The thing I like the most about this book is its currency; it is really up-to-date with the latest online marketing techniques. It even talks about promotion with QR codes, which has only come about with the widespread use of smartphones.

The second thing I like about it is the checklist of 11 ideas that you must do, mainly to leverage your efforts.

Jim’s book also confirms everything I wrote about in Business Growth Toolbox, a marketing tips and tricks manual (but one that lies flat and is a handy reference for Aussies). Particularly, I agree with “Use your expert knowledge to create customer-attracting content” (Chapter 4). Although this strategy is not particularly easy if, say, you are a builder – you’d be too busy building to impart much knowledge!

Low-Cost Ideas A-Plenty

A lot of books about online marketing assumes that you’ve got a product to sell and you have a lot of money. This one does neither; it assumes you want to be wise with funds. If you’re already hiring some company to try and outsmart Google, then a read of page 74 will have you put that money quickly back into your pocket.

Practical Advice in a Money-Grabbing World

So I recommend this book as a practical marketing ideas and tips guide for the new era. It’s quite light on details, but it is full of advice Jim has taken himself, all put across in his candid and open manner.

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Mixed messages can come from all angles. Observers may notice incongruency between what you say when marketing and what you say informally. Try to keep to a happy medium of positive messages without the ‘push’, especially when using your ‘Twitter’ account. Tweets pop up on your blog, your LinkedIn, all over the place, and yes you are being judged.

Website Copy No-no’s

Other incongruencies arise right on your website. For example, many people who create their own web ‘copy’ put across a ‘corporate team’ image that belies the fact it is really just themselves available. After reading the book “A Brand Called You” by Peter Montoya, I think you might reconsider this approach.

Another credibility builder is to provide evidence for any promise statements you make. A promise statement is like: “We react quickly to customer needs”.  Without evidence it is just another marketing filler. Better to think how you really do that in practice, e.g. “Our usual turnaround for email enquiries is 24 hours”.

The best possible evidence for service is a testimonial. In your pile of customer emails or letters, see if you can find a one-line testimonial that drives home your point. If they are more generic in nature, consider having your testimonials on your sidebar – along with their photo if possible.

What Do You Say When Someone Asks: “What Do You Do?”

As I’ve learned from Marketing Consultant Deborah Jackson, we also must practice our ‘pitch’ so that when people ask what we do, we don’t completely blow that opportunity. For example when I used to be asked “what do you do?”, I answered “I’m a copywriter”. Then would ensue a conversation where the person thought I was a patent attorney (protecting copyright)!

With just a little tuition in Attraction Marketing, I now know that if I respond “I help small businesses build a bigger prospect list through the medium of words” (or some such), it meets with a much more genuine (and non-confused) interest.  What could you say that puts across what you do very well and gives you a pinch of credibility?

So whether you are an online merchant or an offline service provider, pay attention to all outgoing messages and credibility factors… and let the company marketing jargon go by way of the dinosaur.
Feedback on this post is welcomed.

Still working today, this trick entails writing copy so that hotly searched keyword phrases are close together on the page. Doing this, we are hedging our bets that these phrases come up in a small “snippet” (the paragraph under your search result) when Google decides to display those words, rather than a carefully written “meta description”. I first learned of this technique in The World’s Best Kept Copywriting Secrets – chapter 25. (Written by experts in their various fields of copywriting).

Search results showing a snippet

Real Search Example

You’ll see on my example screen shot – “affordable copywriting Brisbane” – it shows how Google picks out my POW meta description (keywords are in bold), but for Red Planet Design’s listing it displays a “snippet” from the page text (also our blog under another business).  This exemplifies how you must have a good meta description written AND pay attention to long keyword phrases being searched for.

While not many people are searching for this particular phrase (strangely), you would be surprised how precise and “long-tail” keyword searches are getting.

A good overall SEO writing technique means to always to write everything in full. Not “when you need consulting services”, but “when you need IT consulting services”.  Often these keyword phrases will end up displayed in snippets. Sometimes, though, other items will be at searched for, like “IT consultants health industry”, “Beauty products under $25.00″, etc. This is where Google’s helpful Rich Snippets data structuring can be useful.

Secret 2 to writing SEO copy: Using hidden code called “Rich Snippets”

If you have a really content rich site, you’ll be interested in this secret. Google itself says:

“With rich snippets, webmasters with sites containing structured content—such as review sites or business listings—can label their content to make it clear that each labeled piece of text represents a certain type of data: for example, a restaurant name, an address, or a rating.”

