Sometimes learning what not to do is as important as learning what to do. Copywriting is no exception. I oftentimes see copy that is well written, but obviously created by an amateur. How do I know? One or more of the following five mistakes was made and they killed the copy.

You must plan before you write copy. Most of these mistakes came about because a newbie put fingers to keyboard and started rambling. But once you understand why these mistakes are so deadly you can easily avoid them and overcome them before you ever write the first word.

Pull up your site in a browser and follow along. See if you’ve made any of these mistakes on your site.

#1 – Writing Without Knowing Your Target Audience

This is, without a doubt, the biggest mistake of copywriting and the #1 killer of conversions.  Why?  I’ll answer with a question.

When you write a letter (or email), do you just start writing and decide afterwards who you’re going to send the letter to?  Of course not. So why, then, do so many people just jump in and start writing website copy without having a clue about who they are writing to?

How can people communicate with their site visitors if they have no idea who they are, what they are looking for, their preferred communication style, what problems they face, how they hope to use the product/service to solve those problems and countless other information? 

Truth is, you can’t.

Take knowing your target customers to the extreme. Find out everything you can about them. Then combine all that info to create an imaginary person (or imaginary people) who fit the profile of your target audience members. You can even name them if you want to. Then – with every sentence – write to that person (or persons).

#2 – Writing Without Knowing the Product/Service

Like it or not, copywriters have to be salespeople. That means you have to know all the details of the product or service you’re writing about. How else can you convincingly convey the information to prospects who visit the site?

Ask your client for samples of products, use of the services or access to member areas of a site before you begin writing. Using or taking part in what your client is offering to his/her visitors will make a huge difference in the quality and persuasiveness of your copy.  Nothing comes across as well as copywriting that has been created from experience.

#3 – Writing About the Company Instead of To the Site Visitor

For the most part – at least in the beginning – your site visitors don’t care about your company.  Rather than hear about how long you’ve been in business and that you’re specialists in this, that or the other thing, customers would rather find out how your product/service can benefit them.

If your home page starts with something like this, you’re in trouble: “ABC Company is the specialist in [insert industry here] with over 20 years experience. We provide [fill in the blank] with our extensive knowledge and helpful service. Dedicated to providing the highest quality, we guarantee our work with a 100% money-back promise.”

You’re we-ing all over yourself. The customer has the money.  Don’t you think the copy should at least acknowledge him/her at some point?  Rather than using “we,” “us” and “our” so much, turn it around.

Talk to your site visitors instead of about the company.  Let them know you understand their needs and have answers to their problems.  Don’t ignore them by talking only about yourself.

#4 – Outlining Features Instead of Benefits or End Results

Features are nice, but benefits and end results make the sale because they clearly explain why the customer will be better off after buying your product or using your service. One of the biggest selling factors in copywriting is the ability to tell the customer what he/she can do with a product or service.

Take a tip from the infomercials.  They don’t simply tell you that a rotisserie cooker rotates as it cooks a chicken.  No!  They tell you that this rotisserie cooker can bake a whole, marinated, Italian herb chicken that’s juicy, moist and succulent.  That the seasonings slowly seep into the meat so you get bite after tender bite of flavorful chicken so good you’ll beg for more.  Who cares that the thing has a pointed, metal prong that rotates a chicken while it cooks?  You’re buying it because it can deliver that wonderful whole, marinated, Italian herb chicken!

#5 – Neglecting the Medium

Does it make a difference as to where your copy appears online?  Isn’t all Web copy the same?  The answers are “Yes” and “No.”  Landing pages are not the same as home pages, which are not the same as catalog pages, which are not the same as sales letters, and so on and so on.  Don’t neglect to find out the differences between these and the other types of Web copy.  They all have special considerations that should be studied before you begin writing.

Now you can add these five “don’ts” to your favorite copywriting checklist. Avoiding these mistakes will give you a better shot at reaching your visitors on their level and converting them into repeat customers.

Want to learn more about developing SEO copy that flows as it should? Get Karon’s Step-by-Step Copywriting Course now in its 5th edition. Check it out today for details, free videos & to pick up your own copy!

© Karon Thackston

(Know how to write copy, but need help with effective keyword use? Renowned SEO copywriter Karon Thackston offers 11 clever ways to include keywords in your SEO copy without destroying the flow. Check out how you can write more natural-sounding copy today!)

