Less Is More: The Cat’s Eye Writer Blog Makeover

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girl paintingI am not a designer and never could be one. Yet, as a blogger, I know how important it is to get a nice, clean, visually appealing look. I want to entice my readers, give them a reason to stay. And good design will do that (along with stellar content, of course).

You may have noticed that today’s post looks a little different.

Okay, a lot different.

I believe in regular blog “remodels” because the process makes me look at every single piece of my blog with the question, “How does this help my readers have a better experience?”

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Filed Under: Blog as Marketing Tool, Branding, featured post, WordPress Blog Support Tagged With: , , ,

Blogger’s Rehab: A Remote, Old Movies and Too Much Time

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I’ve been watching a lot of old movies this week. It’s one of the easier things to do with a broken wrist.

And it keeps me out of Bob’s way. Because he actually does have some projects and deadlines.

Me? My job for now is lying on the living room couch with my pain pills, my splinted arm, my remote and an endless supply of comedies from the 80s and 90s. Waiting for recovery.

I’ve always had a love affair with movies. In fact, in my younger days, after I left teaching but before I found my true life’s passion, I launched a short-lived, entertainment-themed business.

On one of those giddy, anything-is-possible days, I struck on an idea that was born from my love of movies, my insanely intense need to make people laugh and my passion for helping people realize—and be recognized for— their talents.

On that crazy evening, scrawling on the back of cocktail napkins, my biz and life partner Bob and I hatched our plan.

We would create and act out original, fun and funny employee recognition programs based on current popular movies. We took the plots and crafted them to fit the specific industry, job positions and personalities of staff our clients wanted to honor, wrapping it all up in a multi-media ‘Oscars’ ceremony, complete with the gold statues.

And so Korporate Comedy Concepts was born.

Even though we launched the business in southern California, coming up with the idea was decidedly easier than getting clients to pay for it.  We had a few gigs, but decided to pull the plug when our seed money ran out.

Revisiting these films this week, in the midst of my restlessness and boredom, got me to thinking. Some of them would make prime plots to drop bloggers into.

Here they are three:

Home Alone

In this remake of the 1990 John Hughes holiday classic, Kevin McCallister, all grown up, is a blogger, WordPress expert and social media celebrity. When he oversleeps and misses the van to the airport for the last remaining flight to BlogWorld 2010, his first-time conference speaker plans are spoiled and he finds himself stuck at home.

As BlogWorld execs 3,000 miles away are cutting his photo out of 5,500 conference programs, Kevin has his own challenges. Hackers threaten to duplicate his blog content on a tacky WordPress for Short People site. And when evil spammers start lurking outside his blog, plotting to take it over with disgusting Viagra ads, he sets a series of ingeneous traps that go way beyond CAPTCHA.

In perhaps the film’s most touching scene, Kevin learns the true meaning of Christmas when he helps his cranky old neighbor open a Facebook account on Christmas Eve so she can find out if her high school love is still alive, mend her relationship with her long lost grandson and creep out her great niece by ‘friending’ her.

This Is Spinal Tap

In 1982, movie lovers were reintroduced to the sights, sounds (and smells) of one of music history’s greatest fictional rock groups. In this rockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap, the British heavy metal group, billed as the ‘world’s loudest band,’  stages their much anticipated comeback tour.

In this 2011 remake, the team at For Bloggers By Bloggers, has lost its way. In a blogging world where content is still king, they haven’t published a single blog post in 8 months. In a comeback bid of momentous proportions, Judy Dunn has a scheme for bringing the blog traffic back with a series of well-calculated appearances on top blogs.

When her plans for becoming a weekly contributor for ProBlogger fall through, she tries unsuccessfully to get guest spots for the group on the Where Is This Blogger Now? blog, only to be rejected and humiliated publicly. She perseveres through the pain and in the end finds guest gigs on a bunch of up and coming niche blogs like snorkelingnuns.com, Horny Toads Rock and the popular Swedish blog Lutefisk Today.

When that pond is all fished out, the bloggers, once in demand, have no choice but to go their separate ways. In one of the final scenes, that brilliantly captures the group’s downward spiral to obscurity, Judy is helping a group of senior citizens at Rolling Hills Assisted Living Center brainstorm topics and create an editorial calendar for their new blog Rockers and Rollers.

Rain Man 

This 1988 Best Picture movie has been beautifully remade, updated with a decidedly post-Millennium, social media flavor.

On the death of their father, a frustrated, angry and almost broke blogger Charlie Babbitt meets his autistic brother Raymond who doesn’t remember. As they drive across the country, it becomes clear that Raymond has an uncanny ability to select blog topics that Charlie’s readers are wildly interested in. He can also predict the times of day when posts will get the most page views and social media shares.

