ZK's Web Marketing Blog

Good Morning Sunday: What it Takes to be Number One – Vince Lombardi

ZK — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:57:32 +0000

As we wait in anticipation to watch today’s super bowl which starts in less than 24 hours, I thought it would be only befitting to dedicate the Good Morning Sunday post to Vince Lombardi – the greatest football coach of all time.

Arguably history’s greatest coaches, regardless of sport.

His ability to teach, motivate and inspire players helped turn the Green Bay Packers into the most dominating NFL team in the 1960s. The Super Bowl Trophy also know as Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Get ready for the Big Game as you enjoy this three minute inspirational movie that shares Vince Lombardi’s keys to success in an unforgettable way with vintage photos, great Lombardi quotes, and the rare audio segments from Lombardi giving his famous speech, What It Takes to Be #1.

Click here if the above movie does not play

“What it takes to be Number One”, became one of the greatest books on leadership not only in sports but also in business and life. The book explores powerful lessons about what it takes to be an effective leader and shows how to apply those qualities to one’s own life and career. It lays down effective leadership qualities and philosophy of Vince Lombardi.

What excites me most are his leadership quotes, his teachings as a coach and his inspirational speeches that motivate the team to perform and push beyond the ordinary every time.

Below are some of my favorite Vince Lombardi quotes

On Commitment:
“Winning is not a one time thing, it is an all time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.

On Success:
“Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.”

On Winning:
“You never win a game unless you beat the guy in front of you. The score on the board doesn’t mean a thing. That’s for the fans. You’ve got to win the war with the man in front of you. You’ve got to get your man.”

“If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.”

“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”

On Leadership:
“Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”

“Leaders aren’t born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.”

On Habit:
“Winning is a habit. Watch your thoughts, they become your beliefs. Watch your beliefs, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character.”

“It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.”

Do you have any favorite Lombardi quotes ? Watch this inspirational clip before you see the Super Bowl match.

Have a Super Bowl Sunday and a great week ahead

Image Credit: Wisdomisms

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

Good Morning Sunday: What it Takes to be Number One – Vince Lombardi

3 Very Effective Ways to Build Trust Online

wilsonljx — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:46:45 +0000

In order to turn your visitors to customers, you will need to bear some things in mind.

Firstly, you should not sell them things based on the mind-set of making money out of them.

Secondly, ensure them to learn something that can benefit them.

Lastly, provide your best quality content with sufficient research and answer all their questions as fast as possible.

1) Building a Sustainable Relationship

The simple answer to building a sustainable relationship is to do one step at a time. You must make your visitors feel comfortable when they opted in to your list.

Do not start to send them offers in the beginning and instead, provide them with many free quality value first which will builds a rapport among you and them. Thus they will be confident that your offer is the best solution to their problem.

Let’s give one scenario; would you want to marry a person without spending time to understand each another?

Definitely no right!

Let’s give another more logical scenario.

A man and woman happened to encounter at a party. They notice each other and instantly decide that they are interested.

The man walks over to the woman and starts a casual conversation. Before leaving, he asked for her number and dates her out. She agrees.

First five dates: The couple goes out for dinner and start to know one another. They ask one another questions, share more about themselves and talk more about their interests and passions.

They start to go out for movies and dinner on weekends and spend a long relaxing weekend together for breakfast.

Date 6: They go out to dinner with her parents, who are visiting from out of town and the next day, he play golfs with her father.

Dates 7-10: She is at his place or he is at her place for four evenings a week.

Dates 11 through 60: Same as above only it is six days per week.

After the 60th date, they are no longer dating, they start to discuss on their future and having marriage plans.

You get my point?

Although a marriage proposal and sales are different in many ways, they are quite similar in that it requires time and commitment. Great relationships-be it personnel or professional- do not happen overnight.

2) Website conversion essentials

Let me provide you with the following three essential web site elements.

• Make it professional looking, eye-catching and well written
-Spend some money on graphics designer if you have the capital and your conversion rate will increase.
-Make sure your sales letter copy is compelling, well written and error free.