So, structured data can be any type of: reviews, people profiles, products, business listings, recipes, and events. People searching for their favorite food, branded goods, a person, gifts with a price range, will benefit from Google’s snippet functionality. Much more advice about rich snippets at Google.

How To. Use microdata, microformats, or highly detailed RDFa to code snippets. If you look up those pages, it contains some instructions – you can simply pass this on to your webmaster to implement, with some ideas for what type of info people would be seeking.

Also, a good SEO plugin for WordPress will use “Rich Snippet type” as an easy pull-down on each post (well, I noticed it in my SEO plugin so it could well be in many of them). SEO plugins let you control the Title & Description tags for each post, so they are quite handy. I use SEO Ultimate and Platinum SEO is also good.

This Tool is handy to check structured data for any type of website: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

See full Sales Letter: http://successissimplyspiritual.com/shop/video-download/
Short Sales page for eBook: http://successissimplyspiritual.com/shop/ebook-download/

“Thank you for your work and expertise”.
- Jen Hall, KissPrinciple.com

Also wrote persuasive e-letter to invite new affiliate members to join: Letter KidSocial_final (.doc) and a Postcard.

Isn’t it funny though, when it comes to business copywriting, everyone thinks (at first) they can do it themselves. I guess it seems easy to write about your own business.  But like one client found after three months of intermittently trying to improve their website copy, it’s never easy for a non-writer!

Just imagine if they had put those hours into their business instead of trying to figure out what to say. They seemed quite startled when I said at the briefing that I would have the copy drafted by next week.  And indeed I did, although it took a while to untangle the words and find the real ‘meat and potatoes’. The initial website copy was written in flowery language with too much repetition, and fortunately the business owner disliked this style.

Another recent website copywriting job I took on was for a roof restorer/repairer. Some of the content they had was from the manufacturer websites – and so was the wrong perspective and too scientific for the everyday consumer.  This is where as a consumer (who has copywriting skills), I have the advantage when it comes to writing for their target market. I know what I look for from a ‘tradie’ — honesty, free quotes, good service, quality job, added benefits like keeping out the heat, warranties, etc. — and so that’s the kind of things that get a mention on the page.

Just Help me Write this Letter, Jen!

It takes a lot of practice to sound this casual!  When writing letters and other marketing material, try to remember these tips:

• One idea per sentence, please!  ANDs are for “fish and chips”, not for joining ideas.
• Use a topic sentence for each para that is concise. Then explain and prove what you have just said.
• Don’t boast about what “We” can do. Try to prove it instead.  “9 out of 10 customers recommend us to their friends” or “We care about our customer satisfaction – every month we send out a report and ask for feedback on how we are doing”.
• Add subheads – even on a two-page letter. Also mix up sentence lengths for variety.
• If you have a unique selling point and you’ve got a fair amount of content, say it in different ways. This way people really will get the message without being irritated by repetition.
• Read back your writing. If you’re getting tangled or it sounds too corporate, go back and write as though you’re explaining all this to a 13-year old. And you’re excited about it, but not SHOUTING!!! — just gently excited.

When working directly on websites, I have enjoyed the ease of changing copy, hyperlinks and tags inside WordPress. But I am extremely careful when editing in “the back end”, as there is more of a tendency to make small errors here. And that’s for me, a professional who writes and edits nearly every day (hey, I have the weekends off!)

Small business professionals - just because you can, does it mean you should?  I apply this philosophy to lots of things that I’m not so great at; I could do my own taxes, for instance, but does that mean I should? Should I muddy my brain with tax law?  After all, that’s why we have accountants.

Similarly, you’re great at what you do. But if you edit your own website copy, are you simultaneously making it hard for the non-industry-savvy customer to understand?

Reading Ease of 49.0 for this complex chapter on Business Structures is OK

It’s not easy to write simply. One example I have is of a client of mine who knows her stuff in marketing. However well-intentioned, adding a 44-word sentence to her web copy with a Flesch Reading Ease of 14 (i.e. hard to read) is a bad idea, particularly considering her target market is local small businesses.

Gauge your content’s ease of reading with the Microsoft Word Grammar Checker. The readability statistics – showing you the reading ease and grade level – will come up as you finish. Also check for too many Passive voice sentences (if above 30%, I would suggest rewrite in a more active structure).

