The Richardson Copywriter | Susan Hamilton Copywriting

Aug

How Often Should Your Business be Blogging?

By Susan H · Comments (0)

So you started this blog thing and it was real fun at first, but now finding things to write about is grueling – not even looking necessary since no one even noticed your attempts. You read about how important it is, but don’t really get it. If it helps your business, you’re willing to try, but man, what is the absolute minimum frequency you should post to start getting some feedback from your online readers?

Good question.

You’ll hear every answer from daily to bi-weekly to monthly. And the truth is, if you have something valuable to another set of eyes, all of those answers will help you. Why? Because new content on your site is good for your business because it will ultimately boost your online reputation.

If you get burned out trying to crank new information out too frequently though, no doubt you’ll sound like it. And no one wants to read that. What you want to do is post content that others will find helpful. It’s a time-consuming endeavor that could take up to three months before you start getting responses.

Even then, they may not be the responses you want, at first.

Why Does Blogging Frequency Matter?

Each business has a different type of information to share. Ideally, posting relevant information daily with the right keyword usage while developing back links to your website – is a good thing. But it’s also a tall order, and you shouldn’t be discouraged by that kind of pressure. You also run a business.

The more frequently you post, the more your readers and customers get to learn about you. As they learn about you and enjoy what you’re writing, they will return. The more frequently they return, the more Google spiders become interested in the activity. As your readers leave reviews, your site will develop back links. If you cultivate your own back link strategy as well, you’ll pay attention to the wording you use when you link. All of these things stem from regular posting, and play a part in where your site ends up on a Google search page. If you’re not on the first page, you don’t exist.

When was the last time you went to the second page to look for something?

Exactly.

What’s a Small Business to do?

My suggestion is to take advantage of inspiration and shoot for the moon. Go ahead and write those posts and keep them in a handy place, like Google Docs. Then give yourself a reasonable blogging schedule, and make a commitment to post new material twice a week. If you have a WordPress blog, you can schedule those posts to go out regularly, and when you get down to a reservoir of one or two left, get yourself re-inspired and fill up your pool.

Posting daily is great if you can keep it up, but like I said, it’s a tall order. I like to under promise and over deliver, don’t you? If you can keep up a dynamic schedule like that, and promote your blog and business at the same time, great. You’ll notice that I only promise to post once a week on The Richardson Copywriter. Once and a while, I get a couple up. I write for so many blogs and ghost write for so many others that I have to be realistic. Blogging isn’t my bread and butter. I have to think about the other things that also pay my bills. Quite frankly, like you, I like the other aspects of my business even more than I like to blog!

I hope this helps you keep things in perspective. Go for the gold, and then refine your objectives and do the best you can. That isn’t a disclaimer! The best you can do is still A LOT. At the end of the day, you’ll never regret doing what needs to be done. We all regret what we don’t.

Let us know about your blogging schedule, we love to hear from you. When you leave a comment, my CommentLuv plugin pulls your latest post into your comment, leaving a back link that will increase in value as my blog ages and grows.

Categories : Business Blogging

Comments (0)

Aug

Grammatically Speaking: Tips to Remember When Blogging

By Susan H · Comments (0)

Your blog isn’t under the same scrutiny as your other, more direct marketing methods. A blog is more of a place where your readers and potential customers can learn more about you before they purchase, as well as interact with you after the sale. A blog is designed for two-way communication, and that means it should be written more conversationally than articles, for example.

That being said, we can’t just post garbage and expect a decent reputation. Basic rules still hold true. If you want your business to be taken seriously, you’ll have to spend a little time making sure you don’t appear to be an unlearned, unskilled individual that couldn’t have much to offer. All it takes is a little – and I do mean a little – common knowledge, reference material, and proofreading. If in doubt that a sentence reads correctly, wait a day and read it out loud. Errors in grammar are often found there.

If you don’t care, your readers will notice. It’s almost a respect issue. If you have problems in this area, hire someone to help you write or edit. Don’t neglect this detail.