It’s just the kind of information Charlie needs to attract more subscribers and advertisers.  He becomes convinced that Raymond is key to turning his failing blog around. Reader to subscriber conversion rates go through the ceiling as Raymond seems to instinctively know where to place the calls-to-action for the best results.

In an interesting twist on the hilarious boxers vs briefs scene in the original movie, Charlie gets a glimpse of Raymond’s resistance to change when his brother insists that blog post headlines must always be five words—no fewer, no more.

Finally, in an act of desperation, Charlie pulls the car over and jumps out, gesturing wildly:

“What difference does it make how many words it has? A headline is a headline! It is a headline whether it has 3 words or 9 words or whatever!”

In this pivotal scene, Charlie begins to understand that his brother’s needs are different. At first intent on using Raymond to grow his subscriber list to 10,000, he now wants what’s best for his brother. Which makes that final train station scene even more powerful.

What about you?

Any other movies you see as ripe for a remake with a blogging theme?

What movie would you like to have the lead blogger role in?

 

This post was published in its original form on bestbloggingtipsonline.com.

 

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , ,

Reader Appreciation Part II: CatsEyeWriter’s Spotlight on 3 Blogs

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Gril with RibbonsLast Friday, in the first ever guest post on my blog, Robin M Fritz made a passionate plea for deepening our bonds with our families through daily rituals. It really didn’t matter if our families were humans, animals or both. We could all relate.

And the conversations in the comments were every bit as astounding as the post itself. Thanks to everyone who shared. This blog is so much richer because of you.

Selecting a guest poster is a little easier if your blog is about marketing or psychology or politics. But this is a blog about blogging and you are a diverse bunch. The thing you share, though, is the desire to become better bloggers and writers.

And we come together a couple of times a week to see how that works.

Your blogs are about everything from photography, travel and the craft of fiction to sailing, aging gracefully and connecting the expat community. Because it was an impossible task to choose just one winner, I am including three more blog posts here that caught my eye.

The theme running through my choices were, again, the 3 E’s: engagement, education and entertainment. I did not consider any other factors—blog design, usability, etc,—only the quality of the content. While their blogs are a work-in-progress, they are on the right track.

I encourage you to check them out, connect with the blogs’ authors and see if there might be ways to collaborate and share.

Here they are, in no special order:

Carole Jane Treggett, the Carole Jane Treggett Blog


Carole Jane Tregget blog

What the blog is about:

Carole is a writer, photographer and new media producer. She blogs about inspiring people to reclaim, rejoin and rejuvenate their creative birthright and go forward to make their creative dreams and life ambition come true.

The post: Self-exposure in social media: Being comfortable in your own creative skin

What I liked about it:

Carole’s “Twitter teaser” was enough to make me curious. She said, “You don’t have to get naked in front of strangers in the sauna if you want to be a successful blogger. Or do you?” Wouldn’t that make you want to read her post? And, if she had used the word “naked” in the actual blog post title, that might have pulled even more readers in. (Words like “naked” used just for shock value have no place in a blog post title, but in this case, it had everything to do with her message.)

In her content, she uses analogies beautifully. Analogies (and metaphors) are powerful because they paint such a clear picture for us. We can imagine—see—what she’s talking about. And when she put it into the context of one of the most popular TV shows of all time, Sex and the City, she captured my attention.

Another thing that shone through in her post was empathy. It is scary to put our work—our blog content—out there in the world. And comparing Charlotte’s literal nakedness in the sauna to our figurative nakedness when we hit “Publish” and send our posts out into the world drives her point home.

Connect with Carole: On Twitter, on Facebook, and on her blog.

 

Justine Ickes, the Culture Every Day Blog


Culture Every Day blog

What the blog is about:

Justine is a writer, traveler and ‘culture genie.’ She blogs about culture—what it is, why it’s important and how it shapes our experiences. I love the tagline below her photo: Sharing cross-cultural tips, resources and real-life stories so we can all play nice. (Good job, Justine, because we know within a few seconds of landing on your home page, what your blog is about.)

The post: The #1 Reason Why Culture Matters

What I liked about it:

I’m a big fan of photos that pull me into the post and help me get a sense of the content. Here we have fish bowls and the concept of fish out of water. Justine compares culture to the water in an aquarium and says that humans are the fish. I get an immediate visual and I’m right there with her. Culture is the water that we swim in, the stuff that keeps us afloat.

And it’s when you get dumped out of your fish bowl and put into another that you may feel confused, like that “fish out of water.”

Justine makes comparisons among cultures with specific details and, again, we can picture them. And she ends with three concrete tips we can all apply when we are meeting or working with someone from another culture.

Connect with Justine: On Twitter, on Facebook, and on her blog.

