If there’s any one thing that can be said about SEO with certainty, it’s that it manages to cause a lot of confusion.

For example, it seems like many people’s idea of SEO was formed 10 years ago, and hasn’t bothered to change with the times. Even an online veteran like Robert Scoble is completely clueless about modern best practices for search engine optimization.

So, before we go any further, let me answer the question posed by the headline . . .

Yes, SEO copywriting still matters.

Here’s why.

Search is still the biggest game in town

“Pick your survey, search remains one of the top activities on the Internet and has been for over a decade,” said search industry legend Danny Sullivan when I pinged him on Twitter. Danny pointed me to one such survey that shows search is the most common online activity after email, and that fact cuts across generations.

“People make billions of unique searches each month,” said SEO guru Aaron Wall via email, “and unlike Facebook flittering, those people are in focus mode.” In other words, compared with most Internet traffic, searchers are the most motivated people that hit your site.

If they’re looking for a product or service, there’s a good chance they’re looking to buy it. If they’re searching for information and your site provides it, you’ve got a great chance of converting that drive-by traffic into a long-term subscriber.

And of course if you’re a professional web writer, whether freelance or with an agency, this discussion is purely academic. You try telling the client not to care about Google traffic, and let me know how that goes.

So, search traffic is clearly important, as long as it’s targeted search traffic. Let’s look at the elements that constitute the modern practice of search engine optimization so we can attract those highly-focused visitors.

Off-page elements eat the biggest slice of SEO pie

Take a look at the image below, generously loaned to me by SEOmoz:

A quick review of the chart reveals that as far as SEO goes, what happens off your site matters more than what’s on it.

• 23.87% – The general trust and authority that your domain has is the largest indicator of SEO success. As Authority Rules makes clear, what works for search engines is what works with people as well.
• 22.33% – The number of links to a specific page matters a lot too… so think twice about link viability when your content is just out of the gate.
• 20.26% – The anchor text of external links matters because this is Google’s way of finding out what your page is about according to other people, not just you.

In other words, it’s like my favorite saying goes:

What people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

In this case, Google wants to know that people are linking to you, and the words they’re using (link anchor text), because that’s a more trusted relevance indicator. So yes . . . compelling content is always rule number one. But just like great content goes unnoticed without promotion, great content doesn’t rank well if you don’t make it clear what it’s supposed to rank for.

But how do we get people to notice our content so they can link to it? That’s where social media comes in. Blogging, social news sites, Twitter, Facebook – these are organic content distribution systems powered by your audience (and their friends).

It may come as a surprise that some of the brightest minds in social media are SEOs, and they’re completely on the up-and-up and non-shady. It’s just that they’re too busy getting things done to proclaim themselves social media experts or some other nonsense.

The huge influence of “off-page” factors on search optimization is why I wrote the SEO Copywriting 2.0 series 3 years ago. I updated it for 2010, but it is still directly on point, because it deals with fundamental aspects of strategic content development that don’t really change.

If you haven’t, check out SEO Copywriting 2.0 to get more out of the remainder of this series. An understanding of content development strategies is critical before going the “last mile” with on-page optimization.

SEO copy is the “last mile” to strong search rankings

Are you familiar with the “last mile” problem in the broadband industry? You can have thousands of miles of high speed fiber optics carrying loads of data cross country, but if the final connection to the customer’s home is aging copper or pokey coaxial, the benefit of the optical cables is lost.

Likewise, if you do everything right by building an authority site that Google trusts, but don’t tell Google that your page content matches what people are actually searching for, the targeted traffic benefit is lost. That’s what effective SEO copywriting does – it tells Google which words are the most relevant ones.

You don’t have to optimize on-page upfront. But you do have to begin with the ending in mind from a keyword standpoint, due to the importance of anchor text when people link. We’ll go more into that in part two of this series.

And if you ignore this SEO stuff? Sure, you’ll get plenty of untargeted “long tail” traffic otherwise, but what good does that really do you? Even with an advertising business model, irrelevant traffic bounces off your site quickly, leading to disgruntled advertisers who don’t renew. And if you’re selling something, you’re only burning bandwidth.

The beauty of building a reader-focused online presence based on valuable content is that you can do well even if Google hates you. But the irony is, if you actually follow that path, Google loves you.

Take advantage of that. It’s the critical last mile of a well-rounded online marketing strategy that makes a huge difference to your overall success.

Traffic must convert, or why bother?

Now we come to the big point. Everyone loves traffic – it’s addictive and strangely gratifying in its own right.

But traffic doesn’t pay the bills. It’s people who take the actions you need them to who do.

Going back to that confusion, many think that a search-optimized web page is some ugly keyword stuffed mess that sends people running for the hills on sight.

That’s not true. At least not when done well.

Danny Sullivan said it well at the close of our discussion:

“Unfortunately, too many assume that SEO means trying to trick search engines. It doesn’t. It simply means building a site that’s friendly to them.”

And that’s what we’ve been talking about here at Copyblogger for four years now (and helping at the code level with Thesis). Now let’s further explore on-page optimization specifics in this Simple SEO Copywriting series.

