Marketing principle #1: Everyone needs a Gluten

My wife has me trying to eat gluten-free for a few weeks.

That means no bread, cookies, pizza, pasta. It's like I've been told, "Ian, from now on, food will suck".

But I'm doing it. Voluntarily.

If Dawn had simply told me, "Eat less starch, eat more veggies, and reduce caloric intake," I'd totally fail.

What's the difference? I need an opponent: Gluten is the bad guy. Tell me to eat smarter and I'm the bad guy. I'm not a bad guy! The result of me having gluten as a focus: I'm eating less starch, eating more veggies and taking in fewer calories. Sound familiar?

The greatest marketing campaigns in history created a focal point: An opponent, harmless or not, that we can focus on as we adjust our behavior.

Why'd we go to the moon? The USSR launched Sputnik. If you don't think JFK's speech launched one of the most ambitious marketing campaigns in history, well, better think again.

Why did 1 in 11 American adults do the Atkins Diet? Because we all decided we need to lose weight? Noooo. Because it turns out that the enemy is carbohydrates. It was easy to focus on a single opponent. It'd make a lot more sense to just reduce fat intake and exercise more. But there's no focus. It's a lot easier to sell a concept if there's a single bad guy.

This isn't a cynical statement on my part. I'm not saying we have to create enemies to do great marketing. Great marketing, though:

Looks at the change in behavior we want to create;Finds an element that can inspire people to make that change;Focuses messaging on that element.So yeah—every marketing campaign needs a gluten.

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Lessons in Twitter community building, by Kevin Hillstrom

Kevin Hillstrom is my analytical idol. So, when I bought a copy of his e-book, Twitter Hashtag Analysis a few weeks back, I was mostly looking for hashtag analysis techniques. But I got a huge bonus: This great e-book is a blueprint for Twitter community building.

Hillstrom based his e-book on analysis of activity in the #blogchat community. He slices and dices the data 99 ways, as I've come to expect, so you to read it for yourself.

I have no business or other connection here, by the way. It's just a great book that you need to read. And I think I might earn $.10 from Amazon if you buy one.

I'm still working my way through the data, but here are the biggest lessons I've picked up so far:

Everyone wants a little love. Reply to those who retweet you. In Hillstrom's analysis, folks who retweet you and then get a reply from you will become engaged members of your little community 60% of the time. If you don't reply? They return 6% of the time.

As Hillstrom succinctly put it: OMG.

Just a little 'thanks' could have huge implications for your community-building efforts.

Even answering someone's tweet makes them more likely to participate. Folks who get their tweets answered will engage—participate again—41% of the time.

That compares to about 6% of the time if someone tweets once or twice, retweets and then is gone.

So, even if they don't retweet you, respond to folks if you want them to stick around.

The more engaged participants you get, the easier it becomes to maintain a healthy community. Why? Because engaged participants will answer tweets and retweets. So, they actually generate more engaged participants, who then respond to new members, and so on.

It doesn't have to be you. Respond to folks and they'll help out.

There is a TON of great insight in Hillstrom's e-book. This little post is just a slice.

But the moral is clear: If you want to build a real, responsive audience on Twitter, nurture it. Respond to people. It pays off, big.

Caveat: This is based on his analysis of the #blogchat hastag. Your results may vary. Kevin has some other great examples of this kind of analysis, though, on his blog.

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Can Quora drive traffic?

I'm addicted to Quora. There, I've said it.

I know some folks have doubts. I love StackOverflow too. But something about Quora has me on there, all the time, answering questions.

I do have an ulterior motive: If I can get on there and help lots of people out, I can build an audience. If I build an audience, that's one more pool of interested people who might someday hire my company, buy a book, etc..

See, I'm not actually addicted. I have business motives! I can quit any time I want.

But that business motive means I gotta see Quora actually do something as a traffic or lead generator. So I've started keeping score.

Traffic is a dead loser. After 4 weeks of posting 3-4 answers a day, and accumulating just over 400 followers, I've had a total of 42 visitors. Wooooo.

But it pays to look a little deeper. On a site like Quora, I'm not necessarily looking for volume. I'm looking for quality. I want really, truly interested people to get in touch with me, follow me on Twitter, etc..

So, take another look at the numbers:

Of the top 50 referring sites for Conversation Marketing, Quora generates the third highest time-on-site. If folks are spending that much time on my site after coming from Quora, then this might just be worth it. In my own, weird scoring system, these are high quality visitors.

