Rock Solid Writing » blog article

Farming the Social Network Back Forty

David Denis — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:11:05 +0000

We’ve all heard the murmurs about the power of social networks for marketing. If you do a little bit of searching you can find places where there is much shouting and hubbub over using Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your business. All the hot hip trendy business mags like Fast Company and Wired give much space and attention to the power of this new media to drive customers into your business.

Should you get involved with social media marketing? As with so many things in life, the answer is, “it depends.”

Good Social Networking Soil

If your business is primarily transactional, and cultivating long term relationships with customers is neither practical nor desirable, you might find other strategies more useful. For many businesses, however, by keeping in regular contact with your key customers (who opt in) is a very helpful way to maintain top of mind awareness so that when the need for your product or service arises, you are the one who gets the call. It’s a corollary to the old proverb — the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Or perhaps an even better metaphor is “you reap what you sow.”

In order to reap, you have to sow.

What to Plant on your Social Network

The key is to provide value in every posting. Something worthwhile that in and of itself will be useful to your friends, followers and connections. Certainly each status update and tweet should be promotional – it’s about your business after all. Just be sure that each short message is a seed, not a pebble. Seeds are ideas that can grow and yield fruit. Pebbles just sit there. Seeds. That’s what you want.

Where do you find the time to do all this? Well, you could do it yourself. Or…you can hire someone to do it for you. Figure out how often you need to post and hire someone to write the posts and put them out on your account. The fee will vary depending on how often you need to post and how many different sites you want to post to. Start with a three month arrangement and track the results, but realize that this is the sort of endeavor that may not yield fruit right away. That’s why it’s called cultivating a relationship. It takes time.

By the way…feel free to friend me up on Facebook. Just search for Rock Solid Writing.

If you prefer Twitter you can follow me there by the name rcksolidwriting.

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David is a freelance writer for hire offering copy writing for print and web, article writing, sales letters, training manuals, , seo content, sales writing, blog articles, copywriting service, sales scripts and business name ideas.
To learn more, or request a quote visit http://www.rocksolidwriting.com/freelance-writer-quote/

Does your Website Stink?

David Denis — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:42:46 +0000

So you have a website. You paid good money for it. It has nice colors and pretty pictures. It has some words, maybe a video or something. It even has links and keywords. Mmmmmmm.

Now ask yourself this question.

Is my website actually doing what it’s supposed to do?

Do you even know what your website is “supposed to do?” Be honest.

To paraphrase Zig Ziglar, you may need to move your website from being a wandering generality and change it into a meaningful specific. How can you find out on what side of the fence your website stands?

Dan Heath over at Fast Company has a good idea.

Notice that it’s all about the message, and mostly about the writing. You can make an enormous change for the better just be using clear direct copy that communicates a clear direct message. You may not need to redesign your entire website (then again…). Nevertheless, if your little informal market survey focus group video project thingy tells you that your website visitors leave your website fuzzy about your company, it may be that you need to upgrade your copy.

In the long run the cost of better writing is much less than a website that stinks.

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David is a freelance writer for hire offering web copy, marketing material, article writing, sales letters, training manuals, speech writing, seo content, sales writing, blog articles, copywriting service, sales scripts and business name ideas.
To learn more, or request a quote visit http://www.rocksolidwriting.com/freelance-writer-quote/

Copywriting Tip: Why Bad Writing happens to Good People

David Denis — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:00:08 +0000

It’s called a POINT for a reason — it’s not dull.

Most people, probably you in fact, are scared by hard concrete words. We think that we must use safe language. Language with the teeth and claws pulled out. Language that is soft, squishy and fuzzy. We think sounding obtuse makes us sound smarter.

The urge to de-fang strong direct sentences is a powerful one. The fear of offending someone, or excluding something makes us queasy. We are afraid to write with words that poke at, or strike, or (God Forbid) even explode upon the reader’s consciousness.

Listen to what Dan Heath from Fast Company says about this, as applied to the writing of Mission Statements.

This is not just about your mission statement. It’s about your website. It’s about your brochures, tear sheets, email campaigns and print ads. It’s about any message you put out there to promote your business that sucks because you were too scared to say it outright and let it go at that.

Stop trying to sound like a PhD in Blabology (unless of course you actually are a PhD in Blabology). Start writing and talking like a real flesh and blood human being with a beating heart and a brilliantly electric brain. Your readers will respond with cheers and hoots and hollers and probably more than one standing O. Why? Because they like reading things that don’t sound like they were penned by a moron.

Got it? Good. Now go do it. I dare you.