Next in the series:

• Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting
• Does Writing for People Work for SEO?
• Introducing Scribe: SEO Copywriting Made Simple

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Unglued Media. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Recently, I was reading a post about sponsored Tweets, which sparked debate in both the comment section and on Twitter. The debate boiled down to whether or not a sponsored Tweet, or any sponsored content for that matter, is ethical.

Social media has a long history of being uncomfortable with making a profit. People believe there is some noble benefit to be gained from “taking the high road” and giving everything away for free.

If you’ve read Copyblogger for any length of time, you’ll notice that they talk a lot about content marketing. In essence, how to build an audience and gain trust and authority by giving content away.

It should be obvious that the goal of that process is to actually make a sale and pay your bills. But for some reason, that’s the part that people struggle with.

Is making money bad?

There is a certain percentage of the population that views any business pursuit (outside of the 9-5 workday, mind you), as a case of profiteering and being greedy.

In the conversation I mentioned above, some people have declared that they’ll stop following the “guilty” party. Some have said that they are completely turned off by all affiliate marketers. And others have stated that all the profits from this venture should be donated to charity.

Of course there’s more to life than making money. But I’m also not opposed to making a profit. If I have something of value to contribute, why should my family live in a van down by the river?

Money is useful for a lot of things, including charitable work and finding the cure for cancer. Like it or not, it makes the world go around. And there’s nothing particularly noble about relying on someone else’s money to lift us up.

Are social media spaces sacred?

What is it that makes one place acceptable for commerce, and another “sacred”?

Why is it now considered OK to monetize a blog, but not OK to monetize a Tweet?

And why does being generous with free content lead so many people to get angry when we try to monetize?

I’ll give you two examples.

Example 1

Chris Brogan has given away a ton of fantastic free content for 11 years. In fact, his primary audience isn’t even a consumer of what he’s selling.

But that doesn’t matter . . . he still gives, freely and generously, every single day.

When he asked his readers to reciprocate and support his book, Trust Agents, (for a whopping 15 bucks), what happened?

His audience put his book on the bestseller lists, yes. But there was also a considerable backlash. Apparently, a vocal minority thought he was supposed to give for free forever, and never ask for anything in return.

Example 2

Gary Vaynerchuk gave free content to his Wine Library TV viewers for years before he asked anyone to buy anything. Sure, he offered wines for sale, but he never pushed them. He consistently cared much more about his audience than he did about making a sale. In fact, I’ve never met someone more passionate about community than Gary V. You can hear it in the way he talks . . . it’s in his blood.

But when he launched his book, Crush It, people all over Twitter begged him to shut up about it. They wanted him to tone it down and relax. (Like Gary V. is ever going to do either of those things.)

These two men gave generously for years before asking for anything in return. And when they did, it was small change compared to what people spend on beer, coffee, movies, or video games. And even smaller change compared to what people make for their companies as 9-5 employees.

For some reason, it’s OK to make money at a day job. Don’t ask any questions, just sit in your cube and do what you’re told.

But when a passionate entrepreneur uses social media to create relationships and ask for money, that’s over the line. I guess the line of thinking is: I can’t make any money on my blog, so why should he?

I realize I’m preaching to the choir here, but there’s a reason for that. It’s simple really:

We need to stand up for our livelihoods

Our dream is under attack. The way of life that many of us are working toward is under siege by people who don’t have the courage, desire, or dedication to make it happen.

How can we let someone come into our house and talk smack? How can we not stand up for what’s right?

Making money, whether with affiliate links, sponsored content, or creating products, is not evil. It’s simply a byproduct of our desire for self-actualization. The world is better because of entrepreneurs, not worse, and it’s time we made that known.

So, are you with me?

About the Author: Nathan Hangen writes about web entrepreneurship at NathanHangen.com, and about how to use social media to fuel your brand at Making It Social. Follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

Earlier this year, Brian and I created a course called Freelance X Factor.

It was designed for the “typical” Copyblogger reader. (Smart, interested in writing, pretty savvy about social media . . . but possibly “not there yet” when it comes to packaging all of that up and turning it into income.)

The course is designed to give you a “business model in a box,” to take what you’re great at and start using it to make a better living. Our focus was to take social media writers and turn them into effective businesspeople.

While we were at it, we included a lot of content to help you become a social media rock star, if you weren’t there already.

And, in honor of the worst global economy since the Great Depression, we packaged all of this up at an incredibly attractive price.

Why bring all this up now? Because everything that made the course so valuable remains true. But we’re just about to raise the incredibly attractive price to something that’s merely “very attractive.”

We’ll be taking the offer down before the end of the month. In early January, we’ll be raising the price for Freelance X Factor from $87 to $147. Which is still, frankly, a hell of a deal.

If you’re a writer and you think the Copyblogger business model could help you re-position yourself for more income, fewer hassles, more respect, and more fun, well, you’re right. Click here to find out how to do that for the best possible price.

I’m a big fan of Leo Babauta.