• Make it uncomplicated and easy to use
-Make sure that the navigation is simple and visitors understand exactly what to do by using easily located opt-in boxes, and sales buttons.

• Make it warm and welcome
-Welcome your guests with open arms and offer to lighten their load by giving them something of value.

3) Building a responsive online mailing list
Know what your target market wants badly enough to pay money for. This may seem obvious but many businesses try to promote what they want to sell instead of what the audience wants to buy.

You can get people to opt in to your list unless you truly offer them something they really want badly due to the high competitiveness in the online marketing space.

Make the opt in process simple. Your form should be one page without many words that will confuses visitors to divert their attention to other links.

Also, set your expectations up front. If you have a newsletter, tell your subscriber that is what they will get. If you only mail out once a week or a month, let them know too. Just make sure that you deliver what you promise.

Image Credit: Intersection Consulting

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

3 Very Effective Ways to Build Trust Online

Creating Your Website: Get Focused, Not Fancy

blisscompanies — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:10 +0000

Many business owners and marketing managers are looking to design a new, more effective website, or to update their existing website. A lot of the hype in so called “dynamic” and “creative”
business websites actually misleads companies from doing what is best.

In other words, a lot of businesses are in fact hurting themselves and losing prospective customers by having fancy websites, rather than functional ones.

A fancy website that has a bunch of bells and whistles, is riddled with JavaScript, and hosts colorful Flash animations might be great for personal expression and non-commercial means, but business is business.

A business website must have a balance of attractiveness and professionalism. The website should be professional with a layout that enhances intuitive navigation and easy checkout processes.

Unless you have a business related and clear-cut reason to include features such as Flash and Java script – it should probably not be included – and if it is then it should be done so in moderation.

These can make a web page cumbersome and slow to load. What’s more, you can actually harm your search engine rankings because the web crawlers see it as “filler” rather than useful and informative content.

Unless you’re in the TV or movie business, your website does not need to, and should not, look and sound like a movie. A nice-looking and brief instructional or informative embedded video is plenty.

It’s also a very bad idea to have a website that automatically launches a video or music without giving the visitor any say in the matter. This can be off-putting.

People feel that their time is precious and if someone has a short amount of time or is trying to comparison shop or do some research, this kind of video will have them rushing off (annoyed) and not looking back.

Make all videos and all music an option that the visitor can choose to click to start. And make the “off” and “pause” buttons clear and placed in obvious locations.

Few things in the online experience are more upsetting to a visitor than wanting to stop a video or music from playing and not being able to immediately figure out the way to do so.

What to Focus On

When it comes to designing your website, it’s all about the visitor – it’s not about you. When you are consumer and visitor centered and focused, you will get the results you want.

Designing a website that pleases you may seem fun and fulfilling, but it may very well not be what’s right for your website visitors.

Sure, to a certain extent it’s got to be something that you’re happy with, but ask yourself what qualities it must have to entice your visitors to be converted to buyers.

Aesthetics and dynamics are only minor concerns compared to practicality and end-user satisfaction. The user’s process of searching the website for information should not be disrupted.

In fact it should be made simple and efficient. When people are searching through a business website, they are not looking for fun and games. They’re looking specifically for information about your products, services, and your company. Nothing should pop up without someone voluntarily clicking for it to do so. The design of the website should enable browsing from one section to another to be seamless.

Above all else, don’t try to please everybody with your website. Createyour website to attract the business of a certain niche. Figure out what your niche is and design your website around it.

You want to rank high in the search engine rankings and by targeting a niche you stand more chance of doing this than with a too-general website. If you think that you can meet the needs and demands of more than one niche, you can always have more than one website!

Bottom Line

Designing a business website is all about practicality, functionality and getting optimal results. It’s not all about making it a work of art or attracting a bunch of people to see your website. It’s about converting visitors to buyers and customers.

Image Credit: Ihtatho

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

Creating Your Website: Get Focused, Not Fancy

The Trust Quotient in Link Building – Tips on Building a Trustworthy Link

DivyaRawat — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:12:13 +0000

The typical bricks and mortar businesses thrive on reputation or goodwill. The hard work that goes in building the reputation of a company/brand has inspired many a stories and budding entrepreneurs.