It really gets my blood pressure up. SEO copywriting has begun to get a poor reputation all due to carelessness. How so? Because too many people claim to know what they are doing. In reality, they simply shove keywords into copy without any concern for how the copy flows. Copy that sounds mechanical or stiff is a sure sign that an amateur writer has had his/her hands in things.

When you write SEO copy, you should take the time to find out what works and what doesn’t. There are two mistakes almost every amateur search engine copywriter makes. Let’s take a look at each one.

#1 – The List

Let’s say you visit the home page of a website that sells beauty supplies. As you read the copy, you keep coming across a string of items: hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables. The copy reads something like this:

————————————————————

The Best Selection of Hair Salon Supplies, Hair Salon Equipment and Professional Manicure Tables On the Internet

When you’re shopping for hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables, you need a vendor who offers great selection as well as great service. Because buying hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables can be an expensive venture, you also want a company that delivers the lowest price.

Trust ABC Beauty Supply to bring you the widest selection of hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables in stock every day. Orders are shipped within 24 hours and – for all hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables orders over $100 – shipping is absolutely free!

————————————————————

Do you see how that flows (or doesn’t flow) when you use all your keyphrases in a row every single time? One time, sure. That’s fine. Even twice, depending on the length of your copy. But to put all your keyphrases in a list and use them every time you have the smallest opportunity is just far too repetitive. What do you do instead?

Discuss each one in its own section. Talk about the various types of hair salon supplies. Review the reasons your hair salon equipment is better than that sold by others. Or even list the features and benefits of the line of manicure tables you offer.

#2 – Substituting Keywords for Generic Terms

This technique (just like the one above) is perfectly fine IF you use it in moderation. However, to replace every instance of a generic term with a keyphrase will cause your copy to sound downright silly. Let’s have a look at an example from a Web design site.

————————————————————

New Orleans Web Design

Our New Orleans Web design firm offers a high level of creativity to businesses located in the general area. Our New Orleans Web design styles are never made from templates. Each New Orleans Web design is a custom creation just for your site.

————————————————————

If you walked into a Web design company’s office and the employees began to talk like that copy is written, you’d most likely think they were on drugs! So why in the world would you write your site copy that way? The reason is because most amateurs mistakenly think they can’t write for both the search engines and the site visitors. I’m delighted to say they are wrong! You can most certainly write for both with great success.

Try this:

———————————————————-

Progressive, creative, upbeat. Those are phrases that best describe many online businesses based in New Orleans. Web design for your organization should match your style. Never created from templates, the site designs you’ll receive will be truly reflective of your corporate personality. Because we work exclusively with companies located in or near New Orleans, Web designs retain that Big Easy feel.

———————————————————-

Did you see it? The phrase was broken up using punctuation. That won’t hurt your rankings one bit, but it will make your copy sound a LOT better.

These are not all the mistakes. I wish they were! But most of the mistakes made by amateur writers can be fixed using one simple test. Read it out loud. If the copy sounds ridiculous to you when you read it out loud, it is going to sound equally ridiculous to a site visitor.

Take your time. Learn the ins and outs of SEO copywriting before you begin to create the text for your (or your clients’) pages. Then you can rest assured that your copy will convert better while it contributes to your high rankings.

I work with two distinct groups of customers in my business: offline business owners and online marketers with an interest in Content Marketing.

Although these two groups are vastly different, they each need the same things if they want to succeed online:

• An effective website
• A clear online marketing strategy to drive web traffic to it
• A way to convert that traffic into paying customers

So How Can You Tell if YOUR Website is “Effective?”

Should you focus on raw traffic numbers, like the number of unique or total visitors your site gets each month? Or should you focus on outside rankings, such as your Alexa rating or your Google PageRank?

The short answer? No!

By themselves, these metrics don’t necessarily mean a strong bottom line!

The ONLY thing that matters when judging how effective your website is this: Does your website help you reach your business goals (e.g., increase revenue or otherwise grow your business)?

In other words, does your website help you connect with your ideal customers in a meaningful way? If not – your website is NOT effective.

Don’t just take my word for this. Here is Google’s feedback re: one of its own metrics (Google PageRank): Note: This excerpt is from the Google Webmaster Forum (link to source provided below)

#pagerank
Q: My site’s PageRank has gone up / gone down / not changed in months!
A: Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.

source: Google Webmaster Forum
(bold text and underlining added for emphasis)

That last sentence says it all, doesn’t it?

Here,Google is affirming that you should focus on those factors which relate to “…meaningful gains to your website or business.”

