You’ve written your sales copy and are nearly ready to unleash your masterpiece of persuasion on the world …

Hold on! First imagine your readers will be responding to your copy with a few rude questions. If you do you’ll uncover a little extra gold that makes your pitch stronger, and more likely to win business.

Rude Question 1: “What’s In It For Me?”

If there’s one truth we copywriters have to accept pretty quickly, it’s that no one reads our work for literary delight. In most cases people would rather be doing something else entirely than reading sales copy. That means you have to keep readers engaged with a promised payoff that serves their self interest. Work out what fuels that interest, deliver it with power and you’ll find your reader more likely to follow your words to the last, and respond.

Rude Question 2: “So What?”

You won’t galvanise a reader into action by offering weak claims and vague promises. Making shallow statements like “we have many happy customers” or “our bicycles are built to last” is unlikely to impress anyone. If you really want to influence, use some hard facts and statistics you can back up with proof. Use genuine testimonials from real people (with a photo, if you can), be specific about your product’s features and benefits and work on getting verification from an independent authority. Saying “94% of Our Customers Come Back Every Month” or showing “5 Ways Our Bicycles Travel Further” will carry much more credibility.

Rude Question 3: “Why Should I?”

At some point in your delivery you will want to ask your readers to do something – your call-to-action. This might encourage them to buy now, download free content or give you their email address. One of the most powerful ways to improve response rates is to give people a reason why. For example, rather than offer the insipid “sign up for our newsletter” make a promise and say “You’ll be better informed with our news updates!”

Imagine They’re Selfish and Just Don’t Care

However convincing you believe your marketing materials to be, you can sharpen your copy considerably if you first assume your readers are plain sceptical and disinterested. Put yourself in your reader’s place, remove all powers of patience and concentration and start to think up ways of convincing even the grumpiest of folk.

Then see how much more convincing you become …

In case you haven’t noticed, today’s most effective marketing content, especially in B2B, is no longer about pushing for the order and bashing people over the head to close sales.

Increasingly the more subtle content marketing is what wins customers over the long term, while helping to build brands into trusted resources.

It’s an approach that, delivered properly, results in … more orders and closed sales.

Here are 10 fresh content marketing ideas for you – all proven to help grow business.

1. Case Studies

Whatever you are selling, you have to talk about how great you are at some point. But how about proving you’re competency and value by writing the story of a successful project or happy customer first? With a case study your credibility is founded on real-life examples of your success. That’s much more powerful than one-sided sales speak.

2. Viral Articles

Share some of your knowledge in an article and post it to sites like knol.google.com/k, ezinearticles.com or articlesbase.com. You’ll get more Web and search engine exposure, while demonstrating your superior knowledge on a subject your audience cares about.

3. Blog Posts

If you want to extend your authority further, start a blog. You don’t have to become a full-blown publisher overnight. Just share information with your website visitors they will value. Combined with a permission-based email list your blog could easily turn into a valuable subscriber base you can market to regularly.

4. A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page

Most businesses have a list of questions they are always answering. Address such questions on your FAQ page and, again, prove your competence in your area of expertise at the same time.

5. A Website Q&A

What about those questions there is no space for on your FAQ page? Consider a Q&A section on your website that invites people to ask questions about your specialist area. Because your users are seen to set the agenda in asking any questions they like, you will come across as more accessible, open and authentic.

6. A Book Review

Locate a publication that will be of interest to your customers and resonates with their view of your place in your industry. Read it and give your opinion on its value, based on your expertise and experience.

7. Demonstrate With an Image

Simplify a complicated process with a mind-map or process flow diagram. You could even get a design professional to produce an entertaining info-graphic that simplifies a hitherto complex subject and wins you gratitude for your smart thinking.

8. Video

Useful video content can transform into sales very quickly. Whether a brief monologue, how-to video or entertaining demonstration, video content wins more fans and drives more people to websites than ever before.

9. Shared Content

Smart social media marketers already know that sharing quality information wins favour with their followers, fans or readers. As long as the content is helpful, people will remember you as a useful resource – even if you didn’t originate the content.

10. Publish a White Paper

Want to really advance your reputation as a resource that knows its stuff? Assess an aspect of your market that matters to people and produce a white paper about it. Address the issues well enough and a white paper might just move you into a whole new league in the eyes of your customers and prospects.

