Archive for October, 2011

The Basics of Copywriting for the Non-Professional Writer

Writing copy for your blog or static site is definitely doable, even if you consider your self to be a bit ‘writing challenged.’ Actually, everything is within your grasp and control if you have reliable information, have studied and practiced. Below we will touch on a few important points about copywriting, so you really ought to pay attention.

You don’t really need to be an expert at copywriting to come up with good, effective titles. All effective and highly converting titles have ingredients, and you have to discover what they are so you know what to do. Your headline must convey a good sense of the offer in the copy, and then you can add something such as a very clear and powerful benefit.

You do have to be proactive, and one action you can take is searching for sales letters and picking apart the titles, or headlines. Professional magazines and the gossip newspapers employ writers who compose those killer headlines, and of course they are great for studying. You understand that your titles are responsible for getting the first sentence of your copy read and then so on.

There is a fine line you have to walk between making emotional appeals and descending into hype-filled copy. The basic process is people buy on emotions and then seek to rationalize it with logic so they feel they made the right choice. If you need some example, find successful sales letters and study them very well.

It is really very helpful for you to read professional copy, and then purposely dissect it into the various parts. You can help your self immensely by trying to feel how they feel about what ever the problem is you are writing about. What your copy has to do is basically make the sale without doing any selling to the person.

It is too easy to do spell/grammar check before you publish anything, so there is no excuse for mistakes in your copy. You either have the software in your word processors or can find it online for free. Of course there is the requisite proof reading that should always be done, as well.

There are many ways and approaches to editing and revision, so pick something you like and go with it. It will not only make you a better copywriter, but a more responsible one at that.

Always remember, you’re writing copy for your target audience, and not for yourself – so it should always be about them.

Do Not Be Scared To Take Complete Advantage of YouTube Marketing

If you’re an Internet marketer that’s trying to leverage YouTube, you should know how important it is to build a strong foundation on it so that you’re able to achieve long term success. Remember there are many areas of opportunity that still exist using video, and if you want to diversify your marketing you should explore it.

The rest of this article is all about making money using YouTube; we could call it being successful, but it really is all about making money.

There’s one feature on YouTube that many videos don’t use – and that is to link one video to another and channel in your viewers so that you’re able to increase the overall views of your YouTube channel and get people engrossed in more of your videos.

If somebody is interested in watching one of your videos and is actually liking it, chances are that they may want to see more videos created by you, ones that are relevant to the current video. This is a great way to get people to take notice of your other video uploads, which may make them want to subscribe to your channel to stay updated.

Successfully linking your videos doesn’t involve doing much, but in the long run, it will help you immensely in getting collective traffic from all of your videos, where you leverage your viewers in the best possible way. If your YouTube videos are focused on current events then you will have to be timely with your release.

If you do not do this, then you know someone else is, and your chance will be lost. We all like to hear about interesting and maybe even compelling news, and your target audience is no different. This will allow you to win their trust, which will obviously increase your subscriber numbers and also get you more views in the long run. This is not just about more subscribers because you want to get people to your money sites, too.

Even after doing everything you can to get noticed on YouTube internally, you should also work on the promotion of your videos through other channels. The first thing you should always focus on is getting your video to rank as high as possible at Google. Do all you can to get traffic to your videos from Facebook, and we need not say why you want to do that.

The list of possibilities is very long at YouTube, and all you need to do is keep learning and get started doing something.

How to Create an Effective Viral Marketing Campaign

Sometimes it seems the most difficult things look easy, and that is because the person doing them is so good – and viral marketing is a lot like that analogy. All you or anybody else can do is learn more about what contributes to producing a viral campaign, and then you do your best and roll it out.

Why is the Apple iPhone so successful and has teens going crazy over it? Simply because it’s cool. Anything that makes the end user get a ‘wow’ feeling, and gives out an idea that it’s cool will spread virally. Study the iPhone and other products, and then look at what you can do in any campaign of yours.

Nothing else is much like the iPhone, at least in the beginning, and that is the kind of effect your campaign needs to offer. Some things must be done, and these are the kinds of qualities you must have in your campaign if you really want a powerful impact.

A basic level of curiosity and interest must be there in anything you try to make viral.

Any viral video or anything else must contain something that hooks their attention if only for a brief moment or two. This applies to each and every niche, and there’s no doubt about the fact that interesting stuff spreads faster. The more you can make the content really stand out and emotional, then your chances will be better.

