Blog Marketing Tips
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November 13, 2007
- Phrases That Keep Your Clients Attention
Just what is it that top class copywriters like Michel Fortin have that keep people glued to their copy, despite it going on for pages and pages and … well, pages?
No, it's not his forumla. And it's not hynotic words like FREE and neither is it his right combination of font colors!
Whilst I don't profess to be a word class copywriter, I have spent a lot of money and a lot of time practicing and writing my own copy but something a copywriter called Alan Forrest Smith said last year made me realize that I was a better copywriter than I had given myself credibility. He said something like …
"Copywriting is a communication skill … it's the art of good conversation"
So the truth is, if you can have a good conversation, if you can hold people's attention whilst you're speaking to them, you have what it takes to write compelling copy.
May 24, 2007
- Write Better Blog Posts
One of the questions I'm frequently asked is "how do I write a blog post so it gets noticed?"
The first thing to consider is that when you are writing your blog posts, you have to please both the search engine spiders as well as your human visitors, but there are ways of creating great blog posts so you please both.
The second thing to consider is that no matter how beautifully your blog posts are written - they could sound like prose from Shakespeare - if they are devoid of keywords, you'll find it harder to get free search engine traffic. Google for example thrives on keyword focused content that is relevant to the reader, but without stuffing your posts with keywords that make it look and sound artificial.
Google now uses something called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to match phrases on a page or post to determine it's relevancy and with over 600,000 phrases used to compare against your blog posts, I would say the days of keyword stuffing are truly over.
October 25, 2006
- Research Before You Pay For Advertising
If you pay for advertising, ensure you do your homework!
I had a telephone call today from an Internet business directory services company who specialize in providing promotion services for small to medium enterprises in the UK. I'm not going to name and shame the company since this isn't the objective here.
The objective is warn you that if you receive these unsolicited phone calls from advertisers telling you they can get you 30 calls per month, do your homework before you say yes!
I'm not suggesting that every advertising company out there will hype up sales and your return on investment but my conversation today proved that the big advertising companies do it and there may be nothing but fluff behind their promises! Lets face it though, someone has to pay for their TV, Sky and other media advertising campaigns.
Anyway, here's what happened…
I received the call from a very nice young man who told me he could almost promise me a top position in Google. When I challenged him, he gave me the search term "search engineering" to type into Google.co.uk so he could prove his point. Uh Oh! The company he was trying to find with this search term was no where to be found and after 7 pages, I gave up.
October 13, 2006
- The Secrets Of Writing Winning Sales Letters - Part 3
Here is the final part to The Secrets of Writing A Winning Sales Letter.
I hope you've gained some insight from the last few posts on how to write a sales letter that sells but if you need some more information and a solid foundation to get you going, might I suggest you start off with Ken Evoy's Make Your Words Sell. There are bigger, more expensive programs out there, but in my view if you use this ebook, you'll have a solid foundation that you can use to upgrade to the more expensive programs later on.
Okay, so back to increasing the sales from one sales letter…
You might want to include brochures and circulars in your mailing with your sales letter and this is fine, providing the materials you're enclosing are of the best quality and are included to reinforce the sale and not just sell them something else. I know people do this, but your objective is to keep your prospective purchasers focused… on one thing… your product or service.
- The Secrets Of Writing Winning Sales Letters - Part 2
How long should your sales letter be?
Copywriters have been debating for the past few years whether long copy sells better than short copy. And I still hear people complain today that they can't be bothered to read long sales copy and as far as they're concerned they simply can't sell as well as writer much shorter and to the point sales copy. Well, you're about to find out what really sells.
As I said, most people question whether readers will really take the time to read a long sales letter and the answer to this is a simple and time-tested yes! I always say that if the information is interesting to the reader and it's something they've been looking for, they'll read it.
For example, when I was looking to purchase John Reese's Traffic Secrets course, I sat down one evening and read every word of the sales letter and watched every video clip online. Why? Because I was interested in purchasing the product and I really wanted to see whether this $997 course was going to give me the answers to my most burning questions about getting traffic to my website.
October 12, 2006
- The Secrets Of Writing Winning Sales Letters - Part 1
How to get attention with your sales letter
It’s true that the most important element of your online marketing efforts is getting traffic to your site, because without traffic you don’t have a business. But once you get traffic to your website, if the copy isn’t compelling, no one will read it. Marketing is made up of many elements including how to get traffic to your site, but it’s your marketing message in the copy that will do the selling!
And, I'm sure you've heard this so many times before, but it's worth repeating, your message has to tell your reader what you can do for them not, what your company can do and how long you've been established.
So regardless of what you're trying to sell…
You really can't sell it without "communicating" or speaking to the needs of your prospective buyer.
October 11, 2006
- Making Your Ads Viral
One Of The Fastest Ways To Build Your Database
Viral marketing is simply word-of-mouth marketing online and is a technique used by many online marketers to get the word out about their website through a social network, which when used well can literally spread like an epidemic.
If you want to make your ads viral, instead of offering a free report or audio download, offer a great little ebook for free!
And how do you make it viral? Offer the receiver (and the future readers) distribution rights, with the option to customize the ebook…And, you're off to a great start!
You may or may not make much profit up front. That's fine and it's really shouldn't be your primary intention.
Your main goal in offering a viral ebook is to spread your ebooks and reports out to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible!
Just remember that all those ebooks have your links within them and that in itself will create the stampede of traffic you're looking for, as well as give you some extra cash if you've included affiliate links.
- Why Classified Ads Don't Work
Are Classified Ads Dead?
Well in my experience, it depends on who you speak to and who they've been speaking to.
If you create a poorly designed ad, submit it into a high-circulation but totally non-targeted publication, don't expect to suddenly become an expert on "why classified ads don't work."
Classified ads work, if you use them correctly!
If you place classified ads in highly targeted ezines and newsletters, it's a quick way to get exposure for your product or service as well as some great backlinks to your website, meaning better search engine rankings.
You can either barter by exchanging products or services as payment for your ad placement with the publisher or, you can pay cash if you prefer. You can actually go one better than this and give them a quality article which many of the online directories will publish for FREE. I'll talk about submitting articles in another post.
Low-cost classified ads can also be placed in offline publications where you can usually demand much higher prices for your products. The craziness of selling "one million ebooks for a penny" does not exist in the offline world.