Here are a few things to check before you post:

Never use could of, would of, or should of. The second word in each pair may sound like “of” conversationally, but it should always read “have.”
Referring to yourself as ‘I’ is not always correct, although it can sound right. Read the sentence aloud, “Steve and I want ice cream.” If it can be read “I want ice cream.” you’ve used it as it should be. If you say, “That really bothered Steve and I” it would be wrong because you wouldn’t say, “That really bothered I.” Instead, “That really bothered Steve and me,” or “me and Steve” while sounding wrong, is actually proper because you can say, “That really bothered me.”
Make sure you use actual words, and not made up words that have simply been used by your family for generations, unless you point that out for humor! You can’t assume that your readers know you’re not an idiot. When in doubt, look it up.

Readers will forgive occasional, tiny grammatical errors. It isn’t the end of the world if you realize after posting that you’ve made a mistake. If you do, simply comment on your own blog about noticing your blunder and let it go.

Do you have any pet peeves when it comes to grammar? What are they, we’d love to hear about them!

Related Articles:

Three Things That Don’t Work

Are You Paying for Great Content?

Categories : Business Blogging

Comments (0)

Aug

Is Social Media a Time Suck?

By Susan H · Comments (6)

I hear this complaint over and over and over again from small companies that don’t blog or have a social media presence. It never surprises me – I believed that for a long time, too. Probably for my first whole year of interacting with few results. It isn’t quick, it isn’t easy to learn, and businesses already have their interoffice ways of doing things that don’t include time to chit-chat about the riff-raf with strangers. There was a time not too long ago that communicating trivially with strangers on the job carried flirtatious implications with raised eyebrows from coworkers and nasty gossip. (It still might, definitely keep tabs on your office staffers! If you don’t know how, download my reference guide The Very Best Way to Use Twitter For Local Business.) These days talking to strangers the right way online can make you a superstar in your industry, niche, or location. Doing it right, however, isn’t done overnight. Don’t give up too quickly.

Tell me, what aspect of your marketing doesn’t go hand-in-hand with work? Everything requires work. There is no such thing as doing something that produces income that is not work. It’s not extremely hard work, but it’s hard work. The payoff is way worth the effort, though, and actually much easier to achieve once the mindset of “social media time-suck” is replaced with, “Oh, this is elbow grease.”

Yeah, it’s going to take some effort to learn and to implement. But so does going to your networking meetings and continuing education classes. The big picture of your future in business includes connections in social media circles.

Never underestimate the power of learning a new strategy. You don’t get yesterday back, and while there are great things to learn from marketing past that are still very relevant and true today, if you don’t position yourself for the future it will pass you by. A blog takes time, targeted social media relationships take time to cultivate, and if you wait for next year you’ll be that much farther behind your competition and your goals.

Have you recently embraced online interactivity, either through blog posts or social media? Leave me your comments, my CommentLuv plugin will pull your blog post link for others to see and provides a back link to your site from mine. Tell me about your foray into social media, and don’t forget to connect with me on Twitter and Facebook.

Categories : Social Media

Comments (6)

Aug

Does Time Prevent You From Blogging About Your Small Business?

By Susan H · Comments (2)

Quite a few of my Twitter followers post about time management and productivity. For those of us who are marketing ourselves online, we’ve had to learn a bit about the value of the online minute. For those of you who can’t find the time to blog, I have some ideas that may help.

5 Steps to Writing Your Business Blog

Make a list of topics you can write about at the beginning of the week.
Take an egg timer and using Word or Google Docs write one of your topics and the subsequent first sentence. Set your timer for 10 minutes.
Write everything you know about this topic until the timer stops.
Pick another topic, and repeat.
Do not edit for at least 24 hrs. (Per Ed Dale, but Shari Voigt allows two days)

Seriously, you may have some real crap. Don’t let that scare you. After 24 hours have passed, take a look at your first document. You will easily be able to see what needs to be done to say what you need to say.

Only after that should you incorporate keywords into your work. You should be keeping a running list of the keywords you’ve researched (Market Samurai is excellent for this) and appropriately add them to your text. Spend a little time sculpting your sentences so you come across conversational and informed. Don’t “stuff” your keywords, they’ll only sound ridiculous. If your keywords don’t flow naturally with the text, it is better to ditch them than put off your readers by forgetting that you want human interaction. You’re writing for them, after all.