Bottom Line: Don’t get bogged down in the minor details or arbitrary numbers when evaluating the effectiveness of your website. Instead, look at your website as a whole and how well it is performing in terms of attracting and converting web visitors into paying customers.

As pointed out in the quote above – there are over 200 variables used to determine the Google organic ranking algorithm (what those variables are and the exact “weight” (relative importance) put on each is anybody’s guess). That formula – which is constantly evolving – is Google’s “Secret Sauce” and none of us mere mortals are going to get a clear peak behind that curtain.

So focus on the things you CAN control (such as On-Page SEO Factors and building quality backlinks).

To help you get started, click on the following link to download the Google SEO Starter Guide. This is an EXCELLENT resource for the beginning webmaster or those new to marketing on the web. It covers the following:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Basics
• Improving Site Structure
• Optimizing Content
• Dealing with Crawlers
• SEO for Mobile Phones
• Promotion & Analytics

There is a lot of material covered in this guide – so don’t worry about mastering all of it immediately. However, it provides a clear explanation of what factors go into creating an effective website and promoting it online. It offers great practical advice for the do-it-yourself crowd – and gives an excellent overview of what to look for before you hire an outside firm to develop your website and/or market your business online.

Til Next Time,

PS: Click here to instantly download your Google SEO Starter Guide now! (Requires the FREE Adobe PDF Reader)

Have you ever fallen victim to “The Great Time Crunch?” (Yes. That is a rhetorical question).

Conflicting obligations and competing interests conspire to rob us of that most-important of all assets: our precious, sweet time.

This issue is particularly problematic for many entrepreneurs (online and off) because they attempt to wear too many hats in the course of a “standard” business day.

Sales Agent. Project Manager. Widget Maker. Bookkeeper. Administrative Assistant.

Sound familiar?

I’ve been struggling with this more than usual lately. This isn’t surprising because the service side of my business (WordPress Web Design and Content Marketing) has exploded over the last 6 months (due to a couple simple – but effective – “tweaks” to my marketing strategy).

Of course, I am thrilled with this  – but more time working “in” my business means I have less time to work “on” my business.

(If the concept of working “on” your business, instead of “in” it, is new to you, I highly recommend The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber).

While operating a service-based business has many advantages – it can quickly put you on a hamster wheel to nowhere. At some point, we have to rise above the “trading hours for dollars” mindset if we ever want to regain control of our time – and our lives.

The “Set It and Forget It” projects we’ve been talking about recently are a great way to work “on” your business. The more ways you can find to convert one body of work into long-term, recurring results, the more freedom you will ultimately have.

We left off last time with choosing a topic for your own “Set It and Forget It” project. Next up: we’ll talk more about “finding” the time in an already-overcrowded schedule to make it happen.

Til Next Time,

PS. If you are just joining us for this series, you can find related articles here: Set It and Forget It Projects.

Many small business owners make the same mistake when they build their first website: They think their new site will immediately start to pull in loads of customers just because it is online.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that (as you probably already know). However, it IS possible to build a successful long-term business presence online – it just takes a little planning.

Here are  4 Tips for a More Successful Website

1. Keep it Simple. First and foremost, the goal should be to create a positive user experience for your audience. So, be sure to consider how your customers and prospects will use it – and how it will help you connect and interact with them.

Then, avoid anything that doesn’t support these goals.

Also, go easy on extraneous graphics, flashing images, cutesy cartoons and music. Instead, focus on providing useful content – and make it easy for your visitors to find it. Your website should present a clean and professional image and be easy to navigate.

2. Don’t Wait for Traffic. You can’t just wait for traffic to find you. Instead, you have to go out and find it.

You have two options here: you can either pay for it (e.g., PPC ads) or you can work on driving organic (non-paid) traffic to your site. (Paid advertising isn’t my area of specialization, so I’ll stay focused on the organic side here).

There are a lot of way you can target organic traffic. For starters, you can update your site frequently with fresh content, write guest blog posts for other sites in your niche, become active on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, or participate in related forums.

The key is to  provide valuable content and input while you are making connections and building backlinks. The more you “stir the pot,” the better your long-term results will be.

3. Remember your “second” audience: The search engines. Of course, you’ll also want to make sure that your website (and each of its pages) is search engine friendly. “On-page SEO” is important (and is something you can actually control!) – including title tags for each page and developing an internal linking strategy is a great start to this.

4. Be approachable. Many websites are cold and unfriendly – and very impersonal. People are skeptical, especially when doing business online. Before they’ll do business with you, most people need to know, like and trust you. Be professional, but also reassure your readers that there is indeed a real person behind the website.

