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Archive for the ‘article writing’ Category

When you think about writing a blog, which do you think is more important?

• Focusing on the content that you’re sharing with readers, expecting that people will read your blogs because of the quality and value your blogs provide.

• Concentrating on how your blog will rank in the search engines and cramming every relatable keyword possible into your post.

Writing for the person is much more important than writing for the search engines. Your blog should demonstrate your expertise to your target niche and convey your passion for what you’re doing. It should come from your heart. That is how you will connect with your readers and why they will share your blog with their network.

That doesn’t mean that SEO isn’t important, however. Offering quality and value in your content won’t do any good if people can’t readily find it.

Optimize your blog for SEO purposes with links. Be sure to include proper links to legitimate, respected sites; don’t just buy links or list them in directories.

Another way to help your blog rank higher on search engines is to add tags. This is something overlooked by many people, but there is real value in tags.

Adding tags is a relatively simple process. If you are using WordPress, look for the tags link, then click “create” under tags. Type your tag, which is basically your description of your post, into that little area.

If, for example, I were to write a post about the top 30 Internet coaches, I would list each person’s name in that area. That will show Google – or other search engines – that information about that particular person is going to appear in my blog post. The search engine will actually create a category of sorts about the person. People looking up that person will see all the posts online about them,  including mine.

Yanik Silver, one of my mentors who has hundreds of thousands of followers, was tagged by blogging entrepreneur Michael Dunlop in a post about the top 30 things to do before you die. Yanik runs Maverick Business Adventures, a wonderful company that offers unique trips around the world to people with plenty of money to take them.

In his adventure program, Yanik offers one of the top 30 things Michael writes about in his blog. That is why Michael tagged him. Michael’s blog ranked seventh in search engines when people looked up Yanik, which drew an incredible amount of traffic to his site.

All he did was add the tag. This is something you can do with every post. If you tag the name of a prominent person because they are relevant to the blog you’ve written and the niche you’re writing for, more people searching for that person will have the opportunity to come across your post.

So, post a list on your next blog, and tag the names on it. It will give your post a higher ranking, maybe on the first page on Google. It’s an easy way to draw traffic. And, in many instances, because that traffic will be people in your target niche, they will probably be interested in what you have to offer.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Although starting a blog isn’t really a complex undertaking, it’s still a good idea to do some research so that you know you’re presenting the best site possible. You want to drive as much traffic as you can to your blog in order to keep your internet rankings climbing.

It’s also important to keep in mind that blogging involves more than just writing the posts. You have to consider such factors as user experience, site design, and the software you’ll need to get your blog running.

Here are a few resources you can check out that offer great information for starting a blog.

www.IncomeDiary.com. This is the site where Michael Dunlop, blogging entrepreneur, offers a free e-course that details his process.

www.WordPress.com. WordPress offers the software you’ll need to get started. One of its strongest selling points is the ability to customize features to suit your own needs. There are also many free features you can use to get started in a matter of minutes. It also allows you to track statistics and block spam.

www.UXBooth.com. You want visitors to your site to have a good experience; this is what will bring them back again and again. This site offers tips for creating the best experience for your readers.

www.SmashingMagazine.com. This design site presents the latest in web design and development. While you won’t need to study design in order to launch a blog, this site can be a useful resource for getting ideas about how your site should look.

www.CopyBlogger.com. This is a good resource for learning how to write blogs that will drive traffic to your site as you build your list and market products.  It offers courses on copywriting, SEO, headline writing and keywords, among other topics.

www.ProBlogger.net. Visit this site to learn about the more technical side of having a successful blog. You’ll find information about blog design, advertising, tools and services, and much more.

www.WarriorForum.com. A forum where Internet marketers talk about their trade, this site can provide useful information about sales techniques. You might even find tips for marketing methods that apply directly to your niche.

www.TaskUS.com. Although this is technically a virtual assistant site, you can use the service to create custom ranking lists and other useful information that you can post in your blog.

Once you’re comfortable with the technical and writing aspects of blogging, you can start drawing visitors to your site.

Remember that if you want to become a great copywriter, you should first be a great copyreader. You can learn so much from reading other people’s copy and applying what you learn to your own niche.

