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The Easy-to-Use Tool that Helps You Build a Breakthrough Blog

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As a digital branding and marketing agency , our company has encouraged, coached, and cajoled clients over the years on the importance of blogging for building traffic, buzz, and organic search. We watched some clients grow by leaps and bounds, attracting hundreds of thousands of blog visitors per month. And we watched others clients stumble along without ever gaining the momentum we were working for. Of course there are a lot of factors that drive success or failure. But among the blogs that succeeded on a huge scale, we noticed two common factors. First, the breakthrough blogs had a strong editorial calendar. And second, they used a thoughtful, strategic approach to managing editorial content. What is an editorial calendar, and why do you need one? An editorial calendar is just a fancy term for a publishing schedule. If you blog regularly, you should look ahead at least one month and make some decisions about which posts you want to publish on what dates. It’s really that simple. An editorial calendar is the foundation of strategic blogging. That little bit of planning goes a surprisingly long way toward getting the most audience reach from your blog content. 1. An editorial calendar lets you plan ahead By planning your posts ahead of time, you drive perseverance. An editorial calendar encourages blogging as a habit, wards off writer’s block, and ensures that you never miss another deadline. It’s a small, subtle thing, but you’ll be surprised at the difference it makes in your mindset. 2. An editorial calendar adds structure to your creativity Many bloggers worry that an editorial calendar will straitjacket their creativity. Actually, the opposite is true. Writing comes to many of us in waves. Struck by a bolt of inspiration, a blogger can write two or three posts in an afternoon. That’s fine — keep writing about what inspires you. Then use your editorial calendar to publish each post according to a plan that keeps your target audience in mind. Staring at that blank screen and trying to come up with a topic can be one of the most stressful aspects of blogging. But you’ll find that when you make those decisions weeks in advance, you actually come up with more and better ideas. You’ll be more creative, not less. 3. You can take a great concept further An editorial calendar is a powerful tool for maximizing the reach of your content, while removing the pressure of having to generate new concepts for each post. Say you’ve got a great topic in mind, one you know your readers care a lot about. There’s no reason to blow it all in one day. Would it make a valuable series, parceled out over a period of time and then gathered into a content landing page ? Could you run some interviews or line up some guest posts on the topic? Or go multimedia and round up a few engaging videos or cartoons on the subject? Whether you write everything yourself or use guest writers, planning ahead lets you group your content more effectively. Once you start looking at your blog a month at a time, you can develop patterns and make sure your content is well-balanced among all the readers you serve. 4. You can be proactive and capitalize on search trends When you pair planning with a strong foundation in SEO , you start to build your audience highly efficiently. An editorial calendar helps you pay better attention to key outreach strategies, such as blog post titles and link building. At a more advanced level, you can use it to plan and time posts related to your target audience’s search behaviors. Capitalizing on search activity can be as simple as timing posts and topics to synch with public holidays or product launches. Or it can be as complex as doing deep keyword analysis and planning content around trending search terms that will deliver maximum traffic to your blog. Why Stresslimit developed the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin After years of hacking together editorial calendars for our clients, using Excel spreadsheets and Google Docs, we wound up in a long discussion with our close friend (and brilliant engineer) Zack Grossbart. Beyond our mutual excitement about blogging and the power of editorial calendar strategy, we shared a passion for open source projects and wanted to give back to the WordPress community. We also wanted to develop a tool that would make our lives and coaching our clients more efficient, easier, and simply cooler. Our clients were excited about the idea of using an editorial calendar. But there was no single tool that enabled us to eliminate “busy work” and free up more time for strategizing and creativity. We were also in synch with Zack on our love for creating simple, intuitive interfaces that help people manage complex behaviors. An eight-month collaborative project was born: co-developing, co-designing and re-iterating the WordPress Editorial Calendar . We’re excited to announce the launch of version 1.0 of our editorial calendar plugin, which is (in our humble opinion) the killer tool for managing and driving the success of any blog — from the small and personal to the large and corporate. We invite you to take the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin for a spin at this link . It’s free, and we think you’re going to get a lot out of it. Here are some of the things you can do with the plugin See a month’s worth of posts at a glance. Juggle your calendar by simply dragging and dropping posts from day to day. Quickly edit your posts’ titles, contents, and publishing times. Publish posts or manage drafts. Instantly see the status of your posts. More easily manage posts from multiple authors. And you can do all of that right from the calendar interface itself. It’s simple and intuitive. No plugin alone can make you a brilliant strategist. But the WordPress Editorial Calendar is a tool that will encourage more strategic habits, thinking, and behavior. Check it out here . About the Authors: Justin Evans is the founding partner of design branding and online marketing agency Stresslimit . His clients include Fortune 500 companies, startups, NGOs, and global thought leaders. Zack Grossbart is a programmer and author whose sensitivity to user experience and design has driven success for many Fortune 500 companies. He blogs about code and about user experience design , and is releasing his first book as a free serialized release at The One Minute Commute . Editor’s Note: We use Stresslimit’s editorial calendar plugin here on Copyblogger, and we think it rocks. There’s no affiliate relationship, we just found it a nifty tool and think you’ll get a lot out of it.

