5 Writing Tools No Internet Marketer Should Be Without

Category Tools and Resources | 9 comments »

Writing compelling content is difficult at the best of times. You have to use a target audience’s hot buttons, emotions, and deepest needs to convince them to buy. But, unless you’ve got a real knack for this type of thing, it just isn’t as easy as it sounds. Thankfully, there’s a few tools that can make it a whole lot easier.

Fair Warning: ‘easier’ does NOT mean these tools create ‘foolproof’ copy! (A hammer only works when you miss your finger!)

Linked In, Facebook &/or Social Search

(Credit)

Once you’ve identified the target audience, you need to learn from them, and who better to learn from than one of them? These Social Networks and searches make it easy to find someone in the perfect target market, learn a bit more about them, gather ideas, and see what the product or service’s competition is up to. You’ll even find it easier to write or sell because you can pretend you’re selling to one of them.

Evernote

One of the best ways to learn how to write better copy is to practice writing and reading someone else’s sales copy. So, when I find a good piece of copy, I clip it and put it into Evernote. Then, I can write them out and get to learn how to improve the results of my copy. These bits can also act as a guide while providing you with ideas for handling certain situations. Lastly, it’s also a good place to keep information about the various products, services, and their competitors as well as examples of good titles and ideas.

ReadPlease

Finding mistakes is tough enough, but things such as awkwardly worded phrases can be almost impossible to find unless someone else reads the copy to you. That’s exactly what ReadPlease does. It’s robotic sounding, but you’d be amazed at how many mistakes you can catch with it.

Whiteboard

(Credit)

Whether you choose an online whiteboard, or the more freeing real-life version, writers need a spot to track site structure, concepts, facts, and develop ideas. And with the freedom of a whiteboard, there are no limitations. Trust me, after using one to structure a piece of copy, you’ll wonder how you ever wrote something without it. (It’s also good for jotting down quick notes, but so is Sticky Notes, if you’re interested.)

WYSIWYG, Keyword Analyzer & Email

Off all the tools listed here, I rely on these three the most. The online WYSIWYG makes it pretty easy to code up your text and leaves it nice and clean. The keyword analysis tool is one of the select few online you can use to calculate keyword density simply by copy and pasting.

Your email program can also be extremely helpful. Now, I know you’re going ‘duh’, but it’s actually a great code cleaner. You see, MS Office has a habit of loading text full of useless code that seems almost impossible to get rid of. To fix this problem, email the file to yourself. Then, preview the file in the email program, select the text, copy, and paste it wherever you need it. You’ll find it keeps the HTML without all the junk. (This tip came from someone several months ago, but I can’t remember who. If that’s you, I’d love to link to the post!)

Oh! One last thing! I’m testing out a Firefox addon called ‘After the Deadline’, which is a spelling, grammar, and style checker. You might like it!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Why I Got Lost and Left Your Site

Category General, Tools and Resources | 17 comments »

I spend hours surfing the web, reading articles, and watching videos. Each site gets about a second to lure me in or watch me leave. Knowing how many users are enjoying your content, and how many are bouncing away is the first step in creating a useful website. Making sure you follow acceptable usability guidelines is the next step.

Good navigation is a must for any website. Going from one page to another should be intuitive and easy. Make sure each page has a navigation bar that points to major parts of your site.

The more options people have the better you chances of someone finding something they like. Be careful not to overload the navigation bar though, that might just turn people away.

One thing many people don’t do, but I highly recommend is making your logo a link to your home page. Giving people multiple options to get to your front page allows people to easily start over if they get lost.

Another question to ask yourself is, “Can people read what’s written?”. Using large legible fonts is important. Users are moving towards larger screens, with higher resolution. That size 11 font is a thing of the past, move to something easier to read and easy on the eyes.

Once you know your site is usable and people aren’t bouncing because of the way the site looks and flows, it’s time to decide what are important parts of your site.

Start by creating goals and conversion points. For example, are you trying to get users to sign up for your newsletter? or are you pushing a specific product?

Google offers the ability to track your conversions via Google Analytics. You should definitely set it up and watch it often.

When we talk about website flow we’re referring to how well your site funnels visitors. How long do they stay? How many are sent to conversion points? How many convert?

I’m going to leave the end of this post open, since there are so many different tips about navigation. I’ll post my favorite tip and ask that you add one in the comment section. When everyone has had a chance to sound off, I’ll compile them all together.

Samir’s Tip: Most users refuse to click on more than 3 links to find pertinent information. The less obstacles to a conversion point, the more likely they are to convert.

Now it’s your turn…

Popularity: 50% [?]

User Name Check – A very cool tool

Category General, Tools and Resources | 5 comments »

I came across a handy little toy the other day that has some interesting applications for those playing in social spaces for fun and profit… It’s called; User Name Check.com

This funky little application searches a TON of the more popular social media, networking, book marking and multi-media websites to see if a given username has been taken. While that is, on the surface, pretty cool… there are a few things your can do with it such as;

Researching company/website names – if you are starting a new company or website, you could definitely use this in co-ordination with domain name research to ensure the best possible choices. If there are SMM elements in your marketing plan, certainly something to look into.

Securing all profiles for SMM campaigns – obviously if you have a new client/business/website and are including elements of a social media marketing campaign, this tool is wicked handy. There are so many listed that it makes securing all the relevant ones a much easier task. It also helps when researching the potential usernames to ensure you get one that is fairly Virgin across the majors.

Researching targets for marketing campaigns – let’s say you’re crafting some link bait and want to target various social media influencers, this tool would be great to stalk them and really understand what types of content might appeal to them. Cyber stalking is made easy with this little bad boy.

Monitor the competition – you can also use it to keep a close eye on the competition by identifying profiles and setting up some monitoring.

This little toy should definitely find its way into your social media marketing toolbox; great for business and stalking too…

(Note; in early testing there were some bugs and false/positives noticed by Andy, so be sure to double check listings while the bugs are being squashed)

Have a great weekend!

Popularity: 51% [?]