If your website doesn’t bring any business, it is a failure. You spend money, resources and energy developing a flashy website. At the end of the day, your website just stays there, not giving you any returns.

If you make just one change to your website, it will change your fortunes. You will see new customers coming to you, asking you for your services.

Stop Working for Your Website; And Let it Start Working for You, Bringing in All the Traffic, and Business You will Ever Want

Here is one thing you can do today, to make your website work for you (and finally stop working for your website):

Make a Promise

Yes. That is it. Make a promise that you can deliver. Not just any promise. An irresistible promise that (only) you can deliver. Make the promise so irresistible that your customers will consider your offer on the spot.

How to Make a Promise

Promise your customers exactly how exactly their lives will be improved.

Examples of some great promises:

Sample Promise # 1:

Beach-worthy tummy in 90 days – Follow these steps to burn belly fat and get a flat belly that makes your friends jealous!

Sample Promise # 2:

Easiest tool to automate your budget and to save hundreds (or thousands) of dollars in tax and accounting fees every year.

Sample Promise # 3:

Your mind is at peace as this mobile tracking tool will keep a watch on your kids for you – all day round!

Does your website make such a promise?

Before You Promise, Discover:

Dig a little deep into the minds of your customers and discover why exactly do they want to use your product.

> Is it because they want to feel self-worthy because of a flat belly?

> Is it because they want to save money and time while filing tax papers?

> Is it because they want to feel secure about their kids?

Answer the biggest advantage of your customers can get while using your product. And, make it THE PROMISE.

Why is this so important?

> Because, majority of businesses don’t promise anything. And, the business fails because they don’t make a promise.

> Instant Communication: When you make a big, bold promise, your customers will instantly know the benefit they will get while using your product or service.

> Straight to the Point: Majority of business websites talk long about the technical features of their products. They simply forget to tell what they offer.

> Simplest Language: Their website is so full of bombastic language, huge claims, mentions of awards, and everything but the promise.

Without A Promise:

> Visitors have no clue why they should spend time at the website or contact the business.

> After browsing a few pages, they leave.

> That is, another customer out of the door.

Apparently, you don’t want this to happen. Almost anyone who visits your site is a potential customer.

The customer didn’t find a good enough reason to stay – simply because you didn’t make a promise. Make him stay. Make her buy from you. Simply make a promise he/she can’t resist.

Lesson to Take Home:

Make a Promise Your Customers Will Love

And, here is My Promise:

I will create an irresistible promise for your business.

Contact me here: http://web-copy-writer.com/contact

Let’s see how a mobile website attracts money to your business.

Do you own an Android phone, an iPhone, or a smart phone of any kind? If yes, you will search for shops right in your mobile. Most people do.

Once you search for an item in your mobile, you get choices of places very close to where you are. In other words, your mobile phone has become very smart. It tells you about the restaurants, florists, clubs, auto garages, etc that are closest to where you are standing (or sitting for that matter).

If you are hungry, you will drive to the restaurant that you feel good about. If your car has a problem, you will drive to the nearest auto garage. In other words,  a local shop won your business, simply because it put in the efforts to attract customers on the move.

They know most people have smart mobile devices like iPhones and Android phones and targeting them is a great idea. In fact, it is a great idea. An idea your small business can copy. And let the extra profits to pour in.

What to Include in Your Mobile Website

Include the following details in your mobile website and people will have no trouble finding you:

• Business Name
• Products or Services Available (List them all)
• Location Map (preferably in Google Map)
• Contact Number
• Business hours
• Photos of Your Place (one or two will do)

Ask your designer to properly mark up the data. It teaches search engines like Google a lot of things about your business.

And, make sure the website loads very fast, even for mobiles using very slow connections. Get ready to attract those customers on the move – right to your place and do more business.

It is big political scene, rallying against corporate retailers, that’d squeeze small businesses to death. I’d leave the politics part out, and talk the business. Apart from rallying and raising slogans against mega retail chains, they can start doing this and it will give better results.

The mistake tiny shops makes is this: they fail to market!