On the other hand, goal conversion from Quora is zero. Zilch. Nada. But it's not much of a sample size.

We'll see how Quora does. My 30-minute-per-day investment really only requires one new client per quarter to pay off.

I'll keep you posted.

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8 copywriting catastrophes and how to avoid them

I'm a creature of habit. And there are 8 stupid copywriting mistakes I make with amazing consistency. Here's how I try to deal with them:

Ever use 'form' when you meant 'from'? When you do, your computer snickers to itself and mutters something like Remember that time you cursed at me because you forgot your password? Well it's payback time, sucka! Spell check THAT!

Your spell checker won't save you. Certainly not from embarrassing stuff like this:

And, of course, truly horrendous mistakes that make a 'lick here' style typo seem like nothing.

The fix. I read most of my rough drafts backwards. Yes, you heard that right. Backwards. That makes correctly-spelled typos jump out at me. It's a trick one of my best writing mentors taught me, and it works beautifully.

Just because I know the word 'pusillanimous' doesn't mean I should use it. But I admit, I still get a little thrill out of using ten syllable word. Why use 'fix' when I can use 'ameliorate'?

Here's the thing: If I'm trying to learn about, I dunno, internet marketing, then I have enough on my mind. Keep the writing simple.

The fix. I actually use a few tools to check grade level, like this text-statistics gadget. And I keep a rubber band on my wrist. Every time I use a word with more than 4 syllables, I snap the rubber band. Ouch.

Ever read something like this?

"Dramatic Technology helps clients build value by leveraging digital assets. We use our unique skill set to integrate technology and human processes for great results."

Uh, what?

I'm terrible about this. I've written entire pages of text that could apply equally well (or poorly) to fresh fruit or bicycle frames.

The fix. Write the paragraph. Show it to someone else. Ask them what you're writing about. If you're describing a car and they say "Um, a peanut farm?" you need to rethink.

I talk a lot about the blank sheet of paper test: If you write a title tag, or a paragraph, or link text, on a blank sheet of paper, the reader needs to know what it's about.

Online, your writing gets pulled apart and re-used in search results, feed readers, etc.. So you can't rely on the fact that your headline will always be right by the photo that clarifies your meaning.

Some truly dramatic fails I've seen:

"Royals to get a taste of Angels Colon"
"Supreme Court tries sodomy"
"UN to grant Taliban amnesty"

Yikes.

The fix. Use the blank sheet of paper test. That's it.

I work for hours on a piece of marketing copy. When it's done, there's no call to action. At all. It describes a company's new service in prose that would make David Ogilvy weep from on high. Everyone reads it and swoons. But no one actually does anything.

Because I didn't ask.

The fix. I wish I knew. Right now I have a sticky note on my desktop that reads "Call to action?!!!". That takes care of it. Usually.

Choke. Passive voice. I could write "We build web sites". But it's so much more fun to write "Web sites are built by us".

I had a Humanities professor in college who looked at me one day and said "Lurie, if you could write in active voice, you'd save 100 trees a year."

I'm paraphrasing.

For some reason, though, I can't seem to just say [SUBJECT] [VERB] [OBJECT]. I have to say [OBJECT] [PASSIVE VERB] [VERB] [SUBJECT]. If could add in more stuff, I probably would.

The fix. Back to the rubber band thing. SNAP.

I know, you're all snickering.

I once wrote a letter to an auto mechanic that started with "Dear Criminal". For some reason, he never called me back...

The fix. I'm better now. I don't write truly angry. I wait a bit, simmer down, then write. Or I write, walk away, come back, revise, and then publish.

It's really, really hard for me to write something and not immediately publish it. The pressure to generate lots of useful, interesting stuff and get it out there is overwhelming.

But I know that, if I put in just 10 minutes of editing, I could turn a so-so article or report into a good one.

The fix. Stop using the internet. Seriously, I have no idea. I try to slow down now and then, but it feels like diminishing returns. Not smart, I know. Maybe you all can humiliate me if I do a lousy editing job on something?

The best way to avoid all of these copywriting disasters, of course, is practice.

If you write a lot, the chance that you'll leave in a horrific typo goes down.

Every time you remember to add the call to action, you improve the hardwired instinct to always include it.

And, the more you edit your own work, the better you get at it.

Any writing issues you have that I haven't listed? Bare your soul in the comments - it's good for you.

