Are You Someone Who Moves?
I was thumbing through one of my many compendiums of quotes (one of my favorite collectibles) last night and I came across one of my favorite sources of inspiration–Benjamin Franklin. And the quote I stumbled on was this gem:
“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.” -Benjamin Franklin
What struck me was this afternoon Brian Clark’s (Copyblogger.com) post on the “Zig-Zag Method For Catching Attention and Building Credibility” hammered home Ben Franklin’s 200 year old point!
Decision time are you immovable, movable, or a mover?
So often our businesses, our marketing, and our writing get stuck in the immovable or movable classes. Often this is the result of contentment with equilibrium, poor performance, or recent failure–none of which breeds break-out success.
Equilibrium
Contentment with status-quo is certainly the number one killer of dreams. We fall into the good enough class. Good enough money, good enough relationships, good enough life.
In other words, things don’t suck in an uncomfortable way. You read it right there is no passion in equilibrium. However, pushing myself has a 50% chance of sucking more.
I am immovable.
Poor Performance
Performing marginally or poorly on tasks often sends us into a dangerous search for a formula. This is the classic business school case study or business case. The rationale is that if I can cite an example and I perform poorly again at least this time I am not accountable.
Inevitably, this becomes a habit forming slippery slope. A classic cancer that grows internal to many large corporations, even good ones.
I am movable.
Recent Failure
Underperforming can often masquerade as acceptable, but failure strikes immediate panic. Panic in leadership and in individual contributor. This often triggers immediate invisible, uninteresting, wannabes.
Without a conscious intervention this will wrap you into an ever accelerating death spiral of repeated failure.
I am movable.
Be a Mover
Looking for examples and patterns of success are certainly a healthy exercise. The secret is studying them for not for formulas, but rather what made them unique at the time. Was there something emotional, trendy, relevant, outrageous, comforting, dominating? Look for the tanget to the trendline at that time.
This is why I often advocate reading literature, periodicals, non-fiction, and blogs outside of your industry for inspiration in your next project. This makes it very hard to stay immovable or be movable. It is likely to spark leadership and innovation.
I am a MOVER!
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It’s About Conversion is a project by Bill Rice dedicated to helping you create online lead generation strategies and execution that converts web traffic into buyers. ItsAboutConversion.com will give you a constant flow of tips, techniques, tools, and strategies for your generating and converting online leads for your business.
Bill Rice is passionate about the social web (social media), online community building, and creating online consumer experiences. Bill Rice regularly applies those passions to design and write money making lead generation projects for his clients. Tell me about your project at It’s About Conversion! or Urgent Leads!.
Stay tuned into my latest online lead generation ideas by subscribing to itsaboutconversion.com.
Does Your Social Network Generate Leads? It Should.
We’re all buzzing about social media and social networks. Is it just a waste of time or can it produce a reasonable ROI? Stop talking and do the math. Does your social network generate leads that convert into business? It should. It might even become a personal asset.
Is Your Social Network Important?
It is becoming obvious that social networks are important. Chris Brogan talks about the vital importance of your network and even ventures to state that companies (employers) will value your person networks. And, because there is real dollar value in a network Jeremiah Owyang cautions us that social media has risk and reward.
Still need to be convinced it is important?
Why Build a Social Network?
Chances are you have already have some foundation of a social network. However, building a social network that adds value to your community and produces business opportunity for you should must incorporate some strategic thinking.
A value-based social network should accomplish three primary objectives:
- Increase the efficiency and frequency of your communication
- Facilitate you consistently adding value to your network
- Generate and/or spot business opportunity
Unfortunately, social networks often degenerate into ego arms races. Creating or growing your network in this fashion creates an overwhelming and useless mess. This approach simply creates a high noise to signal ratio, which destroys any hope of value.
What Services Do I Use?
New social networks and supporting applications pop up daily. Getting distracted by every venue for your network can be paralyzing. Organizing these solutions into categories, based on your objectives, quickly sorts them.