It is the stuff that history is made of. Think Apple and you know you have the best of technology. Think Mercedes and you imagine burning the tracks in a sports car!

These brands and many more are trustworthy, in the sense that they have paid attention to the minutest detail and have hardly slipped on their promises.

They have built on a repertoire of trust! They know the worth of a trust the customer has on their abilities to deliver. That’s their goodwill over the years.

Online businesses are no exception to the rule. They also thrive on the trust factor; a trust that surpasses the physical presence of the company. Trust in online businesses becomes even more relevant than in traditional brick and mortar businesses. So, it becomes imperative for a business to rank high on the Search Engine Pages (SERPs).

What is trust, then?

Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN put a premium on the links that a website provides. For these search engines the trust factor depends upon the accuracy and reliability of the information provided by the websites, in order for it to rank on its top pages. In fact Google puts a lot of emphasis on the Page Rank of a website.

But again how do they measure trust as the search engines have algorithms to work with?

There is no measurable criterion. They follow certain set of guidelines to list the trustworthiness of a site. These could include factors like:

Link/s to another trustworthy/established/popular sites
Status of the site as an authority and outside links to it
The growth pattern in link ageing and link popularity
Whether it qualifies as a niche topical authority
Link Ageing – how old is the linking history

The list may include other factors like its history in ranking, link building, content etc for evaluation as a trust worthy site.

At the same time, a new concept that has taken root is about “TrustRank”. This comes in to play most of the time (which is always!) when the search engines employ editors to monitor and control spam in a site’s content.

Therefore, while building links and make the most of the listings on the SERPs, certain guidelines might prove useful:

Do:

Acquire a natural pattern to your link building
Link to quality and topical authority sites within the niche
Acquire best links asap as link ageing is a factor taken into consideration
Use two to three links at the max.

Don’t:

Link to sites that have dubious link patterns (read spamming)
Use irrelevant content i.e. do not write just anything to acquire links
Use keywords that are not searched well and just for the sake because they show greater results

You can add your own list to these, as and when you start link building.

Remember, link building is as good as relationship building – the base of which is trust. Keep your promises and you will never fall short of trust!

Image Credit:Rudy Miculescu

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

The Trust Quotient in Link Building – Tips on Building a Trustworthy Link

Good Morning Sunday – Susan Boyle, “I Dreamed, a Dream”

ZK — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:24:05 +0000

“My name is Susan Boyle”, were her first words when she introduced herself to the judges and audience at Britain’s got talent audition in 2009.

“And how old are you Susan ?” – asks Simon (one of the judges)

“I am 47 “, she said

The reaction from the judges and the audience after she said that could have shattered anyone’s hope of making it, but not Susan Boyle’s.

“And what’s your dream” – asks Simon

“I dream to be a professional singer” – she says

The reaction from the judges and the audience was very similar, there were giggles and not so friendly expressions. The boo’s from the crowd were louder than cheers for Susan Boyle.

Click here to see the video (embedding is disabled for this video )

That was how Susan Boyle was greeted by the judges and audience when she auditioned for Britains Got Talent.

But wait…

Here’s what happens when she recites her first note.

The audience is completely mesmerized by her powerful voice, the judges have a shocked look on their faces, the BOO’s from the crowd change into WOW’s.

In less than a few seconds, the negative energy around her turns into positive energy, the crowd is in awe during her performance giving her a standing ovation. The judges give her 3 Yes’s.

See the video (embedding is disbled for this video)

Susan became an overnight sensation. In less than a week after the audition Susan’s video was watched several 100 million times, she finished second in the show but Boyle’s debut album, I Dreamed a Dream (2009) remains as the UK best-selling debut album of all time.

There is something about the video clip that makes me feel extremely happy after I watch it every time, I am sure you’ll feel the same way once you see it.

A very inspiring story about how one underdog scores over and wins the battle. It does not matter who we are or how we look, all of us deserve a chance to prove ourselves.