Think Helpful Before Selling and You’re Off to a Great Start

Marketing methods based on useful content are winning more business than ever; primarily because this approach treats readers with the intelligence they deserve.

With smart content marketing you can not only show your audience you know your onions, you’ll actually be building a base of content you can re-purpose and use again and again.

Losing Your Facebook Profile Can Be Very, Very Annoying … Even Expensive

Have you considered what it would mean to lose everything you’ve ever done on Facebook? It happens more often than you might expect. Many folks have lost their entire Facebook history after their accounts have been mysteriously deleted.

For most of us losing our Facebook history would cause varying degrees of annoyance. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but the loss of years’ worth of pictures, friends’ contact details and meaningful shared memories would hurt at least a little bit.

But what if your Facebook account was an important component of your social media delivery?

In that case losing your Facebook profile would at best be costly and time consuming. At worst it could mean the loss of thousands of friends you have spent time engaging, all of whom you can no longer communicate with.

Backup Your Facebook Data to Your Hard Drive

This method will enable you to download a copy of your Facebook information – including photos, videos, wall posts, messages, friends and more.

1. Make sure you are logged into Facebook
2. Go to Account (top right), then Account Settings
3. Scroll down to where it says Download your information and choose the Learn more button.
4. On the next page click the Download button
5. Be patient, it may take a few minutes for Facebook to process your data file
6. After a while you will receive an email with a download link
7. Click on this link, enter your password when requested and authorise the download

Your download will consist of a ZIP file containing a file named index.html. You can open this file in your web browser and see all the content from your Facebook history.

Want a Facebook Backup That’s a Bit More Sophisticated?

If you need more functionality from your social backups then SocialSafe is worth looking at. SocialSafe downloads directly to your hard drive and lets you schedule backups of various social media accounts at intervals you choose.

Alternatively, if you are a Firefox user you might want to look at Archive Facebook – a Firefox extension that enables you to backup and browse your Facebook data directly from Firefox.

If Your Facebook Matters Even a Little Bit …

You may well be glad of a backup copy of your Facebook data – should the notorious gremlins come one night and delete your account forever.

Hubspot have released 101 Awesome Marketing Quotes. Dripping with insights and wisdom from some of today’s most accomplished operators in business and marketing, it’s just the thing for lubricating the marketing mindset.

Enjoy …

1. “If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.”
GUY KAWASAKI, FORMER CHIEF EVANGELIST, APPLE; CO-FOUNDER, ALLTOP.COM

2. “Remarkable social media content and great sales copy are  pretty much the same—plain spoken words designed to focus on the needs of the reader, listener or viewer.”
BRIAN CLARK, COPYBLOGGER

3. “Focus on the core problem your business solves & put out lots of content & enthusiasm & ideas about how to solve that problem.”
LAURA FITTON, ONEFORTY.COM

4. “The biggest mistake we see companies make when they first hit Twitter is to think about it as a channel to push out information.”
TIM O’REILLY & SARAH MILSTEIN, CO-AUTHORS OF THE TWITTER BOOK

5. “For many businesses, the fear behind their social media reluctance isn’t just fear of failure but of blame and accountability—both individual and collective.”
JAY BAER & AMBER NASLUND, AUTHORS OF THE NOW REVOLUTION

6. “It no longer makes economic sense to send an advertising message to the many in hopes of persuading the few.”
M. LAWRENCE LIGHT, FORMER CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, MCDONALDS

7. “The way you can understand all of the social media is as the creation of a new kind of public space.”
DANAH BOYD, SOCIAL MEDIA RESEARCHER! MICROSOFT

8. “Think about what a user is going to type.”
MATT CUTTS, GOOGLE

9. “Institutions that once had to go through media to deliver information are now themselves media.”
ANDREW NACHISON, FOUNDER, WE MEDIA

10. “No matter your sector, chances are that people are already twittering about your products, your brand, your company or at least your industry.”
TIM O’REILLY & SARAH MILSTEIN, CO-AUTHORS OF THE TWITTER BOOK

11. “…as you’ve noticed, people don’t want to be sold. What people do want is news and information about the things they care about.”
LARRY WEBER, AUTHOR OF MARKETING TO THE SOCIAL WEB

12. “Take two ideas and put them together to make one new idea. After all, what is a Snuggie but the mutation of a blanket and a robe?”
JIM KUKRAL, MARKETING SPEAKER, AUTHOR OF ATTENTION

In the mood for more wisdom?

