Published on October 28th, 2019 | by Aimee Laurence

Secure WordPress Success With NLP

If you are thinking of launching or redesigning your WordPress website, you might want to look at NLP for some inspiration on how to improve. NLP is short for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and is an approach used by therapists to change behaviour by communicating effectively and changing self-awareness.

The term “Neuro-Linguistic” combines the neurological processes (i.e. the brain) and your language, to alter the patterns of behaviour learnt through life experiences. These patterns of behaviour are known as “programming” and can be re-organised to achieve specific goals.

With consideration, you can use some of the techniques applied by therapists in your blog in order to connect more deeply with your audience. In this article, we will explore some of these techniques.

Start With Yourself

Before you begin, you should take some time to practice NLP techniques on yourself. You should remember that everything that you think, do or say sends a message to your unconscious mind. The aim is to alter our behaviours in order to program our minds, so that we can achieve certain goals.

By telling yourself, for example, that you are clumsy and will never change, your mind gets programmed this way and it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When you are creating your WordPress site, be mindful of the words that you say to yourself. Are you describing it as a “little blog that you run” or something that you do “just for fun”? If the aim of your site is to generate income, then words like this will keep the project small and unprofitable in your mind. Use your conscious mind to screen and eliminate any unhelpful thoughts or words.

Keep Language Positive

One of the most important things that you can do to draw attention to your blog and improve your conversion rates is to be positive.

Choose a WordPress theme that is upbeat and exciting. Don’t go rushing to install the first free theme or plugin you find. Take time to find one that creates the right image, and make sure that it is from a trusted source. This stage is crucial to making sure that you send the right message.

When writing your content for your blog, keep everything upbeat and positive. Write about what you want for the world and the positive aspects of the service or product that you are selling. Write in a way that describes what the reader wants and what the product can do for them.

Your reader should be able to feel that you understand their problems or struggles and that you have experience in providing the solution.

Mirroring

One technique used a lot in NLP in order to build rapport is mirroring. This can be used in your WordPress blog in order to connect with your readers.

Mirroring is traditionally used in person and involves you copying your customers’ words, habits and gestures in order to build a connection. In your blog, you can use this technique to match the style of writing used by your readers or target audience. Pay attention to how they talk to you when commenting on your posts and using a similar tone and style in your response.

The idea behind this is that people are drawn naturally to others who are like themselves. By very subtly copying the words of your reader, their brain will fire off pleasure sensors in the brain and will make them want to continue connecting with you. The key word here is subtle. If you are too obvious in your mirroring, the reader’s conscious brain will notice, and this will damage rapport. So try to stay natural and calm in your mirroring.

Values

When you have identified your ideal reader, you may start to get an idea about their values and what inspires them. Interact with your readers as often as possible and find out more about them. From there, you can use language that reflects their values and make your readers feel good about your products or services.

Once you know some keywords that are important to your audience, you can start to optimise SEO so that people who are looking for similar words will find your website more often in search rankings. This will act as a magnet for your target reader.

Strong Blog Titles

Choice of language is important when writing the title for your blog post. A technique from NLP called “framing” can help you to form a strong headline which will draw readers to your article.

Framing is the idea that how information is presented can influence the choices that readers will make. For example, when shoppers were asked to choose between 75% lean beef or 25% fat, most people picked the lean option, even though both products were identical. This is an example of how framing can be used to encourage sales or interaction with your blog.

You may find that you will need to learn more about your audience before you will master the framing technique as it will depend on what appeals to them directly. Take some time to collect customer insights and experiment with different headlines to monitor what they respond to. This will help you to frame future articles in a way that will encourage readers to click through.

Build Trust

Whilst the above techniques, like mirroring and matching values, will help to build trust, it is also important that your WordPress site is running well and is secure. Leaving your site open to threats could cause your audience to lose faith in you and many people will be put off buying from a site that does not have the SSL padlock symbol. A good security plugin is recommended for your site and you may also want one to stop your comments being overrun with spam. Choosing the right host will also help with this, as they will have a strong firewall and anti-malware protection.

Posting consistently will also help to build trust with your readers and keep you in their mind. By building a schedule of content, and following the tips above, we are sure that you will make your WordPress site a great success.

Tags: NLP, secure, success, WordPress