Your blog post doesn’t need to be long, a couple of paragraphs are fine. While I believe that grammar is significant in your web copy and marketing materials, blogging gives you a little more room to be ‘you.’ Just in case you need a refresher, however, Copyblogger reminds us that common errors are easy to make, but just as easy to fix. Read more from Brian Clark at Copyblogger.

What grammatical mistakes do you commonly make? Do they prevent you from taking the time to blog? What keeps you from blogging more frequently?

Categories : Business Blogging

Comments (2)

Aug

Great Copywriting is Necessary for All Businesses

By Susan H · Comments (4)

What makes great copy? Is it convincing, well-written grammatically, and spell-checked? Yes, but it should also be compelling, and worth your reader’s time. When I read something that just takes me around the block and back to square one, I’m no better off and I’ve wasted my time. If I end up somewhere else, though – if I end up coming to a conclusion that makes me respond, I’ve just been exposed to great copy.

If you want to know if you’re website copy is doing everything it can for you, contact me. I’ll review one page of your copy for absolutely nothing. It’s not that I give away my services, although I do offer quite a bit at no cost to my readers. More than anything, I want you to see the difference compelling copy will make for your overall marketing campaign. It doesn’t take long for companies to realize effective copy DOES make the difference.

Is great copy really effective?

It’s not hype; it’s fact.

Have you ever wondered why you get those mailers addressed to the fictional “Occupant?” Do some make you cringe, while others raise “the eyebrow of curiosity” causing you to hang on to it and show it to someone, possibly even purchase? Never? Of course you have.

Well, they’re being sent out in droves right now, and competition for your attention is fierce. There is risk associated with direct mail advertising, and it isn’t the right choice for every business. For some companies direct mail is extremely effective. Marketers will tell you: everything from the color, to the pictures, to the right words and precision placement of those words was carefully scrutinized before the ad ran.

It stands to reason that free resources offered on the web make great copy a necessity for small businesses online, too. From Twitter to Facebook, to landing pages and blog posts, if the copy needs work, a business can unknowingly suffer.

Here’s a famous quote from Dad,

“When you don’t know, you don’t know that you don’t know.”

No kidding. That quote is especially true when it comes to your copy. If you think your web copy or direct mail advertisement could be more effective, you’re probably right.

How can you tell if your copy is working for you?

Remember not to sell or write for yourself. If you catch yourself reading your material and asking, “Would that convince me?” you’re in trouble. You’re not selling to you, you’re selling to those who already need you. What do they need? What problems of theirs do you solve with your product, service, or advice? Chances are your needs are not theirs, and you may have a whole lot more to offer when you change your perspective. Online improvements should noticeably increase traffic over time.

Tell us, are you enjoying higher rates of inquiries, service calls, or product sales as a result of changing your copywriting focus? Are you spending more on your online or direct mail campaigns? What works best for your local business?

Categories : Copywriting

Comments (4)

Jul

Free Writing: It’s all in the Edit, Not the Composition

By Susan H · Comments (2)

I want to talk to you about a content writing technique called free writing. Genius really, but completely opposite of what’s been taught in high schools throughout history. The closest thing I’ve seen to it so far is the process of journaling. Even then, however, we have a tendency to edit while we write as opposed to simply writing for a period of time and editing after another set period has gone by, usually a day. Writing, you see, and editing, are done in two different parts of the brain. You’ll become a much better writer when you separate the functions of writing and editing, instead of combining them at one sitting.

The concept is that our brains become accustomed to the routines we’ve established. We know that’s true because of habits like addictions, exercise, and various other things we try to improve upon, only to realize that the mental aspect of what we’re changing is even harder than the physical aspect. Sooner or later we realize that we won’t really change anything about our behaviors without using a replacement value.

For instance, to stop smoking you must do more than just stop. Stopping requires consciously developing negative thoughts towards smoking, but also a replacement physical behavior that helps us relearn an alternative to smoking.

Free writing is actually the same concept. Instead of writing and editing your text as you write and as we’ve been taught, write freely on a topic for a 10 minute session. The time frame is crucial, the gobbledy-gook that you’ll write, is not. No matter what you come up with, even if it’s only “I’m writing for ten minutes and I will not stop until the timer goes off” over and over again, stick with it. Using a timer will help you stay the ten minute course without interruption. This process will allow you to retrain your brain.

