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Business Bloggers Rock

Big companies are paying big money to another company that creates and manages private, branded online communities.

Why?

  • 82% of community members said they were more likely to recommend the company’s products than before joining the community
  • 54% said they were more inclined to purchase products from the company since joining the community

You’re doing the same by blogging, for very little (if any) out of pocket.

Therefore, you rock.

But please, don’t feel like you need to post every day to succeed. In fact, one or two quality posts a week is likely all that is necessary.

Here’s 10 reasons why I may be right about that.

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The Number One Rule of Niche Marketing

It’s been nice to riff on One Thousand Paintings this week, because it’s provided an opportunity to make several (in my mind) important points about the realities of effective modern-day marketing. However, because I personally am a fan of Sala’s concept, I’m worried that the larger point may have been missed.

I greatly appreciate everyone who stepped up in the comments and said:

“Huh?”

In all likelihood, an overwhelming percentage of my readers probably remain puzzled at the appeal of this project. And I’m glad that people stepped up and said so. I think more would have done the same, except perhaps that they were afraid of being publicly contradicted.

The only people I took issue with were those that intimated that the project was a fraud or sham, which it clearly is not.

Here’s the deal — in a long tail and short tail world, the vast majority of people are not going to “get” what you’re doing. In fact, that’s the key requirement.

So, remember this:

The more people who think you’re crazy, the more likely you’re on the right track.

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Why One Thousand Paintings Works

What a fantastic phenomenon One Thousand Paintings has become in the last 24 hours for the Zürich-based artist Sala. In case you haven’t checked it out yet, Sala is selling 1,000 paintings of the numbers 1-1,000. The selling price of each painting is calculated like this:

  • Value = 1000 – number.
  • Initial discount: 90%.
  • Current discount: 60%.
  • The discount will decrease by an absolute 10% for every 100 paintings sold.
  • Min. price: $40.

The project launched in February of this year. After several months of incremental sales, Sala had sold 105 paintings as of May 29. Yesterday he hit the tipping point, and as of this writing the tally is 413. Not a bad day and a half, thanks to a flood of viral linkage prompted by a mention in BoingBoing.

When I blogged about this yesterday, one commenter wondered what this had to do with copywriting. The answer is simple.

Just about everything.

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Free Teleseminar Tonight (Featuring Yours Truly)

I will be interviewed tonight by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff (a/k/a The Blog Squad) as part of their Conversations With Experts teleseminar series. It’s happening tonight at 7:30 Central Time, and it’s free if you attend live.

We’ll be discussing the ways in which business blogs can attract new prospects, establish a relationship with them, and convert them almost effortlessly to a client or customer. And by telling stories that matter to your target market (using copywriting techniques), you’ll be able to retain those clients and customers and boost repeat sales.

Click here to register, and I hope you can make it!

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I Just Bought “67″

This is too cool. And if you don’t think it qualifies as art, tell us about it in the comments…

And regardless of your answer, from a marketing standpoint this concept is experiencing its “tipping point” today, likely thanks to BoingBoing and Seth.

Great story!

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How to Avoid Thinking Too Hard After a Holiday Weekend

One of the things my blogging style doesn’t allow me to do as much as I’d like is to link out to all the interesting things that pop up in my feed reader. So, since I’m feeling rather lackadaisical after the long weekend here in the States (and I have another Mavs victory to prepare for tonight), I thought I’d give these smart people the stage.

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Building Traffic to Build Your Fan Club

Building Your Fan Club

It’s hard to engage readers on a continual basis.

It’s downright impossible to even get to that stage if no one stops by in the first place.

Those of you who have read Viral Copy know that I discussed eleven strategies in four categories for gaining attention and links from other bloggers. And if you’ve been around this blog for a while you also know that I primarily use only one of the categories and two of the strategies.

The category is Resources and the two strategies are tutorials and free ebooks.

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How to Get 53% More Readers for Every Blog Post You Write

You know from the 80/20 Rule of Headlines that the best way to get your writing read is to improve your headline. It can be a bitter pill to swallow when you realize that most people, even among those who subscribe to your blog, are not reading every post, but it’s not just you — it happens to us all.

So what was it about the headline of this post that got you to read this far?

Well, it’s not only that the headline makes a promise to deliver unique and useful information to my audience of bloggers. It’s also the way that it makes that promise.

The headline is very specific.

While certainly not the only method for writing good blog post titles, just about any headline can be made better by being as specific as you possibly can. Specificity increases credibility because specific details are simply more believable than broad assertions. Plus, a specific headline conveys more valuable information to a potential reader, which acts to draw them magnetically into the content.

Here are a few examples of ultra-specific headlines:

  • How I Made $19,931.42 Last Month With Google AdSense
  • In This Free 10 Chapter, 123 Page Ebook You’ll Learn…
  • Eleven Secret Techniques That Make Bloggers Money
  • Lose 36 Pounds in Only 7 Weeks
  • How to Shave 5 Strokes Off Your Golf Score in 3 Days

Of course, the single most important rule of ultra-specific headlines is that you need to be able to back up your assertions. And as I’ve done before, I break the rule in order to make the point (which is the true joy of writing a copywriting blog).

While I’m positive that being more specific in your post titles will increase the number of people who read your post, I have no earthly idea what the actual percentage will be for you. There are way too many variables involved.

So I really should have said:

How to Get More Readers for Every Blog Post Your Write

But that’s simply not as good a headline. :)

UPDATE: I had forgotten all about this Marketing Experiments test that showed that an optimized headline increased website conversion rates by 73%. This means that not only did overall readership of the content rise, but 73% more people took the requested action, due only to a modified headline. In the first case study, the winning headline simply used a specific dollar amount!

So 53% is likely too low just for increased readership. My apologies for underestimating. :)

For more on writing great headlines, check out the Magnetic Headlines series on Copyblogger.

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Is RSS Like CB Radio?

Imagine if ATT had decided to send all of its telephone subscribers a free CB radio back in the 1970s, just to make sure the company was at the forefront of an exciting new communications technology that was sweeping the nation. Mass adoption of trucker tech by the general population would have been a silly thing for a monopoly to gamble on, right?

Seth Godin today looks back at the CB radio craze of the 70s, and specifically how people at the time mistook a niche fascination for a larger trend. The post concludes with Seth asking whether RSS feeds are akin to a true killer-app like email, or destined to join GeoCities in the discarded technology dustbin.

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What’s Your Blog Really About?

image of Building your fan club logo

I read a great story this morning.

It’s all about this guy who started blogging back in 2002 after he read an article on the subject. He spent all his free time teaching himself the ins-and-outs of blogging back at a time when all the “how to blog” resources we have today didn’t exist.

He continued to start additional blogs on different subjects, and soon discovered that he was making enough income to cut back his employment to part time so he could focus more on blogging. He decided to really give this blogging thing a go and see if he could make a living from it.

From there, he eventually did become a full time blogger, supported mostly by advertising revenue from close to 20 blogs. It seems this fellow had stumbled into a thoroughly modern new profession, and it allowed him to make much more money than he had previously.

Where did I read this story?

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