said, readers will be attracted to blogs discussing a topic they’re already interested in. Plus, the video points out that part of consistency is encouraging “small, initial commitments that can be made.” In other words, make it as easy as possible for your audience to take the action you wish them to take.

Zanna’s blog does just that with posts on small simple things you can add to your handbag to be more sustainable and easy steps you can take to travel more consciously. In posts like these, Zanna keeps her content minimal and basic, so readers never feel overwhelmed by what she asks of them. Furthermore, people who read her blog likely are already interested in sustainability and don’t know where to start or have already taken measures in the past that are consistent with Zanna’s advice. Either way, simple steps are more likely to persuade her readers to take action.

But we can’t talk about persuasion without discussing logos, ethos, and pathos too! So, when it comes to blog posts, writers rely the most on pathos by appealing to their readers’ emotions. Blogs tend to be more personal than traditional essays, as stated previously, so adding a layer of emotion that establishes an intimate bond between the blogger and reader could indeed prove very persuasive. In addition, since we’ve agreed on authority as the most relevant persuasive tactic for blog posts, ethos also plays an important role. Bloggers need ethos to sound credible and authoritative. Without it, readers may not consider their content trustworthy or reliable and therefore won’t take what they’re saying seriously. Of course, through appealing to logic with facts, statistics, figures, etc., bloggers may also use logos in their posts, but pathos and ethos are more prominent and relied on more heavily in this medium.

In contrast, traditional essays are the opposite. They tend to focus on logos to persuade readers, especially since the writer is typically removed from the piece. The content is more important than who’s writing it, and the author doesn’t try to establish a bond with his/her audience. But, as with blog posts, all three (logos, ethos, pathos) serve a purpose in traditional essays as well, just with a focus on logic. After all, they’re not mutually exclusive and work best in conjunction with one another.