Common Mistakes in Australian Website Content

Besides long sentences with too many conjunctions, another curse is the American spell-checker. How well do you know your Australian Oxford Dictionary?  Do you assume that the spell-checker inside WordPress and Microsoft Word is right? Most of the time it draws from American spelling. MS Word will continually change my ‘recognised’ to ‘recognized’, as if I don’t know my own mind!  If you are selling jewellery to Australians only, you would be wise to use the Australian spelling ‘jewellery’ mainly, and the American ‘jewelry’ in some of the meta tags.

Other common errors, where sometimes people use the wrong word, include:

• your, instead of you’re  (correct: you’re going to the picnic)
• who, instead of whom (this is a tricky rule, forty men, all of whom doth hats, cannot explain it. So if possible, change the sentence to a more active tense)
• there instead of their – or vice versa  (correct: theirs cost more than ours / there was a fiasco)
• now, instead of know (correct: I know my stuff)

All of these mistakes will not be picked up by the spell checker inside of your CMS.

Another point is, when writing the Meta Titles and Descriptions – which will often be seen by Googlers – it’s all too easy to make a typo and jeopardise your credibility (e.g. ‘experts in superanuation’). So use the meta titles that your copy editor has given you, or if changing them, run it by the Australian Oxford dictionary.

Quick tip: Wikipedia defines the meanings and the main spellings of a huge amount of words, so it’s a good online resource.

As a business owner or consultant, you’re flat out already – with little time to check your Google Analytics data in the normal way.  Welcome to this handy Plugin: Google Analytics Dashboard.  (Plugins:  select “Add new” and search “analytics dashboard”, select the one with four-five stars).

Once installed, you’ve got a great time saver – scroll down to the bottom of your Dashboard to see something like this:

It saves logging into Google Analytics… You can also check how many visitors to each page or post when you are in the back end.

Analysing Visitors

There are many pages on my site with varying visitor numbers (per month), so with yours too, look at it in context. You can tell by this that I would do well to re-look at the words on my About Me page to ensure its got the juice needed to inspire some more reading. The exit rate is people leaving at that page, but you’ll have to go to the full version to figure out their path.

Another Plugin I like is Askimet to stop pesky spam comments. When setting up a new site, I always change the Permalink settings to be more keyword friendly, and untick “Email moderator” in the Discussion settings so that I don’t get comments emailed to me. What kind of tweaks have you made to your WordPress backend, to make your daily life easier?

In a recent post, veteran copywriter Nick Usborne talked about the perils of ‘dead end content’, viz-a-viz: “When you write a page of content for your site, or a post for your blog, and fail to provide links to further reading at the end of the article, review, guide or post.”

Including links to internal pages (catalogues, special reports, or introductory articles) is a good habit to maintain, as it will guide users to other areas of your site. Nick says: “If you want to keep your readers on your site for longer – and you do – you need to maximize the number of readers who visit more than one page.”

The content a web copywriter or blog writer creates can make all the difference. The first part of our job is attraction, where keywords are the focus, and the second part of our job is customer engagement. If there is no engaging tone, it will show up in the numbers who ‘bounce’ (going onto your site for 30 seconds, then clicking off).

Basically, boring content will stop your marketing system in its tracks. It also may affect your overall page rankings, due to the recent Panda update by Google that looks at on-site behaviour.

Once they get to know your business, a web copywriter knows how to create relevant connections between what is being said and other great topics or product materials available in your arsenal. So you see, when a copywriter writes or edits your blog articles, they take it to the next level of helping with all your marketing.

Ready, aim… fire!

If you’re an SME or internet business and you’re not releasing news once per month, then you may never be written up in the media! Sure, if you’ve just cycled across Australia (like Brenda Noonan) then it will be a snap to get coverage… but for the average business a long-term press release strategy is best.

If you find that these releases are not getting taken up by the media for a variety of reasons (they had enough stories, there wasn’t a section, they wanted you to advertise, it wasn’t well written), never fear because you can use it again for SEO purposes.

Why SEO Press Releases?

The main reason is to create more points of readership and at the same time, more links into your own website.

Using the low cost or free submission services – like Newsmaker.com.au (recommended) or www.pressreleasepoint.com – you will be able to send a keyword-rich version of your Press Release out into the great online world.

I also recommend the US-based distributor www.prweb.com for this purpose, as they have a long-lived reputation and some of the stories may be picked up by Google News (if you pay the fee).

The other way this can benefit you is often these major distributors are viewed by bloggers and columnists looking for interesting material… so you never know who will talk about you or where. Just be sure to mention all your main keywords in this online press release, just as I have done in bold here!

Press Release Writing from $125.00 – $175.00.