Writing Relevant Content

by John Eberhard

If you have a web site, a blog, a newsletter, or any printed promotional materials for your business, you need to be able to write good, relevant content. This is also called “copy,” or the text in your promotional materials.

Not everybody is a good writer, and if you have tried and tried and haven’t been able to write good material, then hire a professional copywriter. But if you are involved in writing for any of your promotional efforts, here are some tips to help you.

First of all I want to divide copywriting into two categories. First there is the openly promotional material you write to get someone interested in buying your products or services. This includes most or all of your web site, promotional emails, and any printed promotional materials such as brochures and direct mail. Second there is writing informational material such as articles for use on blogs, newsletters, article syndication, or writing free reports or white papers.

This article will cover more writing for informational material. This is where you are not overtly promoting for people to buy your products or services. Instead you are offering information that the reader will find helpful. I wrote an article about this last October; “Becoming a Trusted Information Source.” The idea is that you put out material that is helpful to people, and by becoming a trusted source of information, you become more trusted in general and people are then more willing to and interested in doing business with you.

Although I think this strategy is not necessarily for everyone, it can be a powerful way of generating trust with the consumer today. And especially on the Internet, where someone has not heard of you or your company before, it is vital to develop that trust before the prospect will be willing to buy from you.

Solving Problems

One of the things I do with my writing is consider what problems the prospect may be experiencing, and write about how to solve those problems. In my case I write an article once a week. Sometimes it is hard to come up with a new topic every week, but I find that interacting with clients and prospects during the week, usually gives me ideas for article topics.

If a client or prospect problem gives me an idea for an article, I will write that down, so that on Tuesday I have a topic ready to write about.

Bleeding Edge?

In my field of Internet marketing there is a new technological development about every 30 seconds. Although you may not be in a highly technological field like mine, there are always new developments in your field. So the question is, should you write about the new, bleeding edge stuff?

I approach the brand new stuff somewhat warily. I see some writers in my field that are always writing about the brand new technology, even if it is untested and speculative. I tend to find such articles somewhere between mildly interesting and extremely boring. So I stay away from that.

Instead, I try to write about things that I know actually work and that people can use, not just the latest gadgets. One of my friends routinely criticizes me for not picking up on the new stuff fast enough, but my readers seem to really appreciate that the information in my articles is actually useful. The key to me is, do I know from personal experience that this new technology or solution actually works? If so I will write about it.

Tone

You have to select a general tone for your articles and pretty much stick with that. I use a down to earth, informal style, with a little humor thrown in now and then. You have to select a style or tone that is right for your business and your industry, and that reflects your personality. For some businesses, like say legal or insurance, a more formal style might be better, but don’t make it so stuffy that no one wants to read it. For some really serious subjects (like handling debt for instance), a more humorous approach can diffuse some of the tension of the topic.

If you’re in doubt about the correct tone to take with your writing, check out the articles or newsletters of competitors in your industry, and select the approach that is right for you.

Summary

A strategy of writing and disseminating informational material can be very effective today in making you or your company a trusted entity, i.e. safe to buy from. And the more you write, the easier it will get.

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Handling Negative Search Engine Listings

by John Eberhard

One of the perils of life today is that people can criticize you on the Internet.

So you hand out a business card to someone, or they hear an ad on the radio about your company, or they receive a direct mail piece or email about you. And they want to learn more about you. So they bring up their favorite search engine and enter your name or company name into the search bar.

What are they going to see on page one, two or three about you? Or about your company? Well unfortunately those listings aren’t always going to be what you would most like them to see.

So let’s say that you have a problem. Let’s say that when someone does a search using your name, or the name of your company or organization, page one has a number of listings that are negative about you or your company. Maybe most of them are negative. What can you do?

Well if there are listings that go to web pages that have actually false information about you, i.e. libel or slander, that’s a legal matter. You can legally force those people to take down false or slanderous information. I am not an expert in this area, but a letter from your lawyer to that person will probably go a long way. If this is your scenario, consult a lawyer.

But let’s say that the listings that appear when your name is searched aren’t libelous or slanderous per se, but they’re negative. So what can you do?

The basic handling for this type of situation is to put up lots of content on the web, that will rank highly when someone searches your name or company name. The idea being that these new listings will rise to the top and push all of that garbage down in the listings and off of page one.

The Handling

So here is the “Overwhelm the Garbage” program. Some call this "reputation management."

a. Write press releases and submit them to multiple online PR sites. See my blog or my book for advice on how to write press releases for online PR sites. These sites tend to rank highly on the search engines, so your press releases will tend to appear on pages 1, 2, or 3 when you search your name or company name.

b. Create social media accounts for the entity on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites. On Facebook start a personal profile and if for a business, put up a Facebook fan page. Your listings on these sites tend also to rank highly in the search engines. It also helps if you are putting up status updates on the sites regularly.

c. If it is a local business you can put up listings on Google Places and other local directory type sites like Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Hotfrog, Yelp, Insider Pages, Merchant Circle and others. There are dozens of sites like this and they all tend to rank pretty well.

d. Get videos produced about your company and post them on YourTube.

e. I have gotten good results by putting up multiple web sites, each with specific purposes related to my company. For instance, I have an articles blog on a separate domain, another blog that is just for press releases about my company, and another blog that is for press releases about my clients. I have put up several web sites and blogs for my political commentary.

c. Start multiple blogs and post items to them regularly. Include free blogs like www.blogger.com, www.blog.com, www.posterous.com, and others. When you post things there, include links in the articles linking back to your main site.

d. Write articles and post these to article directory sites. These tend to not rank as highly as some of the items above, but they’re great for volume.