If you wanted to get feedback, then do a small poll or ask some friends what they think. And if the answer is no, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board and start all over again, or make the necessary changes.

You can use something like Google Analytics to keep tabs on everything that is going on, and then you will use that to assess. Learn from all of your successes and mistakes, and that will make you much stronger and smarter in the future. The nature of viral campaigns are such that discovering the exact cause for failure is not always possible.

So then you learn what you can and move on to the next order of business. Take anything that did not perform and see if it is possible to position the offer differently but with another source of targeted traffic. There might be some elements of your campaign that made it appealing to people and thus it got spread around.

Viral marketing is a challenge, to be sure, but that is part of the fun of online business, or at least we think so.

Guest Blogging -a Way to Get More Readers and Traffic

There’s nothing complicated about guest blogging; in fact, it’s one of the simplest ways to connect with a larger readership by sharing content with other blogs in your niche. If you want to know more about guest blogging, the following tips will be of interest to you.

After Your Post is Published: You can’t just sit back and relax after getting a guest post published. You need to be active enough to make the most out of your guest post and actually make your readers happy. You need to take out the time to draw your readers into your post and try to get as much favorable response from them as possible. If someone does respond to your post, keep the conversation going as long as possible by replying in kind.

Think of your original post as a seed that you nurture and hopefully it will grow into something larger if you give it enough attention. Hopefully, readers will do some of the work for you in keeping the topic going, but you have to do your part as well. Also, take out the time to submit your blog post to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc so that you can get more quality readers to your post.

Once your blog post is live, then the next step involves interacting with the readers when they comment. If you choose to write something with a controversial stance, then that very well may produce some fireworks from people – that is good, actually. Never get ugly with readers on another person’s blog because it is just bad form. But do not shoot yourself in the foot if you flame people back; you are hoping they will be constant readers for you. However, ideally this needs to be a total win-win-win situation for you, the other blog owner and the readers.

If you are new and a totally unknown quantity, then do not expect ultra-popular sites and blogs to want to publish your content. It is always recommended to be unique and unlike everybody else out there with your writing, and you never know what could happen. Create a very compelling headline and make the post as killer as you can muster. Do all you can to really impress everybody, and that includes staying away from article directories when you research your post.

Now you have something you can do that can really turn out to be very effective, so you should do it.

Enhance the Subscriber List to Your Newsletter

To increase the number of subscribers to your newsletter, its time to think outside the box. Big results won’t happen if you play it too safe. In order to make things happen and actually keep a consistent flow of subscribers to your newsletter, you should take extra initiative. In this article we introduce you to a few tips that are easy to incorporate and will assist in bringing more subscribers to your newsletter…

Incorporate a Landing Page: Getting people to notice what you offer and willing to take action is what is needed to get targeted subscribers to your newsletter. While having a subscription box on your website is good, you might want to consider a landing page where you can send targeted traffic. The landing page is where you can put your subscription box and a small sales letter with bullet points that describes the benefits of subscribing to your newsletter.

People that visit your landing page will get a clear idea as to what kind of action they should be taking and why they should subscribe to your newsletter. If you are driving traffic through paid sources such as pay per click ads, then a definitely page is essential. You don’t want to confuse prospects, so its necessary to make your landing page simple, easy to understand and effective.

Have a Subscription Box on Every Page: It’s a simple fact that the more places where a reader can click on “subscribe,” the easier it will be for them to take this action. Every page on your site that has a subscription box is another opportunity for you to gain potential subscribers.

The more pages your website contains, the more important this is. Your site visitors aren’t always going to land on your homepage, so limiting your subscription box to the homepage will limit your reach. You want to give your website visitors as many opportunities as possible to see and fill out your subscription form. The best rule to follow is to make it possible for people to subscribe from every single page on your site. The position of the subscription form can also make a difference in your response rate; keep it high on the page to make it more visible.

Use Ethical Bribery: If you want more visitors to fill out your subscription box, it sometimes takes more than just asking them. In order to get people to take the action you want, you may have to offer them a bribe.

Since this has become such a widely used tactic, however, you have to be creative and original in your approach. Your aim should be to bribe them in such a way that they can’t resist your offer, so they give in and subscribe. For example, if your newsletter is about “dog training,” then you can create a series of dog training videos and give them away for free to people that subscribe to your newsletter.

If you want to motivate people to subscribe to your newsletter, then, try to bribe them in a creative way. Remember that the number one rule for getting newsletter subscribers is to provide your target audience with the kind of content that they really want.