With exception of a handful, every small shop out there makes this mistake (of not marketing their wares).

How a Shop is Losing Sales

There is a certain corner shop hidden behind other shops near a busy street. On the first look it is a video library. And that is what anyone who visits the place will see.

While I was at the library, a woman came asking for a packet of milk. I was very surprised when the guy opened a refrigerator to produce a milk packet. I had no idea there was a big refrigerator there, with a few packets of milk inside.

Just like I failed to understand the shop sold milk, everyone reaching the place have a hard time finding the shop. It is not easy to find. You have to walk about 15-20 ft through a narrow corridor.

I asked his guy why he didn’t place a board outside the corridor, advertising both the video library and the milk stall. My thought was, this will attract dozens of more people to the shop – both for renting videos and for buying milk.

The shopkeeper guy who singlehandedly manage the shop was not very happy at the suggestion. His reply was: ‘I am doing business for 12 years at the same place…’, leaving a lot unsaid.

I can almost hear his thoughts: ‘Who on earth are you to tell me how I do business? Get lost you idiot from my shop!’

I don’t have anything against this guy. However, not placing a hoarding outside is costing him several sales every day.

He is also doing a disservice to people who want to watch some new movies and/or people who want a pack of fresh milk on their way home.

This is one mistake small businesses and local shops need to avoid. Bad marketing.

The opposite of this also happens.

Learn How they Fill this Shop with Affluent Tourists

This shop is hidden away from the main street, yet filled with tourists ready to spend. Read on to learn how they do it.

Once in Madhura (Tamil Nadu), a long time ago, as we were walking down the streets, a young man approached us and asked if we would like to buy some fine t-shirts.

He then took our team (of about four guys) through a narrow alley, a few hundred meters, to a decent textile shop. The only way an outsider could reach the shop was by someone showing the way in. And, this shop appointed several guys to tell the tourists about the fashion items available in the shop and to bring them in.

Although it is extremely difficult for an outsider to find the place, the shop is doing brisk business – because of the guys out there in the busy street, bringing tourists back to the shop.

Now, that is good marketing.

I am not asking shop owners to send kids to the street to bring tourists back to the shop. That is one extreme step taken by shops that didn’t get prime real estate.

Big shops too need marketing. If you don’t market your place, you sabotage your own business.

Shops need marketing. They need to attract people. They need to tell people about their existence.

If your shop is not the center of attraction at a busy street, you need to work harder.

Raise a hoarding. Stick some posters in the neighborhood. Attract customers. Make sales happen. If you think you can get all the customers you want without doing any marketing, that is the biggest mistake you can make and the biggest disservice you can do to your potential customers.

Next article will be on a marketing mistake small businesses and tiny shops make with the people who walk in.

The technique is: Write homepage content last!

Yes, that is it. Write homepage content after writing inner pages. You will write better homepage content this way.

Why is it such an important idea?

[advertisement]When you write content for inner pages – like products and services, you will get a clearer idea of what the website is all about. Believe me, you will learn a lot of things about the business. The things you didn’t think about the beginning suddenly become obvious. Without extra toil, you will create home page content that benefits the visitors.

Every page you write is a learning experience. As you complete each page, you will learn something new about the business. This knowledge comes to your help.

For example, I’ve been writing content for a concrete cutting business. I thought concrete cutting, core drilling, wire sawing, etc as their key functional areas.

Along the way, my client asked me to give prominence to rebar fixing and chemical anchoring.

This saved me much time and headaches. I could write a homepage that is just right. No time wasted on rewriting homepage content. Same principle applies to ‘about us’ page. In most cases, writers are tempted to write these two pages first. But, by keeping them for the last, you can save time and write better content for two of the most important pages of any website.

Your Clients Will Love You

If you deliver top content, you will always be in big demand. New writing projects will find their way to you.

Fail to do this and your clients will start looking for other writers who can understand their business better.

So, What Should I Do Before Writing Home Page Content?

I’m glad you asked. Write the inner pages first. Start with the list of products or services of the business.