 

Steve Hauptman, Monkeytraps, a blog about control


Monkeytraps blog

What the blog is about:

Steve Hauptman is a therapist, Gestaltist and leader of Interactive Therapy groups. His blog, Monkeytraps, is devoted to the oldest human addiction: control. Its thesis is simple. Unless we distinguish between what we can and cannot control, we try to control everything, and make ourselves sick and miserable. Steve blogs with Bert, his ‘inner monkey.’

The post: Bert’s strawberry

What I liked about it:

Steve intrigued me with his blog post teaser: “Who eats fruit on the verge of death?” I was hooked. I had to read the story. His blog is an interesting concept. Bert is his control-addicted inner monkey. Some interesting (and enlightening) conversations must go on at Monkeytraps.

In Bert’s strawberry, Bert is retelling one of Steve’s stories, with his own reactions interspersed, control freak that he is. It’s a story about living in the moment, with a sort of mindfulness, and awareness of the present. To get this post, you really must read it.

Clever and creative way to help us understand how our “monkey mind” messes with us. I was especially impressed because the field of therapy can have its challenges when it comes to blogging.

Connect with Steve: On Twitter, on Facebook, and on his blog.

Okay. There you go.

Now go over and read the full posts and leave a comment. These hard-working bloggers would really appreciate that.

Oh, yeah. And if you click on the social media share buttons at the top of this post (Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc.), these fine bloggers will get even more visibility.

Watch for more reader appreciation posts. I’ll be starting a semi-regular series where I take your posts—those of you who are brave enough to volunteer—and give you a mini-critique on the CatsEyeWriter blog for free. You get some extra coverage and we all get to learn together and apply the principles to our own blogs.

What about you?

What’s the hardest part of writing a post for you?

Do you get stuck with the headline?

The beginning is a snap but you start to sag and ramble a little in the middle?

What advice do you have for us?

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , ,

What I Found Out on My Top 10 Blogger Tour

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kid DJLast December, something magical happened. Some of my readers nominated me for a Top 10 Blogs for Writers award.

If that wasn’t surreal enough, the esteemed judges chose CatsEyeWriter blog as one of 20 finalists.

A week or so later, one of my readers sent me this email:  “Noticed that you won. Congrats! How cool is that?”

I had no idea until I got this email.

But the grandest part of all? Well, that has to be the amazing bloggers I’ve met along the way, my fellow co-winners.

My best takeaway

I learned that all bloggers who are at the top of their game can teach me something. And while my blog’s audience may not be exactly the same as theirs, certain things apply across the board—to all of us.

Business bloggers can learn something new about writing and storytelling from author bloggers.

And bloggers who focus on the craft of writing have readers who also need to know how to market themselves—their blogs, their books.

As bloggers and blog readers, we are way more alike than we are different.

And so the Top Ten Tour was born

It started with a simple question: “What if we all guest posted on each other’s blogs?”

And so the Top 10 tour was born.

I’ve guested on 5 of my co-winners’ blogs so far.

If, like me, you think that you can learn from bloggers in different niches than yours, if you believe that brilliantly presented ideas can help you grow and improve, if you need a little extra creative spark every now and then, I encourage you to linger a while on these blogs.

Read a little. Explore. And if they resonate with you, consider subscribing so you don’t miss a single post.

Because these bloggers are smart, creative, inspiring and fun.

I’m not an author (yet) but I’m learning all sorts of things from them. Things that are helping me think in different ways. Stuff I can bring right back to my own blog—and to you.

Okay, since I didn’t publicize my guest posts here on my own blog, here they are, all in one place. Just in case you missed them:

The Top 10 ‘Mini-Tour,’ Part 1

How to Grow Your Reader Community with an Author Blog – The Creative Penn blog

Want 1,000 Blog Subscribers? Just ‘Invent’ Them – Make a Living Writing blog

Your Blog as Stage: Building a Believable Author Brand – StoryFix blog

5 Reasons First Graders Would Rule Your Writing Blog – Courage 2 Create blog

10 Steps to Making Your Author Blog a Rockin’ Success – A. Victoria Mixon, Editor blog

What about you?

Do you find that reading a mix of blogs helps you develop more fresh content for yours?

Do you ever read outside your niche?

What are some of your favorite blogs?

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,

5 Ways to Pull Your Blog Visitors Into Your Content

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get your content readWhen a visitor lands on your blog, the clock starts ticking. You have precious seconds to grab them by the collar and astound them with your content.

To make them believers and fans.

Before they even get excited about your topics, they need to know where they are, what’s on your blog and exactly how to get around.

The most excellent, fun, funny, helpful blog posts on the planet won’t get you readers if your site is clunky, there are potholes in the road and people don’t know what to do when they land on your home page.

Your goal is to get them to stay, poke around and find useful and interesting things.