Dream the dream you want.

Have a Happy Sunday and a Great Weekend Ahead

Image Credit:YouTube

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

Good Morning Sunday – Susan Boyle, “I Dreamed, a Dream”

4 Ways to Make Your E-Mail Marketing Mobile Friendly

Jessica.Sanders — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:20:16 +0000

E-mail marketing, with 92% of the U.S. internet users sending and reading e-mail, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project, it’s a no brainer.

Right? Yes and no. E-mail marketing no longer reaches your audience the way it used to. People used to sit at their Gateway desktops every night, dial into their Netscape and check e-mails while watching Family Matters.

The story is now a bit different. One in five marketing e-mails is opened on a smart phone. This changes a few things for your e-mail marketing campaign. Though you may have to modify a bit, you can and should make it work in your favor.

Give Your Newsletter a Mobile Lift

More than ever, it’s now important that you design your newsletter in a way that can be read easily on a smart phone.

As more people get into smart phones, studies show it has become the predominant way to check e-mail. Comscore said that 70.1 million U.S. users check their e-mail via smart phone every year.

Luckily for you, as smart phone technology grows, so does the phone’s ability to properly display a regular e-mail. Simply changing the coding and creating a narrower design may be enough.

Provide Interesting Snippets

There is a certain amount of scan and move on that happens when the e-mail immediately pops into someone’s inbox. People are most likely to read your business newsletters while they wait to get their hair cut or meet with someone. Thus, by getting your most important information into the intro clip, you can avoid the immediate deletion.

Then later, while they are watching TV on the couch, or sitting in traffic, they’ll take the time to click through the full article.

Offer Discounts, Coupons, Etc

Now that you know you’re readers are often out and about while checking e-mail, take this opportunity to get them shopping. Offering coupons that can be used right off the smart phone will make their decision to buy your product much easier.

This in turn gives them more incentive to buy. Scoutmob, a growing mobile application, offers their deals directly off the smart phone, giving users easy access to the coupons. I once went to a restaurant simply because Scoutmob offered a deal I couldn’t pass up. With easy access I was in and out.

Make it Convenient to Complete Online Transactions Later

When someone is lazily reading through your e-mail before a meeting, it isn’t likely that they’ll make a purchase from their phone. Online purchasing holds a large spot in the e-commerce world, 80% of people in their early thirties to mid forties make frequent online purchases, according to FifthGear.

However, this has yet to take hold on the mobile platform. On the newsletter, provide your customer care phone number in a click to call manner, give them access to their “shopping cart” to buy later, or allow a sharing feature to make it easy for them to share products.

E-mail marketing still holds an important spot in every company’s business marketing plan, as it should. We are seeing, though, that it’s time to shift the model a bit.

As with everything, technology is changing the way your customers function, which means you must make a slight shift as well.

Image Credit: Carniro

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

4 Ways to Make Your E-Mail Marketing Mobile Friendly

8 Effective Tips to Get More Traffic to your Blog

jasmine — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:41:38 +0000

“If You Build It, They Will Come” is the famous quote from the show Fields of Dreams starring Kevin Costner. But for those of you who, like me, are old enough to recall the movie, the hero had to put in much work and faith before “they” really did come.

Similarly, having developed a blog does not automatically guarantee us any readers, no matter how attractive your blog is or how informative your contents are. You would need to put in lots of time and effort to direct traffic to your blog and I will outline some of these strategies in this blog post.

The good news is that these tips will cost you nothing more than your efforts. After all… you reap what you sow. But before that, let us take a look at some of the internet traffic sources.

The major internet traffic sources include search engines, social media websites and advertisements. But since I plan to discuss on free traffic sources, I will focus on the first two sources.

Tip 1: Quality of Content

First and foremost, you should invest some time in coming up with an interesting topic (in your niche), a valuable content and an attractive title.

Most readers surf the internet looking for information and answers so do some researches and post the findings or share your experiences. Give them what they want to know.

Quality content is crucial in determining traffic to your blog. If a first-time reader finds that he had truly enjoyed your article so much, he would feel compelled to sign up for updates as well as to share your content. And who knows, your article might just go viral.

