Tag Archives: Content Marketing

6 Online Marketing Mistakes that Will Kill Your Business

Posted on by

Usually on Copyblogger we talk about how to grow your business , get more customers, increase your conversion rate, build thousands of daily readers, and all the rest of it. But you also need to know about the factors that will kill off your business. Sometimes it’s a question of attitude, like when you’re sick of it, when it’s only a hobby and you don’t want to take it too seriously, or when you’re equally scared of success and failure. And then there are just downright mistakes, which, fortunately, can be corrected. If you want your business to thrive, watch out for these warning signs. Get them straightened out and you’ll get your business on the road to robust good health. #1: A sucky attitude Your attitude about your own business will affect everyone else’s attitude about it. Every web visitor, every person you speak to, every twitter and FaceBook contact. They’ll know, without you telling them, exactly how you regard your business. What are some of the warning signs that your attitude may suck? When you don’t post for weeks on end. When you haven’t put out a new product or service for the last six months. When you say your business would be great if it wasn’t for those $#%^& customers. When you whinge about how hard business is and how all those successful A-listers must have had friends in the right places. When you’re expecting to be an overnight success and you’re surprised that you aren’t both rich and famous after six months. #2: Marketing to a demographic, not a niche The best and simplest definition of a niche that I’ve seen is “a group of people with a common problem who congregate together.” What isn’t a niche? Freelancers are not a niche. Work at Home Parents (mums, dads, or both) are not a niche. Small business owners are not a niche. Copywriters are not a niche. Women over 40 are not a niche, neither are men after retirement. Those are all demographics — and they’re all groups that I’ve seen people try to market to. It’s only a niche when they share a problem. So what’s the problem in your niche, and how are you going to solve it? Where does your niche group together so you can market to them specifically? It’s a marketing paradox that the more you narrow your niche, the more successful your marketing will be. Have a look at who you’re aiming at now and ask yourself if it’s a demographic or a real niche. How can you narrow your message down to their core problem — the one that you solve brilliantly and uniquely? #3: Looking like a cheapskate It’s so easy to set up an online business these days — just whack up a WordPress.com or Blogger site and off you go. Need graphics? Pick up some clip art. Logo and website header? $50 should take care of that if you outsource to the lowest bidder. Business cards? You can get freebies from Vistaprint, why pay money for a designer and printing? Newsletter list? Send that from your desktop with Outlook. The only problem here is that your business looks cheap. And the overall impression visitors and potential clients get is that you’re (a) broke, (b) cheap and (c) unprofessional. There are some things you can do free or low-cost and no one will notice. Your website is not one of them. Don’t get me wrong here, you don’t have to go to the other extreme and mortgage your house to pay for the website. You do have to make sure that your site has a clean, professional look, that it’s easy to navigate, and that your web presence makes you look worth the prices you charge. #4: Not capturing visitor details Someone comes to your site, looks around, reads some posts, and then leaves. Sure, they liked it and intend to come back and read some more — but they never do. They forget, lose the url, get busy. And you’ve lost them forever. I’m amazed at the number of small businesses that don’t have a way to capture visitor details — their names and email addresses. They’re losing customers and making life harder for themselves. It takes time and effort to attract people to your site, so why let them leave without a way to keep in touch? Set up an email newsletter list (NOT from your desktop, see #3 above) and offer a valuable free report or ebook in exchange for their details. MailChimp is free up to 500 subscribers if money is tight at the start, and you can build from there. Once you’ve lost a visitor they’re gone forever — along with every person they may have referred you to. Do you really want to let them get away that easily? #5: Failing to plan long term Or don’t plan at all. Business plans are for big businesses, and for when you need to go to the bank for capital, right? Wrong! When you don’t plan you’ll drift. You’ll chase the latest marketing guru and technique, flit from this to that and wonder why nothing seems to work for you. What are you aiming for? What do you expect out of your business? How will you know when you’ve reached it? You don’t need a 100 page plan full of legalese and possible budgets and financial projections that no-one but your Accountant understands. But at the very least you do need to know what your aims (goals) for your business are, who you’re marketing to, and what makes you different from everyone else out there. No plan = No business. #6: All learning, no action Are you a ‘gunna’? You’re ‘gunna’ do this and ‘gunna’ do that? Just as soon as you’ve studied this marketing e-course, read those 136 ebooks, listened to the 84 teleseminars and watched the 78 hours of business videos that you’ve downloaded onto your computer? How many information products have you bought that you’ve never read, listened to or watched? How many of them have you actually worked through step by step? We all do this, or rather, don’t do this. Me? I’m waiting for retirement before I work through my resources folder — it’s the only way I’ll ever have the time. Ebooks, courses, videos and all the other teaching methods are great, as long as you utilize what you’ve learned . Information junkies abound. People who take action on what they’ve learned are rare. You’ll learn more in your first twelve months of actually running your business and putting yourself out there than you will from any number of books, courses and videos. Information is great, but nothing beats taking action. About the Author: Mel Brennan is the antipodean force behind both SuperWAHM and the Two Hour Business Plan . You can also catch her on Twitter . P.S. Looking for the advice we talked about at the beginning: how to grow your business, get more customers, increase your conversion rate, gain several thousand daily readers, and all of that good stuff? You’ll find it on the free Copyblogger newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People . Come join us today !

