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20 Warning Signs That Your Content Sucks

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Admit it … you’ve wondered. You’re writing and writing and writing, and a few people say they like it, but you’re just not getting results. Traffic is coming in at a trickle, links are hard to come by, and your comments section is about as lively as a nightclub at breakfast. And you can’t help wondering … Do you just need to be patient, waiting for your traffic to snowball? Or could it be possible that, really, your content sucks , and everyone is just being nice so as not to hurt your delicate artistic feelings? The hard truth: there’s no way to know for sure For one, we’re talking about quality, which is subjective by definition. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure, and all that jazz. It’s also a matter of scale. This isn’t American Idol, where you have 30 million people voting, transforming a singer into a superstar through the power of public consensus. If you’re a beginning blogger, you might have fewer than 100 regular readers, and 20 of them are your friends and family. And let’s face it; your mother is going to like everything you do, no matter how bad it is. That’s her job. So who are you supposed to listen to? Well … nobody, and everybody, all the same time. The maddening thing about creating anything is no one can tell you how to do it, and yet everyone’s opinion can teach you something. There aren’t any rules, no, but there are warnings. If your content sucks, you’ll see dozens, maybe hundreds of telltale signs, hinting that something is wrong. I’ve collected 20 of the most common here. Take a look through them, and see if any describe you: 1. You think your content is “good enough” If you had to rate your content on a scale of 1 to 10, what would you give it? A 6? A 7? That’s what most bloggers say. But here’s the problem: you can’t really grade content on a scale. You’re either blowing people’s minds or putting them to sleep, and there’s nothing in between. Put another way, content graded as a 6 or 7 gets the same reaction as a 1. It’s a waste of time to publish it. 2. Your posts read like journal entries Not too long ago, most people used their blog as a sort of online journal, where people took a few minutes every day to write down their thoughts. But blogs have evolved beyond that. Now they’re more like online magazines, with highly polished content. If your posts look more like “Dear Diary” than a magazine you would see at the newsstand, you’ve probably got a problem. 3. You’re not getting many (or any) comments Comments are one of the best ways to measure reader engagement. If you have a few hundred subscribers, and yet none of them are commenting, then it might be because they find your content unworthy of their attention. Translation: it sucks. 4. Your visitors stay less than two minutes, on average Install Google Analytics, and look at the average amount of time visitors are staying on your website. For most traffic sources, anything less than two minutes is bad. If you are at less than one minute, then your content is repelling people. You can do better. 5. You spend less than an hour on each post Yes, it’s possible to write a great blog post in 15 minutes, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that it doesn’t happen very often. Most of the popular bloggers I know spend anywhere from 2 to 10 hours on each blog post they write. If you’re not, you should be. 6. You’ve never received fan mail If your content is good, people will go out of their way to tell you how good it is. We’re not just talking about nice little tweets; we’re talking about five page e-mails where they tell you their life story and thank God for your existence. No, you won’t get much of it when you’re a beginner, but you will get some . If you haven’t, then your content isn’t as good as it should be. 7. You’ve never received hate mail The opposite is also true. If your content is good, you’ll always have a small but vocal group of people who think you’re wrong, rude, or inconsiderate. They are the righteous majority for moral authority, and nothing you can say will appease them. So don’t try. Their mockery and screams of outrage are merely signs that you’re headed in the right direction. 8. You focus on SEO before you get your first link Whenever a newbie starts asking me about SEO before they’ve even written a post, I always know they’re doomed. There is no better way to write horrible, crappy content than to deliberately stuff it with keywords in an attempt to boost your search engine rankings, when what you really need is for people to link to you in the first place. If this is you, immediately throw salt over your shoulder, turn around three times, and spit. Then forget everything you think you know about SEO. Study smart SEO instead. (But pay attention to the next item.) 9. You believe SEO is the secret to building a popular blog First, let me set the record straight. I am a big fan of SEO. I’m just not a fan of the pedestal many beginners put it on. SEO can’t, by itself, make a popular blog. First, you need remarkable content , and then you optimize it for search engines. Skip the remarkable part, and all the optimization in the world won’t help you. 10. You’re saving your best ideas for later Are you planning to do an e-book or course, and you’re holding back all of your best ideas, waiting for your blog to get popular before you publish them and make gobs of money? If so, stop. To riff on Warren Buffett, waiting until your blog is popular to publish your best ideas is like waiting until you’re old to have sex. Get your good stuff published today. 