Tip 2: Frequent Posting

There are two main reasons why you should post frequently. First, your readers expected it and secondly, search engines look for it. It is the simplest way to build readers’loyalty and at the same time, boost your site’s SEO.

Analyze your blog’s traffic and determine which type of posts do your readers enjoy more. Then try to post more on these topics.

Tip 3: Submitting Your Blog To Search Engines

As mentioned in the beginning, search engines is a major source of traffic, thus it does make absolute sense to submit your blog to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

You see, search engines normally have a link where you can type out your blog’s URL and submit for these search engines to crawl to, in order to include it in their search results.

Do note that this action would put your blog in the search engine’s radar but in order to be placed on the first page of a search result, requires paid advertisement and good solid SEO work. To learn about the latter, take a look at the following tip.

Tip 4: Practice Search Engine Optimization

This is one of the most important actions that helps place your blog higher in the search results pages. There are many ways to describe something but some keywords are more popular and relevant than the others. Adwords Keyword Tool would be able to identify these keywords.

Use these keywords in your posts but don’t drown your posts with them. Use sparingly and your post would eventually be ranked higher.

It requires slightly more work but the end result is worth the effort and it’s sort of like free advertisement.

Tip 5: Visit Blogs and Participate in Forums

Everyone loves a friendly and helpful person. If you specialized expertise e.g medical, IT or web hosting, you may want to consider participating in the numerous forums on the internet. From my experiences, forums are usually frequented by those seeking information.

If you have answers to these questions, do join and participate in forums. Not only would you be assisting someone, you would establish that you have the necessary knowledge and this tends to attract readers to your blog.

In the meantime, you should also reply to all your readers’ comments or questions on your blog. At the same time, you should also visit your friends’ blogs and drop comments, intelligent ones please.

Just remember to include your blog’s URL in the comment so that readers in the other website could click on your URL and come visiting.

Tip 6: Guest Posting

In case you are unable to post as frequently as you wished, you could invite your blogger friends to guest post in your blog. As mentioned in tip 1, you should maintain the quality of your post.

This is really a win-win situation where you get additional posts and your blogger friend gets more exposure! Just make sure that the content is unique and related to your niche.

Oh, it’s good to bear in mind that you should reciprocate the kind gesture and guest post in their sites too.

Tip 7: Run Contests and Giveaways

Everyone loves free stuff. So run some contests and giveaways to increase traffic. These days, most blogs offering contests and giveaways would require participants to promote the blogs in the participants’ social media before being allowed to enter the contest.

As for the prizes, you could negotiate with companies to offer their products in return for something, perhaps a good review of their product on your blog.

Tip 8: Leverage on Social Media Sites

There are two ways you can leverage on the popularity of social media sites. You could try social networking, where you use Facebook and Twitter to make more friends and invite or promote your blog to them.

Then, you can also make use of social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious and Technorati. These discovery engines is a great way to store and share interesting blogs posts, especially among those with the same interests.

There you go, these are some of the strategies which you can apply to promote your blogs.

Other than the above, you could also try the direct and effective way i.e. to ask for it… politely of course. There is no harm in adding a request at the bottom of your post for your readers to re-tweet your post or share it on Facebook.

And of course you should make it easy for them to share i.e. with the relevant buttons just like those you find on this blog!

If you think this article is useful, please help us share it and come visit my blog too.

Image Credit: Erisac

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

8 Effective Tips to Get More Traffic to your Blog

One Surefire Way To Improve Your Writing

Joe Pawlikowski — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:18:27 +0000

Sometimes the most obvious advice is right in front of us. In fact, people might be screaming it at the tops of their lungs. But for some reason, we are deaf to these pleas. That is, until it’s laid out for us in the clearest, simplest possible terms. For that we’ll turn to Stephen King, a man who might know a thing or two about writing.

“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

That comes from King’s writing memoir, On Writing. Many current writers and bloggers have read this to me, among many others containing writing advice. Eventually, though, writers have to ditch these how-to manuals and start reading with purpose. It’s time to expand your reading.

