[Copyblogger] How to Use Content to Find Customers

How to Use Content to Find Customers How to Use Content to Find Customers Sure, it makes us feel warm and fuzzy to create great content. But can we actually get any customers with it? Absolutely, but not if we take the usual blogger's approach. Money doesn't drop out of the sky just because we produce high-quality material. We need to put some time, thought and planning into the marketing side of the content marketing equation. And that means we need to think strategically about how different types of content contribute to the larger persuasion cycle. Get their attention Earlier in this series, we talked about the fact that every bit of content needs to be a tasty cookie that rewards your audience for consuming it. So how can you attract a new audience to come find you? You need something bigger and more exciting than a cookie. You need a birthday cake. In other words, a piece of content that's exciting, that feels special, and that tastes good. (It doesn't hurt if it also has a great headline.) Not only that, it has to show your potential audience that you know your stuff and that you solve a worthwhile problem. Otherwise they might enjoy scarfing down your content, but they won't bother coming back for more. White papers, special reports, extended tutorials, manifestos and viral video all make excellent birthday cakes. (If you want more ideas, you can find lots more here.) Contrary to popular belief, you do want marketing messages in your birthday cake content. But they have to be palatable, subtle messages. You're not closing sales here . . . the birthday cake is just the beginning of the conversation. Raise questions. Poke around at pain points that you can address in later content. Tell stories that resolve objections. But be subtle about it. The purpose of this content is to get your audience into a receptive state of mind before they start hearing any overt sales messages from you. Create interest and desire for what you have to offer, but don't talk too much (if at all) about how you're going to solve all your audience's problems and make their lives wonderful. If your birthday cake is compelling enough, your audience will stick around to find those answers. And, of course, how does your birthday cake get in front of a new audience? By being remarkable enough to share. If it's not good enough to link to, bookmark, retweet, and email friends about, it's not good enough. Keep working on it, or partner with a content expert who can create something exceptional for you. Converting attention to customers Good bloggers are fantastic at capturing attention, but sometimes we have a tough time knowing what to do with it. The answer is to keep delivering compelling messages to our new audience, either using a blog, an email autoresponder, or both. Here's where you use content marketing fundamentals to start creating a commercial relationship. Obviously, you still deliver terrific quality. You teach and entertain more than you sell. You use metaphor, rhythm and vivid language to make your writing sing. But you also use the techniques we teach at Copyblogger to create an audience of buyers, not just fans. You begin to call on your copywriting bag of tricks, adding more persuasive elements to your writing. You're still keeping the selling under the radar at this point, especially if you're using a blog to deliver your content. At this phase, you're building your case, establishing trust, and increasing the intensity of your audience's desire. When you're ready to take an order, send your loyal fan to a well-crafted landing page. That page does the most explicit selling, with a killer offer and a clear, direct call to action. There's definitely an art to writing an effective landing page, but if you've primed your audience with a smart content strategy, the landing page doesn't have nearly as much work to do. How to be in the third tribe If you don't see yourself using the hard-sell, high-squeeze tactics of the traditional Internet marketing crowd, but you also don't want to eat ramen noodles for the rest of your life as a "cool but broke" blogger, you can ignore those two tribes and join what we're calling the third tribe. In the third tribe, we take the best elements from hardcore Internet marketing, but we deliver them with the passion, personal voice and credibility that the best bloggers have to offer. Content marketing is our tribe's most important tool. In fact, it's the tool that defines this tribe. Master it, and the game is yours. So please join us for the rest of the Content Marketing 101 series. Coming up next week is an interview showing how one blogger took sharp, snarky content and turned it into a highly profitable business. Read the rest of the series The Three Essentials of Breakthrough Content Marketing 49 Creative Ways You Can Profit from Content Marketing About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication. • Email to a friend • Related • View comments • Track comments • •

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[Copyblogger] How to Be a Better Writer in the Next 10 Minutes

