Web Copywriting
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It?s that time of year again . . . time to get your trick-or-treating gear ready.
Trust me, this year you?re too old to troll the neighborhood begging for miniature Twix bars. Your neighbors are wise to you and your ?Eminem costume.?
Instead, how about putting a little thought into what your blog will be this Halloween?
Sure, you can go the cheap and easy way and get a Perez Hilton mask, but where?s the fun in that? Instead, look through this collection of spooky archetypes and see if you can spot your blog on the list.
The devil
Instead of a pitchfork, the devil blog sports a yellow highlighter and screaming red headlines.
The devil blog is all about setting up scams and systems so you don?t need to show up to write every day. Sure, the convoluted “blueprint” you paid for that combines scraped content, Adwords arbitrage, and finding a source for counterfeit Acai berries is going to take you about three months to build. And that’s if you don’t sleep. But one day it?s gonna pay off big, baby.
The devil blog is all about the blogger. Your needs, your income, your rewards, and to hell with your readers, or anyone else for that matter.
Double bonus points if your blog is about making money online and you have yet to make your first twenty bucks.
The angel
You?ve been blogging since 1968, back when your posts took the form of hand-embroidered manifestos passed from coffeehouse to coffeehouse via traveling folk singers. Readership really picked up once the Internet got invented.
You?ve given thousands of hours of your life to your community and never asked for anything in return. You are saintly beyond reproach.
Ok, there was that one time, back in 2002, when you asked your audience to do you a favor. They flamed you like a campfire marshmallow. You blamed Al Quaeda and global warming, and have never tried it since.
The zombie
This is the blog that actually died about 18 months ago, but somehow it just keeps limping along, looking plaintively for brains.
You keep meaning to get serious about your cornerstone content. You fully intend to get your blog moved over to your own domain name. And you?re definitely going to write a new post since that last one you did on Groundhog Day. But frankly, Farmville takes a lot of free time, and you just don?t have the bandwidth.
Our advice: Put the damned thing out of its misery and give it a decent burial already.
The sexy witch
You?re tough and smart. You?re ballsy. You?re outspoken. You swear, a lot. You?re prickly and inconvenient, and possibly a little nuts.
You?re not afraid to mock your male compatriots for having smaller/less effective testicles than you do.
You look pretty darned good in that costume, and you know it.
The trendy costume
You?re swine flu or Dead Kanye or the Public Option for U.S. healthcare.
The main thing is to get people talking, stir up lots of controversy, and get some buzz going. Six weeks after Halloween is over, even you won?t remember what exactly the point was.
To paraphrase Andy Warhol, in the future, everyone will be a trending topic on Twitter for fifteen minutes.
The power ranger
You do everything right. You have superhuman strength, agility, and you can fly. Your content is strong, your headlines are sharp, your Twitter etiquette is impeccable.
You?ve got everything going for you, except no one can tell the difference between you and the other 10,000 power rangers that showed up at their door on Saturday night. Find a little spark of something genuinely different and you?ll be ready to actually unleash that ninja storm and do some damage.
So how about you?
I was trying to think of the canonical cool costume to end with, but there really isn?t one.
Because really good costumes can be funny, weird, interesting, creative, insane. The things that make for great Halloween costumes are pretty similar to what make great blogs. But they can?t be lame me-too copies of what some other cool person is doing.
Let us know in the comments what your blog is this Halloween. We can?t wait to check you out.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
Picture this. You?re in a fancy night club, one of the best in Vegas. You’re drinking free beer and watching 50 or 100 people party to heavy beats and exotic dance tunes. You should be enjoying the mood . . . maybe even letting a dance sneak out every now and then.
But instead, you’re off in the corner talking business. Not just any business either. You’re talking about the business of blogging.
I know . . . pretty lame right?
But hold that thought, because although on the surface it seems like you’re missing the point of the “nightclub experience,” the truth is that you are working feverishly to solve a problem that plagues the blogging world.
It might not be life or death, but the fact that most bloggers don’t see it is cause for great concern. So what’s the problem?
Bloggers make terrible businesspeople
I was at the Bank in the Bellagio hotel earlier this month, talking with my pal Rich Lazzara, and we started talking about something we noticed during the first two days of the Blogworld Expo.
