Tag Archives: blogging

How To Write For Your Website To Make It Rain (Money)

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Write to RainWhether you’re launching a brand-new website or revamping an existing one, the writing on your website can be the difference between a website that rains (revenue) and one that doesn’t.

The most common mistake business owners make is the failure to answer one simple question for your audience.

Failing to answer this one question means your future customers will leave your website and move on to your competitor’s websites.


(Image credit Meme Generator & Copyright Little Wayne.)

What’s In It For Me?

This is the silent question every website visitor is asking when they land on your website.

If you don’t answer your visitor’s questions, relate to their situation, intrigue your visitor or provide value in some way, they will leave your website.

A common mistake…

Many businesses writing text for their websites focus on themselves and their business, instead of putting themselves in the shoes of their prospective customers.

You’ve been to these websites, they go on and on about their products, services and qualifications, but not in a way that meets you where you are or feels relevant to your situation.

Do You Feel My Pain?

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Prior to a visitor landing on your website, they’ll often be on Google, searching for a solution to a problem they’re having.

Generally their problem will be causing them discomfort, if not pain, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to solve it.

When you’re writing the text for your website ask yourself:

  • What discomfort or pain do my customers have ?
  • What language do they use to describe their pain?
  • When and how does this problem show up for them?

Write your website text in the language your customers use, that reflects their pain or discomfort, describing a moment in their life.

On the topic of pain…let’s compare two approaches

Consider the product ibuprofen.

If you were writing the text for the website designed to sell more ibuprofen, you could discuss the features of the product: how it lasts a certain amount of time, and it comes in a bottle filled with 80 capsules is more affordable than aspirin etc.

All pretty boring stuff, right?

Or you could paint a picture….describe a beautiful sunny Sunday, and you’d love to go out for a run with your friends, but you can’t because your knees are hurting you again, and you’re just sick of this, and you’re gaining weight, and you’re feeling like a big lump, and your life quality has gone downhill.

Writing from your customer’s perspective can create a compelling emotional reaction.

Really get into the discomfort or the pain points that your future customers are suffering, try and paint a picture of a moment in time, in a day in the life of your customer.

Then from there describe the transformation they can experience once they utilize what you sell.

An example of a transformation:

Now I’ve taken ibuprofen, and now I am limber, I can go and play with my grandkids, (if I had grandkids) and I am training for my first triathlon and I feel more confident in my body and I have a better quality of life.

Wow. That is powerful stuff.

That’s the difference between crappy copywriting that alienates or bores people and copywriting that engages your audience.

Please like and share this article.

I also would love to hear your comments in the box below.

You can subscribe to my channel on YouTube for more online marketing tips, or visit my website for more information about how I help people get better results from their online marketing.

How to Repurpose Social Media Posts to your WordPress Blog

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This Clever Tactic Will Cut The Time You Spend Blogging in Half

Blogging is time consuming.

It’s because of this that so often blogging gets put on the back burner.

However, Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website – (Source Hubspot)

I’m going to show you exactly how to slash the time you spend on your business blog- by 50%.

By repurposing and summarizing posts you find on social media you can:

  1. Cut the time you spend blogging in half
  2. Attract more links to your website
  3. Piggyback off popular content to get more likes and shares.

Check out this video for exact, step-by-step instructions for how to repurpose social media posts on your blog.

Write a blog for your business in only 5 minutes:

Step One: Open Your WordPress Blog

If you’ve got a WordPress site, make sure that you’re logged in and you’re in the posts section.

What I want you to do is click on “add posts”.

Step Two: Go to a Social Media Site

Now, I’m going to go to Facebook, I’m going to take a look at an article that I want to share with my website visitors. For example, I’ve got one here that talks about the Remembrance Day ceremonies in the Calgary Herald.

Step Three: Repurpose The Media

First, I’m going to open this up in a new tab.
I’m going to click the link; open it up in a new tab.
I’m going to save this image as well.
I usually need to click on it first. Click on this, and right click “save image as”. I’m going to call it “post1”. Now I have the link and the image.

So, add new post. I’m going to call this Remembrance Day Ceremonies in Calgary.