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To learn more, or request a quote visit http://www.rocksolidwriting.com/freelance-writer-quote/

Copywriting Tip: Exploit the Curiosity Gap

David Denis — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:09:19 +0000

What’s Your Copy Writing Secret Weapon?

The “Curiosity Gap” is the difference between what you know and what you want to know. When used properly, there is no defense. Your readers will be unable to resist the lure and will come to your website over and over again to satisfy the itch of their curiosity.

It’s not just about headlines, as in the example presented here by Dan Heath of Fast Company. It’s about providing value that your clients and prospects really want. If you regularly post information that is useful, helpful or revealing, people will keep coming back just to see what you are going to post next. The Curiosity Gap will draw them in.

It’s not all about keywords and search engines. It’s also about content and visitors.

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David is a freelance writer for hire offering article writing, sales letters, training manuals, speech writing, seo content, sales writing, blog articles, copywriting service, sales scripts and business name ideas.
To learn more, or request a quote visit http://www.rocksolidwriting.com/freelance-writer-quote/

Content is Exercise – Blog Post

David Denis — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:38:49 +0000

In a recent post on her Fast Company Blog, Wendy Marx came up with a great twist on an old saying.

The saying goes that Content is King. And these days that’s becoming more and more true. I can see it as someone who works to make a living providing content. Many of my clients are small to medium businesses — tile cleaners, pallet makers, management consultants, shipping and fulfillment specialists, roofers, pest control technicians and so on. Their common thread is they all aim to bring in new customers using internet marketing tools like websites, blogs, and email. Content.

These aren’t big companies with enormous budgets. Nor are they on the cutting edge of business practices. They are the kind of bread and butter businesses that form the DNA of our economy. Individually, they may not need the volume of content of the multinational corporation, but they certainly need content and need it on an ongoing basis. It’s a matter of both quality and quantity — and frequency. Your successful content strategy must

Offer information that actually helps your prospects and customers
Create enough content to be actually useful
Provide new content regularly to maintain the interest and attention of readers.

That’s why Wendy Marx is spot on when she says Content is Exercise. Read her blog post to see what she means and a list of important questions you should be asking about your content strategy.

The Copywriter connects SEO elements

David Denis — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:11:51 +0000

Ask Kalena – A Search Advice Column is a pretty darn good blog about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Kalena offers a course in SEO/SEM that attempts to provide something close to certification in the field — a comprehensive course in best practices and how to.

Back in 2008 Sarah Parker quoted from a presentation conducted by Ciarran Norris about Copy Writing for Search. It outlines the importance of clear and concise headlines, first lines, keyword analysis, link placement, and track backs. It’s all about simple mechanics. Make sure your website uses all the arrows your SEO quiver.

BUT…this works best when the copywriter weaves it into the warp and weft of the text so that it isn’t even noticed. The only people who will really see it are the search engine spiders and the experience SEO engineer. The spiders will respond by giving your site high rankings. The SEO folks will nod appreciatively at a job well and artfully done.

And most important of all, your site visitors will get the information they need, and keep coming back for more because the quality and content were simply that good.

Copywriting stitches it all together.

If you want to know more about how I can stitch together all the best aspects of your websites, go to my contact page and request a quote.

Using Technology Effectively in your Business

David Denis — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:00:36 +0000

Is technology a blessing or a curse for your business?

Neither. It’s a tool. Like a screwdriver. Try driving a nail with a screwdriver. Not much good is it? But it sure is good for putting in screws. Using technology in your business is about using the right tool for the right job.

Technology has only 2 functions in your business.

Increased efficiency.
Increased effectiveness.

Using technology properly increases your efficiency by making a wide range of repetitive and complicated tasks simpler and faster and cheaper. If you haven’t realized this yet, you will soon when your faster more profitable competitor eats your lunch. But efficiency is NOT where the real value of technology lies. Increased efficiency only SAVES you money, which is good, but it can only get you just so far. It cannot MAKE money.

3 Ways Technology Makes you more Effective

Effectiveness in business means making a profit. Before profits come sales and sales come from customers. So using technology to make your business more effective means creating customers and making good decisions about your revenues and expenses.

Using Technology Find Customers

Use technology to find your customers. E-bay is such a powerful business model because it makes it super easy for buyer and sellers of just about anything to find one another just about anywhere. I know of a commercial lender who is using the internet to create a network of people who funnel him business. This is high touch because he is now able to reach out and touch a hundred, a thousand percent more prospects than without technology. What would a similar system do for your business?

