We’ve been thinking a lot about new WordPress users lately.

As elegant and simple as it is, WordPress can be a little daunting if you’re just beginning to work with it. The beauty of it though, is that it doesn’t have to be.

So, we’ve been taking some time to think through the big questions people have when they’re just starting out.

What came of it was an indispensible, easy to understand guide for the Genesis Framework for WordPress, compiled and written by Copyblogger Media’s Brian Gardner and our relentless team over at StudioPress.

Whether you’re just getting out of the gate with your Genesis + WordPress website, or you’re already publishing regularly, this easy-to-read distillation of how the Genesis Framework works for you is an invaluable guide for every smart online publisher.

In fact, you should go ahead and grab it even if you don’t own Genesis — it’s a fantastic primer for WordPress too.

The guide is for bloggers, copywriters, consultants, and content marketers who rely on the efficiency, security and scalability of Genesis + WordPress to make their place on the web.

With the free guide, you’ll be well on your way to utilizing (and enhancing) the rock-solid security and remarkable SEO capabilities of the Genesis Framework.

With the vast array of out of the box, turn-key designs & options, unlimited support & updates, and as many website domains as you can build on, the new revolution in publishing is getting a lot easier for everyone.

As Darren Rowse puts it “Genesis lets me sleep easy.”

This free guide helps you navigate all the basics:

• An introduction to Frameworks and Child Themes: page 4
• Turn on Auto-Updates for one-click streamlined stability and peace of mind: page 38
• SEO Settings to ensure your content is reaching your audience: page 19
• Install procedures for both beginners and advanced users: page 6
• Understanding how to enable Widgets for extended functionality and efficiency: page 24
• Theme and Navigation settings to style the look and feel of your site: page 11

It’s all in there. Download it, print it, or drop it on your mobile device to keep it handy whenever you need it.

Note: This is a “living” document, so as Genesis evolves, so will the guide. Check back from time to time for an updated version.

About the Author: Kelton Reid is an independent screenwriter and novelist, as well as a copywriter for Copyblogger Media. Get more from him on Google+.

One of the original forms of content marketing is publishing a good old-fashioned book. It’s not the book sales that make most business authors wealthy, but what they can do because they’ve written a book — consulting, speaking engagements, and more.

But here’s the twist. A recent report out a few weeks ago that electronic books are outselling paperback books, and Apple expects to sell more than 28 million iPads by the end of 2011. So it’s no surprise that a lot of writers want to know how they can get a new-fangled electronic book into the iBookstore.

Getting your book into the iBookstore can be a low-cost and profitable route that exposes your work to entirely new markets. But getting a book approved by Apple isn’t a simple process.

You need to follow specific guidelines for preparing and publishing in order to avoid time-consuming headaches and a rejection email.

This post offers you a step-by-step guide to preparing and publishing your book for submission to the Apple iBookstore.

Preparing your book for electronic publication

It is important to make sure that once readers download your digital book, they have a really good experience with it. That’s what gets them to mention it to others, talk it up on social media sites, and rate it well.

Part of ensuring a good digital experience is in the editing process. This post on BubbleCow discusses some really important elements of self-editing.

You also need good design. Great covers sell books. And with digital books, it’s doubly important to capture reader attention, since the icons are small and there is so much to see at one time.

A couple of places to look for quality cover designers are 2H Designs (UK) and The Book Designer (US). Whether you use those services or not, they’ll give you a good idea of the types of design services out there.

Self publishing for the iBookstore

Apple’s distribution system for the iPad is a free app called iBooks. This app allows you to buy and download books from the iBookstore.

Apple doesn’t have too many restrictions on the books that can be uploaded to the iBookstore, but individual writers are not able to directly upload titles.

In that case, you must be wondering why I am writing this guide. Well, as it turns out, Apple has appointed a number of iBookstore aggregators that are approved to submit books to the iBookstore for you.

For this article I am going to focus on using Lulu. Another popular option is Smashwords.

Here are some things to take into consideration before you get started with an aggregator:

Cover Image. You will need a quality book cover image (JPEG) and it must be a vertical rectangle shape at least 600 pixels tall. The cover should include both the title and the author name. It cannot be a greyscale image and it cannot contain hyperlinks or web site addresses. Also, keep the image PG-13 (no nudity).