- Contact database: Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Mac Address Book
- Reputation and identity: LinkedIN, Plaxo, Personal Blog
- News and opportunity: FriendFeed, Twitter
- Communication and nurturing: Twitter, FriendFeed, Personal Blog
- Metrics: TweetBurner, Bit.ly
Each of these services allows for the simple importing and connecting to contacts in any of the major address book applications. I highly recommend you begin organizing your network there, import, and then continue to sync back to that as a master contact database.
How to Nurture a Social Network
Getting your network to generate leads and business opportunities is perfectly correlated to your lead nurturing strategy. Or, as Tim Sanderssays refresh your network for better performance.
Nurturing a social network is significantly different than nurturing a sales prospect database. You are not creating a drip email campaign. This type of activity will quickly erode your network. Lead nurturing and network building in social media should be focused on listening, discussing, and adding value–in that order.
Listening teaches you what people are interested in learning about, what they find valuable, and messages that call them to action.
Discussion allows you to build relationships and grow your audience. Again, you should be learning here too.
Adding value, this is what produces business opportunity leads. Directing people to and providing valuable, problem solving information drives them to you. This approach drives them to you in solving these problems and attracts others with similar problems.
How do you maximize the value you get back from your time spent on social media and social networking? What are the tools you use?
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It’s About Conversion is a project by Bill Rice dedicated to helping you create online lead generation strategies and execution that converts web traffic into buyers. ItsAboutConversion.com will give you a constant flow of tips, techniques, tools, and strategies for your generating and converting online leads for your business.
Bill Rice is passionate about the social web (social media), online community building, and creating online consumer experiences. Bill Rice regularly applies those passions to design and write money making lead generation projects for his clients. Tell me about your project at It’s About Conversion! or Urgent Leads!.
Stay tuned into my latest online lead generation ideas by subscribing to itsaboutconversion.com.
Use Twitter to Test Headlines
Twitter is a great way to test your headlines and short copy effectiveness. Hundreds of followers and a 140 characters maximum makes for a powerful marketing test environment. Twitter is a quick and efficient way to see if your headlines convert into clicks.
Article Library
Start with a good repository of articles. You should create a significant number of articles in a variety of topics. Good article diversity and quantity will ensure you have a ready-made test bed for a variety of projects.
This article library can be an article directory (eZineArticles), one or more blogs, or your website copy portfolio. Using your own blog or website gives you the added benefit of driving prospective business traffic too.
Since Twitter users, like most social networkers, don’t like constant self-promotion I suggest you routinely test using others websites, blogs, or articles as well as your own. The other authors will love the traffic, may link back to you, preserves your credibility, and it still achieves your conversion testing.
Tracking Conversions
Don’t forget the primary objective–tracking conversions. If you are using your own website or blog this is pretty simple–look at your blog stats or Google analytics. However, what about Tweets that you point at websites you don’t own?
In the past there was little opportunity to collect measurable results from these tests. You could use Summize to track keyword discussion and possibly track re-tweets. Unfortunately, this only measures buzz and typically has more to do with the destination content, not the headline. It doesn’t give you the core metric–do people click because of my copy?
Enter bit.ly Tweetburner, a new tiny URL technology that lets you track source and traffic through your shortened URL. So, now simply shorten and attach a unique bit.ly Tweetburner URL to each of your headline or short copy tests. Then you can track sources and volume of click-throughs.
Respect Your Audience
The quickest way to damage this excellent focus group is to abuse it. So, here are a few cautionary etiquette suggestions to keep yourself from poisoning the water:
- Promote others, as well as yourself, with your headline tests
- Stagger test headlines over various days
- Make sure the destination content is interesting
- Do not link your headline tests to sales letters or landing pages
- Participate in the community too (ask questions and participate)
Happy Testing!
How to Use Article Marketing to Test Your Keywords
Keyword research and analysis is a constant effort in optimizing. Yet, optimizing requires a sandbox to test in. Article marketing and article directories, like eZineArticles.com, can be that perfect test environment–good traffic volume, competitive content, and metrics.