11. Your blog is about … well … everything One of the quickest way is to frustrate your readers is to write about everything that’s on your mind. Here’s why: people don’t come to your blog to find out what you think. They come to your blog for solutions to their problems. The moment you stop talking about them is the moment they stop reading. 12. You don’t know the benefit Pop quiz: one year from now, how will your reader’s life be better? What specific, measurable results will you have helped them obtain? We are not talking about “Having a greater sense of fulfillment and prosperity.” We’re talking about “They’ve lost 20 pounds” or “They’ve brought in five high-quality new clients.” If you can’t put your content in these terms, you’re setting yourself up to fail. 13. You think you deserve more traffic than you’re getting Do you feel annoyed that no one appreciates the value of the knowledge that you’re giving away for free ? I know I used to, and it took several years of struggling to realize no one is entitled to attention . You have to earn it, day in and day out. No exceptions. 14. You have a science, engineering, or technology background I know, it sounds horribly prejudiced. But here’s the deal: scientists, engineers, and other types of technologists are trained to be objective, passive, and detached — all three of which will destroy you as a blogger. No, you’re not doomed if you have a background in one of these disciplines. But it is a handicap, and you need to be aware of it. 15. You’ve never read a book on copywriting Writing a blog post without studying copywriting is like hunting for buried treasure without a map. You might be able to do it, but you’ll have to get astoundingly lucky. If you haven’t studied copywriting , you should. Like right now . 16. You have no idea what keeps your readers up at night Great writing is about intimacy, and nothing is more intimate than knowing what keeps your readers up at night. Find out what makes them afraid, find out what makes them excited, find out what’s going through their mind at 2 a.m. Then use it in your blog posts. You’ll be communicating with them on such a deep, emotional level that it will be impossible for them to ignore you. 17. You write less than 1,000 words per day Of all the warning signs, this is probably the biggest. If you’re not writing at least 1,000 words per day, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for you to write anything but mediocre content. Try writing at least 1000 words every day for 30 days, and see what an impact it has on your writing. You’ll be astounded. 18. You read less than 10 hours per week Besides writing a lot, you also need to read a lot. It exposes you to different writing styles to learn from; it gives you new stories and metaphors; it keeps you abreast of what’s going on in your field. In my opinion, 10 hours a week is a bare minimum. If you really want to be good, think more in the range of 20-40 hours a week. 19. You’ve never talked to a reader on the phone or in person A one-hour conversation with one of your most ardent readers will teach you more about how to communicate with your audience than anything else you can do. If you’re not doing it at least once every month or two, there’s a good chance you’re falling out of touch. 20. You’ve been blogging for less than six months Okay, we’re at the end, so I’ll go ahead and admit it: not everything is your fault. If you’ve been blogging for less than six months, there’s almost nothing you can do; your content is going to suck to some degree. Keep your chin up, expect to be ignored, and just keep going. You’ll get good soon. The bottom line I’d love to tell you that producing great content is easy. I’d love to tell you that there are shortcuts. I’d love to tell you can do it with your brain on auto pilot. But I won’t, because we’re being honest here, right? Producing great content is work. No, it’s not building a pyramid or putting a man on the moon or curing cancer, but it does take time, energy, and dedication. If you’re sitting here, right now, worrying about whether your content sucks or not, that’s actually a good sign. If you’re worrying about it at 2 in the morning, that’s even better. Achieving greatness in blogging is the same as anything else. You have to work your butt off. If you’re willing to do that, then there will always be a place for you on the web. You’ll always be in demand. You’ll always be able to stand out. It’s tough, yes, but it’s worth it. So, what are you waiting for? Hurry up and get started. About the Author: Jon Morrow is Associate Editor of Copyblogger. Get more from him on twitter .