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The Easy-to-Use Tool that Helps You Build a Breakthrough Blog

Want People To Read Your Sales Page? Make It Scannable

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There are two types of sales page readers: those who faithfully read every word, and those who skim until they get to the end. Since you want to sell to both of these groups, you have to know exactly how to capture and hold the attention of each — and doing so in the same sales page is no small feat. The good news is, you can use the same writing strategy to get each group to engage with what you’re reading … and ultimately to buy what you’re selling. One very simple way you can increase the “scannability” of your sales page is by making effective use of subheads. Subheads are a sales page’s best friend If you blog at all, you know the power that a good set of subheads commands over your readers. You take special care to make them stand out, capture attention and intrigue your readers — and most important, to give those people who give your post a quick “once over” a reason to slow down and read every word you’ve written . Sales pages are no different. Good subheads allow your readers to stay grounded in the context of what they’re reading, while building a sense of anticipation of what’s to come. So let’s talk about a few subhead strategies you can use to make readers sit up and take notice. How to strengthen your sales copy with promises We’ve talked before at Copyblogger about how a good headline delivers a promise to the reader that makes them want to read further into your sales page. But if you don’t deliver on that promise quickly, readers can lose interest and either scroll down to the end or give up on your copy entirely. This is why you want to set up each subheader to include a smaller promise — a taste of what’s to come in the next few paragraphs, if only they will continue reading. For each section of your copy, ask yourself: What result will my reader be closer to after reading the text in this section When you find the answer, build that into the subheader text. (If you can’t come up with something, that’s a sign you need to improve that section.) Want an example? Look at the subheader above. I just did it. Why benefit-based subheaders get your readers to stick Naturally, readers want to know what’s in it for them. Here’s where you tell them how the promise you’ve made can make their business (or their life) better. To figure out the positive changes that will happen after they take you up on your offer, look at the promise and ask yourself: How will things be different for my readers after they take in this information This works so well because it makes the reader hungry for a specific outcome. Where a promise simply hints at a basic result, (“You will be more successful”) the benefits speak to the experience that people will have after they get that result (“You will double your current income in two weeks”). Tapping into the desire for a specific experience does two things: First, it forces you to tighten up your copy so that it delivers on the promise. And second, it triggers your readers’ motivation to read every word of it. After all, that’s what happened with this section, isn’t it? How I used story elements to hit the front page of Digg (and how you can too) When I first started learning about copywriting, I found the most popular headlines from places like Digg and Copyblogger and physically wrote them out by hand so I could get a true “feel” for what went into making a compelling opening for my blog posts. The act of writing with pen and paper made the copywriting lessons stick in a powerful way, enabling me to hit the front page of Digg six times. And as I talked to others who used this same technique I realized that it wasn’t a fluke — it’s an important part of learning by doing. It’s so important, in fact, that my first Copyblogger guest post was about this exact subject. It’s opened the doors to many guest posts since then. That’s my story — which, interestingly enough, you’ve just read to the end. Keep in mind the story doesn’t have to be about you — it can be the reader’s story (for example, “How you’ll get twice as many people to read to the end of your copy”). In some cases this can be even more compelling than a story elements that refer to you or your customers. Look at the subheader above and see how I’ve included the idea of story, a promise, and a specific benefit to keep you from clicking away. When you do the same, you readers will appreciate it. Why solid subheadings stop scanners in their tracks Now, all that we’ve talked about so far explains how to keep interested readers moving from section to section of your sales page — but what about the “scanners” who quickly scroll their way down to the price? How do you get them to stop and read what you’ve written? Well, as I said at the beginning, the techniques that keep those interested readers reading can also make scanners feel like they’re missing out on something — a key motivator for taking their finger off of the scroll wheel. If your subheaders are heavy on promises and benefits, and have an element of story to them, scanners will notice them as they move down the page. As the subheaders “stack” on each other, with promise after promise, benefit upon benefit, and a story that just won’t quit — just as I’ve shown you how to do above — scanners will decide that they’ve just got to slow down and really listen to what you’re offering them, because they’ll be convinced the rewards are just too good to miss. (And just in case you scanned your way down here, that last sentence was for you.) About the Author : Dave Navarro is a product launch manager who can’t wait for you to join the 7,000+ people using his free workbooks in the Launch Coach Library (a crowd favorite in the Third Tribe forums).