How to Be a Better Writer in the Next 10 Minutes How to Be a Better Writer in the Next 10 Minutes Wanna be a better writer? Wanna do it quickly and painlessly? Here's how in 4 steps. 1. Step away from the keyboard. Take a walk, put on some music, even do the dishes, whatever. Just get 10 minutes of you time. 2. Look into your head for all the things you're saying to yourself that are making writing harder than you want it to be. Are you doubting that your idea is good enough? Are you thinking that you don't know where you're going with it? Are you telling yourself that nobody will read or "get" what you're writing? Are you telling yourself you don't have what it takes to be a decent writer? Take a good look and go as far as writing down the things you're telling yourself. 3. Look at the opposite position, and find real world evidence to support it. If you doubt that your idea is good enough, put yourself into the position that you're idea is plenty good enough – and then find genuine reasons to support that. You're fired up about the idea, you have a unique insight or you've seen people talking about it so know that people will connect with it, for example. If you're thinking that you don't know where you're going with your writing, take the position that you know where it's heading or that it's okay to not know exactly where it's going. Then look for evidence in your experience to support that, such as: You've written great pieces before, and this is no different. You've done your research so you have just what you need to write a coherent piece. You know that you start writing knowing 50% of the content, and find that the rest comes to you as part of the writing process. This isn't about making things up to make yourself feel better. This is about finding genuine evidence, based on your own experience, that gives more space in your head for the reasons why you can than the reasons why you can't. 4. Give yourself permission to write how you write. It's a safe bet that you're your own worst critic, but placing your confidence in the things that critic tells you is not going to make you a better writer. Quite the opposite, in fact. By finding real reasons that support you in writing things your way you can let yourself off the hook, and that frees you up to write some great stuff. Place your confidence in the reasons you can write great work, and just watch what happens. About the Author: As a leading confidence coach with clients right around the world, Steve Errey has a reputation for talking sense and getting results. Get more from him at The Confidence Guy. • Email to a friend • Related • View comments • Track comments • •

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[Copyblogger] Three Steps That Guarantee Every Word of Your Copy Gets Read

Three Steps That Guarantee Every Word of Your Copy Gets Read Three Steps That Guarantee Every Word of Your Copy Gets Read Get someone to read every word? Isn’t that impossible these days? It’s not impossible if you put your mind to it. Really. If you want to get visitors to stop what they're doing, give you their undivided attention and take the immediate action you desire, then grab the closest pen you can find and start taking notes on these three proven copywriting techniques the pros use every day. 1. Lead With A Intensely Powerful Promise If you've done a good job of pulling your readers in with a magnetic headline, then you’ve only won half the battle - now you need to convince them that it’s worth their while to read everything below it. One of the best ways to make them eager to continue reading is to whet their appetite with an promise to deliver an immediate benefit that makes their life easier or takes some of their pain away. And when you announce that promise, you want to crank up the intensity by using the kind of vivid imagery that engages their senses, getting them to imagine the promise being fulfilled for them in specific detail - so they don’t have to stop and think about it themselves. For example, I’ve promised to tell you how to get visitors to: stop what they are doing, give you their undivided attention, and take the immediate action you desire. If you’re still reading, you probably envisioned your readers doing something like buying your products, signing up for your newsletter, or leaving comments on your site. When you use vivid imagery within an intense promise, your readers will custom-fit that promise to their personal situation - just as you did a moment ago. 2. Use Benefit-Driven Details To Establish Credibility You want to establish credibility in the eyes of your readers, but you can’t just sing your own praises. Your readers only care about what’s in it for them, so it’s in your best interest to spin your story to focus on their best interest instead. For example: Bad: You should listen to me because I’ve driven over $150,000 in sales in the last 12 months for myself and my clients. Good: Discover how to take your sales through the roof using the techniques I used to generate over $150,000 in sales for my clients over the last 12 months. By ensuring the benefit to your readers takes precedence over your own desire to quote stats, you get the best of both worlds - rapt attention and increased credibility. Remember, your readers want to know that you’re competent (so they feel comfortable buying from you), but they don’t want to focus on you any longer than is necessary. After all, would you be more interested in hearing me talk about how I front-paged Digg over and over again last year, or would you rather read the six tutorials at Copyblogger I used to stay on the Digg front page in 2008? Delivering benefits to your reader is the cake - your stats are just the icing. 3. Leverage Readers’ Pain (Or They Will Ignore You And Click Away) It’s may not be politically correct to advise you to push your readers’ pain points, but if you don’t bring it up towards the end of your copy, the likeliness of them delaying action goes way up (and you may well lose them forever). If you don’t bring the consequences of inaction front and center, they’ll get distracted by some other urgency and click away … and the action you needed them to take gets pushed off to a “someday” which never comes. Without focusing on the pain, you’ll lose the sales you need to survive, grind your teeth over stagnant subscriber counts or simply get lost in a sea of competing content written by authors who know how to use pain to get your readers to take the actions that they want them to. But fear not - you don’t have to feel guilty about “bringing the pain.” Once you’ve established the pain that inaction will cause your readers, you remind them of that promised benefit you started out with - and link it directly with whatever it is you’re offering as the way to make that pain disappear. And instead of guiding your readers through copy that focuses on features and credentials and other yawn-inducing text, you’ve used three simple techniques to do exactly what it takes to cause them to take action: You’ve drawn them in with an intensely powerful promise, You’ve used benefit-driven details to establish credibility, and You’ve leveraged their pain points to encourage them to take the action you desired. And now that you’ve experienced it for yourself by reading every word of this article, go do it for your own readers. And drop a comment below while you’re at it. I’m glad you stuck with me ’til the end. About the Author: Dave Navarro is coach-turned-blogger who writes at Rock Your Day and The Launch Coach, and loves to do more by 9 am than most people do all day. • Email to a friend • Related • View comments • Track comments • •

