There are a lot of things to know about effective copywriting. These are just ten do’s and don’ts to help you craft better copy. If you put this list near your desk before you write any copy, you’ll improve your copy exponentially. First the Do’s Know Your Audience – Are you sick to death of hearing this yet? Well, it’s just the facts. You must know your audience so well that you can create audience personas and write your copy directly to them. Don’t make assumptions that you know the audience without study. Even if you are part of the demographic, study your audience anyway. Have a Clear CTA –…

When you’re trying to come up with content for your website, the question of green topics versus hot topics often comes up. Green topics, often referred to as “evergreen” content, is content that will usually be good for many months or even years, while hot topics are immediately “old” after a short period of time. Even a day or two might make a hot topic obsolete. The very fast answer as to which kinds of topics are best, is that you definitely want to have a website full of green topics, interspersed with some hot topics. Most of the things you write about should be evergreen, which makes green topics…

Continual learning experiences are important to any business owner. It doesn’t matter whether you have an online business or an offline business – learning is something that you’ll need to do for the rest of your life if you want to become and stay successful. Thankfully, continuing your business education can be a fun social experience if you involve yourself in collaborative learning opportunities. Finding Learning Communities * Social media – Use social media to access local groups online. Start with looking at what groups the people you know on Facebook are taking part in. Once you join a few groups on FB, you’ll be exposed to other opportunities to…

Blogging for profit is a very real career choice that you can be successful doing if you have a plan of action, follow through, and include these ten key ingredients of an effective and profitable blog. 1. Great Design Depending on your niche, your design should make your audience focus on what is most important about your blog. For instance, if you have a blog about art, then your design should be focused on the genre you’re dedicated to. If your blog is more business focused, you’ll want to tone done the design to be more content focused. 2. Strategic Monetization Making money from your blog is the goal, but…

Getting traffic to your website is something that takes dedication and time. The things that worked last year will still work today, but you’re going to have to do more of it. There is more competition than ever before, and with the improvement of search engine algorithms you’ll need to provide more value than ever before to your audience. Publish More Relevant Content Content has always been king, and nothing has changed. You need to blog daily, if possible, and work on providing content in other ways, too – such as relevant article directories, guest blog posts, eBooks, and more. The more relevant and unique content you can dish up…

Whether you work from home or work in an office, at some point you will likely attend a business meeting of some type or another. The best way to do well at any business meeting or event is to focus on creating a positive first impression. Research the Audience Every meeting usually has a specific audience that will go to that meeting. If it’s a more universal type meeting, research the people that you want to connect with. Know some facts about them and how they got their start. They’ll be impressed that you took the time to get to know them before meeting them. Dress Appropriately Find out what…

People love quoting that nothing in life is free, but when it comes to awesome software and tools that you can put into use for your business right now, nothing could be further from the truth. There is great free software and tools available that can help you run your entire business. 1. Open Office – This is a fully-fledged open source office suite with all the functionality and bells and whistles you’re used to having with MS Office. It has word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, 3D illustrator, database, and a mathematical equation editor. It’s everything you need in an office productivity suite. I have used Open Office and it’s a…

Online marketing is highly focused on content marketing. Content is the king and it always will be when it comes to marketing, especially online. If you think about it, though, content has always been the king – even before online marketing existed. Previously it was on TV and radio, in books, newspapers and magazines and at in-person events. It was in advertisements, in brochures, and more. People are truly insatiable for more information. Now you just need more, and it can get quite expensive and overwhelming. But there are ways to get more bang for your content buck. 1. Know Your Audience – All marketing begins and ends with your…

Having online events is another type of content. Think of everything that goes into planning an online event and you realize it’s all about content. First, you need something to promote, then you need to create the program, and, guess what; if you record the event, you’ve got – that’s right – more content. Thinking outside the blog for a moment, you soon realize that there is so much content that you can create that you may not have considered previously was content. But, now that you know that online events are content, how do you go about planning one? Decide the Topic First you need to pick a topic…

Once you set up your email campaigns it’s easy for time to go by and to let everything get a little stale. If you’re not getting the results you used to get, it’s probably because you’re in an email rut. And if you want to get out of the email rut, it’s best to come up with a plan to update and improve your email marketing at least once a year. Every year take the time to update technology, redesign your artwork, improve your calls to action (CTA), optimize for new devices and so forth. Update Technology Are you still using the same technology that you were using five years…