Here what I’m going to do is I’m going to copy a little bit of this text here, then:

  1. I’m going to paste it into the blog.
  2. I’m going to write this text that says “Click here to read entire article.”
  3. I’m going to select this text here and click the link button.
  4. Here is where I’m going to copy the link of where the article actually lives.
  5. I’m going to paste it in the URL.
  6. I’m going to click “Add link”.
  7. Then, I’m going to add the image. Click “add media”, upload files, and then it’s in my downloads–post1.
  8. Select the image that you saved from the article itself and then click “insert into post”.

Step Four: Add your two cents worth:

What I need to do is add my two cents worth, so it’s not complete plagiarism.

I’m going to format it so it’s like a heading. Because this is regarding Remembrance Day, I want to make sure that it is published on that date, which is a little while ago.

Step Five: Publish

You can post this anytime in the future or in the past as well. Click, “okay” and “publish”. And we’re done.

Isn’t that easy?

If you liked this post, please share it.

I’d love to hear your blogging for business challenges and what your thoughts are on repurposing social media posts!

5 Proven Ways To Increase Blog Post Engagement

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blog post engagement

1. Evaluate your blog post’s headline.

Is it catchy enough?

If you’re struggling with catchy headlines or coming up with something that rolls off the tongue or piques your viewers’ interest, go to BuzzFeed.com and check out some of the headlines there for inspiration.

Is it Catchy Enough?

(above- Buzzfeed.com encourages readers to spend hours on their site, clicking headings that pique our curiosity)

You want to pique reader interest so ensure your headlines play on our curiosity.

Pay a lot of attention to your headlines. About 50% of the effort you’re putting into your post, you should be putting into your headlines.

2. Pay attention to your formatting.

Make sure that your posts are easy to scan, not necessarily read.

  1. Use short sentences.
  2. Use lots of white space
  3. Summarize key points in bold headings
  4. Bold key points
  5. Italicize sparingly
  6. Use bullets and numbering
  7. Provide at least 3 links to resources you mention in the post

Pay attention to your formatting

(this post from LinkedIn has all the right ingredients to encourage me to keep reading)

3. Use images and multimedia.

Historically, posts that are shared the most are the ones that have up to 15 images.

So at least use one image. If you can include a video as well, absolutely go for it.

People want to see photos and they want to see videos more than they want to read a big wall of text.

The most successful posts used images to show someone exactly how to do what they’re describing in the post, not just what to do.

Tips on using images:

  1. Take pictures using your smartphone or screenshots
  2. Pay for stock images
  3. Use free images found on the internet – search Creative Commons licence on Flikr.com for example.

HOT TIP on images:

See the eyeball heatmap image below. For any of you unfamiliar with a eyeball heat map, it tracks the amount of time people spend looking at various parts of a webpage. The longest times are red, followed by orange, yellow and then green.

According to KISS metrics, having an image of either a baby or a lady looking at the text you want someone to focus on, will encourage them to do so.

Hot tips on images

4. Longer blog posts are actually better

Recent studies show that posts over a thousand words are getting shared more and more often because they provide more value.

Instead of just skimming the surface of your topic, dive a little deeper. Provide a little bit more information and details to your audience and you will get rewarded.

5. Ask for what you want.

The very last thing a lot of folks forget to do is ask for interaction.

Ask for people to share your post with their network. Ask for comments and you will receive!

That’s your One Minute Tip. If you found this valuable, please consider sharing with your network. And if you don’t ever want to miss a tip, subscribe to my YouTube channel for weekly tips in your inbox. Thanks so much for watching.


Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l9RXALzJyY

Control Your Email Habits Before They Control You

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blogsAs a small business owner, few things are more important than good productivity and effective time management. Unfortunately, these aren’t always easy to achieve; especially when there’s Facebook to check, blogs to read, and a steady stream of emails to reply to.

Unlike Facebook and blogs though, email is something that no small business owner can or should avoid in the working day. The problems come when too much time is spent reading and rereading them while taking no action.

As we use MailChimp for our email marketing campaigns, we’re able to monitor our subscribers’ email habits. A few of the trends we’ve noticed from looking at this information is rather shocking; some people are actually opening our emails on up to 21 separate occasions.

Clearly this is a huge waste of time, and has prompted us to share a few tips on how to control your email habits before they control you.

Self-control with a self-timer

Assigning yourself a set amount of time for each task every day is a great way to ensure you don’t spend too long on just one and neglect the others. You can even set aside times for getting your fix of the non-work websites that are usually a constant temptation and distraction.

