How to Make Something
Happen With Your Blog
So... you're a blogger trying to gain new clients for your services, or new customers for your products. I'm guessing you want:
More visitors to your blog.
More subscribers and repeat traffic.
New links from other bloggers.
To sell something!
What if I told you that you're already on the right track? That you can accomplish all of the above by doing something that you're already doing as a blogger?
You guessed it - writing. You only need to write, as long as you do it in a strategic, persuasive way.
Tell Your Story
Copywriting skills are essential for effective Internet marketing, public relations, and yes... blogging.
You need to develop and tell the big story about you, your company, and your product or service. You should also strive to make each post, every networking email, press release and direct marketing piece as compelling as possible along the way to the sale.
Blogging may be new, but selling with words is not. To be a successful blogger simply means applying time-tested copywriting techniques in a brand new medium.
The Art and Science of Persuasion
Copywriting is the process of writing words that promote a person, business, opinion, or idea, with the ultimate intention of having the reader take some form of action.
Or another way of saying it... copywriting is the art and science of getting people to do what you want.
If you think that sounds a bit shady, relax. We all use persuasion techniques each and every day, whether we are conscious of it or not. With our spouses, kids, parents, bosses, vendors, employees and customers, we try to do and say things that move them in the direction we desire.
When it comes to persuading in a business context, some are better at it than others. But it's definitely more of a learned skill than a natural talent.
Blogging and Copywriting: A Perfect Match
Good blogging and good copywriting share many of the same attributes - plain spoken words designed to focus on the needs of the reader, using complete honesty and a demonstration of excellent value.
It's not about fancy writing and big words.
It's also not about being contrived or cheesy.
And it's absolutely not about inappropriate high pressure sales techniques that simply don't work.
People hate being sold, but they love to buy. Present a solution to a want or need in a context-appropriate manner, and you're well on your way.
Good copywriting delivered via blogging, RSS feeds and email is all about creating the perfect buying environment. With a bit of knowledge and practice, you can achieve that environment with your marketing efforts.
Writing Blog Post Titles That Work
Your blog post title (or headline) is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader. Without a post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your blog may as well not even exist.
At its essence, a compelling headline must promise some kind of benefit or reward for the reader, in trade for the valuable time it takes to read more. Your headline is the first critical step to getting a link to your post.
Why? Because it's got to be read before it can be linked!
According to some of the best copywriters of all time, you should spend half of the entire time it takes to write a piece of persuasive content on the headline. So if you have a blog post that is really important to you or your business, one that you really want people to read, you should downright obsess over your post title.
Advertising legend David Ogilvy knew the power of headlines, and how the headline literally determined whether the advertisement would get read. He rewrote this famous headline for an automobile advertisement 104 times:
"At 60 miles an hour, the only thing you hear in the new Rolls Royce is the ticking of the dashboard clock ..."
Master copywriter Gene Schwartz often spent an entire week on the first 50 words of a sales piece -- the headline and the opening paragraph. Those 50 words are the most important part of any persuasive writing, and writing them well takes time.
Even for the masters.
So, if you want to be an effective blogger, spend a little extra time on your post title.
5 Simple Steps to
Link Building with a Blog Adding a blog to your domain can be a great way to score inbound links. You'll want to write things that truly connect with people, and that also result in a direct, specific and quantifiable action -- like a link, a Delicious social bookmark, or a vote at news aggregation site Digg.
Each link, bookmark and vote you earn has a tendency to create others, depending on how well your copy offers something of real value to the reader. Check later for how well you did, and keep at it.
So here's the 5 keys to writing blog posts that attract links:
1. Post Titles
A really great headline hints at a reward for the reader so they are willing to read the rest. Your post title is the first crucial step to getting a link to your post, but only if you follow up with content that matches your headline promise.
2. Lists
It's a blogosphere favorite for good reason -- "list" content works, in large part due to the attention-grabbing power of the headline. Any time you make a list that gives a number of reasons, secrets, types, or ways to do something will work because people like quickly digestible content.
3. "How To" Articles
It's no secret that "how to" articles and blog posts are some of the most sought after, linked to, and bookmarked content online. People want useful information, and they'll reward you by promoting it to others when you provide it.
4. Link Out
To get link love, you gotta give link love. So link out to other bloggers as much as possible. Don't worry about losing readers. The counter-intuitive rule of the Internet (to quote blogger Dave Winer) is the more you send them away the more they come back.
5. Persistence
You may work hard on an article or resource that you're just positive will spread like wildfire, and yet hear nothing but lonely crickets chirping upon release. Just keep at it. Put your audience first with everything you write, and success will come.
Viral Marketing With Blogs Blogging is gaining huge traction with entrepreneurs and small businesses. These folks have realized that the "blogosphere" presents a unique opportunity to reach a global audience with little to no cost.