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[Copyblogger] Two Ways to Say More With Fewer Words

Two Ways to Say More With Fewer Words Two Ways to Say More With Fewer Words Attention spans have never been shorter it seems. But what can you do? In order for people to value your content, they've got to extract the value that's there in the first place. The problem is, no one's going to wait around for you to explain at length. You've got to get the point across as quickly as possible. Luckily, there's a solution. All you have to do is say more with fewer words. Here are two communication strategies that allow you to present an entire idea in 10 words or less. Tapping Into the Mental Schema A mental schema is a concept firmly rooted in the brains of your target audience. You can use these schemas to pack an entire story into a few words. Let me explain. Remember the movie Speed? Back when the Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock action flick was being pitched to producers, it was described as Die Hard on a bus. You instantly get the premise if you've seen Die Hard. When YouTube launched, people called it "Flickr for video." Since Flickr was a free service that allowed people to upload and share photos, YouTube must be all of that… for videos. Common sense, right? But here is a question many of you may be thinking. Do you always need to use a popular movie or a brand name as a schema? Absolutely not. What comes to mind when I say "library?" You think about books, lots of them. You think this because "library" is a schema too. Now what if I were to say Wine Library? You would think about lots of wines and maybe Gary Vaynerchuk's business. And, you would be right. Gary does have a ton of wine, and you get that instantly. Just remember that a schema takes advantage of what your audience already knows to tell a complete story in fewer words. You use analogies, archtypes, established worldviews, and popular culture to create instant understanding. As you might have guessed, these schematic comparisons are great in persuasive writing. Just take a look at 10 persuasive writing methods for practical examples you can use today. Word Association Legendary direct marketer Joseph Sugarman said "Every word has an emotion attached to it." Beyond emotional trigger words, this means that even ordinary, everyday words carry an emotional association for the recipient. And as with mental schema, choosing correctly from among these simple words helps you quickly create a complete story. For example, let's take a look at the word "subscribe." By definition, subscribe implies sending or receiving payments. Similarly, here are some emotions associated with this word: You subscribe to communication mediums (phone, internet) You subscribe to media (magazines, video games, newspapers) What's the association? A commitment to pay recurring fees. So, when you use the word "subscribe," you tell a story about a product that requires you to continuously pay for continuous service or use. Now let's look at another word. Think of the word "get." What pops into your mind? Getting money, getting links, and getting traffic. Or in other words, getting something you want. But there's also another association. When you "get" something, you often keep it — without continuous payment (unlike subscribe). This is a subtle difference and here are two examples: You get a phone. You subscribe to phone service. You get a newspaper. You subscribe to newspaper updates. You see how that works? Well, Willy Franzen understood this subtle difference when he increased his subscriber count by 254%. He simply changed his call to action from "Subscribe by RSS" to "Get Updates via RSS" and his subscriptions went way up. This worked because he altered the association from "continuously pay" to "get for free." So now you see how even everyday words have emotions attached to them. And when you want to write short, informative messages, you can carefully build a story around each word in your message. What about you? Do you know of any other ways to communicate more information in fewer words? About the Author: Derek Halpern discusses new media communication at his blog Prevential. • Email to a friend • Related • View comments • Track comments • •

