So, if you’re in the latter category and you loathe article writing, here are a few REALLY QUICK tips that will help you learn to love it:

Finding a topic to write about:

The Google Wonder Wheel:
Struggling to find a good topic? Meet the Google Wonder Wheel.

(Never heard of it? This video explains all!)

Simply type your search term into the Wonder Wheel and click through the various topics.  Note down interesting topics, for example, if you’re keyword is ‘cake decorating’ and you saw the topic ‘basketball cake,’ it could prompt you to write several articles on cake decorating ideas for various sports.

Amazon’s Look Inside Feature:
Try searching through Amazon’s books.  Find a book with the ‘look inside’ facility and sneak a peak at the chapter breakdown.  Try researching one or more of the chapters for your article!

Forming a good title for your article:

Just like I mentioned before, using other people’s experiences can really help you write good copy.  It can help you form great titles for your articles too:

Question and Answer Websites:
Visit Google, type in your topic and then hit the ‘More’ button on the left.  Once the menu drops down, click ‘Discussions’ and then ‘Q&A’ (just like in the image on the right!)

You should now have access to hundreds of questions, which people have asked about your topic.  Go and answer all of those questions in your articles!

Ask.com:
Ask Jeeves a question and on the right-hand side he’ll give you a whole selection of other questions too.  Often these make fantastic article titles!

Researching your article:

Now begins the hard part, right?  Wikipedia is obviously a first choice for many, but why regurgitate the same content that hundreds of other webmasters have paraphrased too?

Instead, write something useful by searching for new content in the following places:

• Google books: Flick through the books in Google’s index to find great material to write about.
• Google scholar: Find great articles, legal documents and patents from a search.   Dig into this material for interesting facts or points of view to write about!
• Your local library: If you have the time, go and explore books that your competitors are too lazy to go and find!

Writing your article:

Ah, now the even harder part.

Structure:
Don’t even think about writing your article until you’ve drafted a structure.

Throw a couple of headings down on a piece of paper and work out where all your research fits into these headings.  I like to scribble my research onto paper and then cross them off my notepad as I type up my article.  It’s very satisfying!

Finally, if you’d like to write your article quicker, try this article from Copyblogger: How to write an article in 20 minutes. Enjoy!!!

I hope these quick tips have helped you, let me know in the comments!  And, if you have any tips to share just let me know!

You should have written a good piece of copy by now, but you haven’t.

Do you know what you need? You need rescuing.

Or rather, your copy does.

So, here four simple tips that will help you; they’ve helped me out loads over the last couple of years. They’re quick to master and simple to implement, so it wont be long before your copywriting nightmare turns into a copywriting dream!

Most importantly, these tips will help you write better, engage your readers and meet your deadlines.

Tip: I use these four different tips to help me write articles for SEO, copy for websites and press releases. I hope they’ll help you too, whatever copy you’re writing!

So, let’s get started:

1. Make a quick plan:

You’ll be surprised how much a plan will help you retrieve your focus. After all, how can you write if you don’t know WHAT to write about?

Scribble down several headings and decide what you need to talk about in each paragraph. You don’t need to write more than a couple of words for each point, just write out a very general outline.

Next, reorder your copy to fit with your plan. If appropriate, chop and change around different paragraphs, but most importantly, MAKE SURE IT ALL FLOWS!

Struggling to get finished? Your new plan will help you write the rest of your copy too.

2. Have you made your point yet?

What’s your point? The copy you’re writing must have a point. To inform? To teach? To sell?

Sometimes you can carry on writing blindly because you think the article isn’t finished yet, but all that’s really missing is your main point.

So, what is your point and have you made it yet?

If you haven’t made it yet, now’s the time to figure out what it is and state it. State it early on in your copy and reiterate it near the end to reinforce the point to your readers.

3. Simplify complicated paragraphs:

If you’re reading a paragraph and it just *doesn’t* sound right, it’s probably full of long winded sentences and poor grammar. So, strip it back and start again. Readers will easily digest concise writing, so by keeping your writing simple you’ll keep your reader’s attention for longer.  (Which means they’re more likely to do what you need them to do: buy, click or share!)

Follow these quick tips to keep your copy concise:

• Only make one point per sentence
• Use short, to-the-point sentences
• Don’t over-complicate sentences with long-winded jargon and technical words
• Avoid writing in the ‘passive voice.’
• Take out extra words where possible

I can’t claim credit for these points, any good copy writing book will tell you to follow these basic rules.