That’s the one surefire way to improve your writing, no matter the style: by reading wider. It takes a little planning and a ton of motivation, but it pays off in the end. It will imbue you with a sense of style and authority, two qualities necessary for any writer’s success.

Here’s how to start your reading regiment.

Remember King’s words here, too: “If you feel you need permission to do all the reading and writing your little heart desires, however, consider it hereby granted by yours truly.”

Read what you will write

It might seem like obvious advice, but so many people fail to follow it. If you’re not reading material similar to what you’re writing, you’re asking for trouble. Writers need to read for a number of reasons, but chief among them is gaining familiarity with a certain style. Even after writers have absorbed the basics, reading still helps keep us attuned to these stylings.

Yet some bloggers claim, sometimes with an air of smugness, that they don’t read blogs. The joke is on them, of course, because eventually they will grow out of touch with blog readers, since they are not one of them. It’s only a pet theory, since I have no evidence, but I’m willing to bet that the No. 1 reason blogs fail is because their authors do not read enough blogs to keep up.

The principle applies for copywriters as well. If you’re writing marketing copy, it’s essential that you read the work of others. If you create landing pages, make sure to find as many landing pages as possible and read them — multiple times, even. The more familiar we become with the writing that we wish to produce, the better writers we ourselves will become.

Read what you want to write

For some writers, the present is just fine. Perhaps some web copywriters are content with their positions and their salary, and wish to do things with their free time other than write. Perhaps some bloggers enjoy it as a hobby, but do not wish to pursue it further. While that might represent a good number of internet writers, it does not represent all of them. Many of us want more.

This means expanding into other styles. Shaukat Ameen covered one such conversion in a post titled The Reason Why Established Blogger Should Sell Information Products Online. While he covered one aspect, the conversion from blogger to salesperson, I’d like to cover another. Writing for pure blogging and writing copy are two completely different disciplines. Both have different tenets, and so those who write in one style must expand their reading so that they can become familiar with the other.

If you want to write informational ebooks, read more informational ebooks. If you want to write novels, read novels. Again, it seems obvious, but it’s so often overlooked. Reading ingrains us with senses of rhythm, structure, and style. With these three elements combined we can expand our writing to other realms. But without them, we’re stuck in one place.

Read outside your comfort zone

Even those who don’t aspire to write magazine features should still read them. Pure nonfiction writers should read novels. Bloggers should read more than just other blogs. If we merely stick with material in our comfort zones, we will not grow beyond them. It’s not until we expand our reading habits that we will see great improvements in our writing.

Consider the first two aspects of reading wider a primer. Reading what you write and reading what you want to write are two basic bits of advice that are essential to any writer. Without them, success is impossible. While success is possible while staying within a comfort zone, growth is not. An improving writer is a growing writer, and in order to grow and improve we must shatter our current boundaries and move into uncharted territory.

Magazine features teach us longer form structure. Nonfiction books teach us how to bring together many disparate ideas under a single theme. Novels, better than any other medium, teach complex storytelling. Blog posts can teach us how to focus on a single idea and expand on it. That is to say, all different forms of writing contain different educational elements. Any writer will do well to read across many different styles and genres, even if she doesn’t plan to write in them herself. The lessons contained in them can be of use to any writer.

We can also get out of our comfort zone by reading about subjects that don’t necessarily interest us. Business bloggers can learn a lot from philosophy and spirituality bloggers. The ideas that personal development bloggers espouse can be of use to technology bloggers. Copywriters can form connections with all sorts of people by reading blogs and magazines on topics they hadn’t previously considered interesting. All of it will serve to help us grow as writers.

Want the ultimate in getting out of your comfort zone? Find a conference or convention — any conference or convention. It can be one dedicated to writing, but it doesn’t have to be. You can find cheap flights and cheap hotels to help keep costs down, and many conventions allow bloggers free access as media members. Go there and see what the attendees read. Attending a convention has the added bonus of personal connections, but that’s a topic for another post.