Using Technology to Communicate with Customers

Second, use technology to communicate with your customers, more often, more quickly and with better information. Do you think voice mail stinks? I recently read about real estate agents out there who have set up systems to respond to a request for information within 15 minutes of receiving a message? That’s high touch because studies show that the first agent to respond is usually the one who gets the listing.

Using Technology to Manage Information

Third, use technology to manage information for better decision-making. Business isn’t only about numbers (see point number two), but if you aren’t paying the right kind of attention to the right numbers, the numbers will trip you up. So learn to use technology to gather information and look at it in ways that will help you decide how to invest your three most important assets as an entrepreneur: time, money and energy.

Stop thinking its high tech vs. high touch. It is true that it’s never been about gadgets. It has always been about people. But the smart businesspeople understand that using high-tech properly makes you MORE high touch. Be aggressive about figuring out how, and YOU will be the one eating lunch.

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This article is available for reprint only if the following bio is included intact.
This article is written by David Denis owner of http://www.rocksolidwriting.com
David is a freelance writer for hire offering article writing, sales letters, training manuals, speech writing, seo content, sales writing, blog articles, copywriting service, sales scripts and business name ideas.
To learn more, or request a quote visit http://www.rocksolidwriting.com/freelance-writer-quote/

Google Likes Websites with Quality Content

David Denis — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:40:05 +0000

I talked yesterday with Neil Burtt, CEO of You Promote in Concord NH. Neil observed that the Google search algorithm seems to be shifting, so that quality content is more important than ever for creating high search engine rank results. It’s not all about the header, the title bar, and the meta tags. Google likes websites that give web users what they need, and it rewards those sites with higher search ranking that make them easy to find.

This is especially critical for small businesses that want their websites to pull in qualified prospects and create selling opportunities.

When your website contains strong compelling content that answers the searchers questions, everyone wins. In its Webmaster Guidelines, Google explains how it views content as part of the whole Search Engine Optimization recipe:

Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”

If you have plentiful, high-quality content that accurately describes what your business does, Google is more likely to place your business higher in the rankings. That means your prospects will find you more easily.

Once they find you, quality content becomes even more critical. It is a standard principle of selling that people buy BENEFITS, not features. If your website describes your product, but does not help people to quickly see the benefit of your product, you won’t get the return you seek from your web marketing investment. Good content should move your prospect to act, and that action should be contacting you.

If writing copy and content isn’t your thing, then get some help to get it done right. Don’t underestimate the power of well-crafted paragraphs for your business website. It need not be fancy, but it should drive customers to your door. What happens then is up to you.

Rock Solid Writing can provide your website with compelling, high quality content that will create more opportunities for your business. Go to the Request a Quote page to contact me about how I can help you get the most from your web investment.

Quality SEO content gets search engine results

David Denis — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:56:38 +0000

The good folks at Danconia Media services note some recent changes in they way Google handles local listings. This may have some powerful effects on the internet landscape, especially for smaller businesses that depend on trade from their immediate area. This may or may not be a bad thing, but as the Danconia blogger observes, “Obtaining organic search engine results will now be more important than ever.”

In the big picture, these changes mean that the results your business gets from organic search are going to become more and more important. When your prospects search for your business, what are you doing to show up high on the search results listings? Of course you must pay attention to your keyword research, meta tags, alt text, headings and all that. But none of that really works properly if you don’t have compelling content that is fresh, valuable to your prospects, and well written for web searching.

Writing is the key

Basically, its all about the content. Make sure your website contains useful, well-written information that will be a resource for your prospects and draw them back to your site repeatedly. What’s more, don’t just set it and forget it. Regularly post new content to keep your site fresh. Sure it takes time and effort, but better organic search results don’t happen by accident. They must be cultivated.

Note these comments from A Beginners Guide to SEO Best Practices:

Having good content is one of the most important things you can do for your page. Like I said earlier, content is the foundation for SEO, you need to have great content. Not only is it better for users if you have really good content, but search engines’ algorithms try to reward pages that have great content. If you have good content people will be more likely to link to you, causing search engines to see more value and authority in your page.

You must offer web copy that has appeal to both the human reader and the search engines. It’s not an either/or proposition. It’s really both/and. When you offer content that hits the sweet spot for both kinds of readers, you can really start to hit it out of the park in terms of search results.

Make it easy for your clients to find you. It’s a beautiful thing.

Sample Article – Your Business Disaster Survival Kit

David Denis — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:00:32 +0000

It’s only a matter of time. Eventually it happens to every businessperson, striking catastrophically like lightning, or creeping up imperceptibly until it swamps you. There may be warning signs, but you may not see them. You may even take precautions, but then you are disarmed by the ferocity of its arrival.