Content Restrictions. You must be the original author, or exclusive digital publisher or distributor. Apple strictly forbids content that encourages illegal activities, promotes intolerance or discrimination, invades the privacy of any person, or that slanders or libels a person or organization. Erotica that depicts underage people engaged in or witnessing sexual acts is totally off-limits, in addition to being just plain wrong.

Pricing. Apple prices ebooks in 99-cent increments, so you are encouraged to do the same.

ISBN. You need to get an ISBN for your ebook. Most aggregators have services that will automatically assign you one.

Get your books into the iBookstore

Now that you have your book edited, a cover created, your pricing set, and have had it checked for content, you are ready to use an aggregator and get your digital book into the iBookstore. (One important thing to know before you move forward: you retain all copyrights and intellectual property rights to your books.)

I’ll take Lulu as an example of the steps you’ll go through to get your digital book into the iBookstore. The steps are very similar for all aggregators.

1. ePub format. ePub is the format Apple accepts for ebooks. Lulu has a service that will run a special ePub checker and then convert your book into the proper format that is guaranteed to pass Apple’s strict guidelines. You can also submit the ePub file yourself using any number of ePub services as well as Apple’s own Pages program. If you want a speedy process, I would suggest using the aggregator’s services to avoid any technical holdups.
2. Cover image. You will need your cover image to upload along with your ebook in ePub format.
3. ISBN. Lulu will assign your book an ISBN as part of their regular service.
4. Upload. You can now upload all your files and supply all of the necessary information about your book.
5. Get Paid. Apple retains 30% of all revenue from sales on the iBookstore. The publisher (that’s you) receives 80% of the remaining revenue and Lulu receives 20%. Or you can pay Lulu a one-time fee and you won’t pay them any additional commissions.

That’s it. You now have your very own book in the Apple iBookstore for sale.

Now, of course, it’s time to market it. But that’s another post …

About the Author: Shane uses his Tablet Computer Geeks blog to deliver the latest and best iPad information, including accessory reviews, app reviews, and industry updates. Follow him on twitter at tc_geeks.

If you’re blogging in your spare time, it can seem impossible. You’re already struggling just to publish a post every weekday, and sometimes you can’t even manage that. You want to work on your SEO, twitter following, and relationships with popular bloggers, but you also have a job, family, friends — responsibilities that are just more important.

And so you wonder: should you just keep going, doing the best you can?

Or is there a strategy you can use that doesn’t require so much time?

I started to research the answer to that question about a year ago, and after working with more than 50 bloggers, trying different things, I think I’ve found one.

As it turns out, the answer isn’t doing more. It’s doing less.

Let me explain.

Step One: Publish only one blog post per week

Whoever said you have to publish a blog post every weekday?

Nobody, as far as I can tell. It’s just what everyone does, and so most of us assume it’s the only way to do it.

But it’s not.

If you’re strapped for time, there’s nothing wrong with cutting back on the number of posts you publish each week. Your readers might even be grateful. Most people have so much to read that they don’t have time to keep up with all of your blog posts, and they feel bad about it. By cutting back, you make it easier for them to stay a subscriber.

So how many posts should you publish, exactly?

There’s no set number, but here’s a suggestion: start with one really good post per week, and if you have time, work your way up.

The key word is “good.” One well-written, well-thought-out blog post can get you more links and traffic than hundreds of hurried ones. Some writers are faster than others, but in general, if you’re spending less than two hours on most of your posts, you’re probably going too fast. Cut back the quantity, and focus on quality.

By itself, this will often double or triple your traffic. But it also does something else: it frees up time to focus on promotion.

Step Two: Publish one guest post per month on popular blogs

As you’ve probably seen, there are hundreds of strategies for promoting a blog. In an ideal world, you would use them all, digging dozens of channels for traffic to come flowing in.

There’s only one problem: you don’t live in an ideal world. And neither do I.

Even if you were working on your blog full-time with a dozen employees to help you, you couldn’t do everything.

So don’t try. Instead, focus on one strategy, and get really good at it.

My advice: start with guest blogging.

Here’s why: pretty much every other traffic strategy depends on you having connections.

To make SEO work, you need links from trusted sites. To make twitter work, you need to get retweets from people who have a lot of followers. To make social bookmarking work, you need connections with social media power users who can bring you dozens or even hundreds of votes.

And that’s hard when you’re a beginner, because you don’t have any of those connections.

In my opinion, it’s far, far easier to establish relationships with influential people first, and then use those connections to fuel the other strategies.