3c3b757d57button.gif 6 Online Marketing Mistakes that Will Kill Your Business

See original here:
6 Online Marketing Mistakes that Will Kill Your Business

5 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Email Newsletter

Posted on by

Five reasons? There may be seven thousand reasons why your newsletter won’t get the response you’re looking for. Most of those reasons have the same common problem, though: readers just don’t like it. And that’s probably because you’re making one of these five mistakes. Mistake # 1: Your newsletter isn’t helpful This is a big one. My wife signed up for a newsletter on Ayurveda, thinking she would get some helpful articles and ideas on a topic she was very interested in. All she ever got was a whole bunch of promotional stuff. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You know very well that non-stop shameless self-promotion doesn’t exactly endear you to others, and of course you’d never make every single newsletter into a pitch. Because you’re a Copyblogger reader, you know that your content has to be useful or it won’t get read. Yet most folks can’t help themselves. They mean to write something useful, they mean to be helpful, but they end up being self-promotional because it’s easier . It’s easier to say “Yoga class on Friday, 17th December” than it is to write yet another article about yoga. So they wind up being self-promotional by default — and since it was the easier option, they don’t think of it as being unhelpful to their readers. That doesn’t mean the readers don’t see it that way, though. Mistake #2: Your voice isn’t particularly compelling Voice is not everything, but it sure counts for a lot. When you speak to a friend over the phone, they sound excited and vibrant. Ask them to put down their feelings on paper and you often find what they’ve written just doesn’t sound like them. Their voice doesn’t show up in their writing, and that means their writing doesn’t really convey how they feel. Every artist, singer, and yes, writer has a signature voice . This voice needs to be authentic. If you’ve tried and failed to find your voice before, put down the pen and Skype a friend. Get them to ask you questions about the topics you’ll be writing about in your newsletter — recording every word, naturally. Then just blab away, and transcribe what you’ve said. I know this method sounds tedious. But it’s quicker than slaving over a boring newsletter that takes you two days to write, and still winds up completely devoid of voice. Voice matters. And you have one — you just have to get it on paper. But tone alone won’t save the day. Mistake # 3: You’re not telling stories Many people think their newsletter has to be full of perfectly organized and structured articles — and since they don’t know how to create those kinds of articles, they get frustrated and stuck when they’re trying to write. Structure isn’t the way to create a great newsletter. Stories are. As human beings, we’re entranced by stories from an early age. Start with stories about your clients. Write about what you’ve experienced in your industry and your thoughts about it. When you’re trying to elicit response, nothing gets your readers engaged like the color and drama of a good story. And how do you finish? Tell the moral of the story — just like you would in a real story. Explain what you learned or what you should have learned or what someone else could learn from this experience. The moral of the story also does double duty as the springboard for your call to action. Which brings us to Mistake # 4. Mistake # 4: You have a half-hearted call to action This week, you need to fill up your yoga class. In your newsletter, you’re going to ask a customer to write back or comment. You need that customer to respond. You can’t hope they will — you have to ask them to do it. You have to be pretty darned clear what you want them to do, too. Just saying “please respond” is far too vague. Your customers don’t know exactly what you want them to do or how to do it. Do you want them to click on a link? Tell them to click here (and also tell them why). Do you want them to write back and tell you you’re a god/goddess/schmuck? Use the words “just click reply to email me back and tell me I’m a god/goddess/schmuck.” Do you want them to buy? Tell them . Most folks just hope their customers will act on their own. And their customers mostly don’t — because they’re too busy to figure out how you want them to respond. You need to tell them. Just a little nudge will do. Of course, none of this will work if you’re a complete stranger. Mistake# 5: You don’t have a specific frequency Switch on your TV at 6 pm. What do you see? In most countries, it’s the evening news. And every evening it’s the same old news, but hey it’s consistent. Most newsletters aren’t. If you’re going to write a newsletter, then you’ve got to have a publishing schedule. You have to promise your readers that your newsletter will go out once a month, or twice a month or three times a week — whatever it may be. Your newsletters can’t go to Bermuda on vacation. They’re doing all the grunt work for you. Our newsletter has gone out since 2002 and has done so week after week without any stoppage. You want to stop? You are ill? Sorry mate, but that won’t wash well with your readers. Imagine the TV station canceling the news because some newsreader didn’t turn up. One of the big reasons for the lack of response is that your newsletter is a stranger to your readers. You can’t send them a newsletter whenever you feel like it and hope they’ll respond. Response is directly related to frequency. Muck up on frequency and the rest of the four points don’t even matter. So there you have it: Pure self-promotion won’t work — make it useful. Your tone of writing is critical. Record yourself if you have to, but connect with your own unique voice. If you can’t get your head around structure, use customer stories. Don’t be half-hearted about promotion — give a strong call to action. Without consistent frequency, your customers will forget who you are even if you do everything else right. Newsletters are a lot of work. There’s no point in doing them unless you see the response you’re looking for. And avoiding these five big mistakes will perk up your response in a hurry. About the Author: Sean D’Souza offers a great free article on ‘Why Headlines Fail’ when you subscribe to his Psychotactics Newsletter . Be sure to check out his blog , too. P.S. Have you checked out Internet Marketing for Smart People , the Copyblogger email newsletter? It features a free 20-step course that will build your business, so you really should click here and subscribe .