Rich mentioned to me that bloggers were crappy business people (that’s putting it nicely) and proposed that if people like you and I started treating our blog as a business, we’d actually start seeing better results. At first I was a bit surprised by the assumption, but after digesting it this weekend I realized that he was absolutely right.
Over the course of our conversation, we discussed a variety of examples, but I want to share the three ?blog killers? that really stood out to me.
1. Business Bloggers Making Hobby Money: These guys (and gals) work like Gary Vaynerchuk, but they aren’t making anything more than hobby money. They want to say that they are probloggers, but they allow the comfort of their job to lull them into a sense of security. Rather than live up to their inner desire to become a blogging powerhouse, they use “hobby blogging” as an excuse to stay exactly where they are.
2. The Dreamers: These bloggers dream all day about blogging success, but they never get around to actually doing the work required to make it happen. They simply won’t take things seriously. To them, spending four hours on Twitter is just as productive as writing a blog post.
3. The Selfish: These bloggers just don’t see the point in networking or in spreading goodwill. They certainly don’t take the time to foster relationships that can help them reach the next level, including creating a solid relationship with their audience.
For selfish bloggers, everything is about them . . . what they can do, how good their products are, and how much you should want to be like them. They step on everyone else in order to get onto the shoulders of giants.
It?s time to get serious
In my opinion, each of these three maladies hinge on what Chris Brogan said during his Blogworld keynote on Thursday, which is that as bloggers we all need to elevate our game.
If you are serious about blogging, you need to treat your blog like a business. You are the CEO of You Inc., and you’ve got to weigh every single decision as if there were millions of dollars on the line. Yeah, it would be great to blog in your underwear and sleep in every morning, but the reality is that most of us can’t afford to do that.
Measure the day’s work in results, not in hours spent typing on Facebook or Twitter. Absolutely, fostering relationships is important, but every action needs to be treated as an investment of your time.
This is especially important if you are a solo blogger, as there is only so much work that you can get done in a day. You’ve got to be efficient with your time. This means measured action and measured results — not just going with the flow.
Be honest with yourself
If you really don’t care whether or not you make any money as a blogger, then that’s fine. But don’t lie to yourself just so you can feel better about being broke.
Bust your tail
Copyblogger took about four years to get where it is today. Gary V busted his ass for two years before he got the book deal. And Chris Brogan spent 11 years on his ?overnight success.?
You’ve got to work hard to become successful. End of story.
Be strategic
Develop a short-, mid-, and long-term plan for your business and follow it to the best of your ability. You can adapt it as you gain knowledge and expertise, but if you go without a plan you’re toast.
Learn how to network
As someone who spends time in sales and marketing, I’m used to shaking hands and saying hello.
It’s important to get out there and meet people, but please don’t be ?that guy.? Treat relationships as an investment in your business.
Provide value
Quit worrying about what your customer can do for you and instead worry about what you can do for your customer.
Don’t think about how you can shove a new product down a customer’s throat. Instead, spend your time worrying about whether you can solve a problem or improve their experience. If providing value to your audience isn’t a priority, you?re in for trouble.
There’s no secret to becoming a full-time blogger aside from hard work and adopting the right mentality. Sure, there are nuances that you’ll need to master, but the plan is already laid out there for you. Find your passion, develop a plan, and work your tail off by creating awesome content.
But heck, isn’t that what they’ve been saying here all along?
About the Author: Nathan Hangen writes about web entrepreneurship at NathanHangen.com, and about how to use social media to fuel your brand at Making It Social. Follow him on Twitter @nhangen.
Buying online is a consumer?s paradise, right?One can compare competing offers ?til the heart?s content, all with simple clicks of a mouse.Well, it?s not that great if you happen to sell online.And what if I told you it?s not really that great for consumers, either?Sound crazy? Read on.
Preface: Start with a killer product or service
This should go without saying in our age of global competition and reduced barriers to entry. But so often merchants are looking for a magic bullet to widely distribute something that the market simply finds inferior.The problem is, there are plenty of people out there with exceptional products and services who are losing out to others with lesser offerings and higher prices.What?s going on with that?Superior marketing and sales techniques, that?s what. Here are 3 ways to level the playing field (or even tip the scales in your favor).