If you can publish just one guest post per month for popular blogs, at the end of the year, you’ll have made connections with twelve very influential people who can help you grow your blog. That’s not going to give you 100,000 subscribers all by itself. But it will give you a nice foundation, and it’s one you can build on.

Step Three: Slowly start doing more posts and promotions

Once you start getting results, I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier to expand your efforts.

Everyone is more motivated to work on something that’s working. If you land a guest post on a big blog and pick up a few hundred subscribers, you won’t have to push yourself quite so hard to work on your next post. You’ll want to do it, and that makes blogging a lot more enjoyable.

You’ll also have the connections you need to slowly start trying some other traffic strategies. For instance, you could:

• Publish a special piece of content, such as a free report or video, and then use your connections to get links from popular blogs (Here’s a free tutorial on how to do that).
• Build a following on twitter to help promote your posts, and then strategically make a post go viral (Here’s a free tutorial on how to do that, too).
• Pick a search phrase that gets hundreds of thousands of searches per month, and then use your connections to get trusted links (That tutorial is coming this Friday).

By themselves, none of those strategies are new. Anyone who has been blogging for more than a few months probably dreams about attracting links, building a twitter following, and getting a first page ranking on Google.

The difference is you’ll actually be able to do it.

Cutting your posting schedule will free up the time you need to work on promotion, and guest blogging will give you the connections you need to pull them off.

It’s a very simple system, but it’s also one that gives you everything you need while investing a more reasonable amount of time.

Is the system perfect?

No.

In fact, it has one serious flaw:

Isn’t getting a guest post on a popular blog kind of hard?

Yeah, it can be.

With audiences numbering in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, popular bloggers are justifiably careful about the quality of content they publish. Frequently, they also have a lot of bloggers volunteering to do guest posts, so the competition can be stiff.

But it’s not impossible. New bloggers do it on a regular basis here at Copyblogger, as well as many other popular blogs.

There’s no reason you can’t do it too. You just need a few tricks of the trade to help you get started.

Check out the free GuestBlogging.com videos

If you haven’t seen the GuestBlogging.com videos yet, you should check them out.

They’re free, and they contain some of the most powerful strategies I’ve learned while writing for Copyblogger and building popular blogs of my own. So far, thousands of people have signed up for them, and many are saying it’s some of the best blogging advice ever published.

The bad news is that I’m about to take it all down.

No, it’s not because I’m the King of Mean. (Even though I am.)

It’s because next week, I’m opening the doors to a new training program I’ve put together specifically for people who are serious about building a popular blog. I’ll leave the videos up for about another week, but once the training program starts, I’ll be taking them down to give members 100% of my attention.

I’ll probably be releasing them again at some point, but I’m not sure when, and I didn’t want the Copyblogger readers to miss out. So, if you’ve been looking for a strategy you can implement in your spare time without having a lot of connections, be sure to take a look.

It’s not the only strategy for building a popular blog. But if you’re strapped for time, I think it’ll work well for you.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of GuestBlogging.com. Get more from Jon on twitter.

One of my favorite posts from around the web last week came from our own Associate Editor Jon Morrow. He recorded a 20-minute video post for Problogger about how he works with speech recognition software to do all of his blogging.

I do an awful lot of writing every week, and I’ve been thinking about trying speech recognition out in order to speed up the process. But like most people, I was afraid it was going to be more trouble than it was worth to get it working.

Jon’s video made me realize how simple (and inexpensive) it will be for me to make it happen.

Because it was a pretty content-rich video, a lot of folks took a quick look and bookmarked it, thinking to come back to it when they had a little more time. So what better way to spend the Friday-after-a-holiday than eating leftover turkey sandwiches and watching a great how-to post?

(If you’re not in the States, you can re-create the effect by overeating wildly today or tonight, drinking just a little too much, pounding down four desserts, having three arguments with your extended family, and then watching the video tomorrow.)

The highlights of the video for me were:

• The quick-to-install (and cheap) piece of hardware that lets the software actually understand what you’re saying.
• Jon on video! Jon and I have spent a lot of time on the phone, so I’ve gotten to know him fairly well. Getting to hang out with him for a few minutes via video was great, he’s a fascinating guy with a lot to say. (The guy can say more with his eyebrows than most people can with a 100-item list post.)
• The one-stop resource to find the right mic and hardware for your setup.
• The live demo showing exactly how Jon uses the software to manage his business and blogs.
• The comical notion that penny-pinching Jon will ever buy a Mac.