3c3b757d57button.gif 5 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Email Newsletter

See original here:
5 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Email Newsletter

Introducing GuestBlogging.com (Check out the Free Videos)

Posted on by

So, you’ve heard my take on why guest blogging is important . Over the years, you’ve probably seen other popular bloggers talking about it too. But maybe you can’t help thinking … how does it help you build a popular blog of your own ? If you’ve been wondering, head over to GuestBlogging.com , because over the next 10 days, I’m going to show you. We’ll talk about: How to get your first 1000 blog subscribers, even if none of the leaders in your niche know who you are yet How to stop getting ignored by popular bloggers and get the links you deserve How to build a following on twitter to help you promote your blog posts How to get your blog a first page ranking on Google, without knowing all of the technical details of SEO Didn’t know guest blogging could help you do all of that? I didn’t either, when I first started. Over the years though, I’ve gotten to see some pretty powerful examples, and so I decided to make some videos for you and share them with you on Guestblogging.com . Here’s how it’ll work: Every few days, I’ll release a new video that walks you through real-world examples and strategies for how you can use guest blogging to build a popular blog. Right now, only the first video is available, but opt in, and I’ll e-mail you as I post new ones. As of right now, there’s nothing for sale. The videos are 100% content, no sales or marketing messages at all. When we’re done with them, I will tell you about a new training program I’m creating specifically for bloggers who are serious about increasing their traffic. But that’s at least a week or so away. For now, enjoy the free videos, and learn about all of the cool ways guest blogging can help you. Click here to get started. See you there! About the Author: Jon Morrow is the Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the Founder of GuestBlogging.com . Get more from him on twitter .

3c3b757d57button.gif Introducing GuestBlogging.com (Check out the Free Videos)

Go here to see the original:
Introducing GuestBlogging.com (Check out the Free Videos)

Get More Great Content from @copyblogger on Twitter

Posted on by

Since we’re taking it a bit easy this summer by dropping from six posts a week to three , you might find yourself going through withdrawal. Not to fear. We share additional content related to copywriting, content, social media, SEO and online marketing from many sources across the web @copyblogger on Twitter. So join us on Twitter !