It’s the business disaster.

A business disaster is not fire, flood, or vandalism. It is the economic disaster that burns your bank account, submerges your spreadsheets, or pillages your paycheck. Your job is cut, or your sales evaporate. Your key employees leave — or maybe even worse…they stay and REALLY screw things ups. No matter what the cause is, survival is YOUR problem. FEMA ain’t coming to rescue you — ever. The only ones calling are creditors, and they aren’t bringing your bottled water.

If you, your business and your family are to survive, you need to hitch up your shorts. If you are to overcome adversity, you need to roll up your sleeves and get to work on your own disaster relief efforts.

Your personal disaster survival kit could contain all manner of tools and resources. To overcome these kinds of problems, there are a few basics tools that you cannot do without.

Business Disaster Survival Tool 1 – Your Reality Checklist

To overcome a business disaster, begin with a complete assessment of all your assets and liabilities. Include not just money, but skills, resources and personality traits. Make sure you know both the brutal facts and the signs of hope in your situation. The key is to see the whole truth about your life as it is now so that you are moving forward on solid factual ground. You will almost always find that your situation is not completely hopeless, and that you have more assets than you realized. Your reality checklist helps you find options that you didn’t see before.

Business Survival Tool 2 — Your Anti-Panic Pill

When balanced on the brink of financial disaster, it is natural, normal and understandable to feel panic. It’s just not helpful. The only way to prevent panic from taking over is to take action.

Several years ago, I lost my job. I had a family, a mortgage and no contingency plans. The panic quickly set in, bolting me awake in the middle of the night, taking my appetite and filling my gut with feelings of fear, dread and anger that I could not control. I found, however, that that I could take action. I threw myself into the work of finding work. This allowed me a sense of real progress, and my positive focus helped prevent me from being paralyzed by the panic I felt.

Business Survival Tool 3 – Your Emergency Beacon

Call for help. Besides the support of my friends and my family, the most valuable help I received was from a local outplacement counselor named Stacy. She helped me channel my fear and anger into a powerful, practical plan of action.

I might have figured it out eventually on my own, but it would have taken me much longer — probably too long. The plan she helped me develop involved literally calling everyone I could think of for ideas, advice and assistance. By not going it alone, I leveraged my own skills and maintained external accountability to make sure I was making progress with my plan.

Business Survival Tool 4 – Your Mental Meal Bars

It’s easy in the middle of failure to let your personal discipline fall apart. Again, it is natural and understandable. It’s just not helpful. In the midst of the mess, take time to practice the small disciplines that will feed your heart, your mind and your body.

Get up at the same time each morning.
Go to bed in time every night to get a good night’s sleep.
Set aside at least some time each day to read and/or listen to positive useful ideas.
Set aside time each day to exercise.
Make sure at least 2 meals each day are low fat, high fiber, and heavy on veggies.
Set aside 1-2 hours each week to plan out for the next 2 weeks.
Schedule other things that are important to you and keep your appointments.

These healthy positive rituals have a direct and profound effect on your ability to recover from disaster. Your mindset can make or break you. Your health affects your energy and your emotional state.

In addition, these simple disciplines are almost always things that you have control over. In a disaster situation, you have lost control of many things, but you can control what you eat, what you hear and see, and how much you move your body. If you can’t do anything else, start there.

Business Survival Tool 5 – Your Road Map

Know where you are, and know where you are going. Spell out your goals with brilliant clarity. Break down your journey into small sections. Keep your focus on the destination, even if it seems really far away. Keep checking your progress and make regular corrections to stay on course. If you are not clear on what it means to be recovered from your disaster, you will delay your recovery and increase your frustration with your progress.

You may have noticed that these principles are principles that we should all be engaged in every day, even when we are not in disaster recovery mode. In fact, if you find yourself dealing with a disaster, the cause may well be related to the fact that you failed to practice one or more of these principles in ordinary times.

Don’t let the smoothness of your current path lull you into carelessness. Start now to incrementally build these tools into your everyday life. You will reduce the likelihood of disaster overtaking you, and you will be better prepared when it does.

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This article is available for reprint only if the following bio is included intact.

This article is written by David Denis owner of http://www.rocksolidwriting.com
David is a freelance writer for hire offering article writing, sales letters, training manuals, speech writing, seo content, sales writing, blog articles, copywriting service, sales scripts and business name ideas.
To learn more, or request a quote visit http://www.rocksolidwriting.com/freelance-writer-quote/