But how often do we apply them?

Rarely, right? But they do make all the difference to your writing! After spending ten minutes rewriting a sentence to no avail, you’ll be surprised how quickly you can correct the troublesome wording by applying these rules.

Bonus: Soon, you’ll find yourself applying these tips automatically!

4. Think you’ve finished writing?

Nearly finished, but not sure if it’s good enough yet? Unsure why it’s ‘not quite there‘?

Go and put the kettle on, make your tenth cup of tea and take a breather. Use your ‘fresh eyes’ and give your copy a final read through.

Edit anything that doesn’t sound right and then stop again.  Then read through your work one final time (after your 11th cup of tea!)

It’s really important to check your copy through all in one go after spending all day stopping and starting writing.

And that’s it!

Regularly, stop, breathe and apply these four tips to your writing when you’re struggling to get finished.

I hope they help you like they help me, and feel free to include more tips in the comments section if you have any to share!

Img credits: [SOS] – [Laptop] – [Done]

BUT if you have limited knowledge on a subject, problems can occur. If you’re writing about something you don’t personally need it can get tricky, even if you’re an article-writing guru or a copywriting master.

I’ve personally been in this situation. I needed to sell a service but I had never used it. I didn’t even know why people would need to use it!

So, what did I do?

I applied my technique, which I’ll share with you now:

How to put others’ experiences in your copy:

This blog post will show you where to find other peoples’ experiences to work them into your own copy. These techniques will allow you to connect your writing to your readers. You’ll be solving their problems, giving them reasons to buy and hopefully closing in on the sale.

So, let’s get started:

Visit Google and type in your keyword, product or thing that identifies your niche. I’m going to do this now, pretending that my problem product is ‘luxury hand cream’.

Next, visit the left of Google’s page where you’ll see a ‘more’ button. Click this and then a box full of links (like those on the right) will open up. Click on ‘discussions’ to see your search performed in forums and Q&A websites. You can even filter discussion posts by the last hour, day or week to find really topical information. Click ‘all time’ to find the most popular, influential discussions.

Tip: Read as many discussions as you have time for: skim read and note down common problems people are having or questions that are being answered.

Look deep into the discussions for ‘benefits’ to work into your copy. I suggest writing things in a note pad as you’re skimming from post to post.

Now, use these real, human experiences to help you sell!

Here’s what I found about luxury hand cream after a couple of searches:

• Factors a good cream will have
• Fragrance, advice on smells of different creams
• What’s best to use for really dry hands
• Phrases, language and style used in discussions
• What’s considered a ‘good’ ingredient / what’s bad
• Great benefits of using luxury hand creams
• Common problems experienced by cream-users

By now, you should have a similar list. So, it’s time to work all of these into your web copy or article.

Use the information you’ve just researched to make your copy sell.

How to make your copy sell using your research:

Here are my top three tips, follow these and you’ll notice a difference to your conversions:

• Take care to use similar language/words to those used in the discussions
• Make sure you write about how YOUR product solves any common problems you’ve noted
• Use your research to pin point unique selling points and highlight these in your copy

Follow these and you’ll have a more interesting, engaging piece of copy, geared up for selling.

A few final tips:

Try tapping in keywords about your service/product, and if applicable, any other words like ‘problems’, ‘help’ and ‘ideas’ into Google. Think about what potential buyers would search for. E.g. somebody looking to BUY luxury hand cream may ask for ideas or advice in a forum.

Affiliate bloggers: use these tips to make more money!

I think this is a great method of copy writing that affiliate bloggers/shop owners could really benefit from. If you’re into affiliate marketing, make sure you research your products  using my methods and use your findings to boost your copy!

Some more places to try:

If you’ve pumped the forums dry, try searching on these websites too:

• Yahoo Answers (and other Q&A sites)
• Twitter (and other microblogging sites)
• Facebook (and other social networks)
• Online groups and communities
• Social media websites like Digg, Delicious and Reddit
• Search blog posts and comments too.

• Why should I be engaging in niche communities? And:
• What are the benefits of participating in a niche community?

(Feel free to skip these and jump down to the tips below if you already know why it’s important to post in niche communities as part of your SEO campaign.)

Why should I be engaging in niche communities?