His book, The Power of Less, is required reading for anyone who wants a rewarding life.

But many of Leo’s followers think doing less means, well, settling for less.

I’m here to tell you it can mean achieving much more.

In the last 4 years, I’ve been living the power of less.

In fact, I started with that philosophy well before I knew it was one.

Do Less to Achieve More

I annoy many of my partners and friends with my approach.

But the reality is, engaging in busy work is not the secret to success.

Success comes from ignoring the busy and sticking with developing content and pursuing projects that matter to your goals.

That means you need time to think.

Enjoy the Stillness

Don’t get me wrong, I work hard and push the envelope.

But I choose the things I pursue very carefully.

And that means ignoring the immediate until I know the right thing to do.

Again, this often annoys people who want my immediate attention.

But when it’s right, I act . . . and everyone involved is a lot happier with the eventual outcome.

Don’t Do Things That Don’t Matter

The stereotype of the successful person is one who juggles multiple cats in the pursuit of maximum return.

I’m telling you to drop most of those cats, and lovingly embrace that special one.

Making clear decisions about content and projects that work requires clear vision, and you don’t achieve that in a frenzied, haphazard mode.

Right decisions require the right mindset, and a clear path to achieving the goal.

How clear is your mind right now?

P.S. No cats were harmed in the writing of this post.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

I spent most of 2007 hanging out with Curtis Jackson, better known as Fifty Cent. Together we wrote a bestselling book about hustling, fearlessness, and power.

I’d like to share a couple of insights that arose from that collaboration.

After the remarkable success of his first two commercial albums, Fifty Cent stood on top of the music world. But his very success was starting to corrode his musical ability.

His sense of connection, so vital on the streets, was fading in this new environment he now inhabited.

He was surrounded by flatterers who wanted to be in his entourage, managers and industry people who saw only dollar signs in him. His main interactions were with people in the corporate world or other stars.

At the same time, he could no longer hang out on the streets or get firsthand looks at the trends that were just starting up.

All of this meant that Fifty was flying blind with his music, not really sure if it would connect anymore with his audience. Other stars didn’t seem to mind this; in fact, they enjoyed living in this kind of celebrity bubble. They were afraid of coming back down to earth. Fifty felt the opposite, but there seemed to be no way out.

Know your environment from the inside out

Most people think first of what they want to express or make, then find the audience for their idea. You must work the opposite angle, thinking first of the public. You need to keep your focus on their changing needs, the trends that are washing through them. Beginning with their demand, you create the appropriate supply. Do not be afraid of people’s criticisms—without such feedback your work will be too personal and delusional. You must maintain as close a relationship to your environment as possible, getting an inside “feel” for what is happening around you. Never lose touch with your base.

~ The 50th Law

An experiment in reconnection

In early 2007, Fifty decided to start up his own website. He thought of it as a way to market his music and merchandise directly to the public, without the screen of his record label, which was proving quite inept in adapting to the Internet age.

First, he decided to experiment. As he prepared to launch a G-Unit record in the summer of 2008, he leaked one of the songs on to the website on a Friday night, then the next day he refreshed the Comments page every few minutes and tracked the members’ response to it.

After several hundred comments it was clear that the verdict was negative. The song was too soft. They wanted and expected something harder from a G-Unit record.

Taking their criticisms to heart, he shelved the song and soon released another, creating the hard sound they had demanded. This time the response was overwhelmingly positive.

He put up the latest single from his arch-enemy The Game, hoping to read the negative comments of his fans. To his surprise, many of them liked the song. He engaged in an online debate with them about this and had his eyes opened about changes in people’s tastes and why they had perhaps grown distant from his music. It forced him to rethink his own direction.

Creating a radical connection

To draw more people to his site, Fifty decided to break down the distance in both directions. He posted blogs on personal subjects, and then responded to his fans’ comments. They could feel they had complete access to him.

Using the advances in technology, he took this further, having his team film him on their cell phones wherever he went; these images were then streamed live on the website. Made dramatic by Fifty’s flair for confrontation, membership grew by leaps and bounds.

As it evolved, the website came to strangely resemble the world of hustling that Fifty had created for himself on the streets of southside Queens.

He could produce testers (trial songs) for his fans, who were like drug fiends, constantly hungry for new product from Fifty; and he could get instant feedback on their quality. He could develop a feel for what they were looking for and how he could manipulate their demand.

He had moved from the outside to the inside and the hustling game came alive once more, this time on a global scale.

Four keys to the fearless approach

The public is never wrong. When people don’t respond to what you do, they’re telling you something loud and clear. You’re just not listening.

~ Fifty Cent

Fifty’s approach isn’t just for pop culture icons. His insights into rebuilding connection are universal.

Most of us live in a society of apparent abundance and ease. We lack a sense of urgency to connect to other people. In such a melting pot as the modern world, with people’s tastes changing at a faster pace than ever before, our success depends on our ability to move outside of ourselves and connect to other social networks.

At all cost, you need to continually force yourself outward. You must reach a point where losing this connection to your environment makes you feel uncomfortable, even vulnerable.