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How crawl budget works - my latest SEL column

My latest Search Engine Land column just went live. It's about Crawl Budget and how it may work. Having re-read it, though, I want to make sure I add even more qualification to what I wrote:

I talk about crawl budget a lot, but the most important part of this article, really, is 'making the most of your crawl budget'. That's what Vanessa Fox refers to as 'crawl efficiency'. If you have a huge crawl budget but 90% of it is sucked up by duplicate content and such, then you won't see much benefit.Search engines apply PageRank to individual pages, not to entire sites. However, I definitely see evidence that they look at some version of average PageRank, or domain authority, or whatever you want to call it, site-wide. That appears to impact crawl budget. There may not be a causal link - it may simply be that sites with lots of pages that all have higher PageRank get higher crawl budgets as a side effect of deep links to individual site pages.This is a very deep, geeky topic - I hope I don't ruffle any feathers too badly, but I also hope that a lot of people smarter than I will pick up the discussion, so we can all learn something.

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11 internet marketing skills you must always be learning

In spite of reading my blog, you want to go into internet marketing. Welcome to the asylum, my friend.

Time to start learning. This is a list necessary skills for an internet marketer. Warning: I do not necessarily know all these as well as I want to. I'm still learning:

Writing. I've beaten this one to death. If you can't write, don't even put the word 'marketer' in your title. DON'T. I hear you starting - "mar..." BZZZZT. Stop right there.Statistics. You don't need to be an expert statistician. But understanding a rolling average, statistical significance and confidence interval is required.SEO. Yep. Search engine optimization. This of course leads to a whole new list of stuff. That's for another blog post.PPC. Pay per click marketing. See SEO, above. Information Retrieval. I separate this from SEO and PPC because it's central to a lot of stuff you may end up doing to dig through/mine/organize data when you do everything from social media monitoring to reading your client's last 3 years of sales brochures.HTML and CSS. Please. For the love of all that's good in the universe. You can't help people market on the internet if you can't even fathom how it's all built.Design. You don't have to be a professional designer. At least I hope not - I can't design to save my life. But you should understand some basic principles: The Golden Ratio, typography, use of color, how to do a layout using a grid. Don't be a native, but at least speak the language.Social media. Shudder. It pains me to use this stupid phrase. Still, you need to understand how people connect online. It's a (sarcasm here) teeny little aspect of online marketing (end sarcasm). Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and a bunch of others.Math. Quick: What's .1 X $10,000? If you answered $100, then I've interviewed you before. Fail.Business sense. I can't easily categorize this. But you need to understand what makes a business 'tick'. Little stuff, like earning more money than you spend, can really make a difference.Diplomacy. Yeaaahhhhhhhhh I'm still working on this one. Learn to advocate, strongly, for controversial points that you know for certain are critical to your client. Without alienating every single person in the room. 'Diplomacy' is the ability to tell people they're totally wrong, and make them smile at the same time.comments (10) | trackbacks (0) | permalink

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Internet marketing in under 300 words

Today, you get to see the ugly, stench-ridden underbelly of my writing process. I actually recorded myself typing this blog post. While I removed a few typos that would've gotten me rated NSFW, the rest is pretty much straight-up:

And, in plain old text, in case you don't want the video version:

There are no tricks to internet marketing.

No secret methods.

It's about connecting with an audience.

It's about building a relationship that lasts.

Just for a second:
Forget "Social Media"
Forget search engines
Forget the internet

Focus on marketing.
Focus. On. Marketing.

...

Great marketing requires that you

1. SHOW UP:
Speak where you'll be heard
= Be found.

2. COMMUNICATE:
Favor 'clear'
Favor 'simple'
= Be understood.

3. CONNECT:
Respond to questions
Help people out
= Please them.

Every person who finds you is a potential customer.
Every person who understands you is a potential salesperson.
Every person you please joins your marketing team.

...

K, you can think about the internet again.

The internet makes marketing easier:

Search engines and social networks help you show up.
The whole web gives you a chance to communicate clearly.
Social media helps you connect with customers.

But it's still marketing:

Show up.
Communicate.
Connect.

I know what you're saying.

There's no trick.

There's no 'method'.

Does this really work?

You tell me:

You've now spent 30 seconds reading plain text.

On a screen.

There's no music.

There's no dancing raisins or speeding cars.

No tricks.

It's just marketing.
Delivered using the internet.

Tricky, huh?

You should try it.

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