One of the most popular time management systems is the Pomodoro Technique, a method of assigning yourself medium length blocks of dedicated work time, usually around twenty five minutes long, interspersed with short breaks of five or ten minutes.

Giving yourself twenty five minutes of concentrated email time, perhaps two or three times a day if need be, will help to focus your mind on the task at hand, while giving yourself a guilt-free five or ten minute window to check Facebook or browse some blogs to refresh your mind in between.

Accountability looks good on paper

If you find yourself quickly checking your email and taking no action constantly throughout the day, it might shock you to learn just how many times you do this, even if the accumulative time spent doing so isn’t that much.

Every time you turn your mind to your email, no matter how briefly, you’re taking it away from all the other important tasks that need your attention too.

It’s natural to tell yourself you don’t do this too often while underestimating the real figure, but having a pen and paper with you and keeping a record of how many times you idly check your email throughout the day will help you see just how often you do so, which will in turn give you the visual evidence you might need to control this habit.

This technique isn’t restricted to just your email habits, either. Keeping track of how many times you unconsciously open a social media page or look at blogs you don’t actually read can help you cut down on that habit too.

Another type of game theory

One irrefutable fact of life is that people are more likely to work on tasks if they enjoy them. Another fact of life is that nobody enjoys wading through a backlog of emails. The obvious solution here then is to somehow make email a fun endeavor, and eliminate the boredom that constantly drives people back to browsing social media and non-work related blogs. If only there were a way.

Welcome to the Email Game.

Easily found on Google, the Email Game is a web application that turns the task of clearing your inbox into something enjoyable, which of course helps motivate you to get through them quickly, eliminating the bottleneck that is your inbox and freeing you up to get on with the next thing on your to-do list.

Take control of your email habits today

Spending time on email every day is unavoidable for small business owners, but nurturing good habits can ensure that time is spent well rather than wasted. Every minute saved on not idly checking your inbox can be spent on something more productive.

It can even be reassigned and become time reserved for browsing social media, reading blogs, or any other leisure activity that can help relax your mind and maintain your concentration on the important tasks of the day.

Why Your Company Needs an Optimized Social Media Presence

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new-media-group-optimized-social-mediaGone are the days of needing the newspaper or the radio to tell the world about your ideas. You no longer need press releases or the wire to break exciting news to your customers, and you no longer need a TV to publicize videos and online commercials. The only thing you need is a social media strategy.

Plain and simple, your business needs to be online; if you’re not sharing, tweeting or posting, you’re falling behind. Social media has taken the world of information by storm – we’re able to watch events unfold in real time, and see the opinions of people from all over the world with just a couple of clicks. Your business is able to take advantage of these tools in order to gain more followers, develop your reputation, improve your SEO, and gain direct access into the thoughts and values of your customers.

Here are four reasons why your business needs an optimized social media strategy:

1.    Extend Your Reach

Social media is arguably the largest method of communication – it gives you access to hundreds of millions of people! Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+, you have the chance to connect with people of all ages, from all around the world. Some great ways to do this are to start following or “liking” different companies that are in the same industry, or even pick a few that are just for interest! The social media world is a give-and-take process; the more you share and follow the more you’ll get in return.

2.    Direct Access

Customer feedback is the most valuable insight for a business. You get to learn what your customers are looking for and how you can improve for next time! With social media you’re able to make that feedback turn into a conversation, and show that individual as well as many other potential customers, how dedicated you are to working with them to meet their needs.

3.    Thought Leadership

Having a business blog or generating an opportunity to be a guest writer on someone else’s blog is a great way to improve your business’ reputation. People know that real people run businesses, and they want to know the thoughts and values of those top executives. Writing out your ideas can turn your status towards thought leadership, and you’ll start being the source that people go to for details about your industry. Whether you’re in finance, construction, jewellery making – you name it! Show the world your expertise over your social media channels.

4.    SEO

Lastly, from a technical standpoint, social media is a quick way to improve how you rank in search engines listings. It grants you more links and pages, and the more your content gets shared the more opportunities you will have to show up through searches. There are also a number of very insightful programs that are able to run analytics on your accounts to see how your influence is growing, and where you’re seeing the most success.

With the number of individuals using social media to pick where they shop, eat, buy, visit, etc., you will be left in the dust without an online presence. Take the time to build out a strategy that will show the world your thoughts, and then build a system so that you can show customers your commitment to them through responses. Social media is invaluable, and could be just the step that your company was looking for to take it to the next level.