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Want People To Read Your Sales Page? Make It Scannable

A Four-Step Guide to Generating Sales Leads from Your Blog

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Dean: Did you know you can use your blog to make money offline? Blogger: Offline? What is this “offline” you speak of? Dean: It’s the opposite of “online.” Blogger: (confused silence) Dean: You know. Offline. Not on the internet. The real world. Blogger: (shaking phone) Not only does this stupid phone drop my calls, now it’s translating them into crazy moon language. Okay, I jest. But to listen to some bloggers, you would think a blog’s only purpose is to make money online, by selling ebooks , membership sites , or advertising. The truth is, blogs have grown into a more powerful tool than anyone ever imagined. They’re ideal for making money online, of course. But they can also be used to generate profits for nearly any kind of business, including those that provide real services in the offline world. This often means generating sales leads for a service or consulting business. This is how I use my copywriting business blog, which accounts for most of the new clients who call me these days. Okay, sounds great. People read your blog and then call to hire you, right? Well, not quite. Are you selling a product or a service? First, it’s important to understand that selling a service is not like selling a product. When you sell a product, the process is usually pretty straightforward. Basically, you introduce the product, spell out some benefits, make an offer, and people make a buying decision. Selling a service can be a little more involved. Prospects first inquire about the service, usually comparing you with other providers. If the service is expensive, like my copywriting and marketing consulting, people are even more careful about their decision. I’ve had clients take years to finally made the decision to hire me. And it’s common for people to start a phone call by saying, “I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while now. Do you have moment to talk about a copywriting project?” This shouldn’t surprise you. The more expensive the service, the more important it is, and the more commitment it requires from the customer, the more careful that customer is going to be. Think about it. If you need your bathroom painted, you might spend an afternoon looking for a decent painter. If you need to build an extension onto your house, you might spend weeks or even months finding the perfect contractor for the job. So if you provide a service, such as freelance writing, graphic design, web consulting, wedding photography, event planning, translation, or whatever, you can use your blog to attract prospects and begin the process of selling them on your services. Here’s how. Create your sales funnel Professional sales people often talk about filling their “sales funnel” or “sales pipeline.” What they mean is that in order to make a sale sometime in the future, they want people to inquire today. They always want to have lots of people who are in various stages of readiness to buy. To keep things simple, I like to think of the sales funnel as having just 4 simple steps. 1. Generate inquiries This means getting people to contact you. Typically this is done by offering something of value in exchange for contact information. For my business, I offer a free newsletter . If people go to my main website, I also offer a free white paper . In both cases, they have to give me some contact information before they get the freebie. I also provide a contact form and phone number for “hot” leads who are ready to talk business. I get many inquiries every week. Most can’t afford my services. But a few are high quality and good candidates for future business. 2. Follow up After you’ve delivered the freebie or provided whatever information you have promised, it’s time to schedule your follow-up, usually either by email or phone. Because you are responding to someone’s inquiry, it’s not a cold call. You have a valid reason for making contact and have an opportunity to gauge how serious the person is. Are they just gathering information? Do they need your services immediately? Or are they somewhere in between? The most serious are your sales leads. Everyone else is a prospect. You will want to spend more time on sales leads than prospects. 3. Nurture leads This is the step most people are tempted to skip. Like every other person selling a service, you want to make a sale right away. But while a few people will hire you immediately, most will not. Their interest needs to be nurtured until they’re ready to buy. You should store all contact information in a database, which could be a simple customer relationship management system like Highrise or a desktop-based program such as ACT! . Find ways to regularly communicate with your leads. Over time, they will become more familiar with you and more comfortable with the idea of hiring you. People always prefer the familiar over the unknown. There are many ways to nurture leads. You can send news or information they might be interested in, make additional offers for low-cost or introductory services, connect with them socially, and even seek their advice from time to time. 