I recommend you check it out, I found it tremendously useful:

Speech Recognition for Bloggers: The Ultimate Guide

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

If you’re blogging to promote your services, physical products or digital offerings, you understand that getting a return on investment for the time and effort you put into blogging is important. On the other hand, if you spend all your time relentlessly pitching your wares, you’ll find that you alienate a good portion of your prospective audience.

The problem bloggers face from a selling standpoint is that various readers are at different awareness levels, depending on how long they’ve been reading and how much exposure you’ve provided to your offer. I was reminded by the great John Forde of Copywriter’s Roundtable that this is not a new problem.

Jack recently pointed out that Eugene Schwartz tackled the issue in Breakthrough Advertising back in 1966. Schwartz broke down prospect awareness into five distinct phases:

1. The Most Aware: Your prospect knows your product, and only needs to know “the deal.”

2. Product-Aware: Your prospect knows what you sell, but isn’t sure it’s right for him.

3. Solution-Aware: Your prospect knows the result he wants, but not that your product provides it.

4. Problem-Aware: Your prospect senses he has a problem, but doesn’t know there’s a solution.

5. Completely Unaware: No knowledge of anything except, perhaps, his own identity or opinion.

As usual, we often find that the challenges we face in modern marketing have already been thought through decades before by very bright people like Schwartz and David Ogilvy. Let’s take a look at how the 5 stages of awareness contained in a 40-year-old book can help you craft content that works for your blogging goals.

The Five Stages of Reader Awareness

1. The Most Aware

These are long-time readers who may have been specifically attracted to your offer as well, but have held off on becoming a customer for one or more reasons, even though they’re interested. These are the people you can speak most directly with, but you’ll need to make sure your direct messages are not hurting your chances with those at different awareness levels.

Strategies: Take these readers “off road” for periodic offer specific messages delivered via another channel, such as an email autoresponder. You can also do occasional offer announcement posts in between regular content, or tack on a P.S. to a relevant article.

2. Product-Aware

These people are still not sure if what you offer is right for them, even though you’ve educated them about it with a white paper or other tutorial. They don’t want to be pummeled with offer information, because they’re hung up at an earlier stage of the process.

Strategies: Often, a white paper or tutorial series of posts is not enough to convert these people. This is why there is value in establishing a second content channel, either by autoresponder or a separate blog (or both). The key is to deliver real content with independent value, but that also demonstrates a benefit of your offer and a link to your sales page at the end.

3. Solution-Aware

This person has a need, perhaps subscribes to your blog, and yet doesn’t know you offer a solution. This the perfect person to offer a white paper, free report, multi-post tutorial delivered by email or simply from a dedicated part of the blog.

Strategies: Keep in mind that without a specific way to follow-up with this person related to the educational content you’ve provided (see above), you’ll have more fence sitters than is desirable.

4. Problem-Aware

This is the classic example of the person who needs to be convinced to subscribe to your blog and begin a relationship with you. They might have arrived via search engine but they don’t know or trust you. While strong content with independent value is critical to all readers of your blog, these people most need to see the value up front to get on board as a subscriber.

Strategies: We’ve covered this topic quite a bit, so if you’re a new reader, check out these posts:

• 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers
• Four Simple Steps to More Blog Subscribers
• How to Get 6,312 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day

5. Completely Unaware

This is your typical social media news traffic. They aren’t necessarily looking for anything about you or your offer, but they’re responding to a piece of content you put out. This is the reason why I don’t favor link baiting with off-topic content. Sure, you get backlinks, and that’s good. But wouldn’t it be better if you got links and boosted your subscriptions too?

Strategies: When you’re creating content that is specifically designed to attract attention and links, keep it related to your ultimate goals. Traffic just for the sake of traffic is a waste of time when you’re selling something other than ads.

Value First

The blogs that attract audiences in the first place offer valuable content—it’s as simple as that. Pitching relentlessly from your blog will likely ruin effectiveness for most (if not all) businesses.

Again, you’re blogging in the first place to promote your business, and there’s no reason to be shy about that fact. But if the vast majority of your posts don’t offer independent value (telling more than selling), you won’t have as much trust with your audience, and you likely won’t have much of an audience at all.