The following are four strategies you can use to bring yourself closer to this ideal.

1. Crush all distance

In this day and age, to reach people you must have access to their inner lives — their frustrations, aspirations, resentments.

To do so, you must crush as much distance as possible between you and your audience.

You enter their spirit and absorb it from within. Their way of looking at things becomes yours. And when you recreate it in some form of work, it has life. What shocks and excites you will then have the same effect on them.

This requires a degree of fearlessness and open spirit. You are not afraid to have your whole personality shaped by these intense interactions. You assume a radical equality with the public, giving voice to people’s ideas and desires.

What you produce will naturally connect in a deep way.

2. Open informal channels of criticism and feedback

When Eleanor Roosevelt entered the White House as First Lady in 1933, it was with much trepidation. Denied an official position within the administration, she decided to work to create informal channels to the public, on her own.

She traveled all over the country — to inner cities and remote rural towns — listening to people’s complaints and needs. She brought many of these people back to meet the president and give him firsthand impressions of the effects of the New Deal.

She opened a column in The Woman’s Home Companion, in which she let her audience know, “I want you to write me.” She would use her column as a kind of discussion forum with the American public, encouraging people to share their criticisms.

Within six months she had received over 300,000 letters, and with her staff she worked to answer every last one of them.

She began to see a pattern from the bottom up — a growing disenchantment with the New Deal. Every day, she left a memo in her husband’s basket, reminding him of these criticisms and the need to be more responsive. And slowly, she began to have an influence on his policy, pushing him leftward. All of this took tremendous courage for she was continually ridiculed for her activist approach, long before any First Lady had ever thought of such a role.

As Eleanor understood, any kind of group tends to close itself off from the outside world. From within this bubble, people delude themselves into thinking they have insight into how their audience or public feels — they read the papers, various reports, the poll numbers, etc.

But all of this information tends to be flat and highly filtered. It is much different when you interact directly with the public, hear in the flesh their criticisms and feedback. You create a back-and-forth dynamic in which their ideas, involvement and energy can be harnessed for your purposes.

3. Reconnect with your base

We see it again and again.

A person has success when they are younger because they have deep ties with a social group. Then slowly they lose this connection.

In his own way, the famous black activist Malcolm X struggled with this problem. He had spent his youth as a savvy street hustler, ending up in prison on drug charges. Out of prison he became a highly visible spokesperson for Nation of Islam, channeling his emotions into powerful speeches that gave voice to those who lived deep in the ghettos of America.

As he became more and more famous, he made an effort to inoculate himself from the psychic distance experienced by other successful leaders in the black community.

He increased his interactions with street hustlers and agitators, the kind of people from the lower depths that most leaders would scrupulously avoid. He made himself spend more time with those who had suffered recent injustices, soaking up their experiences and sense of outrage.

I knew that the ghetto people knew that I never left the ghetto in spirit, and I never left it physically any more than I had to. I had a ghetto instinct; for instance, I could feel if tension was beyond normal in a ghetto audience. And I could speak and understand the ghetto’s language.

~ Malcolm X

The goal in connecting to the public is not to please everyone, to spread yourself out to the widest possible audience. You have a base of power — a group of people, small or large, who identify with you. Keep your associations with it alive, intense and present.

Return to your origins — the source of all inspiration and power.

4. Create the social mirror

Instead of turning inward, consider people’s coolness to your idea and their criticisms as a kind of mirror that they are holding up to you.

Your ego cannot protect you — the mirror does not lie. You use it to correct your appearance and avoid ridicule.

The opinions of other people serve a similar function. You view your work inside your mind, encrusted with all kinds of desires and fears. Through their criticisms you can get closer to this objective version and gradually improve what you do.

When your work does not communicate with others, consider it your own fault. You did not make your ideas clear enough, you failed to connect with your audience emotionally. This will spare you any bitterness or anger that might come from people’s critiques. You are simply perfecting your work through the social mirror.

About the Author: Robert Greene is the bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power (two million copies sold) and The 33 Strategies of War. His collaboration with Fifty Cent, The 50th Law, spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Check out Robert’s blog at Power, Seduction and War.

Many bloggers already know that Twitter is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog.

When I talked to Guy Kawasaki about my book, he called the Tweetmeme Retweet button “the most important button on the web,” because of the enormous traffic-driving power it possesses. With one click, any of your readers can spread your post to hundreds or thousands of their followers.

As a marketer, I, of course, see this as an opportunity for optimization. When I see a powerful tool, my first impulse is to figure out how to make it even more powerful.

When you click that button, Tweetmeme grabs the title of the page it’s on, shortens the URL, and combines the two into a autofilled tweet for posting. Thus, the title of your post becomes the tweet that is shared with a potentially huge number of Twitter users.

If the importance of compelling headlines wasn’t painfully obvious before, it should be now.

Nearly 20% of all “normal” tweets contain a link, yet almost 70% of retweets do. Retweeting is the most common way links are shared on Twitter.