Writing success is impossible without a backbone of reading. Reading teaches us about structure, style, and content. Without these three elements, any writer is lost. In order to learn the first, we need to read what we plan to write.

In order to learn the second, we need to read not only what we plan to write, but also what we want to write. In order to expand on the third, we must read across formats and genres. No one should need prodding in this regard; reading is fun, above everything else. That we can learn something while we’re being entertained is merely an added bonus.

Image Credits:Enokson

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One Surefire Way To Improve Your Writing

5 Essential Upgrades your Blog needs for 2012

LauraMoisei — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:52:02 +0000

Your New Year’s resolution as a blogger surely sounded something like “I’ll take more care of my precious and make it grow like never before”. 2012 is here and it’s time to do some spring cleaning in order to make your blog shine in this fast-paced world of Internet.

Did you know that every day comes with 14 fresh plugins for WordPress? This means 14 out of the box features you’ve never experienced before. Technology is constantly evolving. New trends in graphic design and content writing are round the corner. And the readers can sense if your blog is keeping up to the times or not.

So where to start upgrading? Here are a few tips.

Polish your blog’s design and usability.
- Most bloggers stop thinking about updates once they got past the approximately 154 nights spent on tinkering the layout. But it’s very healthy to take a step back and watch the overall picture. There’s always some work left to do for spicing up your blog’s design and usability.

Install the latest version of your favorite plugins. You don’t need all the bells and whistles, just the essential features: spam filter, comments managing, form building, performance monitor, some social media integrations. With a decent bunch of plugins from trusted publishers, you will enjoy the enhancements without worrying about conflicts and low page loading speeds.

If you are using the Thesis Theme framework, you can customize it like you want. Three main spots you can personalize are the top banner, the sidebar icons and the overall look of typography. If possible, work with a professional graphic designer to make your blog match the exact feel of your ideas.

People should have as less obstacles as possible in leaving comments. CAPTCHA is redundant for this, remove it. For secure authentication you can use Facebook log in.

Boost your lead generation.
Here’s the recipe for success: a real bio of yourself in the About page and a contact form for visitors to drop a few lines of feedback. Make the contact form short and simple, not too focused on “selling” and visually attractive.

A phrase like “Follow me on Twitter” next to your account link will help transform your readers into fans. Also, if you are a freelancer looking for gigs, you should publish your phone number also, even if it seems redundant. This is a more business-like way to introduce yourself to potential clients, who probably won’t search for your details on LinkedIn or other social media.

Content clutter – wipe it out!
Make a commitment to yourself: “I shall stick to the essence and won’t do any more writing on topics that are beside the point of my own blog”. Of course, we don’t advise you to become a niche blogger if you’re a generalist, but try to leave aside all those posts that just blend successful topics others have blogged about in 2010.

What is not enjoyable to write is probably not interesting to read too. Be yourself, speak about your own hot topics, take care of details. And NO for small personal annoyances of everyday life, these are not topics your public will read about anymore. Here’s one for the high-flown language fans: forget it, internet is too fast for anyone to bother deciphering this.

Control your ads display.
- This is a matter of design but also marketing. Avoid having blinking ads all over your blog. As often as you can, take static banners instead of animated ones. For AdSense, the best position would be the sidebar and between blog posts.

Try not to have ads inside posts in one post view – if you can’t remove them, at least place them right below the title, not in the content, or the entire post will have the overall look of an advertorial.

Be social!
It’s always a good idea to place social buttons somewhere visible, for people to share your content easily. Google Plus is on the wave now, so make sure you include a snippet with “Add us to Google+ circles” (of course, this means creating a G+ page for your business first).

Probably the best social media channel for a blogger is Twitter, so join it if you haven’t already and make a habit from tweeting your ideas around. And one more all-times tip: be nice, make friends among other bloggers and create a community where you promote each other. This will ensure a happy blogging for you in 2012 and ever.