These resources are sure to give you tips and tricks that will help make your blog successful.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Michael Dunlop is the successful young entrepreneur behind such blog sites as www.RetireAt21.com and www.IncomeDiary.com. His sites have upwards of 200,000 visitors each month.

How does he do it?

In his words, “It’s all about creative content.”

When you post a blog with unique content or present standard content in a creative and engaging way, you attract more people. The people who are attracted to your content will then link to it or tweet about it. This is what’s called link bait or tweet bait.

For example, Michael posted “the top earning websites in the world.” He listed what each site earned in the last year, and then broke that down to how much they made in a second. When people see that Google made $691 a second, it catches their attention and they link to his site or tweet the information.

This strategy can work in any niche. Whatever your area of expertise, you can post lists of top earners or “10 best …” Those readers who already follow you will share the information with their network, attracting even more people to your blog.

To save you the time of researching these types of lists, you can use a service such as www.TaskUs.com, which will do the work for you. They will provide you with all the information you need, which you can then copy and paste to your blog. For a reasonable fee, you can see a return that is worth thousands.

You can also post lists that reflect your own personal opinion. For instance, you might post a list of people who have influenced you in your career, or the top ten reasons why it’s great to work in your field.

Since a list of the best of anything is really subjective, some readers might disagree with your choices. Don’t be upset if that happens. It means that they are paying attention to you. The more comments that people post, the more conversation you’ll generate.

The point is to be creative. People are drawn to lists because they present interesting tidbits of information that are easily shared. David Letterman discovered that years ago – his nightly top ten lists have long been shared around the world.

When you offer creative content in the form of link bait or tweet bait, you will begin to attract more readers to your blog. As the number of people linking to your site increases, so does your internet ranking. And it happens instantly. So start thinking creatively about some lists that will give your readers information that they simply can’t wait to share.

There are several universal principles that apply to attracting all types of clients. But, if you really want to focus mainly on corporate clients, there are some areas where your approach will need to be different.

List-building is essential, whether you want corporate or individual clients, but to effectively build your list of corporate clients, you’ll need to employ alternative methods to the usual online blogs, teleseminars and social media.

While these do increase your exposure and will help to grow your list, attracting corporate clients requires you to be doing a lot more offline rather than online. This is the most significant difference between being a magnet for corporate clients as opposed to individuals.

•    Get your articles published – not so much online as in trade magazines that are read by your target audience. This is a phenomenal way to build your list, and it will also enhance your credibility and expertise in your area. When a potential client sees your name attached to a publication that they trust and turn to for trends and advice, they will be more than eager to get on your list.

•    As tempting as it may be, limit sending companies your automatic newsletters or articles online. Corporations and large companies often have spam filters in place that will intercept your material before it’s ever read. Treat your valuable content better than that by making sure it gets into the hands of your intended target market through print media.

•    Advertise at the back of the trade magazines that are prominent in your field. To start with, pick the ones that you read yourself. Your ad doesn’t have to be large or costly. A small classified ad offering your free report can generate some very good leads for you. In fact, when I was first venturing into the corporate track I landed a £50,000 contract with just a small classified ad.

•    Do an offline mailing. This can actually help you to build your online list for later, as well. For example, one of my clients wanted to target corporate women. She put together a mailing campaign promoting a teleseminar to 500 people, and received responses from 125 people. While she physically put something in the post, the contact information she received back included email addresses, which she added to her list.  Once you establish a relationship offline, you will be able to maintain it by contacting your clients online whenever you want.

If you’re going to target corporate clients, you need to think in terms of offline, as well as online, marketing strategies. Of course you shouldn’t abandon the benefits that online exposure can give you, but don’t discount the advantages of doing business the old-fashioned way, before the advances of modern technology made it so easy to reach large numbers of people at once.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

You know the bullet point – in fact, a few of them are included in this article.  But there’s a noted difference between the bullet points included here and the ones that you’ll find on a registration page or sales letter.  When your intention is to entice readers to buy, a simple listing of information will never do.  Instead, you must entice and provoke curiosity with bullet points that shoot right to the heart of the matter.