5 ways to pull your blog’s visitors into your content

1. Include a tagline in your header.

We are all insanely busy and most of us are attention-disordered. Your header should not only include the name of your blog, but a short sub-phrase that describes you and/or your blog’s purpose.

If it’s a business blog, say what it is you do (in the case of CatsEyeWriter, the sub-title is blogging coach – social media copywriter) or your best customer benefit. If it’s a personal blog, a short line on what it’s about. This way, people know that they are in the right place immediately.

2. Consider a separate mission statement in the sidebar.

Some bloggers have a box with their photo and a couple of lines—either who they are or what their blog is about—in the sidebar. Your time-challenged visitors will appreciate knowing what you are all about in just a quick glance.

3. Create a friendly, informative about page.

Research shows that on any site, the about page is the second most viewed page. Make yours engaging. Share not only your professional side, but some personal things. Your readers are very curious about who this person is behind this blog. Don’t disappoint them.

4. Organize your content by categories and tags.

When you started blogging, you hopefully decided what your main topics will be. This is incredibly useful to the reader because they can more easily find the specific posts they are most interested in.

Think of categories as chapters in a book. You can list them along the side and assign each post you write to the categories it fits in. For a food blog, the categories might be southern cuisine, Italian, quick meals, etc.

Tags are like a book’s index. The tags might be ingredients: garlic, potato dishes, cheese, etc. You may have seen ‘tag clouds’ on a blog, where the things bloggers have written the most about are bigger words in the cloud.

5. Fine tune your content by testing.

The way you get better at writing the just right content for your readers is by engaging with them in the comments, watching the posts that get lots of reader interaction and asking them more questions about what they’d like to see on your blog.

I call it blog-as-laboratory.

Is your content organized to make it super-easy for your readers to locate it?

Do you have other strategies for pulling your readers in?

Would love to hear your thoughts (or questions) in the comments.

Oh, and congratulations to Courtney Cantrell, whose question about how to stay full of blog post topics and write about the things people care about wins her a free copy of my ebook, Guide to Showing Up Online, available in my online store for $17.

And, my most exciting news: I have just posted my webinar: 30 Design and Content Secrets to Skyrocket Your Blog. Hope you’ll check it out!

30 Secrets to making your blog skyrocket

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , ,

Why Your Blog Doesn’t Need an Audience of Thousands

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Find your blog's audienceIf you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve noticed something. I am a huge fan of high-quality posts—put out consistently.

Of  building a blog community that people will want to hang around in.

Of serving up helpful stuff. Of telling stories that educate, engage, and, yes, even entertain.

The ‘experts’ who tell you how to get 5,000 new blog subscribers in one month are like those shysters on Twitter who tell you that you can get a bazillion new followers in 24 hours.

If (and there is always an if) you follow their proven methods.

Problem is, their ‘proven methods’ often involve a chain letter mentality and working with people who like to play tricks.

Like following someone and immediately unfollowing them, so the number of people you follow is outrageously low and your followers (whoever and wherever they are) are in the thousands.

But for what?

Whether on Twitter or on your blog, is it really helpful to have masses of people who don’t care about you, who never read your stuff, who would never hire you or engage you in a conversation?

It’s better to have 100 involved, excited readers than 5,000 who visit, but don’t hang around because they don’t really care about you.

So you don’t want an audience of thousands. All you really need is a core group of interested readers interacting with you and each other. And that is how you build your community.

Reach out to the right people and build from there

Of course it depends on the goal of your blog.

But if you want an engaged community, if you want readers who love your stuff and can’t wait to tell their friends about you, you need to focus on finding that niche audience and writing about the topics they are passionate about.

Two ways to get traffic are: 1) pulling readers in with headlines and keywords that will attract the people googling those topics and 2) creating kick-ass content and pushing it out through social media and other avenues.

Both of these strategies will work. Except that #1 is useless if you don’t have the quality content (#2).

You need to work on #2 first.

People often ask me how I grew my audience.

And I say, one reader at a time.

Before you click away from this post because it’s too depressing, let me just say one more thing.

You don’t have to be perfect from day one. You don’t have to worry and fuss about every word you write.

Just try to do one little thing to make today’s post better than yesterday’s. Try one small change to make tomorrow’s post better than today’s.

And before you know it, you’ll be on your way to building your community—with good content and an openness to your readers and their needs. That will take you a long way toward reaching your blogging—and your traffic— goals.

Now I’m asking what you need

I’m taking my own advice today.

I’m planning a webinar with my best advice on how to make your blog more successful. I’m asking you a few questions because I want to be sure I help bloggers with the exact problems they are having.

I’ll choose the most interesting response  left in the comments and give that person a free copy of my ebook, Guide to Showing Up Online (a $17 value).