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How to Use Stories to Change the World

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If you have a blog, you tell stories. You may have dealt with the frustration of not having very many people see your stories, of not having enough subscribers or readers. Nevertheless, you keep on documenting your story in your blog posts, your Facebook status updates, your Twitter feed. You tell your stories and hope people will hear you. You’re lucky. The majority of people in Burma — a country that is brutally ruled by a military dictatorship — have no electricity, let alone access to the Internet. Which means it’s difficult to widely share stories about what they experience there. Right now, there are thousands of blogs detailing the difficulties of life as a single parent, but there aren’t many blogs describing what it’s like to live your entire life in a refugee camp or to survive a disaster like Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than 138,000 people in Burma. Those who manage to blog can suffer dire consequences for daring to do so. A 30-year-old blogger from Burma was sentenced to 20 years in prison for posting political satire. Weaving narratives about our lives is one of the things that makes us human The stories we tell are undeniably powerful. Stories allow us to connect with one another, to know each other as individuals rather than statistics. Yet those who are living through human rights crises have their stories written from a distance, in news blurbs and legal briefs. These stories rarely become as compelling as the ones you tell on your own blog, simply because they often lack the intimacy of a much fuller first-person narrative. Until now. Putting the human back into human rights My strategy to survive was to appease the soldiers and to make friends with them. I thought, if only we could make friends with these soldiers, then we would survive. But porters can die at any time. For example, if a soldier got angry and just shot me with his gun, nothing would happen to him. I would just die, like a chicken or a rat. To Tanintharyi Division, they send 500 porters every year. Of the 500, only 72 porters make it back to the prison. If you survive, you survive. I was a porter for nearly six months. ~ Lai Pa, 34-year-old man from Burma Perhaps you’ve read about the severe crackdown on monks protesting in the Saffron Revolution, or the destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis. Although Burma is a hotbed of human rights abuses and repression, it is also home to 50 million individuals and exponentially more stories. This fall, Voice of Witness will release Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime . The book will delve into the diverse lives of people who have lived under Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Voice of Witness is a nonprofit book series that empowers the men and women who have lived through human rights crises by letting them tell their stories in their own words. In Nowhere to Be Home , dozens of stories are told publically for the first time. Lai Pa was studying to become a preacher when he was imprisoned and forced to work as a porter for the military . Tang Mai, an LGBT rights activist talks about his strained relationship with his father, a famous ethnic Kachin rebel leader. Ye Myint Win was a former army general who fought against those very same rebels; his story is told alongside Tang Mai’s. You can read the short descriptions we’ve put here for you, but as you can see, they only scratch the surface as an introduction to the narrators. (All of those names, as you can imagine, have been changed to protect these people.) The book brings to light the voices of refugees, former political prisoners, migrant workers, farmers, artists, students, and activists. These vivid portraits do something that human rights reports don’t: they allow you to experience Burma through entire life stories of its people in their own words. Calling all bloggers: how can we share these stories? Bloggers are storytellers, and your stories give you power. We’re asking you to share some of what you’ve learned from your own experiences of telling your story publically, to help us imagine ways this book can extend beyond the reach of print. Tell us. How can we use the Internet to amplify the narratives in this book? How can we make their words echo as far and as wide as any post here on Copyblogger? We want to hear your thoughts about sharing stories, about how storytelling can change the world, and about how you would use social media to share these incredible stories collected from Burma. Please let us know in the comments! About the Authors : Maggie Lemere and Zoë West are the editors of Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime , the latest in the Voice of Witness book series. Voice of Witness was founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen, and is the nonprofit division of McSweeney’s Books. If you’re inspired by the storytelling work done by the nonprofit book series Voice of Witness, you can make a donation here to support their work.

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7 Quick-Start Techniques for Fighting the Fear to Write