Expert copywriters know how to pack a real punch with their bullet points, and here are a few of their industry secrets:

• Each bullet point should be a solo act and encase its very own mini-topic. It should not rely on the points before it, or the points after it.  When bullet points are well-written, it’s not uncommon for someone to sign up as a result of reading one, topic-targeted bullet point.

• Bullet points should be enticing. Each bullet point, when read alone, should evoke an, “Oooh, that looks good,” from its reader.

• If you’re selling something (like a paid teleseminar space, for example), you’ll need about 12 to 15 bullet points. You want prospects to feel confident that you have a significant amount of information to exchange for their money; that there’s so much juicy stuff included, they simply can’t afford to miss out.

• Be specific. Let readers know exactly what you’re offering, how many steps are included in your plan, how long it will take, and what they will learn.

• Be bold. Make promises that make prospects say, “Really?  Can they really do that?”  Of course, you must ensure that you can, without a doubt, deliver on that promise.

• Provoke curiosity. An example of a bullet point that provokes curiosity is, “This 3-step plan to jumpstart your business growth can increase your lead from 50% to 300% in less than 30 days.”  Readers will stop, wonder how in the world that’s possible, and at the very least, read on to satisfy their curiosity.

• Keep your agenda out of it. Sales letter bullet points should be all about getting prospects to consider the benefits available to them.  The points should focus on satisfying readers’ desires, and should mention nothing about your needs.

• No tables of content. That’s  boring!   You’ve got to entice, provoke, and make it nearly impossible to stop reading.  When’s the last time you were captivated by a table of contents?

• Address the problems that you’ll solve. People want to know that you “feel” them.  They want to know that you’re prepared to solve their problems, because you have a good grasp on what their issues and problems are.

• Read the work of the copywriting greats. Don’t plagiarize, of course, but become familiar enough with their work that you can effectively imitate their work.

Generic, strictly informational, bullet points will never gather the effect that you’re looking for from your registration page or sales letter.  Each one of your bullet points has to reach out of the computer monitor, grab your prospect by the throat, and make it utterly impossible for that person to click away (without first signing up).

Bullet points have the potential to be powerful selling tools…as long as they’re brazen, enticing, curiosity-evoking, and shoot right to the heart of the matter.  You have the power to create powerful bullet points…by simply keeping your target in mind, taking careful aim, and shooting.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Do you feel like you have more ideas than you have time to implement? That you have more options and opportunities than you could possibly follow up on in the hours available in your day?

As the mother of two small children, I can certainly relate. I only work in my business three days a week, so I know what it’s like to not have time for labor-intensive and time-intensive lead generation activities.

The solution to that is SYSTEM.

In my book, SYSTEM stands for Save Your-Self Time, Energy, and Money.

Here’s just one example of how to do that. Something that works very well for me in my business is article marketing. This has been a tremendous source of leads both offline and online since I first started my business.

Article marketing has been absolutely fabulous for getting me established as an expert. My articles have played a key role in encouraging phone calls from potential clients who have read them. They establish me as an expert to the powerful decision-makers in companies who read them.

Article marketing is power, however, if you don’t do it in the proper way, it will end up being very time-consuming for you.

First, you have to come up with the ideas for the articles. Then you have to actually write the articles. Then format, upload and distribute them. There’s a good deal of time involved in all of those things.

But, if you systematize it, you can significantly reduce the number of hours you invest without sacrificing the quality of your end product. I syndicate my articles all over the web, and my article writing possibly takes me two to four hours a month. And that takes into account everything I do with articles.

I post an article a day to my blog, but I don’t post it. As I shared with you, I’m only working three days a week. If I did the posting myself, my blog post would only be updated three days a week. I’ve found a way to use technology and my team to automate all of this.

Look for the places where you can do this in your own business. This is a really important area for the busy, stressed, overwhelmed business owner. You have to learn to systematize. Implement practices and technology that can simplify some of your processes. Utilize the talents of someone for hire so you can make time to follow up on the ideas, options and opportunities that can further advance your business.

Save yourself time, energy and money and systemize in such a way that you feel good about your business and you can move forward at the same time.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com