Okay. Here are the questions:

1. What is your blog’s URL (address)?

2. How long have you been blogging?

3. What is your blog’s goal/mission?

4.  What is the biggest problem you are having on your blog?

Leave your answers in the comments section. I’ll choose the most interesting comment and will announce the winner in this Friday’s post.

As always, thanks for being a part of this caring community.

Filed Under: Blogging, Community Building Tagged With: , , , ,

5 Reasons Your Excellent Blog Content Isn’t Getting You Subscribers

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Tatooed computer guy

Blog posts that educate, entertain and engage will keep your readers right there with you.

Most of the time. That is, if you can get visitors there in the first place.

And if you don’t lose them once they get there— with poor design, flawed usability and butt-ugly color schemes.

Outstanding blog design and development go hand in hand with kick-ass content to attract readers and keep them happy. You can’t have one without the other.

Have you given your blog a check-up lately?

Could it be working harder for you, catching more people before they decide to leave because your site is too dark, or has too many animated images jumping out at them, or is just plain impossible to navigate?

5 Reasons Your Excellent Blog Content Isn’t Getting You Subscribers

1. Your blog design is clunky.

It has the feel of 1998. It’s giving your readers the creeps with those outdated colors of chartreuse and black. It doesn’t look sharp and clean.

And it doesn’t reflect your brand. Your personality.

Here is an example of a new site created by Savvy WordPress for a food blogger. It’s clean, uncluttered and lets the content (and incredible photos) shine.:

LovelyLanvin blog

2. You are confusing your readers with too many choices.

Decide what the most important function of your home page should be and put that front and center. Or, in my case, on the top right. For me, it’s my blog subscription sign-ups.

On my blog, created by Savvy WordPress —are you noticing a pattern here?— my big old, in-your-face email subscription sign-up box is the first thing visitors see (and elsewhere, I have an RSS connect button for people who would rather get issues via their Google readers).

catseyewriter subscription box

3. You are making it too hard to share your content.

When your readers share your blog posts on social media sites, other people see the great work you are doing and you will get new subscribers.

The buttons above my post come from the amazing Digg Digg plugin. It has tons of options and also allows you to float your buttons on the outside of your site. Fun to customize.

Digg Digg

And on the bottom, it gets better. Sociable for WordPress gives my readers even more ways to share. The Pro Version adds the Facebook like button 10 new icon sets in different sizes and other goodies for $4.95 and $3 a year for support.

Sociable for WordPress 30

4. Your readers don’t feel they know you, so they don’t care.

In addition to warm, friendly posts and a kick-ass about page, it helps to show readers who you are right away, as soon as they land on your home page.

My designer installed the Gravatar widget that comes with WordPress, with text that immediately gives my readers a sense of who I am.

about catseyewriter

5. They don’t feel their comments are recognized.

Responding to people who leave comments is incredibly important. Another way to encourage more comments is with the cool design feature on my home page called Customized Recent Comments plugin.

It shows visitors at a glance what people are talking about in your current post’s comments section.

comments on catseyewriter

Have you been thinking about upgrading your current blog or starting your first one?

Enter for a chance to win a free blog design and set-up package from Savvy WordPress!

If you’ve been wanting to upgrade your blog to a shiny new one, or if you’ve decided to create your very first blog, this contest is for you.

The winner will get a free 4-page basic blog design, customized using a premium theme and valued  at $450:

  • Pages include blog, about, and contact.
  • WordPress installation & database set-up on your hosting account.
  • Custom design (headers, navigation and color scheme) up to 1 hour
  • Sidebar set-up with up to 7 widgets of your choice
  • Installation of recommended plugins
  • Basic contact form
  • Feedburner RSS installation

It’s easy to enter. All you have to do is:

1)    Like me on my CatsEyeWriter Facebook page

2)    Follow me on Twitter (@CatsEyeWriter)

3)    Click here to tweet about the contest

NOTE: If you’ve already liked me on Facebook and you already follow me on Twitter, you just need to do step #3.

Winner’s name will be drawn on December 25. Good luck!

Contest Alert!: The generous gang at Headway has donated one of their very cool premium themes (my blog was built with Headway) to the contest mix. So now, if you win, you get the design, set-up and premium theme. Thanks to Grant and Clay at Headway!

Have you discovered other design elements that make the content on your blog pop?  Share with us in the comments.

ANNOUNCEMENT!: We have a winner! Amy Woidtke of EcoKind Design has won a brand new blog design with the amazing Headway theme. Congrats, Amy!

Filed Under: Blogging, Branding Tagged With: , , ,

Best of 2009 Copywriting Clichés: Tips For Killer, Rockstar Writers Who Don’t Want to Suck

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rockstarI love my readers. You challenge me all the time. A smart, inquisitive bunch you are.

Soon after I hit “publish” on last week’s post, I heard from some of you.