Image Credit:Nick Canoy

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

5 Essential Upgrades your Blog needs for 2012

Good Morning Sunday: 8 David Ogilvy Quotes to Help You Write Better Blog Content

ZK — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:21:16 +0000

He dropped out of college. He had been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer. He knew nothing about marketing, had never written any copy. He was unemployed at 38 when he approached advertising agencies to hire him.

No American agency hired him, however a London agency did hired him. Three year later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.

David Ogilvy was a Legend, an inspiration to many copywriters, marketers and sales professionals.

Often called “The Father of Advertising” and “The King Of Madison Avenue”, Ogilvy was know largely to help clients understand consumer insights. Real advertising or copy works best when based on consumer insights and addresses a solution to their problem. Apart from building a multi billion dollar business, he helped create some of the most iconic brands such as Dove, Shell, Hathaway Shirts and Rolls-Royce.

In 1965, Fortune magazine asked “Is Ogilvy a Genius?” and in 1975, Time called him “the most sought-after wizard in the advertising industry”.

David Ogilvy’s work and books have been very inspiring to write better copy, I encourage you to read his books and watch some of his videos. He is a true testament of selling products through simple and insightful copy.

Below are some of David Ogilvy’s famous quotes and are very relevant to bloggers and marketers to sell their products in the online medium.

1 ) “I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.”

- I start off with the above quote as being my most favored one. The best of communication that hits well with your audience comes from true life experiences be it pain, fear, excitement or seriousness. As a blogger this hold very true, you need to tell a story, your success, your failure and let your own personal voice come out on our blog. You will only make an impact on your reader when you write copy and thought that come from within.

2) “A consumer is not a moron. She’s your wife. Don’t insult her intelligence, and don’t shock her.”

- The is one of the great Ogilvy quote, you’ll often hear this one with advertising and marketing experts. To me this holds good for bloggers and internet marketers too, if you are trying to sell a product online ensure that you don’t insult your audiences intelligence. Don’t try to hard sell or be over persuasive in your copy, let it flow naturally, be honest and highlight the benefits of your product.

Treat your readers with dignity, value them and their opinions and comments.

3) “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

- The magic of your communication is in your headline, if you get that right you’ll have more readers for your post. Spend time on crafting an effective headline, write a strong headline that gets the attention of your reader.

- Use effective titles in your headlines.
- Get the communication message of your post in a few words.
- Test and Measure your headline or copy.

“The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.” – David Ogilvy

4) “The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be”

- The key to successful blogging is being unique and informative. Write informative content that help your readers. As a blogger you should know what works well with your audience and what needs to change. Focus your time and energy in creating great and valuable content. Remember content is king, if its informative and addresses a problem it will sell by itself.

5) “The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.”

- The true value of selling a product starts with testing the same with your audience, get to know what your audience likes about your product, here you need to test not only the positives but also the negatives of the products. Remember that testing negatives will only make your products better. It’s the same when you test your landing pages or your PPC ads. Testing is the key to success of any product online or offline.

“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” – David Ogilvy

6. “Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.”

- Often we see blogs starting off well but a few posts later the blogger loses interest, the posts are written just to keep up with the keep content fresh without adding any real value to the readers or doing justice to content.

When you start a blog be passionate about it and believe in it. Your self belief is critical to your success as a blogger. Make you blog a content powerhouse by being relevant to your audience.

7. “What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.”

- Content is the king, be relevant to your audience. It’s important to provide them with solutions to their problems and benefits about your product and services. Create content that provides information and solves their problems. Content can be in the form of tips, FAQs, tutorials, how to dos etc.

8. “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”

- Trust factor is very important in any form of communication or business, especially if you run a blog you need to truthful to your readers. Tell the truth and give you true opinions about products and services. If there is an issue with your product or service don’t try to cover up. The world of social media is very powerful, you will be exposed faster than you think.

There are lots more Ogilvy quotes and books that will help you understand marketing, advertising and copy writing with a lot of clarity and thought.

Do you have any personal favorite Ogilvy quote ?

Have a Happy Sunday and a Great Weekend Ahead

Image Credit: Ogilvy on Advertising

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

Good Morning Sunday: 8 David Ogilvy Quotes to Help You Write Better Blog Content