One way to accomplish this is to include an “about us” section  on your website. Include a professional picture of you and your team (if you have one) either there or elsewhere on your site. Share a little about your business, but be sure to keep the focus on how you can help them.

A successful website is within your reach – it just takes a little planning. Keep these 4 tips in mind and you’ll be on your way.

Til Next Time,

PS Need help? My company specializes in developing user-friendly websites and Content Marketing strategies for offline business owners. Contact me today to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation!

Obviously, I am HUGE WordPress fan – which works out well considering I spend the biggest part of my day – every day – working with it or on it. I love its search engine friendly features and its (normally) “easy to get along with” philosophy…

That said, I am definitely NOT loving the new WordPress 3.1 upgrade. Not even a little bit…

My biggest challenge has to do with formatting simple text. Yeah, I know. Sounds ridiculous, right?? This is ordinarily one of the easiest things to do in WordPress thanks to the super-intuitive visual editor function.

For example, whenever I try to apply H2 or H3 tags (using the visual editor) – the change is applied to the entire page – not exactly the look I am after… Likewise for bold/italics and the left/center/right justification options.

Another time, an entire page of text was somehow hyper-linked to one of the images on the page. In fact, a bunch of weird, random goofy things like that keep popping up.

When I check in the HTML editor, it’s clear the commands are being applied to the entire document rather than just the highlighted area. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to fix by removing the offending code and putting it where it belongs – but it is very frustrating. And time consuming.

Tweaks that should take 15 minutes are now eating up hours.

I should note this problem is most prominent when I paste in text from a plain text file (NOT Microsoft Word – so you’d think any weird formatting ‘junk’ would be avoided, right??) However, I do this all the time – and have been doing so for years without issue. It is often not possible to write everything directly in the WordPress interface when you are exchanging and sharing documents with clients.

This problem definitely started after the WordPress 3.1 upgrade… and I, for one, am really looking forward to fast fix. In the meantime, I am going to hold off on upgrading any other sites for now.

Til Next Time,

PS Would love to hear if anyone else is experiencing the same issue – and what, if any, solutions you’ve come up with – please leave a comment below if you have any thoughts or ideas on this topic!

Okay, so now it’s time to choose a topic for your “Set It and Forget It” online marketing project.

Unfortunately, this can be one of the most challenging parts of the entire process. There are a number of reasons for this – not the least of which is it requires making a commitment.

When you decide to focus on just one project, you must also give up – or at least forgo – forward movement on another. Too often, it’s tempting to chase after multiple projects at any given time – which can quickly land you on the fast track to nowhere if you aren’t careful.

So today, let’s make a decision to actually make a decision… and choose the topic for your own “Set It and Forget It” online marketing project.

Here are a Couple Factors You’ll Want to Keep in Mind:

1.) Your Market or Niche. I won’t belabor this point, because it is pretty straightforward. If you own an auto repair shop, you will obviously want to choose a topic related to your area of expertise. Likewise, if you work exclusively online, you’ll want to stay focused on topics related to your specific niche.

Here’s an article that can help you brainstorm potential topics related to your online business efforts: Fresh Web Content Ideas

2.) Your Target Audience. I can’t stress enough how important this one is. This is the “WHO” part of the equation – as in, “WHO” are you creating this project for in the first place?

Yeah, I know – you are tackling this project to help grow your business, but that will flow naturally from creating real, honest-to-goodness value for your customers.

So, be sure to pay attention to the questions and feedback you get from your customers and/or readers. What are their “pain” points? In other words, what challenges and issues are they having that you are uniquely qualified to solve?

Identifying these unmet needs is a great starting point.

My challenge now to you is to choose just ONE larger project you’d like to focus on and complete by time we finish this series.

(If you are just joining us, you can find related posts here: “Set It and Forget It” Tutorials)

Til Next Time,

PS If you need more help zeroing in on a single topic for your “Set It and Forget It” project – this is still my favorite go-to resource for creating profitable short reports.

Today, let’s define the scope of our project for the “How to Leverage “Set It and Forget It” Online Marketing Strategies to Build Your Business” series. (You can find related posts here: “Set It and Forget It” Tutorials).

This step is really important because this is where you create the framework for the rest of the project. (Plus, breaking down a large project into smaller “mini-projects” like this makes it a lot less intimidating).

The following graphic illustrates what we’ll cover over the course of this series: (click on the image to see a larger version).