Keyword Analysis
The first step in setting up your tests is the keyword analysis. The methodology for analyzing your project will largely depend on the purpose of your copy. Blogs are looking for volume, PPC campaigns are looking for a profitable niche, companies are looking for product and service inquiries.
As you begin to research keywords make sure you keep these concepts in mind. Resources like Google and Wordtracker.com keyword tools can focus you on the right keywords for each objective. Once narrowed to a handful of promising keywords and phrases to are ready to seed your tests.
Writing the Test Articles
Testing with articles can be as much art as science, but done properly it will still yield valuable information for any SEO project. Article directories and Google (your ultimate client) are very fickle about duplicate content. So, simply submitting multiple iterations and controls, like a traditional scientific test, is not an option. Instead follow these guidelines:
- Try to find the most appropriate category for your SEO article test
- Consistently post all of your test articles into that category
- Ideally you have already published yourself into a top 10 author for that category
- Write three unique articles for each keyword you are testing
- Vary keyword density, key phrase word order, alternate keywords
- Try multiple headline techniques (try a number in at least one)
- Try various summary techniques (try a famous quote in one)
Marketing the Article
Once written and submitted this is where you can get a bit more scientific. You can attempt a variety of different article marketing techniques. Here are a few that I recommend:
- Blog reference/link
- Twitter comment
- Social bookmarking
I like to use bit.ly (a tiny URL technology) because it gives you detailed click-through source and tracking metrics.
Measuring the Results
If you are not measuring then you are simply hoping for miracles and most people don’t pay for that. Before you start submitting and marketing your test articles make sure you are certain of your objective and key tracking metrics. Here are some possible metrics:
- Views
- Click-through
- Syndication/Publication
- Traffic sources
Quality article directories, like eZineArticles, are making it easier to track and capture these metrics.
The nice thing about using article marketing as an SEO content and keyword test environment is, once complete, you have a great repository of validated and ready to deploy SEO Web copy.
How to Attract Venture Capital with Copywriting
Venture capital is the fuel, and often the igniting spark, of many young ventures. Unfortunately, new entrepreneurs find it difficult to connect to venture capital firms and many firms never see bright opportunities that flame out before attracting funding. Effective copywriting can be the key to solving these missed opportunities
Target Venture Capital
Finely written Web copy and experienced keyword research famously attracts search engines, motivates customers, and compels action. If you are an entrepreneur with a hot idea, but not quite enough capital to take it to its full potential angels and venture capitalist should be part of your target market in your marketing plan.
Keyword Research
Start with good keyword research and analysis an zero in on what venture capitalist are looking for–markets, benefits, ideas, and trends. Then create an SEO plan to bring vector in interest to your project or company.
Highlight Synergies
No one will know companies and technologies that are natural components of your value chain. These become powerful synergies when two or more of these opportunities are in one investor’s portfolio. Make sure your Web copy and marketing materials clearly demonstrate these connections and potentials.
Focus on Benefits
Like customers they are looking for benefits and need to be emotionally inspired to action. A professional copywriter can help you achieve this result on your website, in your emails, on your business card, and even in your pitch.
Get Emotional
Remember what drives venture capitalist to action: large markets, smart teams, and a passionate inferno. These are all qualities that a good copywriter can bring to vivid life your marketing.
Target Bright Entrepreneurs
This difficulty in connecting is not limited to entrepreneurs trying to raise capital. In fact, the problem of investors trying to locate the right ideas, quality teams, and attractive deals to meet their goals may be more acute.
Venture capital websites typically highlight past successes, current portfolios, and partner profiles, yet do little to attract targeted new opportunity.
A top copywriter can design a search engine strategy and experience that will efficiently attract, segment, and engage the types of entrepreneurs and ideas you want to fund.
Write for the Sale
Like any marketing or copywriting project, don’t forget to write for the sale. Hope and opportunity will still pass in the wind if you don’t ask for a conversation.