I’ve done research into various factors surrounding retweets and found a handful of factors that you may want to take into consideration when writing headlines for posts that you hope to share and spread on Twitter.

Use nouns and third-person verbs

When I looked at the parts of speech that occur in retweets versus those that occur in normal tweets, I found that retweets tend to be noun-heavy and use third-person verbs.

This pattern is reminiscent of newspaper headlines. Highly retweetable headlines talk about someone or something doing something.

A headline should never talk about all the things you did yesterday and how you did them, as past-tense verbs and adverbs both lead to far fewer retweets.

The most (and least) retweetable words

The words that tend to occur more in retweets than in normal tweets are topped by the word “you.”

This means, whenever possible, you should talk directly to your readers. “Top” and “10″ also rank highly, showing that lists do well on Twitter. Not surprisingly, talking about social media and Twitter itself also helps.

On the other side of the coin are the least retweetable words. Random first-person verbs and details about your life, however fascinating you may find it, don’t get a ton of retweets.

Tell me something new

I compared how common words in retweets are to how often these same common words appear in normal tweets, and found that rare and more novel words are highly retweetable.

When you’re writing your headlines, you should be striving to say something new that breaks through the clutter of everyday chatter.

Don’t be dumb

I expected to find that retweets were simple and required less intelligence to understand. But my data showed the opposite.

Using two readability metrics, I found that retweets often use longer, more complex words. So don’t try to “dumb down” your headlines for Twitter; users and power retweeters are smarter than you may think.

Stop talking about yourself

LIWC is a linguistic system designed to identify concepts in pieces of text.

The most striking thing I found when using LIWC to analyze retweets is that self reference does not get a lot of sharing.

In other words, don’t talk about yourself if you want Twitter traffic; talk about your readers.

If you’ve been in social media awhile, you probably already guessed that was the case — now you’ve got the data to back it up.

About the Author: Get more tips like this and learn about the full range of social media marketing platforms, tools, techniques and strategies from Dan Zarrella’s The Social Media Marketing Book, published by O’Reilly.

I’ll admit it. I have a soft spot for Thanksgiving.

First, because it’s an excuse for me to bake for three days. (If you need a last-minute recipe for the world’s best chocolate cream pie, I’ve got you covered.)

And second, because it reminds me to quit grumbling and start noticing all of the amazing stuff I’ve got in my life.

Here’s my list of 10 things I would humbly recommend you add to your own “gratitude list” this year. They’ve done great things for my business and I think they’ll do great things for yours.

1. The crummy economy

I know, this seems weird. I’m not discounting the very serious and significant problems this has created for millions of people. One of whom might well be you.

But in cracking open the existing systems and shaking them like an ant farm, the horrible economy has also created some amazing opportunities.

If you think of the big companies as dinosaurs who’ve just been hit between the eyes with a gigantic meteor, remember that you’re the smart, agile, adaptable monkey who’s going to inherit the earth.

Frankly, the economy is going to suck for awhile no matter how you feel about it. So you might as well look for the angles that can benefit you.

2. The social web

Brian’s not a fan of this term, since of course everything about the web has always been social. It was built by humans, after all.

But there’s no question that a revolution in communication technology lets you be social with more people, more easily, over incredible geographic and cultural distances, with less friction than ever before.

Which means you can get the word out about what you do for hardly any money, with no special technical ability, to tens of thousands or even millions of people.

And that’s just cool.

3. The quality of free information

Stewart Brand didn’t just say “information wants to be free.” He also said, “information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable.”

What this boils down to is that a lot of smart people have put together great tips, techniques, and help for you to do just about anything. Very often, they start by selling that information at a hefty price tag, to those for whom it’s most valuable.

Then some time goes by, they keep developing their stuff, and they “move the free line” by giving away tremendously valuable information for free.

Yes, the free goodies take time to sift through. Yes, there’s a whole lot of junk.

But if you’re bootstrapping your project, you can spend a little more time and energy and find the answers you want.

Because the current ethos is “give away incredibly valuable stuff for free to build trust and rapport,” you can benefit from that.

You have to choose wisely, of course. Don’t spend your time watching or reading anything from people you don’t respect or relate to. But if you stick with the people your gut tells you are right for you, you can learn amazing things without spending a dime.

4. The quality of paid information

Because there’s so much excellent free material out there, it means that for people who are creating paid information products (membership sites, ebooks, home study courses, etc.), their stuff has to be top notch.

So when you find yourself crossing that line where you’ve got some spare money but not much spare time, you have increasingly excellent opportunities to educate yourself online.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re learning to fly fish, climb the corporate ladder, design gardens, potty train your kid, be a happier person, or even (yes) market your business online, there are terrific resources that will teach you to do that for a very reasonable fee. And you can access these courses from virtually anywhere on earth.

5. Twitter search

Companies have taken hundreds of millions of dollars in VC funding to build tools that “listen in” to the conversations buzzing around the Internet.

That’s fine, but you can do an amazing job of this for free by signing up for a Twitter account.