Facebook has been all the rage these days since the site opened its doors to the masses and experienced a steep growth spurt. It’s an interesting place to watch no matter what, but it can also clue you in on how to more effectively market your products, services or affiliate offerings with your blog.

Facebook and the Art of Segmentation

Some people seem to miss the value in Facebook’s 35 million users, because the advertising rates are low and the click-through rates abominable. The real value in Facebook’s audience comes from data mining and the ability to watch, track and cluster what attractive demographics are doing in the aggregate.

In other words, Facebook may be selling us more than it’s selling ads.

Back in May, Facebook opened up to third-party developers via the Facebook Platform. This essentially allows independent developers to create applications (or widgets) for Facebook users to add to their profiles. These applications can be used to interact with other users, play games, and other social diversions.

While the move to open up the platform to others was applauded (especially compared to the closed off MySpace), the move was not entirely altruistic. One of the keys to extracting value from the patterns of information that Facebook users provide by using the site is segmentation into tighter interest groups. This provides more-focused advertising, sales and marketing opportunities.

So, Facebook smartly opened up the doors to third-party developers and said, “Here, you do the work.” Developers get access to the huge Facebook audience, with the hopes that their application will go viral. Facebook gets to sit back, watch and record.

Facebook applications are turning into a marketable item themselves if enough users are acquired. Chris Pearson has recently launched an application for pro football fans. If you’re a football fan on Facebook, check it out here to get a feel for how one might market to this niche audience down the road.

Your Blog and the Art of Segmentation

Even though your blog audience is more tightly focused than Facebook’s, you can still benefit from segmenting by interest. This is especially important when you’re trying to sell something. As I said in the very earliest days of this blog, you need to take people off road to sell to them, for several important reasons.

First of all, getting someone to buy something usually takes repeated exposure to the offer. While you might get away with making a pitch in a blog post, you’d likely need to keep making that pitch repeatedly to maximize conversions.

Do that, and you’ll likely run off most of your audience. They opted-in for your content, not to be barraged with sales messages.

So, what you want to do is only speak to the people who are interested in hearing specifically about whatever it is you’re selling, and continue delivering content to other readers until you have something to sell that’s of interest to them.

Here’s an example of how you can go about carving out a portion of your audience for opt-in marketing:

1. Write a post that drives interested prospects to a landing page.
2. Offer a free five-part tutorial on how to use the product you’re selling, or why it’s beneficial. Make the tutorial educational and honest rather than a hype-filled hard sell—it works.
3. Deliver the tutorial over the span of a week or so via autoresponder. At some point in the tutorial you’ll want to start offering a call to action to actually buy the product or contact you, as applicable.
4. After the tutorial is over, continue to follow-up with related content that allows you to repeat the call to action. You should probably not mail more than once a week, although many people have had success with more aggressive scheduling. The key is to continue to offer value combined with your offer.

So, for example, if you’re trying to make money with your blog via affiliate marketing, don’t just write one post about a product you think will appeal to your audience and hope the search engine gods will bless you. Offer an educational marketing experience via your copywriting skills to those who are truly interested, and let the magic of repetition do the rest.

The Art of the Autoresponder

Email autoresponders are one of the mainstays of effective online marketing, but bloggers very rarely use them. Email marketing may seem passé, but think about this—how many emails a day do you receive from Facebook that drive you back to the site?

Email is alive and well when delivered to people who want to hear from you. That’s why taking a tutorial marketing approach to selling is so important—people want independent value when making buying decisions. Give them content that stands on its own while also making an offer, and they’ll be more inclined to do business with you.

I use autoresponders in just about every for-profit project I do, and you’ll start seeing them used on Copyblogger as well going forward. In fact, I plan to offer up a tutorial with more advanced tips on creating these types of marketing tutorials (how meta!), and it will naturally be delivered only to those people who want it.

If you’re interested in learning more about using autoresponders in the meantime, AWeber offers free how-to videos and live educational webinars. AWeber is my autoresponder of choice, so I do get a commission if you sign up with them through my link. Hey, school’s starting… the babies need new shoes!

The key is to cover all the bases when it comes to the different learning styles of the audience. Let me elaborate on that point a bit.

One way in which otherwise quality content fails to satisfy the needs of much of the prospective audience is by failing to address different learning styles. Moreover, failing to properly structure the different approaches to communicating information will leave many of your readers confused and your content in shambles from a flow perspective.