Check ‘at least’ half a dozen websites that offer similar products. Try to understand who uses the products. And, find out what they look for in the products or services they want. This research will help you write strong sales pages for products and services.

Write five to ten such pages. After writing those pages, you will have a better idea of what the business is all about.

The Homepage Content Will Come Naturally

After writing several pages for the website, it will be easier for you to give a quick introduction of the business. When you start writing a homepage, you can lead with the most important product or service the business delivers.

And, the homepage you produce will be the most useful content a visitor receives upon reaching the site. And, that is all it matters.

What were the rules for successful Search Engine Optimization in 2005? Let’s take a look…

Keyword Density: Shoot for keyword densities up to 5% and you will rank high in search engines.

I’ve no count of so called articles written for the sole purpose of serving as content for search engine spiders to feed on. Repeating the keyword/key phrase 25 times in a 500 word article looked awkward for me, but never for my clients.

In one extreme case, I wrote some 100 articles for a self storage company. The purpose? Keyword density of 20%! In other words, I have to fit in keywords ‘city name self storage’ and ‘self storage city name’ in every sentence of the 750 word article I’d write. Replace the city name with New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc and you have articles for dozens of cities in the USA.

The client wouldn’t find it even if I use Ctrl+F to replace city names and create new articles. Although I never liked it, I could write 750 words in 20 minutes or less (a feat I could never repeat in other projects).

And, during those project, I thought the job of an SEO content writer is to create fodder for search engines to feed on. (Still, a lot of people think this is the way to go).

Anchor Text: Get other websites to link to your site with specific keywords or phrases as link text.

Anchor text was a big deal. Suppose you wanted your website to rank highly for the search term ‘natural acne cure’. You would ask other websites to link to your website with the text ‘natural acne cure’. If you get thousands of such links, your website would rank high for that search term.

Even today, if you search the term ‘click here’ in Google, the first result is of Adobe PDF reader page. This is because, the thousands of pages that offer a PDF download link to Adobe’s site to download the software that helps you read a PDF file. (My personal preference is Foxit Reader though).

Article Submission: Write a 300-word article and submit it to 100s of article directories.

Almost everyone used this technique to get links. You can easily write an article. Then, from the resource box, you can place as much as three links to your website. The links can have any anchor text you want.

Article submission is not dead. People do submit to article directories. However, more writers and bloggers now exchange articles with other websites and blogs in similar categories.

Meta Keywords: Include all possible keywords in the keyword meta tag.

Dump as many keywords as possible in the page’s meta keyword tag. It was possible to see 15 or more keywords appearing in the meta tag.

Page Title: Use a descriptive page title.

This technique remains constant from 2005 through 2013. The title in title tag is what people see in search results pages. The more descriptive the title tag, the better it is for a searcher to identify the right page.

Alt Attributes: Use keywords in the alt attribute of img tags.

Google and search engines can’t identify the image, unless you specifically tell them what it is. The alt=”a sunflower farm” would tell Google the image shows a sunflower farm. This still is a legitimate technique. The boring part is, people would dump a dozen keywords, where one would do.

All Stuff, No Fluff Content

In the past, internet marketers could get away with articles so full of fluff. Not any more. If you are serious about online marketing success, you need solid content that interests your potential customers.

Don’t just tell what to do. Tell them how to do it. It seems anyone in the street can tell you what to do. Few can clearly explain the steps to take. It is easy to tell me what to do. However, it is extremely difficult for you to tell me how I can do it. I will start loving you if you tell me how I can achieve a certain result by taking specific steps.

For example, instead of telling your readers to save money for retirement, show them the safe funds, stocks and investment vehicles that will help them achieve their retirement goals. You can also tell them how they can minimize expenses of owning a car, a house, etc.

It is easy to ask your readers to save money. It takes a lot of research, studies and observations to find out how. It is painful comparing costs of insurance, car ownership, home ownership, etc that will help your readers.

Content in Different Formats

PDF: Text content in the website is not the only kind of content. Offer text content in PDF format or e-books. Same content delivered in such formats have higher perceived value.