Many SEOs try to fool Google into thinking their sites are important. We push our links onto bookmarking sites, news submission sites and social networks.  And we’re all guilty of creating accounts, dropping links and moving on to the next place very quickly.  I feel that it’s no longer the best technique, and it’s pretty obvious that Google’s on to us, so let’s keep one step ahead of the game and use a method that will benefit us, Google AND our niche market.

Instead, spend your time building quality links organically by engaging in a range of discussions on niche community sites.  Niche communities WILL help your content rank highly.  By participating in a niche community, you’ll build STRONG, relevant links to the site you’re optimising and you’ll give something back to the users of that site.

What are the benefits of participating in a niche community?

Aside from the obvious (a chance to link the site you’re optimising), niche communities provide the following:

• A stream of targeted and interested members, which you can engage with.  Find out what they’re interested in.  Learn about the questions they’re asking, which you can answer and later expand into blog posts (As an aside, I like to browse sections matching my particular niche in Q&A sites for this reason!)
• Potentially, there’s a chance to bring a stream of targeted traffic to your site.
• The chance to build trust and authority in your area.
• The opportunity to network with other niche community members, who also have blogs and websites (think guest posts, blogrolls and comments.)
• In some cases, PageRank can be passed to the site you’re optimising, which may help you rank better.
• Think of all that relevant content surrounding YOUR links!

Sounds great doesn’t it?

We just need to find some fantastic niche communities to engage in now!

For the sake of this article, I’m going to look for handmade / crafting niche communities.  Let’s pretend I sell handmade items in the UK, so ideally I’m looking for UK niche communities to engage in.

So let’s get started:

Tip #1:  Find niche communities using Google’s advanced search operators:

Visit Google (in the country of your choice) and type in the following:

allintitle:social network + craft

Allintitle: searches through the title tags on sites in Google’s index.  It asks Google to return results with ALL the keywords in the title.  Pretty handy if a niche community has named their site something like ‘The Craft Lovers Social Network’.

Next, try:

allinurl:join + craft

Allinurl: does a similar job to allintitle.  It searches for ALL of those words in the URL.  Again, this is handy if somebody has a site with both ‘craft’ and ‘join’ in their URL.

HINT: Try substituting network for ‘community’, ‘forum’ or ‘blog’ and ‘join’ for ’sign up.’

HINT: Try using related words for ‘craft’ too, such as: handmade, jewelery, etc.  And try using both plural and singular options.  Append ‘UK’ (or your country of choice) to find niche communities specifically in that location.

Tip #2: Find niche communities using ‘Sites Like’:

If I’ve found one niche community and I’d like to find some similar sites to join, I type the following into Google:

Sites like MyFavouriteSite.co.uk

Usually, I find a blog post that gives a round up of similar sites to my favourite niche community.

If not, I try inputting the original site’s URL or some key phrases into these websites:

• http://www.siteslike.com and
• http://www.similarsites.com

These return similar sites to the URLs you put in.  Very handy!

Tip #3:  Find niche community forums using these tools:

Forum participation is a great way to engage with your niche community.  Advice: spend less time worrying about your signature links and more time building relevant, helpful and USEFUL content in the forum and the traffic will follow.

You can easily find niche forums by searching with the following tools:

• http://boardreader.com/s/handmade.html
• Search Google and click ‘More’ then ‘Discussions’ on the left menu, and
• http://omgili.com/handmade#

I found 20+ crafting and handmade communities with those methods, in just 5 minutes, how many did you find for your niche?

Finally:

Soon, I’ll be posting a guide on engaging with your niche community, giving you my formula for optimal participation. That’ll be up in the next week or so, so please subscribe to my RSS feed.

Finally, if you missed my last post, I shared over 500+ social media websites, which I’ve found on my Internet travels.  Many are categorised by niche, so you may find some great communities in there to get you started

[Image credit]

The search is over!  100s of social media networks!

Stop your search and let me share with you my five best kept secrets.  These are five websites that contain hundreds of links to social networking websites.  Some are arranged by niche, others by function.

I promise, these will give you fuel for weeks:

1.  150+ social networks, categorised by niche:

With over 50 different categories and hundreds of websites listed, you’re sure to find a social networking site that will help you build relevant links and engage with interested people.  Is beer your thing?  There’s a network for that.  What about pets or politics?  Religion? Shopping? Smoking? Sport? Spanish? Real estate? Travel? Education? Yep there are social networks for all those too.  A lot of the niche social networking sites linked ALSO have their own reviews too, conducted by the site’s owner.