The brain needs to understand that you will physically do this regardless of the outcome. Amazing things happen when you decide to take authority over your thoughts through physical action. You want to do one thing, but instead, create an environment where you have to do another. Your writing improves when you let your thoughts ‘flow’ instead of editing them. Returning to edit after a day of letting your work rest helps you stay on point, and also allows you to come up with quite a bit more content on a subject than you ever realized you could.

Give it a shot! Tell me what you think about free writing techniques. Are you coming up with better content? Tell me about it below.

Learn more from online marketing strategist, Ed Dale, by following this You Tube video link here:

The Challenge 2010: Free Writing

Categories : Business Blogging

Comments (2)

Jul

7 Ways to Measure the Cost of a Website

By Susan H · Comments (0)

Website or Website Marketing Strategy?

It’s a given that every company needs a website. It still surprises me how many don’t, instead opting to exist only in directory listings. While I highly recommend directories, and am even launching my own local business directory in a few days, I wonder about the reasons a business would choose that option in lieu of an actual website instead of in addition to a website. Taking that thought further, I wonder how often companies understand the actual value of a great website. Chances are it’s not ignorance, it’s money.

It isn’t expensive to have a website. In fact for about $5.00 a month, you can create your own cookie-cutter site that may do some handy things for you when it comes to making ‘an appearance’. But those who know will tell you, the difference is as extreme as the price. I may have just lost those of you who believe, “All I really need is …”

Your website acts as your online presence, yes, but a website marketing strategy requires so much more. Without a proper understanding of what a website should be able to do, any and all money invested into its creation is a waste. Just existing is simply not enough.

Your website needs to be found by the people who will buy your services or products.

To do so takes strategy with your words and link system, but also requires that you have a certain amount of control. What you say to your viewers, how you decide to lay out your pages, and a system designed to continually update your website with new information, are as important as the design itself.

Once they find you, your website needs to answer their questions.

Answer their questions. Yes, you need to let them know about you, but the best way to do that for today’s customer is to put a priority on his/her needs and address them with the wonderful things you can do to satisfy them. Although your website should tell viewers about your company, it should only be part of your advertisement platform and not the end-all of it.

Your website needs to advocate for your company – speak for you – in the absence of you.

When your website is a resource for your viewers, you encourage their return. In so doing, you appeal to their need to understand who you are and what you’re about before they decide to make a purchase. Does your site connect with other like businesses and share that helpful information with your viewers?

It’s more than “I’m better than everyone else, you should do business with me”. Are you making the experience of going to your website enjoyable with easy-to-understand navigation and helpful information? Are you giving anything away? A great website makes those transactions very easy.

Your website needs to keep viewer attention long enough to convince them to contact you.

Believe it or not, some of the strategies promoted these days do the exact opposite. When your link ratios are too heavy and exist ‘above the fold’ of your copy, you risk losing viewer attention to another location.

Contact forms should be easy to use, and include all of your contact information, including your business address, phone, fax, email, and social media connections.

Your website should be also be attractive and current. Readers are much more likely to interact with a company that has taken the time and expense to have an appealing quality over an ‘existence’. If you want to stand out, this is huge.

Your website should be able to interact with your viewers and customers – encouraging their reviews and opinions.

When you encourage your current customers to leave comments and reviews on your website, they become your best advertisement to your new viewers. Addressing consumer complaints through your blog shows good faith effort to rectify problems, endearing consumers with your blatant integrity.

Your website should be easy to format.

Many cookie-cutter sites available today just fail here. Adding pictures can be way too time-consuming, and formatting text in a manner that engages readers can be a grueling chore. A fully-functional, well-built CMS website can be completely designed to reflect your company, while allowing continuous updating and interactivity that make your website a pleasant task instead of a ‘duty’.

A website should be able to easily grow in page depth.

The deeper your site, the more credible - according to Google. If you get locked into a cheap site that limits your page depth potential, it will be difficult to address building onto your site in the future. Page depth refers to sub-navigation. As your site ages your website should increase in relevance as you continue to update it with more information.

All in all, a great website that accomplishes all of those tasks effectively, and for that matter – awesomely, is well worth the initial up-front cost it requires.

For more information about great website design, contact my associate, Shari Voigt, at Zero To Sixty Marketing LLC.