Here is one easy way to create PDF: Create your document with MS Word™ and upload the document to Google Docs (now, Google Drive). Then, export the document as PDF, and download the same to your desktop. You have a PDF document to share.

Video: Video content is another big marketing tool, rising in prominence. Supplement your text content with videos. Video tutorials are in hot demand today, and your potential customers will love you for delivering helpful videos.

Record videos with your digital camera and upload it to your site. Don’t be worried about the quality. If the video is helpful to your audience, they are going to love it. Professional video editors and studio professionals can record and edit a top of the line video.

Infographics: Infographics are another fad of the day. Create your own infographic by going to visual.ly. Upload it to your site and share it from Google+, Facebook or any social networking site where you are active.

If the content you share is very helpful to your audience, they will share with others – giving your content even more exposure. And, delivering solid, helpful content to your target audience is the only way to content marketing. Without proper content marketing, you will find it extremely difficult to profit from your online marketing efforts.

1. A Promise

2. Proof

3. Credibility

If your copy has all three elements above, it is going to be a strong copy. A big, bold promise of benefits or real solutions to real problems is what attracts them to your copy.

Proof and credibility keeps them attracted to your offer, and help you sell your solution.

Every marketer out there is a problem solvers. They promise mega benefits like:

Clear skin,
A healthy body,
An organized home,
Cheap long distance calls,
Profitable business,
Smart kids,
Healthy heart,
Ability to seduce men/women,
… and the list goes on and on.

#1 Promise

Think of the following as a bold promise:

Learn these male behavioral traits that send gorgeous ladies crazy for you. You are too occupied to notice that Playboy bombshell giving you puppy eyes because you are already surrounded with hottest girls in the town, eating out of your hands.

Give yourself a clear, beautiful and radiant skin that will give you the confidence of a princess and help you claim your ex back from your jealous friend.

Those two examples above tell you what a bold promise is. Such a clear, bold and solid promise is the cornerstone of any successful copy.

How to Make a Promise that Works

Identify what your product does. Does it give your customers a clear skin? A trim body? Smart kids? Cheap phone calls around the world? Ability to attract the opposite sex? Once you identify this point, connect that benefit with an emotional benefit. And you have a strong promise.

Love, pride, power, lust, fear, insecurity, etc are some powerful emotions to play with.

In the clear-skin example above, you make a girl feel proud of herself because of her smooth skin and her ability to finally revenge her jealous friend, who has stolen her boyfriend. She feels that self-worth growing within her as she reads your copy, learns how she can get a clear skin and how that clear skin would help her get what she wants (her ex back).

Your copy has played with her emotions and by the time she finishes reading your copy, she will be shouting at you to give her the solution. You have effectively played with a complex matrix of emotions – love, pride, insecurity, confidence, and the girl thingy that you can’t fully explain.

That is one example of a promise. Now, take a look at how you can use human emotions to sell long distance voice and video calls.

Staying in NY need not prevent you from seeing the first smiles of your grand child – even if she is in Melbourne, London or Tokyo. You can see your grandchild’s face in your screen, listen to her giggling and feel real close – as if there is no physical separation. You don’t have to wait for summer for your daughter to bring your grandchild home. You can see the newest little one in your family, any time you want.

Now that is the benefit of an IP based video calling solution. You appeal to a different emotion – of familial bonds.

#2: Proof of Benefits

Show dozens of testimonials, case studies, and real life examples of how your solution worked in the past.

With a little digging, you can discover tons of testimonials from customers who have bought your solutions in the past. Use such testimonials in your marketing materials. Your prospects will see you have solved the problems of others and that your solution will work for them too. They feel more comfortable spending money on solutions that have worked for others.

Case studies pack more power than a regular testimonial. If you can use case studies, you will have no trouble creating top-notch marketing materials that instantly win the trust of your prospects.

Case studies teach your prospects how someone had a specific problem, how he/she has tried different solutions, why some of the solutions didn’t work, how they used your solution and how it worked for the situation. Case studies are much more powerful than testimonials because they explain in detail ‘how’ the solution worked in a particular situation. It indirectly teaches the prospects how the solution would work in their situation too.