“Don’t just tell me how to wake up an old blog post,” you said. “Show me.”

Okay. That’s a fair request. I went fishing through my old posts. And I found one in particular that had touched a nerve. In fact, it’s still one of the most googled posts I have ever written.

The topic? The runaway use of cheesy clichés in copywriting.

So hearing the same old tired words can make us a little crazy. Our eyes glaze over when we hear “We go the extra mile,” ”discover the difference,” and “out-of-the-box.”

But why?

Now, I will admit. Clichés became clichés in the first place because they were powerful. People just got what you were saying immediately when you used the word or phrase. You could picture it.

But if every product is “cutting edge,” then what does cutting edge mean? It means nothing anymore. It’s a tired, deflated party balloon, once full of energy, now just sad.

The three clichés that made my new list for 2009

Okay, it was hard,but here’s the list: Best Clichés of 2009. I wish I could give them all an award (she smiles). Cause they’re all winners.

Counting down, in David Letterman reverse order:

3. ‘Killer’

I’m finished reading a piece when this word rears its ugly head. In a Google search, you’ll find 457,000 entries with the word ”killer.”

We have killer apps, killer websites, killer ads.

Aside from who wants to kill anyway (aren’t there laws against that?), how did this word worm its way into our language? And what did it mean when it was bright and shiny new?

I think it started out as another word for great. Awesome.

What does it mean now? Nothing. A simple search turned up hundreds of articles with ”killer” in the headline:

“Increase Your Click-Throughs with Killer Title Tags”

“Get More Online Dates by Writing a Killer Profile”

And my all-time favorite, she says, tongue firmly embedded in cheek:

“Become a Killer Writer: Avoid Overused Adjectives” (Huh?)

2. ‘Sucks’

This one took a close second.

“How to Succeed at Content Marketing Even if Your Content Skills Suck”

“How to Write a Good eBook—You Know, the Kind That Doesn’t Suck.”

“6 Words That Make Your Résumé Suck”

And now, my personal favorite:

“Clichés Suck”

Okay, ready? Time for the guy in the tux to pass me the sealed envelope on silver tray). And the winner of the Best Cliché of 2009 is:

3. ‘Rock star’

If I hear one more writer compare a person or thing to a rock star, I’m going to light an incendiary device under my computer monitor, just like in those old movies where the trailer trash guy shoots the television.

Blog like a rock star.

Network like a rock star.

Use QuickBooks like a rock star. (Okay, I made that one up.)

All right.

Enough with the ”rock star.”

Even the top bloggers, who I will be nice enough not to name here, are guilty. Here are two recent post titles:

“How to be A Rock Star in Your Niche”

“Rockstar Plugins You May Not Know About” (Now even a WordPress plugin can be a rock star!)

Rock star meant something once.

Charismatic, passionate, attractive. (On second thought, looking at Arrowsmith’s Steven Tyler, maybe not so much that last one).

But these words have had the life sucked out of them. The visual imagery is gone. Because if everyone can be a rock star, then it isn’t that special anymore.

There you go.

Avoid these three clichés and you’ll be on your way to becoming, as my blog post title so cleverly described:

A killer, rockstar writer who doesn’t suck.

Filed Under: Copywriting Tagged With: , ,

5 Ways the Right Photo Can Get You More Blog Readers

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the right photo If you are like me, your blog posts take some time.

Sometimes lots of time.

I’ll toss a topic around, let it marinate. Even start writing and abandon it because I’m not feeling particularly passionate about it.

So by the time I’m finished, I want to be finished. I want to get it out of my brain so those guys Stephen King calls The Boys in the Basement can come out. You know, the ones with more bright, shiny ideas?

But wait. Now I have to think about a photo?

Why you need an amazing photo for your blog post

Because words alone are boring.

Your reader wants a reason to read your post. If she sees too many words squeezed together all bunched up, like they’re in a hot room and they can’t breathe, well, she’ll feel the same way.

Because, let’s face it, we’re all attention-disordered.

A photo (or the right one) will pull us by the shoulders and make us stop long enough to read the post.

Because at least 60 percent of your readers are visual learners.

Cave men knew it. A picture just makes us sit up, makes us remember a story. And yes, 60 percent of us are engaged more by the visual than other ways of taking in information.

Because photos work beautifully with analogies and metaphors.

The photo is the powerful partner of metaphor. Something is like something else and here, this photo helps you see that.

Because photos pull your reader into the post.

We are all curious creatures. We are hard-wired to want to know why. Photos can make your reader wonder, “Why is this here? And they’ll have to read your post to find out.

Because photos evoke emotions and give your business a personality.

Photos set the tone. Love. Fear. Laugh-out-loud images. At Cat’s Eye, we don’t take ourselves too seriously and our photos reflect that.

