Entries from January 2011 ↓

I want to hear what you think.

Freelance Copywriter’s Blog has been going for sometime and now’s the time to find out what you really think.

This is your opportunity to tell me what you want to read, what you find interesting and what you find not so interesting.

Whether you stop by regularly or just once in a while, your feedback will help me tailor future posts to make sure you always find something that’s going to be of use to you. After all, a blog full of useless posts is about as useful as a chocolate teapot [although not as tasty].

It will only take a minute or two to complete the short survey below so if you have the time to spare I’d love to hear your views.

Thank you.

Sally

When you market your business on the internet, success is all about traffic.

With traffic come customers.

With customers comes money.

So, if you want to be a success on line you need traffic and customers.

But how do you go about achieving that? What can you do to boost your traffic and persuade your traffic to buy from you?

Here are 4 ideas to help you.

1. Keywords

You know your market; you know what they’re searching for. So by using those keywords, you’ll attract more of your target market.

By incorporating the keywords within your SEO website content, articles and blogs you are increasing the chances of your content appearing within your market’s search results.

But make sure you use specific terms that are relevant to your products and services. A shed load of traffic is no use if it’s not looking for what you offer.

2. Video

Video marketing is very popular. People love to research and watch them online so make the most of it by incorporating them on your website.

Produce short videos displaying your products – they can be ‘how tos’ or video case studies about how people have benefited from your product.

3. Pictures

Selling online has one major disadvantage to selling in a shop—your customers can’t come in to your store and see what they are buying.

People don’t like ‘buying blind’ so remove that obstacle by adding pictures of your products to your website.

4. Email marketing

Email marketing gives you a way of maintaining regular contact with your customers and prospective customers.

You can use them to give tips, advice, news and special offers all of which will lead the reader back to your website and encourage them to buy.

These four simple ideas can make a huge difference to your traffic. If your website isn’t attracting visitors it won’t sell anything.

It could be the most beautiful website ever seen but unless it pulls in visitors and converts them into buying customers it’s not worth the money you paid for it.

Social media is the new black—everyone’s doing it (apparently), even the Queen’s now on Facebook.

But just because you’ve set up a Facebook fan page or a Twitter account doesn’t mean you’ll automatically attract followers and fans.

How you use social media tools will determine how effective they are. As a freelance copywriter I use social media a lot (especially Twitter – @sallyormond) which also means I come across a lot of people who are ‘using’ the tools albeit not very effectively.

In this post I want to run through 5 elements that may be causing you to repel more people than you attract.

1. Social Media

Social media is about conversations—2 way conversations. You are supposed to be communicating with people rather than broadcasting to them.

Remember, Twitter isn’t radio. You haven’t booked an air slot for your advertisements. If you constantly tweet about your products, services and offers people won’t want to follow you. Why should they?

2. Self promotion

On all forms of social media you have the option to put together a short biography. The purpose of this is so that potential fans or followers can find out who you are and whether they think you’ll be an interest person to engage with.

If your profile is blatant promotion and quite robotic it won’t inspire them to want to get to know you better. Write it from the heart and inject your personality—be human.

3. ‘Social’

It is called ‘social media’ for a reason—because it’s meant to be social. If you use Twitter for pure business how will people get to know you? They certainly won’t want to start a conversation with you.

By all means tweet about your business but intersperse them with chatty updates and engage others in conversation.

4. Follow me!

On Twitter don’t try and grow too quickly. If you suddenly amass 1000 people you’re following and you only have 46 followers, you’re just playing the numbers game.

Follow people you want to follow.  Don’t be seduced into believing you have to have thousands of followers. It’s more important to have quality followers who are actually interested in you.

5. Don’t be a wallflower

Once you’ve set up your Twitter account, don’t just sit back and wait for someone to say hello.

Find people you want to follow and then engage them in conversation. Gradually you’ll gather more followers, have more conversations, gather more followers, have more conversations….

If you want to be part of the party you have to participate.

Social media is a great tool for business but it can also be fun. In fact it should be fun. It gives you the opportunity to chat and interact with people you would never normally meet. So give it a go.

If you want to join the army of business bloggers out there, you probably have a very pressing question on your mind:

“How do I get started?”

There are a number of things you have to think about before diving in.

For starters, why do you want to blog? If your answer is because everyone else is doing it, forget it.

If you are going to blog you must have a reason for doing so – to position yourself as an expert, to improve your customers’ experience, to help build links etc.

Socialmediaexaminer.com offers a great post outlining The 5 Pillars of Business Blogging Success. It shows that successful blogging is a lot more than just throwing random posts out into cyber space.

You must:

• Plan – why are you doing it? What do you want to get from it? Make sure you pay attention to your keywords. Have you defined your target audience?

• Have great content – your posts should be interesting. The language you use should be accessible to all. Pay attention to your headings. Don’t be overly self-promotional.

• Design – a great blog is more than just content. Think about how it looks, the functions it will have and what tools you’ll use to spread the word.

• Marketing – oh yes, you’ll have to market it if you want it to be successful.

• Engage – if you don’t engage with your audience, they won’t read.

There’s a lot to think about, isn’t there? Why not grab a coffee and have a read, it will help you decide whether you should be blogging or not. And if the answer is ‘yes’, how to get started