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Congratulations, you have a hot writing assignment! Maybe it’s a proposal that could make your company’s fortune. Maybe it’s your first professional writing gig. It could even be a guest post for Copyblogger. The stakes are high . . . and you know it. In fact, it’s all you can think about . . . the F.E.A.R. trying to sabotage your aspirations for success. Your fingers are shaking too hard to type anything , and your stomach has sunk down to the bottom of an ocean so deep that all the fish have weird lights on their heads. Well that’s not helping any, now is it? Instead, let’s get those pixels flowing with these 7 not-too-scary steps. 1. Write down your goal What does success look like? Get imaginative , specific and visceral . Imagine yourself being awarded with the Employee of the Month trophy while your boss announces: Without Catherine’s vital work on the proposal, we would never have won this contract. Now we will be giving bonuses to all our staff and hiring three new ones, and we couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks, Catherine. Everyone is clapping and there’s cake. This goal serves two purposes: It encourages you to get writing. It gives you a way to measure whether your writing is effective . If it increases the chance of the successful proposal/trophy/cake then it’s effective. If it does not , then you need to make changes. An objective yardstick is critical when your emotions are getting the better of you. 2. Plan your content Grab your favorite brainstorming tool. Could be mind-mapping software, a bunch of index cards, parchment and quill pen . . . whatever suits you. Start with the high-level ideas. If you’re writing a sales page, you need to describe the benefits , so that’s an entry. The call to action is another. What content do you need to provide to support the high-level ideas? In the last example, each specific benefit would have a separate entry. Go down as many levels as you need to until every entry makes only one point . Evaluate the entries. Does each one move you toward your goal? Can some be removed? What order makes the most sense? Shuffle and remove entries until you have a working plan of what to write. Notice you now have a nice, clear idea of what the finished document should look like. Awesome. It’s time to take a deep breath and start on the actual writing. 3. Ten minutes of gibberish If you’re looking at the blank screen with mounting horror ( Have I forgotten the English language entirely? ), open a new document and pound out anything . A history of cheese The lyrics of your favorite song A stream-of-consciousness piece that starts with “Daffodil Philomena carousel elf-wine fodder marmalade” A cake recipe An imaginary shopping list Endless lines of All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy Don’t force it to make sense! Just let it flow out with no judgment or expectations. When there’s no pressure to get anything Right, for many people the mental vapor-lock vanishes. They can go back and start writing the important stuff. 4. Divide your ideas into sections Remember back in school when we were taught, “One idea per paragraph”? Still a good idea, although you may need more than a paragraph. But each section of your document should convey one idea, and only one. Introduce each section with a good subhead to make the document more readable and keep your ideas organized. You can go back and adjust your content plan to include extra ideas, but give each idea its own section and subhead. 5. Explain it to the potted plant If you’re trying to make a point and you’re . . . umm . . . you know, how do I say it . . . it’s on the tip of my tongue . . . stuck on how to explain it? Talk it out with another person. It doesn’t actually need to be a real person. It can be to the potted plant on the windowsill. You’ll start out stumbling and inarticulate, but quickly the thoughts will come together and you’ll have it all sorted in your head. Or you may realize that this was one of those ideas that seemed good at first blush but doesn’t really make any sense. That’s fine too. Delete it and move on. 6. Editing, your deadly new friend After you’ve written what you need to write, the dreaded post-writing stage kicks in. This is where you edit your work to make it the best it can possibly be. Revising, polishing, reordering and spell-checking are all wonderful tools. They help you make your point more clearly and concisely. BUT. Perfectionism, the copywriter’s curse , loves editing. If you’re not careful, deadlines will fly by while you make infinitesimal improvements. Never try to write and edit at the same time. Write first, edit later. Focus on removing words when editing. This doesn’t mean you can’t tell a relevant story or insert an interesting adjective, but every word must contribute to that goal you set out in Step 1. Set an upper limit on revisions. For truly critical documents, you might go as high as ten revisions. But pick a number and stick to it , no matter how much you think, “Oh but I just have this one tweak . . .” 7. Still overwhelmed? Today I’m releasing a new resource called Awesome Fear-Wrangling: Manage your Website Fears, Grow an Awesome Website . If you want some industrial-strength help, come check it out! (There’s a special bonus today too. It’s my birthday. There’s cake.) What are your techniques to get you writing when you’re facing a bunch of fear? Tell us in the comments! About the Author: Catherine is wicked passionate about helping people to start and grow an awesome website. When she’s not adding five-minute missions to BeAwesomeOnline.com , she can invariably be found on Twitter .

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Creative Content Recycling: Are You Wasting Your Garbage?