1. Eliminate competition with artful positioning
Wouldn?t selling online be wonderful without competition? Well, it?s possible, if only to the extent that a certain type of person considers you the absolute only option. Yes, it?s our friend positioning again, and we?ll keep talking about it because it?s so vital to success.The traditional approach to positioning involves offering a benefit your competition cannot or will not offer, thereby making your offer the only choice for those who value that benefit. It still works too ? look at the insane level of customer service that Zappos offers, and you?ll understand why throngs of people wouldn?t dream of buying shoes elsewhere.For small and micro-businesses, positioning (a/k/a your unique selling proposition) can be as simple as creating a unique bond with enough people to build a thriving business. Whether by creating a hybrid business at the intersection of disciplines, crafting a better metaphor that communicates what people need to hear, or creating an emotional bond and huge trust based on your own personality, modern online positioning has come down to connections that resonate authentically and generate loyalty.Remember, it?s not about where you rank in a hierarchy against others. It?s about carving out your unique territory and owning it outright.
2. Confront your competitors proactively
Let?s face it, in some markets, positioning alone might not get it done. When you?re selling retail items such as consumer electronics or commodity goods, shoppers are more focused on overall value for the buck.The most common merchant response to the threat of online comparison shopping is not very effective. ?Hey, let?s pretend they?re not there!? is nice as wishful thinking, but let?s be realistic.You?ll hear time and again that the initial objectives of copy in a call-to-action environment is to 1) attract attention; 2) express benefits; and 3) overcome objections. The fact that your prospect thinks you have legitimate competition is really just an objection to buying from you right now.Instead of sticking your head in the ground, why not proactively address why your offer is better than the other guy?s? Don?t assume that your prospect ?gets? that your offer is superior; ?show? her it?s better by doing a head-to-head comparison with charts, checklists, or even an interactive apples-to-apples demonstration.People examining your offer want you to be the solution to their desire or problem. It?s your job to eliminate the lingering doubt that exists in the form of objections, and like it or not, your competition is one of those objections.
3. Emotional benefits make everyone happy
We tell you over and over (and over) to focus first on benefits rather than features, because people decide to buy based on lightening-fast emotional responses, and justify that decision with logic. But what if it turned out that making purchase decisions via emotion (instead of by overly-rational research and price shopping) actually made us happier?Recent psychological resaerch indicates just that. The study focused on using proven methods to impede logical decision-making, thereby forcing people to go with emotional, intuitive choices instead.The results?Those who used primarily emotion rather than primarily logic made more consistent choices. And consistency is one of the hallmarks of a ?rational actor.? In other words, the ?emotional? people made more ?rational? choices than those who focused on rationality!What does that mean? From the study:
For the consumers, contrary to lay perceptions, attending to one’s emotional responses may prove to be very valuable in understanding one’s preferences. It is possible consumers would be much happier with choices based more on their emotional reaction. For example, if one buys a house and relies on very cognitive attributes such as resale value, one may not be as happy actually living in it, as opposed to a person who attends to his or her emotional reaction to the house prior to purchasing it.
Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide, thinks that online price shopping might actually make us unhappy. He notes that the study speculates that the Internet leads consumers to engage in more rational deliberation, which in turn produces an outcome that contradicts our assumptions about the ?online shopping paradise.?Remember, when introduced to an emotional benefit in an offer, neurology shows that our brains react as if we were already experiencing the actual benefit. In essence, employing emotional benefits not only begins the customer satisfaction experience before the sale, this latest research indicates that initial satisfaction maintains after the sale.
Isn?t bonding with prospects and customers better for everyone?
It?s amazing how many of the initial assumptions sparked by the Internet continue to be dead wrong. E-commerce was supposed to benefit the consumer by providing limitless options, and yet the counterintuitive paradox of choice shows that too many options make us anxious and unhappy.Instead, we now have an entire movement devoted to voluntary simple living. We don?t necessarily want more choice; we want something that does what we need it to do when we desire a solution.In an ultra-competitive environment, a quality product or service is an indisputable market obligation (and I?d say an ethical obligation as well). But given how we actually operate as human beings in the face of overwhelming choice, isn?t a communication approach that bonds emotionally with our prospective customers also a market obligation? Perhaps even an ethical one?What do you think? Let me know in the comments.About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.