Social networks categorised by niche:  Click here to visit.

2. 100 social media websites that pass PageRank:

This list IS a little outdated (it’s from 2007) and there are several sites that a) no longer exist and b) have now opted to nofollow links BUT don’t be put off.  There are still LOTS of links on this site that are worth checking out.

100 social media websites that pass PageRank:  Click here to visit.

3. Over 350+ social media networks:

This website was designed for users who’d like to check which social media websites and social networks they can still claim a branded profile on.  For example, I can search ‘SuperCarly’ and see out of the 350+ social media websites which I can then go and still claim!

But how does this help you build networks and profiles?

Well, in the top navigation, KnowEm provides a list of the services they’re currently tracking, all divided up by function.  For example, I can see roughly 30 blogging websites, 47 community sites and around 30 bookmarking sites and there are still a lot of other options to look through.  The site also contains social media networks for specialty niche areas too, like health, design, music, business, travel and news.  KnowEm offer a premium service too, so if you’re too busy, they can secure your brand name across all available social media networks on your behalf.  Bargain.

350+ social media networks:  Click here to visit.

4.  10 image bookmarking websites for backlinks:

OK, this one will only keep you busy for one hour, but it’s worth it.  I’d never heard of these websites before I found this post.  You can sign up to most of them and create profile links and backlinks to your submissions, though two websites require invites before signing up (though you can email to request these.)  Plus, if you create a really good image and it goes viral, you get lovely free traffic!

A must for all designers and photographers. Businesses – you could get your staff to submit quirky photos to a couple of these sites?  Give them a try!

10 image bookmarking websites for backlinks:  Click here to visit.

5. 30+ social media networks on Ping.Fm

I’m going to be honest and assume that a bunch of these websites ARE already contained in the 350+ list KnowEm provides…BUT I will say that I’ve already spotted one or two gems that don‘t appear to be on the KnowEm site, which is pretty useful!

Ping.FM boasts the ability to update a lot of  services from the same place, making your social media networks and social networking portals very easy to manage!

30+ social media networks on Ping.Fm:  Click here to visit.

I hope you’ve found these websites as useful as I have!

A big shout out to the owners who spent a lot of time collating these lists to share with us all.

Lastly, have you any similar resources to share?  I’d really appreciate it

(Credit:  Icons.)

ProFollow is NoFollow – but not for long (hopefully!)

On Saturday morning I woke up to a lovely email from AboutUs.org’s Kristina, who’d taken time to personally write and send me a message about the company’s decision to temporarily stop giving out free follow links to people who’d taken the time to edit their AboutUs.org pages.

She referred me to the official blog post on AboutUs.org, which states:

We decided to stop following all external links after discovering that Google may regard our Spotlight article service as a form of link selling. Link selling isn’t normal web advertising. A link seller provides inbound links to a site specifically to manipulate search engine results.

So, there you have it.  No more lovely, free follow links – but is this just for now?

The blog post does continue:

It’s possible we’ll reconsider our decision in the future, and remove the NoFollow attribute on pages edited by AboutUs visitors

Phew!  Let’s hope they do find a way to still reward AboutUs.org visitors without Google assuming they’re selling links.  After all, any ‘juice’ being passed from the ProFollow scheme would have been worth nothing if AboutUs.org couldn’t maintain a decent PageRank for its content because of ‘link selling’ anyway.

And now for the good news… AboutUs launch new project:

So, still wallowing in the disappointment from the revoked ProFollow scheme, you can imagine my excited little face when I looked at FaceBook and found that AboutUs.org had launched a new side project – AboutUs.com!

Now we’ve got something new for you: AboutUs.com. It’s all about the essence of websites, as understood – and conveyed – by different people.

Ooh, very interesting!  It’s essentially a platform that collates your ‘insights’ about websites, written in 120 characters or less.

Somebody has written the obligatory ‘it’s just like Twitter’ comment on the FaceBook page – and I guess it is a little similar to Twitter, yes. (120 character limit, for example.)  But this isn’t yet another microblogging service.  It’s a service to explain what you think is great or rubbish about other websites, which are then all collected and presented together on a page for that particular domain name.