Too many people think Twitter is mostly about telling people what kind of sandwich they’re having for lunch today. But for smart business people, Twitter is mostly about listening.

Search Twitter for the kinds of phrases your customers tend to talk about. Maybe it’s low-carb dessert recipes or finding a karate school for their kids.

You’ll find out what they’re saying, what kind of language they use to talk about it, what bugs them and what delights them.

These are staggeringly useful things to know when you’re trying to market a product or service. And you can get it by spending maybe 6 or 7 minutes a day, for free.

6. Connections with incredible people

Whatever it is you like to blog or write about, there are amazingly cool people who like to blog and write about that, too.

They’re posting wonderful articles and interesting perspectives and asking fascinating questions. And you can get to know them just by writing about their stuff (with a link, of course), posting reasonably intelligent comments on their blog, and following them on Twitter.

The smart, funny, snarky, interesting, kind, and entirely wonderful people I’ve met by blogging have blown me away. And I’m always finding new folks. (That was true before I started writing for a “big blog,” by the way. In fact, it’s how I started writing for a big blog.)

7. Aweber

Aweber (www.aweber.com) is my email newsletter management tool. They do a great job getting mail into in-boxes (mostly because they hate spammers even worse than you do). They have useful tools, a fantastic how-to blog, an easy-to-understand interface, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

A great email autoresponder sequence is my single favorite marketing tool (above a blog, even), and Aweber is the tool I think is best for the job.

8. Backpack

37Signals is another company I think is terrific, and I would be toast without their Backpack product.

Backpack keeps everything I do in one spot. Half-written blog posts, GTD lists, my calendar, reference notes for client projects, wild-hair ideas for new ventures, gardening plans, checklists for things I’m building, even backups of the million ebooks and audio education products I buy.

For me, they have the exact right combination of flexibility and simplicity, at an excellent price. If it doesn’t fit into my Backpack, I can probably live without it.

9. My copywriting library

A lot of those “secrets of the internet money-getting zillionaires” came from books you can buy for $12 on Amazon.

You can’t make money unless you can persuade someone to pay attention to what you’ve got, and then build a case for its value. That’s copywriting. (It’s even copywriting if you’re doing it with video.)

Classics like Scientific Advertising and Tested Advertising Methods are joined by newer giants like Robert Cialdini’s Influence and Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, and a handful of great web-based references like Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets.

Learning to write great persuasive copy is mostly a matter of studying the techniques (which don’t change much, because human nature doesn’t change) and then trying them out. There’s no “push button” service that will magically do it for you. But the truth is, it’s well within your ability. You just have to get out there and start trying it.

10. The Third Tribe

This was an idea that bubbled up on Copyblogger back in February, after we were asked the question “Whose side are you on?”

Brian and I talked about this question quite a bit, and realized that we definitely weren’t on the strict yellow-highlighter-squeeze-page side. But we weren’t on the “blog for 20 years before you dare to ask anyone for the sale” side either.

So we made up a third side.

Actually, it had been there all along, going back four years to when Brian first created this blog. But once you have a label, you find that you start to articulate what you’re doing more clearly.

That led directly to the brand-new Copyblogger email newsletter, which kicks off with a 20-part course on how to be an ethical, non-sleazy, relationship-based kumbaya blogger and still make a very nice living. If that sounds like something that would interest you, you can learn more about the newsletter here.

What’s on your list?

What are you grateful for this year? What do you think other readers would be grateful for if they knew more about it? Let us know in the comments.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

Last Friday I was in Atlanta, where I gave a talk on social media marketing at Dan Kennedy’s InfoSUMMIT conference.

I’m something of a fish out of water at a Glazer-Kennedy event. For example, unlike at Blogworld, I’m the only person in a room of 800 who has pink hair.

I wasn’t sure they’d be too receptive to what I had to say, but they surprised me.

They were warm, welcoming, and extremely interested in my no-shortcuts, no-magic-beans answers to their questions about how to use social media for marketing and business.

So in honor of Dan Kennedy, who sometimes styles himself as the “Professor of Harsh Reality,” I thought I’d talk today about some of the not-so-kumbaya aspects of social media marketing.

Harsh Reality #1: No one is reading your blog

As far as anyone can figure, there are about 200 million blogs around the world. Technorati tells us there are about 900,000 blog posts made every 24 hours.

The world is not waiting breathlessly to hear what you have to say about losing weight with acai berries, making big money as an affiliate marketer, or how to join your Secrets of the Breakthrough Millionaire Insider Guru Mastermind Platinum Club.

Me-too content gets ignored. Scraped and remixed junk won’t cut it. There’s too much good content that you need to compete with. And there’s no magic system that can replace sitting in front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read. (Or partnering with someone who can.)

If you don’t have a great answer to the question “Why should anyone read your blog?” you’re going to be pretty unhappy with your results. That’s why we spend so much time teaching you how to produce better, smarter, more effective content.

Harsh Reality #2: You’ve got to give (some of) your best stuff away

It’s very natural to expect to get paid for what you do. And you should have a business model that leads to exactly that.