This is a bit of work but it is an extremely effective program. I have done this program for myself and for one client. The client had quite a few negatives and now has none on the first five pages of Google.

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Pay Per Click Advertising in 2012

By John Eberhard

Pay per click advertising (PPC) refers to advertising on Google AdWords, MSN Ad Center, Facebook or LinkedIn. It is so called because you create ads that are then displayed online to people under certain circumstances, and then if the viewer clicks on your ad, you get charged.

Pay per click advertising is extremely effective in generating leads on a regular basis, and you can get them going fairly quickly.

Google and MSN

Google Adwords and MSN Ad Center function very similarly. Both allow you to put up ads that appear when people enter certain specific keywords. You can also select the geographical area where your ads will be seen, so if you have a local business that only services people in a certain geographical area, you can have your ads only appear to people in that area. You can select what your budget is going to be per day and thus control your expenses.

With both services you decide what your bid is going to be, i.e. how much money you will are willing to pay whenever someone clicks on your ad. Your bid, along with some other factors, will determine how high up on the page your ad appears. So if there is a lot of competition for the keywords you have selected, you may have to bid higher to have your ads appear near the top.

Google AdWords is the largest service, meaning they have the most traffic, and so in using them you will have the potential of generating a lot of traffic to your site. MSN, which merged a couple of years ago with Yahoo’s PPC program, has quite a bit less. And strangely the merger with Yahoo doesn’t seem to have raised their traffic much. The advantage with MSN is that you will not have to bid as high and so the overall cost of the leads you produce will be a lot less. You will just get fewer of them per given period of time.

Facebook

Facebook has a PPC program. These appear as small display ads with a little bit of text in the right hand column.

With Facebook you can select who sees your ads according to geography, age, sex, and according to who has certain keywords on their info page. So for instance, if you have a local dance studio, you can select a certain geographical area, then select girls between certain ages, who have the word “dance” or “ballet” on their info page. Once again you set your bid, and your budget.

I have found that Facebook’s PPC program works pretty well. It’s especially good if their demographic targeting factors work well for your business. You won’t get as much traffic as on Google, but you’ll probably get more than with MSN.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a relatively new PPC program. Once again you can select geography, bid and budget. But here you can target people according to membership in certain groups on LinkedIn, by job title, by working at certain companies, and by age and gender.

I have had only one client on LinkedIn’s PPC program so far, and it has been low in volume but the cost per lead has been very good, because we are able to really tightly target people who would be interested in his services.

Conversions

As I said earlier PPC is great for generating a regular flow of leads for your business. In my opinion it works better for generating leads than for generating actual online sales.

So you want to get people to click on your ads, but beyond that you want them to fill out your form on your web site and become a lead, or specifically in PPC what we call a “conversion.” A lot of this has to do with what you have on your landing page, how effective your sales copy is, and what your offer is.

Only a certain percentage of people who click your ad and come to your site will actually fill out the form and become a conversion. Supposedly nationally this works out to 3%. So if you are paying $1.00 for each click (not unusual today) and for every 100 clicks you get 3 people to become a conversion, then your cost per conversion will be $33.

Who Should Use PPC?

Because of the amount of competition in PPC today, which drives higher bids and higher cost per conversion, PPC does not work for low ticket items. If you are selling a CD or book, PPC will not work for you, because the cost per sale will be higher than the price of your product.

You could possible make PPC work for a low ticket item on MSN, Facebook or LinkedIn, but definitely not on Google.

I find that PPC works extremely well for home improvement companies, because the cost of their services is high enough to be viable with the cost per conversion on Google AdWords and the other providers. Those types of companies need leads and PPC provides a steady stream.

It’s difficult to give a hard and fast rule, but in general, high ticket items of say over $500 will do really well with PPC.

In 2012

I have noticed what appears to be a lessening of interest in PPC over the last year. I cannot personally see any lessening of effectiveness in PPC overall during that time period in generating a regular flow of leads for my clients. But I have noticed that there is a lot of competition, which in some cases leads to higher bids, and higher cost per conversion.

I also notice quite a few players in the market who are making many elementary mistakes in running their campaigns, which will cause them to get poor results and eventually drop out of the PPC market and conclude that “pay per click doesn’t work.” Just as one example, I see many PPC advertisers having the visitor land on their home page. This makes the visitor have to spend time figuring out your navigational scheme and find what they are looking for on your site. The correct action is to have the person land on a detail page for the specific product you are promoting with your ad, or even better, have them land on a custom page that is specifically for that ad.

PPC does work, but there are some basic rules that you have to know and apply. I believe it works best if you have a consultant manage your campaign.

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