5 ways the right photo can increase your blog posts views

The right photo can increase reader engagement and blog post views by:

  1. Conveying the overall feeling or emotion of your post. My post on why negative headlines work is one of my most-read ones. The photo: a sort of mean-looking rock star guy sticking his tongue out.

  1. Illustrating an analogy or metaphor that was part of your main idea. We wanted a way to explain why we gave up our 10-month-old baby, marketingyoursmallbiz.com and went back to a sole focus on our 16-year-old company, Cat’s Eye Marketing. What better way than to show how contentious and needy the baby was and how jealous the teenager was because she had lost our love and attention? The photo: A very cute baby staring out from the page, focused, looking like he wants all your attention.

  1. Evoking surprise and/or curiosity. I did a blog post on finding your niche that also later became an article on Biznik.com that happened to get 1,700 page views and 81 comments. Using a little humor in the article, I talked about Swedish cowboys who collect Star Wars memorabilia as being, perhaps too limiting of a niche. The photo: A Marlboro Man-type cowboy with his horse.

  1. Complementing your headline. This is a good way to engage the reader more. But don’t look for a photo that, in a boring way, is exactly what your headline says, I mean, literally. In one post in a series on marketing with e-newsletters, the one on building your list carefully and ethically (“Rule # 1: Get Permission First”), the photo was a little boy in a classroom holding up his hand, waiting to be called on by the teacher.

  1. Simply making your reader smile. Okay, some photos I choose just because of the smile factor. I wrote a post called ”The Crazy Cat Edition: Does the Real You Show Up Online?” and
    started with the story of my cat, who is a ventriloquist. He imitates lots of different sounds and I never know which cat is showing up until he starts talking. The photo: the craziest-looking cat I could find.

You know, these strategies can apply to your other online communication tools, too. We use a sharp, interesting and unique photo every week in our weekly marketing e-tip. Check this one out for the issue, “The James Brown Guide to Copywriting: 5 Tips for Putting a Little ‘Soul’ in Your Marketing Copy.”

In a future post, I’ll share some of the free and low-cost sources I’ve found for incredible, fun photos

What about you?

If you use photos in your posts, what kinds are you attracted to?

Any tips to share?

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,

Just Say ‘No’: Why You Shouldn’t Have a Blog

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why you shouldn't blogBob and I have taught our Savvy Blogging workshop long enough to recognize a certain person. You may recognize her, too. In fact, it may be you.

Class before last, a student who had been very quiet throughout the session came up to Bob afterward. She wore a deep frown.

Bob was lost in thought himself. Wonder what I did?

Right at this moment, this bright articulate woman broke into a grin.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Yeah? For what?” Bob said.

“For giving me permission not to blog,” she said.

Too many blogs

Every social media expert on the planet has one or two or three blogs. All our friends and colleagues are doing the blogging thing. Or so it seems. I think my hairdresser has a blog.

Here are some frightening stats:

• 22 million people in the U.S. blog.

• Technorati has tracked 133 million blogs since 2002.

• A new blog is born every half second.

• 184 million people worldwide have started a blog.

• 346 million people worldwide read blogs.

It’s easy to see why someone might think their business will go down the toilet without one.

In the above mentioned workshop, Bob walks his students through the benefits and the commitment required to be a successful blogger. The woman in question was
relieved that anyone would suggest that not everyone needs to blog.

Reasons not to blog

1. Your customers don’t go online. This is a big one. Obvious, exaggerated example: Say you are a service station owner. Do your customers go online to learn about your products and services? And if they do, will their habits in buying gas
change as a result of reading your posts?

2. It would take you four hours to write a post. Depending on what you charge clients for your services, the marketing benefits you get from blogging could be eaten up by spending a half a day noodling with one post. Again, your call.

3. You don’t have anything to say. Maybe this is true and maybe it isn’t. But related to reason #2, if you are constantly stressed out because you don’t have a
topic, if you have to reach deep every time you come up with a subject, this might be too time-consuming and draining an experience for you

4. You have something to say, but you aren’t a writer. This may be good or bad, depending on what you think ”writing” looks like. But if you honestly get tongue-tied every single time you sit down to write, or you have an inner critic, say, your 5th grade teacher, who just won’t let up on you, maybe you should rethink things. (Or maybe you want to hire someone to blog for you.)

5. You and your computer don’t have much together time. I hear this frequently. “I’m away from the office a lot.” Part of blogging is posting. But another key part is responding to your readers. If you don’t go back in and recognize them with a reply, they might not come back.

6. You have to be careful about what you say. Maybe you are an attorney or a therapist. If you blog under your business identity, weigh carefully whether you risk someone construing your personal post as professional advice. The blogging
professionals who might be subject to lawsuits have this down. Just be careful.