3c3b757d57button.gif Get More Great Content from @copyblogger on Twitter

Here is the original post:
Get More Great Content from @copyblogger on Twitter

The Force that Powers Persuasive Content (And 3 Ways to Intensify It)

Posted on by

You hear it from us all the time… If you want to engage and influence, connect emotionally and then justify logically . That’s still true. But there’s a Force more powerful than logic or emotion… And it’s you . Same as it Ever Was First, what do we know about effective persuasion? We can now scan and record human brain activity in controlled tests, and the results continue to verify decades-old social psychology studies on persuasion. Those same social psychology studies confirmed the effectiveness of centuries-old persuasion techniques practiced by sales people, savvy politicians, and smart parents. And those very techniques originate with the observations of the ancient Greeks and Romans over 2,000 years ago, who developed the art of rhetoric to effectively persuade the masses of the day. It’s a cliché, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. In other words, technology, media, and cultural context are dramatically different and ever evolving, but human beings respond fundamentally the same way we always have. And when it comes to persuasion, people respond to a person’s perceived character way more than logic. Strong character can even defeat an eloquent emotional appeal in many persuasion duels. So let’s take a closer look. The Origin of the Force The ancient art of rhetoric is based on three compelling components: Logos is an appeal to pure logic and reason. Pathos is an appeal to the desires, fears, passions, and other emotions of the audience. Ethos is an appeal to the authority, honesty, and credibility of the person speaking or writing. Of the three, Aristotle said ethos may well be the most effective means of persuasion a person possesses. And while general reputation certainly comes into play, Aristotle further said that ethos is best demonstrated through the tone and style of the messages you deliver. That’s right – the content of your character is determined by the character of your content . Here are three powerful ways to strengthen the force of your ethos. The Force is Strong in Those Who… 1. Show Some Decorum Ethos is driven first and foremost by virtue, with a twist. Rather than an inherent trait, virtue is perceived by the audience when they believe you share and uphold the same values they do. You connect with them when you satisfy their expectations. The ancient Romans called this meeting of audience expectations decorum . It’s not necessarily about being prim and proper – after all, the best person to persuade a gang of drunken bikers to sleep it off is likely one of their own, not the local schoolmarm. In short, you can’t lead a tribe that thinks you don’t belong – and it’s totally up to them to decide if you fit in. So if the idea of changing to meet the expectations of an audience doesn’t sit well with you, you’ll have to attract an audience that naturally fits with who you already are. Luckily, that’s what the Internet is famous for. 2. Have Han Solo Authority There’s no doubt that Han Solo is a pragmatic bad ass. Whether you’re raiding the spice mines of Kessel, rescuing a rebel princess, or seeking just-in-time help at a murderous moon-sized space station, Solo is the likable, talented, practical pro for the job. In terms of ethos, you want to display similar practical wisdom to increase your persuasive mojo. Be the likeable street-smart authority whose content helps get things done, not an aloof academic expert looking down from the lectern. You don’t have to be perfect (Solo sure isn’t). In fact, letting your flaws flow increases your authenticity and strengthens the bond with those you’re trying to reach. When it comes down to it, all that matters is you know your stuff and deliver. A Wookie sidekick is nice, but optional. 3. Exhibit Jedi Leadership The final key element of an ethos that persuades is the goodwill and receptivity cultivated between you and the audience. This is usually best accomplished when people feel you are acting out of selfless leadership, without a vested interest or ulterior motive. “Wait a minute Brian,” you’re saying about now. “I do have a vested interest. I want to sell stuff and build my business!” Okay, I hear you (and these voices in my head are freaking me out a bit). That’s where we come back once again to valuable free content. Even while naturally promoting you and your business, great content with independent value is nonetheless a gift to your market. As long as you’re transparent (and unapologetic ) about the reason you’re providing the content, you’re exhibiting effective leadership that entitles you to pull Jedi mind tricks at will. Put the audience first and you’ll get what you want in return. Everyone wins. Jedi Mind Tricks Without Going to the Dark Side A strong perceived ethos is powerful stuff, which is why many have faked congruent character for fun and profit over the centuries. Church, state, and aristocracy have all seen healthy amounts of character manipulation thanks to the persuasive power of ethos. Social media seems ripe for similar shenanigans. But great content can’t be faked, and a worldwide reach means you can be you and attract like-minded people who think you rock just the way you are. So there’s no need to go to the dark side of the Force to fit in. Freed from the tyranny of geography, the Internet allows us to avoid being character chameleons and be authentic instead. Smart online marketers realize they don’t need a tiny niche topic to lead a tribe, because they themselves are the niche. Never forget it’s all about them. But it’s you who has the appeal. About the Author : Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of Thesis and Scribe . Get more from Brian on Twitter .

3c3b757d57button.gif The Force that Powers Persuasive Content (And 3 Ways to Intensify It)

See the rest here:
The Force that Powers Persuasive Content (And 3 Ways to Intensify It)