Have you been considering a new website? Did this post help? Leave me your comments and questions below, I’m happy to respond!

Categories : Search Engine Optimization

Comments (0)

Jun

Your Small Business Should be Blogging

By Susan H · Comments (3)

Why should your small business be blogging? Your interaction with viewers, or lack thereof, may be the only thing holding you back from more sales. While the importance of a website is crucial in our tech-crazy era, a website that has the ability to update information through blogging will outperform in sales when compared to a company website that doesn’t. There are other ways to add updated material continually to your site, and many have value, but a blog adds something more.

A blog can have a name, such as The Richardson Copywriter, that specifically targets an audience. Location keywords are helpful in your SEO strategy, and assist your local efforts substantially.

Your blog allows your viewers to get to know you. Over time, if they like what they’re reading, they’ll continue to return to the blog posts and begin to comment and share your material, most likely online. The more frequently your company name and message are mentioned online, the better. And when someone decides to link back to you, you’re rewarded with a level of authority from Google that will start to move you up the page. Good stuff, right?

When you start to realize the trust value a blog platform develops for new business, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without one. Locally, you may do just fine with the great service you provide to your regular clients. That will keep them returning for years. Repeat business is worth around $5,000 per client in the course of a five year period, and you don’t have to advertise to them, they’re already sold! Share new offerings, yes, but the big ‘convincing argument for your services’ has already been determined. New clients are much more expensive to get. But they are necessary for continued growth, and once a new customer is sold, they become that returning customer.

So if you’re not blogging, how do you help existing clients sell your products or services to new customers? Maybe you haven’t thought about that, but you should. When existing clients post comments on your blogs, and share your business on Yelp.com, MerchantCircle.com, Twitter, or even Foursquare, it’s a pretty convincing sell to new clients. In effect, they have become your walking, talking advertisements. Almost nothing is more convincing.

Are you blogging?

Categories : Business Blogging

Comments (3)

Jun

Capture Your Audience

By Susan H · Comments (0)

Who is your audience? If you want to get your message out to the right people, you’d better be sure you’re talking directly to them. Depending on your business or industry, it can be a tightrope to walk making sure that you’ve encompassed the right demographic. After all, so many times they overlap. You don’t want to miss anybody! Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:

A plumbing industry service technician, for instance, will ordinarily buy his hot water heaters from wholesalers, but on weekends during emergency work, no wholesalers are open and they have to shop retail. So the home improvement store caters to both B2B and B2C. The most popular home improvement stores are doing a great job of making sure they don’t miss out on either customer.

A retail store for young girls has the hottest fashions around, but who makes the purchase – the daughter or the mom? What about gift cards, who makes the purchase then? Mom might buy the card, but the daughter is choosing. And just maybe her boyfriend!

Floral arrangements never really change too much. The holidays impact the age and gender of the shopper, but overall, everyone buys flowers and someone has a birthday everyday. The difference in the product lines will change per holiday, catering to one gender more than another.

When it comes to online products, like website design and copy, all of those things have to be considered – and they’re quite different depending on the business. The graphics, keywords, and structure all vary based on the target audience just as much as a brick and mortar establishment. Everything from color to font speak not only of the company website and products, but also to the consumer.

Direct mail campaigns don’t use any keyword strategies that a spider might like, but they still need to use the words that will most impact the client they’re aiming for. In direct mail pieces, the tone, color, and graphic choices are the dominant considerations. But so is the mail itself – flier, panel-brochures, or inserts. Occasionally, it can be more important to get in front of the masses than it is to target specific demographics – but more often, marketing campaigns bring in a higher yield when they’re strategic.

There’s quite a bit to consider when you want to increase sales. When you want to be certain you’re targeting the right customer, be prepared to study and refine long-term. Sending out two slightly different models is the best way to test your return on investment (ROI). Change your text slightly and alter the response request on each piece, and see which one brings back the highest return. The next campaign will benefit from that research because you can now remove the lesser performing piece. Testing this way is ongoing, and will improve your understanding of who, exactly, is your best customer.

Testing your ROI between variations in two different mailings or online sales pages is an effective way to learn how to increase customer response. For more information, or questions regarding these methods, you can always hit reply in my E-newsletter. I welcome your comments and questions below as well, and will always respond to real people.

