…are the words ‘you’, and ‘because.’ Read this great post by copywriter Brian Clark over at Copyblogger.

Apparently, we are all self-focused, and want to read what’s in it for us…but you knew that. What you might not know is how important it is to give your readers a ‘reason why.’

A study by a social psychologist shows that everything is better when you explain why you are doing something, even if the explanation is lame. Read about this on Brain’s post…because I told you to…and it will make you smarter when writing your newsletters and blogs.

Online, your words are your store front. Typos are broken windows. Your message is your window dressing. Outrageous claims make you look like a huckster out on the sidewalk.

In the online copywriting world, there are plenty of hucksters pushing "instant sales letters," or 60 second sales pages. Most of what I see in the way of long sales copy pages look like they come from the same template, or a variation thereof. Professionals must be buying the easy way out and using so-called expert’s cookie cutter templates. Many of these experts have copied each other, and haven’t been doing business online for long.

Nick Usborne is an expert on writing web copy, and he makes some very good observations in this blog post about experts who join the marketing hype hordes on the Internet, sacrificing their hard earned offline reputations. It’s worth the read, go here and read it.

A conversation about the power of blogs as marketing was started on John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing site, and picked up by friend Des Walsh on Thinking Home Business blog. Which got me to thinking: instead of writing "advertorials" for marketing messages, we should be writing "convertorials!"

Here’s what Des posted:

The more I think about blogging in a business context and especially in relation to marketing, the more I believe the key idea to communicate is that of the ‘conversation of the blogosphere’. While I experience that conversation on a daily basis, I do find it a challenge to explain it. Sometimes I feel the people I’m talking to are wondering (again?) whether I’ve really lost it. ‘Conversation of the blogosphere?’

So I was pleased to find a neat explanation by marketing expert and blogging coach John Jantsch, in his McLuhan-referencing post The Medium is the Message:

Blogs were not created to be the next great marketing tool but, over time, people realized that they liked what they could do with blogs and as more and more people used them and built tools to extend the way they were used, the character of the message that businesses were sending changed forever.

The challenge to bloggers everywhere is getting the readers (customers, clients) to participate in the conversation. Many consultants we work with report few and far between comments.

A blog should not be judged by the number or lack of comments, rather on the quality of the posts and whether it is relevant and worthy to a target audience.

For comments to start coming in on your blog, we recommend leaving comments on other people’s blogs. Participate in a discussion, stir things up a bit and you’ll see that other bloggers will find out about you and converse with you.

It’s like love, you know you can’t get it without giving it… What are some other ways to get readers to join the "convertorial?"

Brian Clark over at Copyblogger.com has an interesting post about psychological experiments giving people power and authority ("You Must Repect My Authority.") He reminds us of the Stanley Milgram studies at Yale where participants were asked to deliver increasingly strong electric shocks to people who missed a question on a test.

Given enough authority to do so, the participants for the most part had no problem in delivering pain to subjects. (The experiment involved actors who played the part of a suffering person.)

He then turns around and says that blogs offer similar authority to their writers. Okay, it’s a stretch in logic, but the point is well taken. Writers do gain perceived authority, and what easier and better way to do this than in the public blogosphere? Here’s what he says:

Content Creates Context

Good blogging creates authority, plain and simple. Writing consistently about your area of expertise makes you an authority figure within your industry and niche. You will enjoy a definitive advantage over competitors who do not blog, and likely even over those who have been blogging for shorter time periods.

Professionals and other business people have long been writing for trade publications and newspaper columns to build authority, coupled with networking in the community and at trade shows and conferences, all in an attempt to build word-of-mouth referral business. With blogging, you’re building authority and networking all at once, and on a global scale if your business model benefits from that kind of reach.

The goal is not to be on the A-List as determined by the Technorati Top 100 Blogs. Your goal is to be on the A-List for your niche, geographic region or industry. Hopefully you’re well on the way with your own blog.

Most of the professionals I encounter are experts. And they write great articles about their expertise. You’re probably one of those people I’m talking about or you wouldn’t be reading this blog that is dedicated to writing better newsletters and blogs.

Yet most of you probably don’t get the traffic mileage out of your articles that you deserve. Am I resonating yet with any of you out there? You can write great stuff, publish it on your website, blog or newsletter, and still not generate a surge in visitors to your site, or increase your number of subscribers.

Have I got a great ebook for you! You see, I didn’t realize how this whole article web distribution-submission to article directories-thing worked until I heard Christopher Knight from www.EzineArticles.com speak on a teleconference. Now I get it.

He’s got simple steps to show you how to maximize the value of your articles. You can probably double or triple your article production based on his strategies. Honest. I did it, by following a few suggestions, I turned several articles I had already written into two or three new articles.