Luckily, it’s easier than it sounds, thanks to the 4MAT methodology developed by Bernice McCarthy as a strategy for teachers to create more effective instructional materials. This same approach will help you develop educational marketing materials such as essays, blog posts, and white papers, and develop tutorial content that draws traffic to your site and creates satisfied new subscribers.

The Four Learning Styles

Studies have identified four discrete styles of learning based on the different ways people perceive information:

1. Innovative Learners (approximately 35% of people) want to know why they should learn something, and how it will benefit them. This is the “what’s in it for them” factor.
2. Analytic Learners (approximately 22% of people) want “just the facts,” and will be keen to see what the features or supporting data looks like once the benefits have been communicated.
3. Common Sense Learners (approximately 18% of people) are interested in how things work, and are best served by concrete, experiential learning activities.
4. Dynamic Learners (approximately 25% of people) are enthralled with the possibilities offered by the information, rely heavily on their own intuition, and seek to teach both themselves and others.

Integrating the Four Learning Styles

Failing to address any of the four learning styles will likely diminish the impact of your content. More importantly, the four styles are interdependent, in that type 3 and 4 learners cannot optimally connect with the lesson without having first experienced content aimed at type 1 and 2 learners. Plus, addressing each learning style also offers something for everyone, regardless of that person’s preferred style of learning.

This is why the 4MAT approach is called a cycle, and is represented as a sequential pie chart with each learning type representing a phase of the instruction. Structuring your writing or presentations with this cycle in mind can make you a more effective communicator.

• Phase One: Why

  Besides targeting the largest learning style group, starting off your content with the reason why the information is of value is a foundational element of the rest of the piece. It’s also critical for attracting attention. This is why your headline and opening paragraphs must quickly and clearly express a practical benefit to the reader, and why presentations must grab attention immediately before getting into substance.

• Phase Two: What

  Now we come to what analytic learners call the meat—the features of a product and the supporting data. In other words, they want cold, hard facts and analysis. This phase of your content naturally follows the statement of the “why,” and failing to properly segue into phase two by dwelling on too much fluff up front will hurt you with these people, as well as bog down your overall delivery.

• Phase Three: How

  Once common sense learners have heard the why and the what, they’re ready to dive in and learn—by doing. While it’s tough for people to get hands on when reading or listening, you can appease the how crowd with specific examples and illustrations of how things work in the real world. Case studies and other concrete scenarios bring things together for the common sense learner, and add extra understanding to the innovative and analytic learner.

• Phase Four: What If…

  The dynamic learner has absorbed everything offered so far, and has been sitting there wondering what would happen if x is modified, or what if I did y instead because my situation is slightly different? These are the people who shine during Q and A at a presentation, who take the time to email a question to the author, and who leave comments requesting clarification or offering up their own illustrations in order to sharpen their understanding. Having an interactive online presence completes the learning cycle, and allows for the conversation to spread onto other blogs and social media sites.

Engaging Left and Right Brain

Now that you have the four-step cycle down, make the presentation of your information flow by keeping the reader constantly engaged across both hemispheres of the brain. How? Follow up facts or main points with stories, anecdotes, relevant quotes… basically anything cool that holds attention and reinforces learning. This method engages left and right brain in a healthy cadence that makes the experience less of a chore, and more entertaining.

The Four Phases and Business Blogging

You’ve likely noticed that this post is heavy on the why and what, with only a sprinkling of how and very little in the way of stories and illustrations. Comments are open so we can engage in what if… However, the great thing about applying this methodology via a blog is you can do a series of posts on the same topic and approach the subject from each of the four learning styles, or otherwise break up the content in a way that makes sense. This is why blogs can be such powerful tools for both educating and converting readers into customers and clients—they allow for a running dialogue via easily digestible portions.

Any questions?

SplashPress Media Ltd. has acquired the assets of Tubetorial, LLC, which includes the Tubetorial website and the Cutline Theme Community. SplashPress is the owner of over 30 websites, including The Blog Herald and the recently-acquired Performancing.

Tubetorial was a concept I came up with several months prior to Google’s acquisition of YouTube, and the timing couldn’t have been better. I partnered with Chris Pearson to launch and develop the site last September, and we were just about to segue into phase 2 of our business plan after an initial 6 months of successful content development and promotion. However, we started receiving inquiries from several groups about acquisition. SplashPress quickly stepped to the head of the pack in terms of credibility and vision for the concepts we had created.

