Last year, a bunch of copy­writ­ers who also blog — like yours truly — shot the breeze on the Nuts and Blog­bolts talk radio show.

It was an inter­est­ing and at times spir­ited discussion.

After some talk about con­tent and copy (or should I say, writ­ing con­tent ver­sus writ­ing copy), the show’s host, Mike San­sone, asked each pan­elist if we would indi­vid­u­ally respond on our blogs to this question:

“Writ­ing for the vis­i­tor is more impor­tant than writ­ing for the search engines. Can both be met with­out sac­ri­fic­ing quality?”

Ryan Healy posted his answer on the sub­ject. Good answer. I agree with him, because he makes some great points. But I also dis­agree as I think there are ways around it.

So I guess my answer is both “yes” and “no.” Here’s why.

First off, I’m not a search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) expert by any stretch. How­ever, I do know enough about SEO to know that it’s pri­mar­ily based on three major factors:

Code, links, and content.

Let’s take a look at each one…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

In prac­ti­cally every major mar­ket­ing teach­ing, course, or sem­i­nar I’ve come across, I have found that almost all suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing on the Inter­net really boils down to two essen­tial fac­tors: traf­fic and con­ver­sion.

Sim­ply put, vis­i­tors and sales.

In fact, I’ve been to two-​​day Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars and work­shops, where the first day focused on gen­er­at­ing traf­fic and the sec­ond day on build­ing sales.

That’s all well and good. How­ever, I believe there’s one more key com­po­nent. It’s one that’s grow­ing not only in pop­u­lar­ity, but also in need and impor­tance. It’s the one fac­tor on which the other two hinge. And it’s one that seems to be the least talked about.

In my career, I’ve seen the proof again and again. If you incor­po­rate this third ele­ment into your busi­ness model, chances are you’re going to see sub­stan­tial, con­tin­u­ous growth in your busi­ness — with a lot less effort than you’ve orig­i­nally thought possible.

What is it? What is this third, miss­ing element?

Read the rest of this post or share it »

I want to give you a quick update on things. You may have noticed I haven’t blogged any­thing new in a while. But there’s a reason.

Before I explain, check out this free newslet­ter. It’s high qual­ity, with top-​​shelf con­tent, and it’s 100% free. I’m proud of it, because I was a part of its incep­tion, and my wife and I are in the pre­miere issue.

I believe it’s going to be the gold stan­dard in the Inter­net mar­ket­ing newslet­ter indus­try. When so many newslet­ters out there are paid for and marketer-​​specific, this newslet­ter cov­ers a wide range of mar­ket­ing top­ics, strate­gies, and experts.

And the top­ics are not overly gen­er­al­ized, the­o­ret­i­cal or philo­soph­i­cal stuff. There’s going to be tons of strategy-​​specific ways to max­i­mize your mar­ket­ing and your mon­ey­mak­ing efforts. A great way to start 2009!

Note that there will be an offer on the result­ing thank-​​you page for a dif­fer­ent prod­uct. But you’re not held hostage, and the newslet­ter will still arrive in your email inbox, even if you refuse. It’s not manda­tory at all. Sign up and instantly get your first issue.

Now, speak­ing of my wife, here’s the rea­son why I’ve been out of the loop…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

As with sta­tic web­sites, the suc­cess of a blog depends on attract­ing a steady stream of new and return traf­fic. The dif­fer­ence is, blog pro­mo­tion tools are slightly dif­fer­ent, a bit more diverse, and largely much more effective.

Why? Because blogs are designed with inter­ac­tiv­ity and social net­work­ing abil­ity built in. They are ideal both for devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships and for mar­ket­ing your brand.

How­ever, don’t neglect stan­dard pro­mo­tional activ­i­ties in favor of blog-​​only traf­fic gen­er­a­tion meth­ods. You can and should use both.

In fact, tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing can become even more potent with a blog due to its nature.

For exam­ple, and most impor­tant, you will still want to uti­lize your email list, and use your blog to grow it, too. Ask read­ers to sub­scribe, and let them know when you post a new arti­cle just as you would with a new fea­ture or prod­uct on a sta­tic website.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Gary: Your wife has triplets. Now some­body comes up to you and explains, tells you your wife has triplets. Is there any way that that piece of infor­ma­tion could be trans­mit­ted to you in a way that wouldn’t be of inter­est to you? I mean, if they use bro­ken Eng­lish, bad gram­mar, if they use sign language.

How­ever it was, if it was, if your wife had unex­pect­edly had triplets I think you’d be inter­ested in the mes­sage. And, and, and that, that’s a point, uh, I think it’s really important ****.

Read the rest of this post or share it »