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[Copyblogger] What if an A-List Blogger Decides to Take You Down?

What if an A-List Blogger Decides to Take You Down? What if an A-List Blogger Decides to Take You Down? Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch shares the sunshine with all. If that seems like an odd question, it is. Still… what if? We're in a strange (if not brave) new world. For all the good it's brought us, there's a potentially dark underbelly that needs to be considered. It's nice to look at successful blogs, Twitter accounts, and websites and marvel at the new found power of independent content creators. It's exciting to see them garner the same kind of attention that was once only available to well-funded media organizations. But with recognition comes responsibility. I think it's time to give some thought to what it means to use it well. Consider two recent incidents. Bloggers Unleashed In one, social media guru David Armano took to his blog to reprimand someone who ripped off his work. In the other, Jason Fried at 37 Signals used his company blog, Signal vs. Noise, to blast a third-party service he felt had damaged his brand. Putting aside whether or not Armano and Fried were "right" (I think both basically were), their posts raise questions that affect everyone who uses the Internet and social media to advance their goals. For all of the shortcomings of old media, it had at least one thing going for it: editorial review. Ideas and critiques had to pass more than one set of eyes before finding print, and author and publisher shared the burden of responsibility. The system didn't always work, but it was something. Does Self-Review Work? Now, A-list bloggers enjoy all the audience of newspapers and then some. Without, in most cases, checks and balances. What's more, they have immense influence. It's a by-product of the way the social web works. You might like Maureen Dowd, but you don't feel like you know her. With bloggers it's more personal, more real. Thus far, most top bloggers seem to be exercising decent judgment (leaving out blogs about politics and celebrities – those are different animals). Even the examples I cited above were handled well enough. The handshake agreement we have with new media seems to be holding up. Which makes now the best time to have an open discussion about keeping it that way. I'm not calling for censorship or regulation, and I never would. And I don't begrudge the authors – they've earned their status. That doesn't mean, however, that we shouldn't consider just how much power we're willing to give them. Two Ways to Temper the Rant At a minimum, I'd argue that it's time for the web media community to consider two basic principles when it comes to content. For producers, think before you publish (this goes triple for the A-listers). If you're going to directly critique an individual or business, sleep on it first. Don't let the ease of publishing get in the way of good judgment. If you can address an issue or solve a problem with direct contact, do it. Not everything needs to be made public. A few negative words in the age of Google can do real and irreparable damage. For consumers, stay skeptical. Don't assume that even the best and most popular bloggers are right all of the time. Do your own research if need be. Don't assume the writers know more than you do because, in many cases, they don't. We may not actually need to have this conversation yet, but someone will eventually cross the line. The more attention we pay to the ethics of new media publishing now, the better off we'll all be when it happens. About the Author: Neal Shaffer is the founder of Slant Six Creative, a creative communications studio based in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo by J.D. Lasica • Email to a friend • Related • View comments • Track comments • •

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