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You see it done all the time, and it’s just so wasteful. People take a bunch of perfectly good trash, and they just toss it in the garbage can. Unbelievable. The thing is, any time you create something, you’re going to end up with a lot of odds and ends, scraps that end up on the metaphorical cutting room floor. What if you could sell your product . . . but then find a way to repurpose and sell the by-products of your product too? Welcome to waste management 2.0 For our new Question the Rules course, Lee interviewed Jason Fried, founder of the software company 37signals. (That’s the company that makes a bunch of amazing products including Basecamp and Highrise.) We were fascinated by something Jason had to say — a topic that he and partner David Heinemeier Hansson devoted a section to in their great new book Rework : Sell Your By-Products. For instance, here’s an excerpt about Henry Ford: Ford learned of a process for turning wood scraps from the production of Model Ts into charcoal briquets. He built a charcoal plant and Ford Charcoal was created (later renamed Kingsford Charcoal.) Ford could have just tossed all of that extra stuff that was thrown off while his factories were creating their product. After all, it was garbage, and the production of the Model T was all that mattered. But he didn’t, and created a revolutionary new product — one that became a substantial profit center. Creative recycling for creative types If your first thought is that the by-product concept doesn’t apply to creative work, just look at the movie industry. Every time they make a film, they shoot a lot more footage than ends up in the actual flick. Most of the footage used to end up on the cutting room floor, or maybe in the outtakes that they’d run over the credits of Smokey and the Bandit. But today? The by-products of filmmaking are everywhere. Cut scenes and alternative endings help sell DVDs, or end up on YouTube as a way to promote a theatrical release. Adding this formerly wasted material even allows the movie studios to create an easy upsell. They create two tiers of pricing for a DVD: Customers can get the basic version. They can buy just the movie. Or, for just a few dollars more, customers can get their hands on a more in-depth version, chock full of by-products — which is the stuff that used to be called “trash.” The “waste not, want not” attitude is a choice you can make about any business. And once you decide to start looking at the “waste” you’re producing, you’ll find useful by-products everywhere. Where to look for by-products in your own business If you’re doing creative work like writing or graphic design, how about recycling rejected client pitches? Can you take the effort you put into your cool custom web design and turn it into a more generic template that you can sell over and over? Can you take the interviews you do on a writing project and post the raw versions on your blog? Keep looking and you’ll start finding useful waste everywhere. Even your vacations can end up having useful by-products. Think about it: You go someplace cool, interesting, or beautiful. You eat some great meals and talk to interesting people. You take photos or shoot video of the things you see, and the people you meet. You do this because you’re into it. Because it’s part of what you do on vacation. But once you’re in the recycling mindset, it’s easy to think of a dozen ways to use that stuff — the “leftover media” from your experiences. You could write travel articles, sell video clips, create “microstock” photo services, publish an e-book guide, or post a YouTube video that pulls customers back into your business. You could write posts on Yelp! Or Foursquare. Maybe that sounds ridiculous. But smart, creative entrepreneur Chris Guillebeau does something very similar. He takes remnants and artifacts of what he loves to do (travel) and uses them to strengthen his business. Take an inventory of your own creative residue, and you may find you’re sitting on a little gold mine. As Jason Fried points out, the book Rework is actually a by-product of running the business of 37signals. And that bit of “runoff” made the New York Times bestseller list. Not bad for yesterday’s trash. About the Author: This article is a by-product of the interview Lee did with Rework author Jason Fried as part of Lee & Johnny’s brand-new Question The Rules course. Did we mention it was going to be 75% off until Saturday? Click here to check it out . (Editor’s note: We were so excited about Johnny’s new course, and proud of the great work done by one of our own regular writers, that we snagged an affiliate link for it. We’ve taken a sneak peek at the course and we think it’s a great resource for entrepreneurs who want to play a sharper, smarter game. Sonia will share more of her thoughts on Questioning the Rules tomorrow.)

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Landing Page Makeover Clinic #25: LeTrip.org

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This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work. Jill Mitchell wants to increase awareness and sales of her one-of-a-kind French vintage objects that she sells on Etsy and Ebay. She also wants more visiblity and sales for her buying tours of Provence. She doesn’t actively market her site, although she does enjoy a responsive newsletter following. She doesn’t have a handle on her site metrics — traffic, blog readership, click-through rate from blog to Etsy/Ebay. Jill is flying blind. Let’s see how we can get these sales sailing. The Goal: Sell French tours and vintage gifts. The Problem: Not making enough sales. The Current Landing Page (homepage): http://www.letrip.org Value: $39 — average gift sale The Maven’s 10-Point Critique Click image for larger view #1 — Make sure all your main links work. I usually save the tech tweaks and tuning for the #7-#10 slots and frontload the marketing suggestions, but in this case, I have to start here. When I was putting this makeover together, I got an error message when I clicked the blog link. You need to keep an eye on any issues like this and fix them pronto. When I did manage to get to your blog and clicked “Home,” thinking I’m going back to the main homepage, I don’t. I don’t go anywhere. You’ll want to clarify what HOME means on your blog. Add a “Go to Main Page” so your visitors don’t feel trapped. Trapped people lose the mood to buy. Make your main logo clickable to www.letrip.org #2 — Be upfront, be clear as to the purpose of your site and what visitors can expect to find there. If you want to sell your tours and vintage gifts, you need to be obvious. Say it (and show it) clearly and up front. I had to spend more than a few minutes reading your homepage and clicking around to