Just go HERE to grab the full ebook for yourself.

Poorly constructed SEO copywriting attracts penalties from search engines (or gets you banned altogether), drives people away from your website and makes your brand less credible.

Time to deal with a few SEO copywriting myths that cause trouble at every level of business.

MYTH 1: Search Engines Are More Important Than Your Readers

Oh dear! This assumes search engines are more important than your readers; which will never do. Plenty of keyword fodder may drive traffic to your site but if readers leave in droves the moment they arrive because your content sucks then what’s the point of SEO at all? Ensure you know what your readers will like and know the content meets that objective. Yes, keywords are important but never more so than reader focused copy.

MYTH 2: You Must Insert Keywords As Much As Possible Into Every Landing Page

This is very 1999. Back in the days when search engines could only identify relevance by the frequency of certain words on a page keyword density writing worked (although many articles read as if they were written by complete idiots). Today keywords and phrases still matter, but heavy keyword density is out in favour of more scientific methods like TF-IDF. Too many incidences of keywords on a page will be considered keyword stuffing – another black hat tactic that could get your website penalised or banned from search engines.

MYTH 3: Post Your Content And The Job Is Done

This is more wrong than ever! Today it’s more important to add good content regularly to your website. And it makes sense. Not only will search robots come back to visit your site more often, your readers will too. Regularly adding quality content also offers distinct advantages for your social media marketing because, if it’s good, people will share it.

MYTH 4: Just Post Whatever Content You Can

Yes, adding to your content is good practice. But it must be good. Content development is essential, especially if you operate where Web competition is fierce. But you must still make sure it is relevant and of value to your readers. And don’t post duplicate content (even if it is good) because search engines will pick it up and may mark you down for it.

MYTH 5: Good Keywords Drive Traffic

Not quite – backlinks drive traffic. Well researched keywords and phrases are important, but what really matters are the backlinks you get from other websites. What’s the best way to garner quality backlinks? Make sure your content is relevant and valuable to visitors and that other webmasters recognise it as such.

Remember This One SEO Copywriting Truth

Even though search engine marketing is developing all the time, the key is to remember it’s people who matter most.

Caring about your readers and producing content that addresses their needs will always outshine cheap messages delivered apathetically.

Bear this in mind and you’ll be ahead of the pack from the get go.

George Orwell wrote literature ranked as some of the best of the 20th century. Books like Animal Farm, 1984 and Down and Out in Paris and London led to many considering him the greatest writer of his generation.

Yet Orwell’s writing is far from what some might consider “literature” in style. His work delivers insightful messages while remaining easy to follow and enjoy. He was passionate about clarity and making things simple for the reader (rather than highlighting the writer).

It’s a sentiment many in business would do well to follow – not to turn your emails into bestsellers, but to get your message across cleanly and powerfully. Whether communicating with colleagues, investors or customers you’re more likely to enjoy better results by keeping the following advice in mind.

Firstly, always ask yourself these questions:

1.What am I trying to say?
2.What words will express it?
3.What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4.Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
5.Could I put it more shortly?
6.Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

Then apply these basic rules of writing:

1.Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2.Never use a long word when a short one will do.
3.If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4.Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
5.Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6.Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I’ve kept these rules tucked inside my notebook for years. They help to keep writing tight and focused where it should be – on the reader.

Your word processor’s spell checker is not just useful. It’s often an essential tool, saving plenty of time spent leafing through dictionaries. It can even protect you from revealing embarrassing mistakes to your readers.

But your spell checker can only offer suggestions on what it thinks is incorrect, as the following verse illustrates only too well.

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It Plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye cannot sea.

Eye ran this poem through it,
Your shore reel glad to know.
It’s vary polished in its weigh.
My checker told me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew loads of thyme.
It helps me right awl styles two read,
And aides me when I rime.

Each frays composed up on my screen
Eye trust to be a joule.
The checker pours o’er every word
To check sum spelling rule.
(Source unknown)

Remember, your spell checker is a great tool to run over copy when you have finished your draft. But it is no substitute for reading work through properly.

Ewe no it makes scents!