And guess what? It’s actually simpler and easier now to write articles, and I’m getting more "web mileage" out of what I’ve already written.

So, here’s my recommendation: buy his ebook, read it, listen to his audio files, and apply a couple of his ideas. You will love me for recommending this to you. I’ll disclose I’m an affiliate on this product, but that’s not why I’m recommending it.

I hate to see so many talented experts out there not getting the visibility they deserve because they don’t know how to maximize the use of their articles.

Not to go on and on about this, but for more info and a special price, keep reading:

Read More→

Want to know how to get more readers for your blog? Here’s a great PDF called Viral Copy by Brian Clark: get it now. Learn all about "link love."

Brian Clark has a blog called www.copyblogging.com. What is interesting is his in-depth knowledge about writing for blogs combined with copywriting and direct sales skills. While writing sales copy is not considered appropriate for a blog, getting lots of link love is, in order to generate more traffic and get results for your business blog.

How do you generate link love? Get the PDF, you will learn a lot!

Thanks to Nick Usborne for letting us know about this Brian’s blog and this great free Viral Copy: Trading Words for Traffic resource.

One of the most prolific bloggers around is Steve Rubel. He posts several times a day at www.micropersuasion.com, and keeps me updated on what new in the worlds of PR, tech & web, and blogs. I like what he says about writing great copy for your blogs that have a marketing purpose:

The Four P’s of Blog Marketing:

Anyone who has spent any time around marketers has probably heard about the profession’s "Four P’s." These are the core elements of marketing – product, price, place and promotion. Well, the more I think about it, blog marketing needs its own version of the four P’s. How about these?

The Four P’s of Blog Marketing

Passionate – Write about issues that are near and dear to your heart
Purposeful – Make sure you keep the end in mind; why are you blogging?
Present – Keep an eye on what’s topical today
Positional – Take a stand on an issue and follow it

These four P’s, in my opinion, are great to keep in mind when writing any copy – ezine or newsletter, or web copy, even sales letters.

These Four P’s are going up on a sticky note to my monitor…and I keep a clean monitor. They’ll be prominent when I go to write my next Newsletter Nuggets. If you don’t get Newsletter Nuggets, you should, it’s my weekly post on tips for using the Internet to build your biz. Send a blank email to dr.patsi-45475@autocontactor.com.

This article comes from Marketing Profs.com, and to tell you the truth, I’d never read an actual piece on White Papers. Learn something new everyday, even though I’ve written them and used them…

How to Write Compelling White Papers (Your Audience Will Really Want to Read)
by Sandra Clutter

Sandra Clutter is the principal writer/consultant at unCluttered Communications,(www.unclutteredcom.com). She can be reached at sclutter@unclutteredcom.com.

November 15, 2005

Longer than print ads, Web site copy or case studies, white papers have the space (typically anywhere from 4 to 16 pages) to provide industry overviews, identify with the audience’s issues or "pain points," present findings, propose a solution and highlight the benefits of a product or service.

And white papers play a crucial role in the buying cycle of IT professionals, according to Bitpipe, a leading online source for white papers. A 2004 Bitpipe survey found that respondents downloaded, on average, 30 white papers per year. The survey also found that respondents passed white papers along to colleagues almost 70 percent of the time. Thirty-six percent of respondents contacted the company that published the white paper for more information, and over 35 percent forwarded the white papers to supervisors.

As the evidence shows, a white paper can be a powerful and persuasive marketing vehicle. Provided, of course, that the reader actually reads it.

Tips to Keep Readers Hooked

The biggest tip on hooking—and keeping—readers? Making your white paper informative and educational, and writing it in a positive, non-technical and "non-salesy" style.

Read More→

Want to know the essentials for a writing a long sales letter or landing page for an info product or teleseminar? These tips come from Laurie Weiss of EmpowermentSystems.com.

1. Headlines that tell the outline of the story, for people who are in a hurry and like just the facts.
2. Testimonials for people who want to know what others think about something to help them decide whether they might like it, too.
3. Juicy gossip is for people who love stories. Most people who have read this letter say, "I didn’t know that about you."
4. An explanation of why I am qualified to write such a program, for careful people who want to be sure I am trustworthy.
5. Explanations for skeptical people who don’t know if the program will work for them.
6. Special bonus offers to convince people that their investment will be well worth the price.

Of course, the value is in writing in a way that is authentic, interesting, emotional, friendly and respectful. So many sales pages I see follow this template but are so overly-hyped that they lose readers along the way.

Oh, another big turn-off for me is a long list of bonuses! This has been so over-used on the Internet. Quite frankly, I don’t want all those ‘free’ bonuses, who has time to even read them?