4. Close sales This step is self-explanatory. A potential customer needs your service. You provide a quote or estimate, answer questions, overcome objections, and eventually close the sale. This is your end game, the goal of your efforts. And if you’ve set up a good lead generation system and kept your sales funnel consistently full, it will actually be the easiest step in the process. Easy ways to generate inquiries from your blog The hardest part about generating sales leads is getting people to contact you in the first place. If you’re just starting out and no one knows who you are, this may seem impossible. As a blogger, you may know a variety of ways to promote your blog. Obviously, the more blog traffic you get, the easier it will be to generate leads. But you don’t need a ton of traffic to make it work. According to Alexa , my business blog is ranked at around 100,000 or so. That’s not bad, but it’s nowhere near superstar blogs such as Copyblogger. However, I get enough of the right kind of people reading it to generate a steady stream of inquiries for my services. So don’t worry about becoming a top-ranked blog. To successfully sell your services, you just need regular inquiries from the right kind of people. The more specialized you are, and the more targeted your blog posts, the more likely this will happen. Of course, bringing people to your blog is one thing. Generating inquiries is another. Here are some simple things you can do to make those inquiries happen. Contact Form — If you have a blog, you almost certainly have a contact form. However, the standard contact form is not enough. You should modify your form to match the service you sell. Take a look at the highly specialized form I use . E-Newsletter — This is an easy way to stay in touch with many people and provide great value while you’re at it. Since I specialize in copywriting for direct mail and direct marketing, my newsletter features articles and information on the subject. I have several thousand subscribers and about half of my new clients say they became pre-sold on my abilities by subscribing. Free White Paper — While a newsletter requires an ongoing commitment, a white paper is a one-time effort. Write it, post a contact/request form, and send a link to the PDF when requests come in. You could also automate the process with an auto responder, but I like to fulfill these requests personally so I can watch for hot leads from companies I want to work with. My white paper on improving direct mail response generates many requests every week. Information Kit — If you’ve built a blog or site around your services, you should provide plenty of information online. However, you can offer pricing, forms, a client list, and other information in the form of a downloadable PDF. Remember, when someone requests information, it gives you the opportunity to capture contact information. Webinars — These days it’s fairly simple to put together a webinar using services such as GoToWebinar . You can also create non-interactive presentations with software like PowerPoint or OpenOffice. The idea is to provide something of value that enables you to collect contact information. Videos — Using software and hardware built into many computers, you can create simple, informative videos. They don’t have to be fancy. Just look into the camera and talk. Or edit together simple footage demonstrating your work or how you solved a problem. Video can also be a helpful tool to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter, webinar, or other information. Pay Per Click — If you write and promote a good blog, you’re probably getting a fair amount of natural traffic. But pay-per-click ads can give you a boost for people looking for your particular services. Your results will vary depending on the level of competition and amount you’re willing to spend, but it’s worth a test. Just remember: Your blog is a means to an end . If you use your blog to attract the right kind of traffic, and follow the advice above to generate sales leads, you should see a dramatic increase in your business. About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s most in-demand direct marketing copywriters who shares his writing and freelancing know-how at Pro Copy Tips .

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A Four-Step Guide to Generating Sales Leads from Your Blog

Social Media Marketing Insight from 21 Smart People (And Me, Too)

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There’s a new book out called Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars . Yes, that title sets off my hyperbole radar a bit too (not to mention my alliteration alert), but it’s a solid collection of smart social media advice based on real-world case studies, best practices, and proven techniques. I wrote Chapter Two of the book – The Psychology of Social Media . It’s about applying tried and trued influence factors in the social media space to build a business or make whatever case you’re trying to make. Here’s what else you’ll learn: How to Create a Mega-Following With Social Media – Gary Vaynerchuk Personality : How To Stand Out In Virtual Crowd – Andy Wibbels

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Social Media Marketing Insight from 21 Smart People (And Me, Too)