Categories : Target Marketing

Comments (0)

Jun

Making Virtual Business Solutions Work

By Susan H · Comments (2)

Virtual marketing departments and outsourced business solutions are becoming more mainstream with improved technology. Companies can outsource everything from human resources to data entry, and marketing to off-site consulting. Why not? Work previously requiring overhead can now be completed with shortened man-hours and reduced office space. It isn’t as simple as turning over the keys, however, and some of the issues that used to be uncovered during the employee hiring process may not be as apparent when hiring an entire department. Additionally, getting those issues resolved might be handled differently.

Communication is the key

It is every bit as important to communicate effectively with a virtual department as it is with an in-house department. Regular meetings should still be kept, and guidelines should still be adhered to. One of the most effective ways to work together is to schedule video or phone conferences weekly to discuss the parameters of outstanding and pending work. Staying ‘in the loop’ will allow open conversation – an opportunity to praise work well done or identify areas for improvement. At the same time, it is equally important that the outsourcing company is reachable and willing to discuss questions or concerns stemming from the virtual department.

Keep these things in mind:

Spell out exactly what is expected of your virtual department. Documentation can be helpful.
Discuss dates for product or project completion. Virtual departments work for several companies and will have requirements due to their time lines as well as the outsourcing company’s expectations. Working together will assure that goals are met.
Require accountability. What is the hierarchy within both companies for problem resolution?
Have a good attitude.

Working Smarter Should Work

If your company isn’t using collaborative tools and team effort to accomplish goals, working virtual won’t be more efficient. The end results should be easier to accomplish, not more difficult. Using something as easy as Google tools, like G-mail, Google Docs, and Google Reader can help multiple people work on, approve, and share vital information so individual tasks can be managed off-site.

Other helpful collaborative tools that help with various aspects of communication include:

Mikogo.com - Screen sharing and voice conferencing. Allows the presenter to change between screens for different screen sharing perspectives. Also provides a pointer for the other participants to comment directly on the presenter’s screen. Large file transfer ability is also a plus.

Deskaway.com – File and document sharing with up to date communication and task management in a secure environment. Allows projects to be broken into tasks and individually assigned all under one project listing. Also shares large files and comments with all or certain team members. Great for project approval due to the comment structure and editing ability. Additionally manages time for entire projects as well as individual team members.

Dropbox.com – Largest free file share I’ve seen. Easy desktop application allows a drag and drop for files, documents and images, and task bar alert when new information is included. All team members can access at the same time quickly and seamlessly. One member can drop a file in the box, and other members instantly have access to it.

Virtual Problem Resolution
Somewhere, somehow, or sometime a problem will arise. When it does, how will it be resolved? Part of that question has already been answered above. First, know the hierarchy involved within each business. Know who to go to when issues are not resolved. Second, have a good attitude – even in adversity. Nothing gets the defenses up like feeling an attack coming on, and you won’t get the resolution you’ve hoped for without practicing patient people skills.

Patient people skills? Yes. No matter what side of the circumstance you’re on. Remember that people are only people, and even if everyone is truly trying to do their best, something still may go wrong. Having a good attitude isn’t taking abuse, neglect, or irresponsibility with a smile. Rather, it’s recognizing that the whole picture may not be evident to the naked eye, and deciding you’re not going to let an issue destroy relationships.

If the situation has a poor outcome and your company has handled it well, you’ll be better prepared for the next scenario. Understand that sometimes the resolution of a problem is a parting of the ways.

On the other hand, apologies, flowers, and concert tickets can go a long way.

Categories : Business Solutions for Working Virtual

Comments (2)

How Often Should Your Business be Blogging?

Why Does Blogging Frequency Matter?

What’s a Small Business to do?

Grammatically Speaking: Tips to Remember When Blogging

Here are a few things to check before you post:

Does Time Prevent You From Blogging About Your Small Business?

5 Steps to Writing Your Business Blog

Great Copywriting is Necessary for All Businesses

Is great copy really effective?

How can you tell if your copy is working for you?

Free Writing: It’s all in the Edit, Not the Composition

7 Ways to Measure the Cost of a Website

Website or Website Marketing Strategy?

Your Small Business Should be Blogging

Capture Your Audience

Making Virtual Business Solutions Work

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