When screenwriter John August wrote that only non-writers get writer’s block, some readers whined (and personally attacked him).”But getting blocked does happen to real writers!” they cried. They cried because they wanted to be victims, instead of responsible for their writing blocks. They whined because it was easier and less scary than facing the facts. But when your income depends on your ability to write, whining won’t get you anywhere. It will distract you from the golden opportunity that writer’s block always offers: greater clarity and confidence.When you work it right, writer’s block is your secret weapon to becoming a better and more resilient writer. And when your ability to write is what pays the bills, that’s gold.
How writer’s block can give you more clarity
Writing flows when you are clear on what you need to say, and why you need to say it. Writing becomes a chore when you know what you need to say but are reluctant to do it. And it can dry up completely when you’re not so clear anymore. Your clarity is directly linked to how convinced you are that you have something valuable to say — and that you can say it. Both of these require courage to face the fear that any act of writing brings. So use writer’s block as a signal to stop and reflect on what you fear and why, because if you don’t acknowledge the fear, you’ll never be able to face it. All it takes to move through fear is facing it, feeling it. Saying to yourself, “Okay, this is scary. But it still needs to be done.”
How to Start unblocking yourself
If you need some concrete steps to get started on identifying the fears related to your writer’s block, try the “clean-slate” exercise:
- Take a blank sheet of paper and write down a one-line summary of what you think you’re supposed to be writing. Be as topic-specific and categorical as you can. Is it a book review, an online report, a sales page, a newsletter article?
- Write down all the ideas and opinions about that topic that have been passed along to you by other people — things that you’ve read, heard, overheard, or even imagined. Don’t forget your parents, mentors, friends, role models. Record all those voices running around in your head and lay them out on the page.
- Good. Now put that page aside because that’s not the one that’s going to turn your block into a weapon. (In fact, it’s the one that will keep you stuck.)
- Get another blank sheet of paper.
- Again, write down what you think you should be writing in the center of the page. Now, make sure you are alone in your room. There should be no one around to look over your shoulder, judge you, criticize you, or misunderstand you — in physical form or in your head. It’s important to maintain this solitude for the next step.
- Dig deep into what you have to say, what you think, and what your opinion is, stripped away from all of those from the first sheet. Put it all out on the page, and take more pages if you need to. Remember, there is no one to judge you and your task is to write without any reference to the ideas or opinions from that first sheet, but write only from within you.
This second “clean-slate” page will reveal the true reason why you wanted to write in the first place. It’s a safe place to get some clarity about what you need to say, without worrying about what anyone else will think. Going to that safe place gets you unstuck.
How writer’s block can boost your confidence
Each time you unblock yourself by writing despite your fears, it builds confidence. You realize, “Hey, I’ve got a lot to say! And I’ve got a unique position!” You teach yourself that even though your job requires you to write to and for other people, you’re really doing it for yourself — whether for income, personal satisfaction, or even good conscience. You also strengthen your writing so that nothing can faze it. You won’t get thrown off by anyone’s doubts (including your own), negative opinions, projections, or reservations about your ability to perform. Those will only cloud what you know you need to say. Most important of all, you learn that writer’s block is all in the mind. That John’s whiny commentators missed out on a mother lode of resilience any writer would envy, because they ran away from writer’s block instead of picking it up as the weapon that it is. To be a resilient and fierce writer, you need to write despite your fears. And you need signals, such as writer’s block, to help uncover your fears so you can face them. Writer’s block can’t be separated from your doubt and fear. It’s something you are not a victim of, but responsible to. It can, and should, be faced head-on.Preferably right now, if your next meal is waiting for that last page to get finished. About the Author: Melissa Karnaze writes about the intelligence of emotions on Mindful Construct and Twitter.
Since the very first blog, written around an ancient campfire somewhere in the moist foothills of Seattle, content has been crowned the undisputed king. The king ruled over all that was written, be they blogs, articles, ads, fiction, or a killer love letter. All that was copy sat at the feet of the [.]
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