The key to selling with a blog is to give great value to your readers in the form of free information. Blogs build your authority as an expert in your industry and create a relationship with readers that creates a perfect buying environment. But with all the noise out there, you need to be strategic about ways to gain an audience in the first place.
The great thing about blogs is the links that you can get from other bloggers, which bring you traffic. Plus, these links help you rank better in search engines like Google. To get links from other bloggers, you need to say or create something that is worthy of attention.
In other words, you're looking for publicity, just like you might offline with the mainstream media. But online, a little bit of attention from bloggers often leads to even more attention from even more bloggers, which creates the possibility that something you write could spread virally all over the Internet.
Here are five strategies for creating content that gets attention:
1. Hold a Contest. Come up with a competition relevant to your industry or business niche. Promote it to other relevant bloggers and get them involved. Or, you could create a form of sweepstakes, but make sure to consult an attorney in this case, as sweepstakes are highly regulated.
2. Create a Tutorial or Free Ebook. The Internet is built on information. Create a useful guide based on your expertise and people will take notice. You'll gain publicity, new prospects and hopefully sales from just one effort.
3. Give an Award or Hold an Event. Create an award for the best blogger or website in your niche, or try creating an industry awareness event that you orchestrate. The most valuable traffic you can get is from related, but perhaps non-competitive businesses in your own industry, and any industry loves to buzz about who's the best or what's going on.
4. Give to Charity. Combine a fundraising or paid online event with a pledge to donate all proceeds to charity. You'll be doing a good deed and be perceived as a good citizen, and you might also get loads of free publicity as well.
5. Be Controversial. A good controversy almost always gains attention. Do or say something that goes against the grain of your industry or niche. Be careful not to go too far, but it's much worse to simply play it safe and have no audience at all.
These are just a few ways to gain attention online with your blog. The key is to think about what has value to your desired audience (as opposed to just you), and then find a creative way to present it.
SEO Copywriting is a
Waste of Time for BlogsGood copywriting skills can help you sell with your blog. But if you think by "copywriting" I mean "SEO copywriting," you'd be wrong.
In fact, you're probably wasting your time even worrying about traditional SEO techniques when it comes to blogs. Here's why.
Writing for Search Engines
Search engine optimization ("SEO") copywriting means writing web page copy that is optimized to rank well in the search engines. This includes inserting targeted key words in certain places (like titles), and in frequencies and densities designed to satisfy a particular search engine algorithm.
Why isn't this as important anymore? Essentially, SEO experts think traditional SEO for blogs is a big waste of time.
Humans Matter More
The gist of the argument is that when it comes to search rankings, what's written on a web page is less important than what other people say about that web page, and how many times.
It all comes down to links.
First of all, referral traffic (links from other bloggers) is of higher quality for the things that matter most - subscriptions and sales.
It's like the difference between a prospect who is sent your way from a happy former client, measured against someone who finds you in the Yellow Pages.
But this also impacts your search engine rankings. The algorithms favor sites and pages with incoming, non-reciprocal links from body text - in other words, express recommendations from other people. And much more weight is placed on the words used in those links (anchor text) than the words on the page linked to.
Just ask George W. Bush.
You won't find the words "miserable failure" anywhere on the biography page of the current U.S. President, and yet that page ranks number one for the search term in Google. That's because a whole bunch of other people (mostly bloggers) decided to link to W's bio with the anchor text "miserable failure," and obtained top ranking.
The trend of search engine's favoring what others say is intensifying. Just like offline, word of mouth matters most.
As mentioned above, search engines like Google already incorporate user feedback (links + anchor text) in their algorithms. When people link to and tag the posts of other bloggers on social book marking sites, and tagging is more fully integrated into the current version of search, rankings will rely on recommendations even more.
The end result will be better search, and the end of traditional SEO techniques.
Content Matters Most
This is why traditonal (not SEO) copywriting skills that catch and hold reader attention are important for bloggers. I would argue that great copywriting is the new SEO for bloggers, if it gets you positive links from others. And since blogging is a new form of public relations, and PR depends on great copywriting...
Well, you get my point.
So, maybe you should quit worrying about SEO and start producing incredible content and networking in your niche. Copywriting techniques will help you excel in both.
Don't be Search Engine Ugly
Now, for that grain of salt. There's no reason to completely ignore things like keywords in your writing. For one thing, it can influence the anchor text that is used to link to you, which is a good thing.
For example, take this article. It's got the keyword phrase "seo copywriting" right up front in the post title, and yet the headline still manages to be provocative. There's no reason why you shouldn't strive for human titillation and keyword relevancy.
But... if you have to choose between the two, go for the human factor first and foremost.
So, optimize your post URLs and include your keywords, but beyond that, let it go.
Search engine algorithms come and go, but human nature remains the same.
Brian Clark is the founder of
http://www.tubetorial.com, which provides free video tutorials that help you start a profitable Internet home business. He also writes about online copywriting that works at his blog
www.Copyblogger.com.