Can you think of other reasons someone might not want to
start blogging?

Do you have a blog?

If you’ve considered starting one, what has stopped you?

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , ,

Too Many Blogs, Too Many Posts?: Busy Readers and Fatigued Writers

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too much bloggingWhere is it written that blogging is rewarding only when you post 5-7 times a week? The experts tell us that more is always better. But I’ve never been convinced.

Since I started this blogging thing, I’ve subscribed to six of my favorite blogs. They range from daily posts to once a week, 1-2 times weekly and twice a week, all the way to no particular schedule.

That means I read between 34 and 40 posts a week. And I am on the conservative side with my RSS feeds. I only subscribe when I positively can’t do without a particular blogger’s wit and wisdom.

Imagine Reading Hundreds of Posts a Day

Some bloggers (admittedly hard-core subscribers) are receiving 50, 100, 200 posts a day.

But are they reading all of them?

A few days ago, one of my favorite bloggers, James Chartrand from Men with Pens, announced that he was cutting back his posts from daily to three a week.

He wanted to know what his readers thought about his decision. Know what? Of the 60+ responses, more than 90% said, “Yippee!”

Did it mean they didn’t like his posts? On the contrary. Most said that the posts were of such high quality that they wanted more time to read, to ponder, to take all the ideas in.

And one reader even said that the fact that the posts were piling up, with no time to properly read and digest them, brought him to such a state of frustration that he actually unsubscribed!

What’s the Answer?

When it comes to posting, I think it comes down to the question: Are you a full-time blogger or do you have another business to run, too? Certainly some of us can’t spend every waking hour blogging.

But even more important: Don’t your readers have other things to do, too? Like serving their own clients and customers. Making a buck. Paying the mortgage. Hanging around enough so their kid still recognizes them.

What I’ve figured out: I blog when I have something important or interesting to say. May be three times a week. Most often it’s once or twice a week.

Tell me. If you are a blogger, do you post five days a week? If so, is it a difficult schedule to keep? Are you finding enough unique and useful things to say?

And if you are a less frequent blogger, how’s that working for you?

If you are a reader, do you find time to read a blog that has daily posts? Or do you like less frequent posts with time between to “ponder” the ideas?

I really, really want to know how you feel.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , ,

Social Media Marketing: Are You Lurking, or Just Listening?

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Judydunn_editor

I listened in on a great discussion last week. (Hmmm…or was I a lurker?)

It started at Copyblogger.com. Guest blogger, ad executive Bob Hoffman, compared web marketing to marketing on TV: ‘people with stuff yelling at people with money.’ He was talking about the one-way, non-interactive web marketing model.

But is social media marketing really as interactive as it’s cracked up to be?

Hoffman thinks not. He said that, regardless of what the ‘conversation advocates’ say, the average customer does not have the time for, or interest in, chatting with marketers.

Hoffman describes interactivity as the ability to interact with the content of the medium, not just the medium. So, viewing a blog or channel surfing on TV is one-way communication, but posting a comment on a blog or forum meets the definition of interactivity.

Hoffman thinks that we (meaning you and I), as ‘web geeks,’ spend way more time in front of a computer screen than our customers do. And if our customers do use the web, it’s passively, hopping from page to page, reading this and that.

Anonymous visitors

Over at the Remarkable Communication blog, Sonia Simone continued the conversation. She said that, even within a community conversation model, in any one online community, no more than 1% of readers ever post comments.

So that means that the body of potential customers who are influenced by a conversation is much, much larger than the number of active users. And, while these listeners are not interacting, they often make buying decisions based on the information and opinions they read.

Who are the ‘lurkers’?

I was struck by something Simone said in her second post: “Online media have an unappealing word for this behavior: lurking. It conjures up a picture of some creepy guy hiding in the bushes outside your window.”

I’ve been there myself. Not the part about the creepy guy hiding in the bushes. But I have been a listener— a lurker of sorts. I subscribe to one blog because I enjoy the commentary. I visit that other forum just to see what’s going on, to listen to what people are talking about. To learn something.

Does a lurker’s motive matter?

Let’s say you are starting a new business and want to know the needs—I mean, the real pain— of your target customers. You think you know what’s keeping them up at night, but you want to be sure before you launch that new product or service, before you roll out that expensive ad or direct mail campaign.

So you listen in on forums where your prospects hang out. You gather information on their needs and challenges. You lurk.

You may not even want to contribute because you feel that your prospective customers will be more honest if they don’t know you are there.

So what do you think? Does the motive matter? Personally, I visit forums and blogs to better understand the issues solopreneurs face. And I don’t always contribute to the conversation.

Do you think listeners and lurkers are participants in online communication or just eavesdroppers? And by not revealing their motives are they being deceptive in any way?

I’d love to read your comments on this post.

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