figure out that you offer specialty buying tours of Provence with the emphasis on vintage and antiques. So let’s start there. You need to get the main idea: “LeTrip — Unique Buying Tours of Vintage Provence” or some variation into your headline. Your tagline can be a little more fun but still clear: “Let an American take you vintage shopping in Provence.” You might also want to work in “Always a Guest, Never A Tourist” and any other descriptors that make sense for you and will be attractive and intriguing to your visitors. #3 — Push your value proposition forward. Way forward. I’m sure the competition for French tourism is intense, even in a recession. So you need to be clear (oops, she said it again) about what makes your tours so gosh darn magnifique as compared to other niche tours of Provence. What can you say about your tours that no one else can? I noticed that your main site talks about wine tours, so you may want to broaden your approach to “Passionate Buying Tours of Provence: Great Wine — Vintage Gifts — Antiques” or whatever works best to capture what is special and unique about Le Trip. #4 — Get your gift store info and links on the homepage. Why segregate your gift businesses strictly to the blog, when you should be promoting them in all the spaces and places your visitors are looking? I’d add an easy-to-see separate button to your current navigation bar with “Unique Vintage Gifts from Provence” and send folks to a separate page where you can highlight your gift items and direct them to your Etsy and Ebay stores. #5 — Organize your navigation for visitor expectations. Make it easy for them to find what they need. Why are your visitors there? They love Provence, want to visit Provence, wish they could see Provence. (And if they can’t, they’d like to purchase a little piece of Provence.) Your navigation needs to reflect the information-seeking needs of your visitors, so I would make the following change: Home — LeTrip Difference — LeTrip Tours — Upcoming Events — Brava! Meet Jill — Read Jill’s Blog — Contact Jill Add a search box and a sitemap, too. #6 — Put your key messaging into the strongest part of your homepage. Sidebars are for sweeteners. Your best homepage real estate is being used for a long, sweetly worded ramble about Provence. Move that content to Le Trip Difference and start promoting your upcoming tours — the ones that pay you cash Euros — there instead! Give your visitors a tasty intro that will draw them deeper into the site for the rest of the information and reservation details. Save your sidebars for secondary sweeteners. Add a rotation of testimonials here, or feature a “gift idea of the month.” #7 — Organize your site for selling and telling. Use your blog to illuminate Jill’s personal style and take. Following info links about tours, I’m sometimes directed to your blog and sometimes not — what’s up with that? I was confused and confounded. I have to imagine your average visitor would be, too. So I’m strongly suggesting that you do a complete revamp of your internal site structure to make sure you keep visitors moving along a consistent, intuitive track on your main site . A leads to B leads to C. (This, after fixing any link issues that might still remain, could be the most important recommendation of the entire Makeover.) Use your blog to express your thoughts, your personality, your take on all things Provence. Your blog is where your clients and prospects get to know more about the person behind LeTrip. The more they know you, the better they’ll feel about taking a tour with you or buying from your stores. #8 — Add those essential credibility boosters! Strengthen your About Jill page with more facts. How long have you been in business? How many tours/people have you given since opening your doors? Are you a member of any travel/tourism associations? Your prospects want to know who they’re doing business with. Also, provide a physical address in France. A P.O. Box is fine, but if you’re promoting your ex-pat lifestyle and business, I’d like to know you’re actually in Provence and not Passaic, New Jersey. #9 — Lay the basic SEO groundwork to boost organic search engine rankings You mentioned in your notes to me that you don’t understand SEO or how it works. There’s a ton of good info out there, but for now here’s what you need to do: Identify the words, terms, and phrases people might use to find your kind of services and products, and make sure you’re using that language in all your content. Make sure each one of your site pages has its own ‘meta’ title that front-loads the keyphrases before your company name. A homepage title might read like this: Vintage Buying Tours of Provence, France :: LeTrip.org . Your other pages would follow the same syntax. Make sure your blog uses best practices for SEO, as well. Check out Copyblogger’s own Scribe SEO for great assistance in this area, as well as our free resources on SEO Copywriting . Don’t stop there, of course. Good SEO makes all the difference, and these few points will give you a good start. #10 — Use social media to connect and grow your tour and gift businesses. You have a tremendous opportunity to widen your prospect universe with social media. So add Facebook and Twitter to your marketing mix. Add the buttons, ask folks to connect with you, and start connecting with others who love Provence and all things vintage. My thanks to Jill Mitchell for her patience and support of Heifer International. Look for my next makeover in approximately 3 to 4 weeks. Want your own Copywriting Maven landing page makeover? Got a landing page that’s more poop than pop? Need to get better results from your online marketing? If you’re interested in a private page makeover, site audit, or other services, please email Roberta directly .) About the Author: Roberta Rosenberg is The Copywriting Maven at MGP Direct, Inc . Find her @CopywriterMaven on Twitter.

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