So, naturally, I had to take advantage and put:

But that’s just my opinion.  If you disagree, you may write something different like ‘SuperCarly.co.uk is run by a smelly girl that likes smelly dogs’, or something equally as derogatory.  Or if you love my blog, you could write ‘SuperCarly.co.uk is run by an amazingly fantastic girl called Carly’, which is more preferential!

You get the point.

Of course, this website could have a more practical application then simply a platform on which to call me names; use it to find out if a website is fraudulent or scammy, search to find the shop with the best reviews or simply use it to find new places to surf.

Fantastic.  Never risk buying overpriced shoes again,  learn which Bingo site is the best and find fun new places to hang out!

Oh and let me know if you sign up to add any insights: simply leave your URL in the comments and I’ll even give you a vote!!

Oh and yes, I did notice that AboutUs.com is providing websites with a follow link – I just didn’t want to point it out, jinx it and have them take it away, so shhhh

If you could spare five seconds to vote in my poll below, I’d be very happy!

The article reads:

It is possible that I am just too old for this kind of thing. But for a start, Twitter’s public, right? So it somewhat stretches credibility to think that Romeo and Juliet would use it to conduct their secret love affair. Second – the whole thing’s interminable. It’s been going for a fortnight, and we’ve only just had Romeo and Juliet falling for each other. And third, didn’t the original have something to do with poetry? Does a tweet like “Goooooooooood morningggggg :):):):):) It happened….. with THE most beautiful boy alive…. IT happened :):):):)” really cut it?

Source: a plague on the Twitter Romeo and Juliet

I think the above article, penned by Charlotte Higgins, fails to see the potential of the RSC’s Twitter project.  Personally, I’m pleased that the RSC are putting something out there that  makes Romeo and Juliet (and indeed Shakespearean literature) accessible to youngsters.  No, not people in their twenties or even late teens, I’m talking about the 12, 13, 14 year olds who DO talk in this way and who DO conduct most of their relationships over social networking sites in public.  OK, perhaps not secret relationships like Romeo and Juliet, but at least the story becomes more relevant and more interesting to this age group.

A quick look at some of my younger connections’ Facebook profiles and I find the the writing style of Romeo and Juliet isn’t too far off the mark.  Plus, who cares if ‘the whole thing’s interminable, it’s been going on for a fortnight?’  The Tweets will be archived, and in a year or so, kids will be able to go through the website and read them all like a book.  I’d even encourage the RSC to get their project printed up into book!

What’s your opinion?

Are you still at school?  Would you rather read the RSC’s account of Romeo and Juliet on Twitter or do you prefer a bit of Shakespeare?  Do you think it’s easier to understand?  Or is it a bit lame?  Let me know what you think!

Google Translate for Animals:

The ‘Translate for Animals‘ application for the Android phone is my personal favourite, though I knew right away it was an April Fools’ Day joke!

If you’ve not yet seen the video, watch it below.

I wish it was real;  it would really help me understand if Archie is happy, whether he’d like MORE walks and if he really likes eating kibbles.

Sadly, it’s a fake.  Were you convinced by it?

Google Street View 3D:

My second favourite April Fools’ prank was Google’s Street View 3D:

Whoa! That bus is coming right at me!

See it for yourself by entering Street View and clicking the man in the 3D glasses on the left.

I’ve not put on my 3D glasses yet, but I’m pretty certain it won’t actually work. Have you tried?  Does it work?

Also, I’m not sure how useful Street View 3D would be in real life – though it would be pretty cool to play with after a couple of beers!

And finally…

A few more notable Google gags included using the power of Dr Wave’s ‘waving’ to notify you of new ‘Waves‘ and Google renaming itself Topeka.

Plus, today Google has been showing strange units of time, regarding its speed returning queries:

Results 1 – 10 of about 1,830,000,000 for Google. (0.16 centibeats)

I’ve also been getting speedy results in ‘warps’ and ‘jiffies.’

Those crazy Googlers have farrr too much time on their hands!

So, tell me:

What was your favourite April Fools’ joke this year?  Did you fall for any jokes?  Did you create any genius jokes that fooled lots of people?

They’re all remarkable.

Apologies if you’ve seen this video before, it is from 2003.  I’ve only just stumbled across it and I think it’s a great resource for anybody interested in marketing.

Have you seen anything remarkable recently?

I particularly like the milk-not-milk example.  I’ve spotted it myself since watching the video, while shopping in the supermarket!