But first, you’ve got some dues to pay.

Commenter Corree Silvera mentioned her favorite Brian Clark quote from this year’s Blogworld Expo:

Don’t sacrifice a lot of money later for a little money now.

The answer to the question in Harsh Reality #1, “why should anyone read your blog?” is that you’re going to give away some of your best, most valuable, most life-improving material away for free, within a well-defined content marketing plan.

Just remember Sean d’Souza’s bikini concept. You can give 90% of it away, but there will always be people who will happily pay to see that last 10%.

Harsh Reality #3: It will eat your life (if you let it)

Social media marketing would be pretty easy if we never had to eat, sleep, shower, or hang out with our kids.

But if doing those things is important to you, you’re going to have to set some boundaries.

Know what you want to do with social media, keep yourself focused, and set a timer if you have to. The tools are amazing, but so is their power to distract you from what you’re trying to accomplish.

Harsh Reality #4: Social media hates selling

Is there anything more pitiful than that guy who gets on Twitter and won’t shut up about how he can put you in a condo today with no money down despite your lousy credit rating? Even the spammers are blocking this dude.

It’s really hard to sell products and services in social media, mostly because this audience hates salespeople worse than they hate Microsoft. You may be able to get some limited success out of it, but more likely you’ll be banned, blocked, shunned, and abused.

Instead of promoting a product or service, promote fantastic content. Promote a great special report or an amazingly valuable email course. Promote wonderful stuff that you’re giving away.

Use excellent free stuff to build authority and trust. Then you have the right to make an offer and possibly do some business. Not before.

Harsh Reality #5: What they say is a million times more important than what you say

Your marketing might be beautifully executed. You might have a special report that goes more viral than H1N1, a great-looking blog that hits Digg twice a day, and an email marketing sequence that copywriting genius Gene Schwartz would have been proud to write.

If your reputation sucks, none of it matters.

People with lousy products, crummy business practices, and shady backgrounds get found out. And word spreads with frightening speed.

Treat people right, because if you don’t, you will be exposed. And it will not be pretty.

Harsh Reality #6: A blog is not a marketing plan

Blogs are cool, but a single useful tool isn’t the same thing as a solid business and marketing plan.

Blogs are just one way to get your best content out there, and they work best when you pair them up with email autoresponders, special reports, Twitter, and any of a dozen other powerful tools.

Just hanging out and being cool isn’t enough. If you’re in social media to do business, you have to develop a strategy for taking mildly interested strangers and turning them into raving fans . . . and customers.

Harsh Reality #7: You don’t get to opt out

Businesses that think they can ignore all this “Twitter stupidity” tend to get painfully rude awakenings.

The conversation will happen with or without you. You definitely don’t need to respond to every chucklehead with a Facebook account (and you shouldn’t), but you need to keep your ear to the ground, and you need a clue.

OK, enough about harsh reality already! If you want our best advice about what to do to create a great online business, subscribe to Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter. It’s some of our best stuff, no junk, no fluff. And of course we will never, ever spam you or share your information with anyone.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

Can social media make you famous?

Come on, you know you’ve thought about it. Who can resist dreaming about a post going viral and getting hundreds of thousands of visitors? Or having tens of thousands of followers on Twitter who follow your every move? Or checking your email and having hundreds of messages from your adoring fans?

It can happen. I know, because I helped make it happen for my friend Brea Grant.

In 2008, Brea called to tell me she had just been offered a major role on the third season of the mega-popular NBC show Heroes, and she wanted me to help her leverage the opportunity. I’d previously created a website to help her connect with casting directors, but now we both realized she was going to need a strategy to connect with fans.

A crash course in connection

Over the next few months, I gave Brea a crash course in social media. She learned how to use Twitter and Facebook, YouTube and Ustream. We also launched a blog.

The purpose of each tool wasn’t just to tell everyone what she was doing or what she thought about something. It was to help her connect directly with her fans and build a relationship with them.

It worked. Or, I should say she worked. Brea did everything I asked her to do and more, and the result is that she’s created a fan base that followed her beyond her character’s untimely demise on Heroes. The contacts she made online also led to the creation and contract with IDW to publish her first comic book We Will Bury You, due in early 2010.

And me? It’s safe to say I learned a ton.

How this applies to you

After his success launching a consulting service here at Copyblogger, Jon Morrow asked me to share some of the lessons I’ve picked up from working with Brea.

Through my work with my own clients, I’ve found that these are universal truths that work for small businesses, professional bloggers, hobby bloggers, and anyone who just wants to raise their online profile.

I hope you enjoy them . . . and be sure to read to the end to see how this applies to you, not just celebrities.

Lesson #1: Find your blog’s core purpose

Here’s a question that never seems to go away: what is a blog?

Is it a public journal? An online magazine? An extended way to connect with friends and family?

And the answer is . . . a blog is whatever your audience needs it to be.

People visit Brea’s blog to experience a personal connection with Brea. Visitors might receive this from chatting with her on Twitter, listening to the same music she listens to, or just getting a glimpse of her day-to-day life.