Several sub-projects fall under the umbrella of the “Main Project” in this example. You may find that simply creating an autoresponder (email) series is enough or perhaps you just need a short incentive report to promote your business.

Every business is different – so this series is designed to break each of these smaller “Set It and Forget It” projects into stand-alone tutorials. This way, you’ll be able to pick and choose what you need.

Now, I’d like to challenge you to come up with your own “Set It and Forget It” marketing project. Remember, the main goal of this type of project is to invest your time and energy into it ONCE and in return, it will produce results for you long into the future.

Til Next Time,

PS Remember, you can find all posts related to this series here: “Set It and Forget It” Tutorials. You can also subscribe to the feed for this series to receive updates on future posts.

]]> http://www.webcopyresults.com/6714/set-it-and-forget-it-define-scope-of-project/feed 0 http://www.webcopyresults.com/6678/put-your-content-marketing-strategy-on-autopilot http://www.webcopyresults.com/6678/put-your-content-marketing-strategy-on-autopilot#comments Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:45:14 +0000 Trish Lindemood http://www.webcopyresults.com/?p=6678

At least part of it, anyway.

Fortunately, “Set It and Forget It” content projects are a great way to automate a portion of your online marketing efforts.

So, let’s jump right in to our new series, How to Leverage “Set It and Forget It” Online Marketing Strategies to Build Your Business. (If you are just joining us, you can click on that link to find other posts on this topic).

For this series, we’re going to tackle a pretty big “Set It and Forget It” project: Creating an eBook (40+ pages) you can either sell outright or use to promote your existing products or services.

Important Note:

Even if creating and selling this type of information product doesn’t interest you, we’ll also cover a number of worthwhile, but smaller “Set it and Forget It” content projects during this series.

For example, we’ll talk about how to create short, rebrandable incentive reports (to build your mailing list and promote your larger eBook), build and test landing pages (to increase opt-in rates and improve conversions) and develop an autoresponder (email) series (to promote your “Set It and Forget It” online marketing project on autopilot).

The goal?

By the end of this series, you’ll be able to take away pointers for each of these sub-projects and put them to work in your own online business.

Clearly, this is a pretty ambitious project – in fact, the master checklist includes over 20 different action items. So, it will take some time to cover each of these items in detail.

However, I definitely don’t want to lock myself into talking about ONLY this project for the next several months, so to make sure you don’t miss any updates from this series, you may want to subscribe to the series feed now.

Next Up: We’ll take a look at the entire scope of this project in more detail so you can use it to create your own master checklist.

Til Next Time,

PS I want to make this series as helpful to you as possible. Therefore, if you have any specific questions or would like to see more detail on a particular topic, please don’t hesitate leave a comment or suggestion below (or on any upcoming post in this series).

Yesterday, we talked about the value of using “Set It and Forget It” online marketing strategies to build your business. Today, let’s take a look at how to get started.

It All Begins with a Checklist

Before I start working on a multi-step project (such as designing a new website or creating larger content-based products) – I always create a very detailed checklist of every step needed to complete the project.

Here are 3 Main Reasons To Use Checklists:

1. Reduce Overwhelm. Let’s face it, large projects can be overwhelming – especially if you aren’t exactly sure what you need to do in order to get from Point A to Point B.

Unfortunately, this is where a lot of people get “stuck.” However, creating a detailed checklist can instantly transform a unwieldy project into something a lot more manageable by helping you answer the all-important question of “What’s next?”

2. Stay on Schedule. When you break a large project down into small pieces, it is so much easier to work it into your already over-crowded schedule.

It can be next to impossible to block out huge chunks of time to devote to your “Set It and Forget It” marketing plans – but 15 minutes here and half an hour there can add up to huge progress when done consistently.

3. Save Time. This is especially true for tasks and projects you’ll repeat in the future.

For example, I can now get a new website up and running much, much faster thanks to the detailed checklists I created in the beginning.

At this point, I have most of the basic steps committed to memory, but there are some tasks (e.g., those involving specific CSS code) I refer to over and over again. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve saved by not having to track down those details every time I want to perform a specific task.

For the rest of this series on How to Leverage “Set It and Forget It” Marketing Strategies to Build Your Business, we’ll focus on how to create and use short reports and longer information products to increase exposure, build your list and most importantly, generate revenue for your business.

Til Next Time,

PS I’ve created a special sub-category for this series – which means you can subscribe to the category feed to receive automatic updates.