SplashPress plans to integrate Tubetorial and Cutline with Performancing, which shows they clearly understand the importance of community-building alongside solid content. Chris and I offer our best wishes to the SplashPress team, and expect to see great things going forward.

More at 901am.

Web copy, PDF, audio, video… plus combinations that are only limited by the imaginations of savvy online marketers. It’s not only about telling people a story they want to hear, it’s also about how they want to hear it.

Tony Clark has launched a series of posts about what he calls “video white papers,” and white paper guru Michael Stelzner has joined in on the conversation. In the second installment of the series Tony explains what he means by the term:

A few years ago, I began taking the concepts used in developing white papers for clients and applying them to video-based presentations. Not really canned slide-shows, not really product demos, and not just sales presentations, but a mix of the three. I started calling them video white papers, because like a good white paper, they focused on the audience and their issues, not the authors and all the amazing benefits they have to offer.

This is an interesting concept, and it ties in directly with what Michel Fortin is talking about. To make a sale, you’ve got to provide enough information. And why not increase your chances of making a connection by providing the information in various formats?

This type of educational marketing has been the cornerstone of my online marketing efforts since the late 90s. Tony sums up the approach nicely in part three of his series:

Useful content intended to educate, that also provides a marketing platform for related products or services.

It’s the only way that I’ve ever felt comfortable marketing. And guess what? Done strategically with great copy, compelling stories, and powerful offers, it works like you wouldn’t believe.

It’s what I had previously been calling “tutorial marketing,” up until I backed off the term because I thought it lacked the proper punch. There’s never been any doubt about the concept of tutorial marketing… in fact, it’s growing in popularity as interruption and high-pressure techniques continue to lose effectiveness.

And the term tutorial marketing itself?

Maybe it wasn’t that lame after all, especially since I haven’t come up with anything more descriptive to communicate the “don’t sell… teach” philosophy. It’s a nice juxtaposition of two things you wouldn’t normally associate together that when combined work really, really well.

After all, permission marketing wasn’t all that sexy… and it did ok.

That’s you, remember?

Since the Holiday Season is upon us, and we all have better things to do than read blogs, I thought I would go ahead and shut things down for the year. And what better way to go out than with a recap of what you found notable in 2006?

So, let’s take an unscientific look at the year’s most popular Copyblogger content, as determined by your comments, links and bookmarks:

Copywriting 101 (Series)

The series that launched the blog, Copywriting 101 is designed to get you up and running with the basics of writing great copy in ten easy lessons. The two most popular installments?

• How to Write Headlines That Work
• Writing Headlines That Get Results

Which leads us to…

How to Write Magnetic Headlines (Series)

It’s obvious you all understand the importance of headlines and blog post titles, so there’s no wonder that this was a popular 8-part series. While the 10 and 7 fill-in-the-blank headline formula posts got the most attention, it’s important to understand why certain headline structures work, right?

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

One more on headlines, specifically about specificity.

5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang

I also talked about structure, bullets, subheads and closings, but when it came to specific elements of a piece of writing, you were into the opening the most. Which is good, since it’s the most important thing after the headline.

10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers

I did a whole series on this, but this post seemed to do better (likely because I had more subscribers at the time).

The Most Powerful Blogging Technique There Is

After you read that post, you might want to read this one for the rest of the story.

The Two Most Important Words in Blogging

I love this post, because you really loved it.

Give Me Three Minutes and I’ll Make You a Better Blogger

In this case, it’s not about you. Really.

5 Signs Your Blog Post is Going Horribly Wrong

A bit of a humorous approach to keeping your writing on track, this post also caused a kerfuffle when it became the catalyst for a plagiarism scandal involving the venerable UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

You also seem to dig “famous people posts.”

Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King and Aristotle received the attention they rightly deserve, and Plato and Prince did OK as well. Owen Wilson received a luke-warm reception, and Cameron Diaz got what she had coming.

And the 2006 winner is…

How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic – The Ultimate Guide

On a blog about writing compelling content, the post that received by far the most collective comments, links, Delicious bookmarks and Digg votes is… a collection of links.

It’s things like this that keep my ego well in check.

I really would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has listened to me ramble on this year. Without you, this blog would consist of me muttering to myself, and I already do plenty of that in real life (usually when I’m trying to come up with an idea for a post).

Enjoy the holidays, cherish the ones you love, and plan on accomplishing more than you think you can in the coming year.

It’s going to be an interesting one.