Whatever your topic, you need to get crystal clear on why people are there.

Is it to read the hilarious details of your personal life? Watch detailed how-to videos on watercolor painting? Hear your latest celebrity rant?

It doesn’t matter what it is, only that you know it and ruthlessly eliminate anything that gets in the way.

Lesson #2: Ditch the distractions

As Brea’s fame has increased, we’ve received countless offers to add bells and whistles that “polish” her site and social media presence. Many of these tools are very cool and cutting edge but would ultimately get in the way of our core purpose: a personal connection with Brea.

So we turned them all down.

I’ve seen lots of my other clients struggle with this problem too, although usually on a smaller scale. If you’re starting a blog, for instance, you might get distracted by polishing and re-polishing your blog design, learning about ad networks, or experimenting with dozens of the latest WordPress plug-ins. More likely than not though, all of those things are just distractions for both you and your audience.

Before you do anything online, always ask yourself: is this in line with the core purpose of what I’m trying to accomplish?

If it’s not, then ditch it. Too many useless bells and whistles don’t increase your fame. They just make it look like you have something to hide.

Lesson #3: Streamline your social networking

One day Brea called me and said, “You know I shut down my Facebook account, right?”

Well NO, I didn’t know, and she is supposed to ask me about these things first! But I agreed that it was the right move.

Why? Because Facebook had become an unmanageable beast rather than a fun place to connect with her fans.

I’m not saying to ditch social media if it’s confusing, because . . . well . . . it’s always confusing. But if you’ve made a genuine attempt to learn the culture of a site and engage with it and it just ain’t doin’ it for you, try something else.

Maybe your tribe isn’t there, or maybe it just makes you cranky. Either way, it’s not going to be effective. Move on.

Lesson #4: Focus on your talents

Brea loves Twitter. She likes the short updates, ease of use, and how easy it is to get into one-on-one dialogue with fans. She also loves blogging, especially sharing the music she’s listening to and books that she’s reading.

Surprisingly, she’d much rather write than video blog. Being yourself on camera is quite different than playing someone else!

You might love podcasts, or video blogging, or writing blog posts. Whatever your flavor, you’re going to shine in a space when you pick the one that is best suited to your natural abilities.

This is NOT a get-out-of-jail-free card for learning new skills! You’ll never know whether or not you thrive in a medium until you practice and get comfortable with it. The point is that you don’t have to do everything. Try it all, and then stick with whatever works best.

Lesson #5: Take advantage of your opportunities

Okay, let’s be honest. Did social media make Brea Grant famous? Or was it all about being on a mega-popular TV show like Heroes?

The honest answer: both.

Lots of actors land a role on a popular show, fail to capitalize on it, and then disappear forever. Lots of aspiring actors also try to build a following with social media and never make it.

To a large extent, success online (or in life in general) is about doing both. You have to work hard until the right opportunity shows up, and then you have to make sure you leverage it to its maximum potential.

Social media can help get other people talking about you, but first you have to do something worth talking about.

Want to learn how?

I’m guessing you’ve figured out that I have a course on how to use social media to generate buzz around your career or business. It’s called Creating Fame, and it builds on my experience in helping clients do exactly that.

But how about some free videos first?

In Creating Fame, I talk about the importance of giving away high-quality free content to create a greater connection with your audience, and that’s exactly what I’d like to do here.

Take a look at my Creating Fans Out Of Thin Air Video. If it looks like something you’re interested in, just leave your name and email address for more than two hours of additional free content, including a video from Brea.

Whether or not you’re interested in the course, I think you’ll learn a lot from the free videos. Click here to check them out.

About the Author: Laura Roeder is a social media consultant and the founder of Creating Fame.

It’s that time of year again…

Summer’s just about over, the kids are heading back to school, and Teaching Sells is opening up for the Fall semester.

Many of you might not be familiar with Teaching Sells, and that’s perfectly fine.

Here’s what we’ve got to introduce you:

For starters, a 22-page PDF report (or audio version) called Forget Everything You Know About Making Money Online (And Start Making Some). You’ll discover why you need to forget all the “get rich quick” crap and start building a real online business.

Plus, we’ve got three case studies for you that demonstrate three different ways Teaching Sells members have taken advantage of the online training opportunity we provide. You’ll also see why being an “expert” at the training you sell is completely optional.

Plus, we’ll also send you:

• A bonus report about building quick and easy membership sites.
• A 20-Step Process Map to building an online training business.
• An instructional video that reveals the solution to the “traffic problem” every online entrepreneur faces.
• And a complete course listing of the entire Teaching Sells program.

But hey, why read this?

We put together a brand new video that explains all of the above to you in wonderful Technicolor Teaching Sells style (and yes… we teach you how to create videos like this in the course).

You’ll notice the video is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek play on the typical “make money online” promotion. We had a lot of fun making it, so hopefully you’ll be entertained as well as informed.

Watch the Teaching Sells video here and sign up of all the free goodness.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of Teaching Sells. Get more from Brian on Twitter.