I just wrote about 3 Worst Online Marketing Mistakes and realized all three can be avoided by good writing skills…

I was composing copy for our Blog Squad(tm) Mentor Program, and wrote this:

3 Worst Online Marketing Mistakes

1. People aren’t finding you easily online – your website or blog is not updated frequently enough, there’s not enough content with keywords, or you may have poor website design that makes search engine indexing and capturing visitors difficult if not impossible.
2. There’s no way for people to try out your services or products for free before buying; no information products available; no way for you to capture email addresses for follow-up marketing. Even when you do have a system in place, you aren’t following up with leads like you should.
3. Your emails, web pages, blog posts, ezine and other content lack benefits-driven reasons why visitors or email recipients should read, care, and act on your messages. You’re not persuading anybody to do anything. You wish you could hire an expensive copywriter, but you’re the one in charge of your marketing and web writing.

Each of these common online marketing mistakes can be avoided when you have good writing skills. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. or even be good at writing like they teach you in school. You do have to be able to communicate clearly what the benefits to readers are.

That means putting yourself into the mind of a potential prospect, and writing with their needs in mind. When you address the problems of your readers, you’ll be using the keywords they use in search directories to find solutions to their problems.

You write about them, they search for solutions, they find you (your website, your blog, or your landing pages), and everybody goes home happy.

You can’t find good clients online without good writing skills.

Want to learn more? Click here to read about the advantages of joining the Blogging and Beyond Mentor Program. We teach you the writing skills you need to grow your business online.

Sooner or later, as a small business professional, you’ll have to write copy that persuades. According to our poll, readers find persuasive writing the most challenging.

Here’s a post by Copyblogger Brian Clark about 10 Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques:

1. Repetition
2. Reasons Why
3. Consistency
4. Social Proof
5. Comparisons
6. Agitate and Solve
7. Prognosticate
8. Go Tribal
9. Address Objections
10. Storytelling

I don’t believe this list is in any particular order. If it were, Brian would have started the list with Agitate and Solve. Nobody’s going to read your copy unless you get their attention. And like newspapers, you’ve got to use bad news up front in your headlines.

It’s hard wired in our brains to pay attention to pain. Yet many clients we work with struggle with finding the real pain of their market. Some write their blogs, newsletters, and copy with the same up-beat optimism that makes them successful and fun to be around.

When it comes to writing copy that persuades, however, take off those rosy glasses. Go for the pain. Agitate it and make it worse. Get readers to remember how bad it feels. Then you can talk about solutions to their problems.

The reason you do this, besides getting their attention, is to establish your credibility as someone who knows what they’re experiencing. You’re creating rapport through empathy.