A cou­ple of new things to tell you about today.

First off, I’m try­ing a new exper­i­ment. I’ve decided to close and remove com­ments on this blog. Just to see what hap­pens. Why? Here’s the thing…

When I post a new blog post, it will be cross­posted to a few social net­works. Some, by design with the help of a few tools and plu­g­ins. Oth­ers, by sub­scribers and read­ers who retweet, reblog, or track­back to my posts.

What I’ve noticed is, on these social net­works — Twit­ter, Face­book, Friend­Feed, Digg, and now with the new Google Buzz — my posts seem to incite dis­cus­sions on these loca­tions. Dis­cus­sions I love to par­tic­i­pate in, too, when I have a chance.

I want to har­ness that social media power and divest myself of the con­stant mod­er­a­tion of this blog. I feel that, since there are so many dis­cus­sions tak­ing place else­where, why not take advan­tage of social media and bring the dis­cus­sions to the pub­lic instead?

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Dan Kennedy often says clunky copy out­sells clean copy. I some­what agree with him, but not all the time. In fact, clunk­i­ness can work against you. And a recent uni­ver­sity study proves this.

Peo­ple have a ten­dency to forge not only a last­ing opin­ion based on first impres­sions but also a blan­ket opin­ion that per­vades all other areas as well.

The adage, “a first impres­sion is a last­ing one,” is not only tem­po­ral (i.e., the ini­tial opin­ion remains con­sis­tent and nearly imper­me­able for a long time) but also spa­tial. That is, a first impres­sion is also a uni­ver­sal one. It per­me­ates other areas, even unre­lated ones, as well.

Illog­i­cal? Yes. But it’s human nature.

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I’m in the mid­dle of upgrad­ing this blog’s theme. It’s already two if not three years old, and some of the plu­g­ins con­flict with the theme. Above all, it takes a long time to load.

After some test­ing, I orig­i­nally thought it was my plu­g­ins, or the fact that there are too many of them. But it’s not.

A quick test over at Web​si​teOp​ti​miza​tion​.com revealed that latency was caused by too many uncom­pressed CSS line-​​items and javascripts, too many graph­ics, and the use of tables (rather than using posi­tion­ing through CSS 2.0+).

So after using the theme on Mar​keters​Board​.com by the awe­some design­ers at Inst​ant​Shift​.com (and pay­ing for a license to cus­tomize it), I’ve decided to use it for this blog and redesigned it to fit.

You’ll notice some of the famil­iar ele­ments are still here. But I still need to tweak some of the lay­out issues and col­ors, espe­cially with all the plu­g­ins. So bear with me. It should be com­plete by a day or two. Thanks!

The other day I was asked a ques­tion I hear all too often: “How do I dis­tin­guish myself from other copywriters?”

To find the answer, look to one of the most effec­tive and fre­quently used copy­writ­ing and mar­ket­ing tools. It’s your “Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion,” or USP.

(I pre­fer to call it a “Unique Sell­ing Posi­tion.” If you’ve read my book, “Power Posi­tion­ing,” then you’d know that I’m a big fan of posi­tion­ing rather than prospecting.)

Your USP is also your “hook.”

Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity — with­out need­ing to state it outright.

But since I hear this ques­tion often, par­tic­u­larly from copy­writ­ers just enter­ing the field, I sense that it’s because peo­ple need a lit­tle help in defin­ing their USP.

So to help you, here’s a tip.

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The fol­low­ing is prob­a­bly the great­est com­mand­ment in “Power Positioning.”

Now that we’ve talked about lead gen­er­a­tion adver­tis­ing, the next step is where to adver­tise. And the trick to hav­ing as many pre-​​qualified prospects come for­ward is to have your ad noticed and read by such a spe­cific group of peo­ple as much, as often, and as effec­tively as pos­si­ble. Gen­eral pub­li­ca­tions won’t do that and they cost a lot of money… That’s cost-​​per-​​lead money.

Spe­cial­ized pub­li­ca­tions, on the other hand, have the dis­tinc­tion of appeal­ing to a spe­cific audi­ence and thus increase the chances of it being noticed as well as read. Why? If one news­pa­per has a read­er­ship of 100,000 but only 25,000 fits into your demo­graph­ics, where another has only 40,000 read­ers but all of which fits into your demo­graph­ics (because the pub­li­ca­tion is spe­cial­ized), which one do you think will give you the great­est response?

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I recently joined a new band. It’s not a pro­fes­sional band by any stretch (I mean, not one in the sense of gig­ging all the time). It’s a hobby of mine. I’m the drum­mer, and I love clas­sic rock.

And like most of the bands I join, I love design­ing their web­sites. And this one, Dig­gin’ For Hoffa, is no excep­tion. Just like my main site at Suc​cess​Doc​tor​.com, this site is entirely WordPress-​​driven, even though it’s not a blog.

But I’d like to ask you a favor, too…

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Last month, I released a Word­Press theme that mim­ics my pre­vi­ous blog design, Clean Copy. It has a left side­bar and the same font and color scheme as my old theme on my blog at MichelFortin​.com.

Thank you to every­one who down­loaded it!

How­ever, since then a lot of peo­ple have requested the right-​​sidebar ver­sion (I rec­om­mend the right for SEO pur­poses). And I also thought about a full, double-​​sidebar ver­sion, with one on each side.

So I decided to hire Cory Miller once again, a tal­ented theme designer whom I highly rec­om­mend, to design them. And, he did it. Intro­duc­ing…

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