Monthly Archives: September 2011

The Truth About Farts

September 29, 2011 – 12:35 am

Gas is always embarrassing, whether you’re with a date, or just courting a new customer. If either one of these folks catches you trying to slip some by, you could be looking at the end of a potentially beautiful relationship.

But let’s be clear: Gas as I’m defining it today is much more than the remnants of last night’s burrito special. Think about it in terms of excess toxic content related to your business:

    • Fart #1 – Remember that datasheet for the product that fell flat right after launch three years ago? You may have forgotten all about it, but your
      customer in Singapore is currently downloading it from some dark corner of your Web site, and hoping to place an order.
    • Fart #2 – That “quick-turn” brochure that Randy from Sales pulled together on his own has nothing whatsoever to do with your current corporate  branding―but of course, Randy’s still sharing it with partners via your extranet.
    • Fart #3 – Pry open the door of your site’s Media Center, and what do you see? Is the most current press release featured there from way back in 2006?

This horrible stinky content is not only embarrassing; it can actually drive customers away from your business. When the content you’re presenting to your target market is outdated, irrelevant, mis-branded, or just plain incorrect, you’re creating confusion.

And nobody in a state of confusion is going to whip out their
wallet and make a purchase.

 The Best Antacid EVER
One of my favorite things to do is a content audit, and it’s one thing that many companies don’t think of when they are building their content strategies. It’s not enough to just create new content; you also need to clear the decks of all the old garbage that can taint the effectiveness of the fantastic stuff you want to
share with your customers today.

A good content audit is like a juice fast, cleansing your corporate and product marketing of all the junk that’s adhered itself to your organization over time. Once you’re confident that your customers are receiving a message that is consistent, relevant, and timely, you can stop clenching, relax, and get on with marketing your business.

Don’t know what’s lurking in the bowels of your Web site? I’ll put on my miner’s lamp, ferret out the nasties, and in no time you’ll feel light as a feather! Just shoot me a note, and we’ll get to work!

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In Praise of the F-Bomb

September 21, 2011 – 2:40 am

OK, so last time around we were talking about what NOT to do with your headlines when you’re trying to drive readers to your site. Today, we’re going to give you some tools that WILL get those coveted customers over to your pages, loving the fabulous content you’re serving up!

You only have a precious few seconds to convince a reader that you’re clickable,
so don’t waste their time or yours with crappy headlines.

Here are some nuggets of headline wisdom that I have used to help my clients get eyeballs on their content:

Great Advice #1: Save the Best for Last
Even if you’re working from a content outline, sometimes brilliance overtakes you in the middle of writing content, and your copy ends up going in a somewhat different (and often much better) direction than you originally intended. Don’t fight the feelin’; use that spontaneity and passion while it’s flowing out of your fingers. Once you have your copy where you need it to be, THEN you can review it and build yourself a sweet little headline that distills that feeling down to the very tastiest level, and pop it up top!

Great Advice #2: Be Provocative
Here we go: Sex sells. And so does anything kind of edgy and provocative. I’m not saying that you have to incorporate an f-bomb into every headline, but the masterful use of allusion, double-entendre, and the like can go a long way toward getting a set of Web-weary eyes to sit up and take notice.

Great Advice #3: Know What Makes Your Reader Give a Damn
What does your customer REALLY care about? Saving money? Getting stuff done faster? Reducing their carbon footprint? Then DON’T WRITE ABOUT PUPPIES. Knowing what is killing your customer right now can help you serve up exactly what they need to read―and get them to it via a superb, well-oiled headline. OK, that sounds a bit dirty, but you know what I’m getting at.

And who the hell am I to tell you about headlines? Well, I’ll be honest: A while back, my Web traffic just wasn’t that great, and it was really bugging me (not to mention affecting my bottom line!). So I started doing some research into people and organizations that I knew were getting gobs and gobs of traffic, and I looked especially at the headlines they were using to drive readers to their pages. And get this:

When I started implementing what I learned on my own site,
my page hits increased 1,200%.

No, that’s not a typo. 1,200%. So I’ve been there, and yeah, I found a way to fix the problem. ‘Nuff said.

Got any headline horror stories (or big wins) to share? Seen any real headline hiccups in your travels around the Web? Let’s hear about ‘em in the comments!

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Screwed by a Single Line of Copy

September 14, 2011 – 7:09 pm

Yes, your blog/landing page/email newsletter is AMAZING. The writing is great, your product managers love it, and Sales just can’t wait to handle all the anticipated inbound calls.

But. . .if an amazing piece of copy is posted on the Internet and nobody’s there to read it,
does it make an impact?

If your content brilliance is never reaching its intended audience, take your complaint right to the top–the top of the page, that is. To put it bluntly, your headline might just suck. A weak or bad headline can make all the difference between having your content overrun with eager readers, or <crickets>.

You only have a few seconds to entice your audience to make the crucial click to read more, so don’t waste it. Now, there’s a lot of advice out there about how to write a good headline; a few minutes with Google or Bing will yield hundreds of pages of advice.

But I’m not here to tell you how to write a good headline;
rather, I’m here to tell you how NOT to.

So let’s begin, shall we?

Bad Advice #1: Write Your Headline First
I’ll be honest here, I used to try doing this, and it was the biggest waste of time in the world. If you know the story your copy needs to tell, and you have it developed in a way that engages the reader, flows easily, and reinforces all the messaging you want to get across, then just write it! After you’ve gotten the story nailed down, skim through it and pull out the 2-3 most compelling ideas and review them. One of them can likely be spun into a snappy, intriguing, digestible headline.

Bad Advice #2: Load the Headline with Keywords
Headlines are not the place to showcase all the keyword goodness your SEO intern came up with (yes, I ended a sentence with a preposition—get over it). Nothing is more boring to read than a list of keywords with a few verbs thrown in to make it a headline. And while it might rank decently in a Web search, nobody’s going to click on it, period.

Bad Advice #3: Use a Formula to Build Great Headlines
Repeat after me: “Formula is for babies; headlines are for people.” Unless you have a really strange business model, your copy is targeted at humans, and humans respond best to other humans. So forget about using a wizard or some fancy code to build a headline that sells your copy. This approach is sterile, and will yield cold, sterile results―not the engaging copy that will make customers sit up and take notice.

OK, so I’ve told you what NOT to do―so what DOES work? Stay tuned, and in the next post, I’ll fill you in on how to build a headline that will grab your audience by the, uh, eyeballs and make them want to click for more. . .

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