#3: Credibility

If your product is related to health care, skin care, etc, you can use research materials by physicians and other experts from the medical field. People trust experts like doctors and researchers.

When doctors prescribe a particular drug, you will take it – in most cases, without asking any questions. When a researcher tells you about a new discovery, you will have no trouble believing it. When a financial expert appears in the TV, you believe what he or she says.

Such professionals have credibility. If you use their own research findings, teachings and speeches, your credibility increases. You can use the names of the professionals, doctors, researchers, etc even if they don’t endorse your products. You can cite their research findings, published materials, etc in your sales copy.

As a sales copy writer, your job is to sell the solution in question. If the copy doesn’t sell, the product doesn’t make any money or profits. Now you have a clear idea of what constitutes great sales copy. Draft your own sales copy in the following formula:

1. Draw their attention with a bold promise they can’t ignore;

2. Prove beyond a shadow of doubt that your solution works; and

3. Show them how powerful people have good things to say about your product.

Follow the three simple steps above with the only focus on winning customers’ trust. When you send out your sales copy, it will attract the right prospects and help you sell your solution – and help you make money – as much as you want.

High landing page quality score makes your Adwords campaigns a lot more profitable. Learn the exact secrets to increasing Adwords landing page quality score.

If one factor determines your landing page, that has to be this: On Page SEO Optimization. We will discuss on-page optimization in detail. If you do on page SEO right, your campaigns will get quality scores of 6 and 7 – automatically.

If your landing pages get quality scores of 5, 4 or even 3, you are losing money. Follow the steps below to pull quality scores (both landing page quality score and thereby campaign quality scores) to 6, 7 or even higher.

Seven Places to Use Keywords

Use keywords in the following seven places and you will see high landing page score – instantly.

>>  In the page title: <title>Keyword: Site Name</title>
>>  In the page url: http://yoursite.com/keyword-directory/keyword-page.html
>>  In the Header: <h2>Keyword Optimized Title</h2>
>>  As bold text: <strong>keyword</strong>
>>  As anchor text pointing to the page: <a href=”/keyword-page.php”>Keyword</a>
>>  And once or twice within the text content of the page: Text text. Text keyword text text.

If you use keywords in all those seven places above, your page will have very high keyword density. In other words, you have keyword-optimized your landing pages. Use this landing page for your next adwords campaign. You will instantly get high quality scores for the keyword you optimized the page for.

Other SEO Optimization Factors to Consider

Keyword optimization tells only half the story. There are even more critical factors to consider.

Page Load Time – the faster it loads, the better it gets.

The people who visit your web page are impatient. They are not willing to wait for five seconds for your page to load. If it doesn’t load within three seconds, they will become impatient.

Test page loading time. Ideally keep it to less than three seconds. Some common culprits that slow down pages are:

Embedded elements

–  Plug-ins
– Flash content
– Image files

A simple, and clean html/php code will guarantee fast loading pages.

It also helps when you limiting the number of page elements to a bare minimum (plug-ins, widgets, Flash, javascript, etc). If you don’t need an element for the page, remove it. Even tiny widgets like Facebook friend box can seriously affect page loading time. Remove such elements from your Adwords landing pages and you can make serious improvements in page load times. Improved page load times will improve your landing page quality score and thus your adwords campaign ranking too.

Conversion Optimization

Up to this point, you have learnt the technical aspects of designing a landing page. Now, we will talk about powerful marketing techniques. Without implementing these techniques, you are missing serious profit making opportunities.

Conversion is the single most important factor every internet marketer must give the most importance, whenever they create a landing page. Careful use of visual elements within the page will lead to better conversions and conversion rates.

Conversion rate is the rate at which people converts to customers, leads or email newsletter subscribers. If 100 persons visit your page and 10 people take the action you want them to take, your conversion rate is 10%.

How to Improve Conversion Rates

Clearly tell your visitors what action to take. Do you want to share their email address so that you can sell them your products 100 times in the next 12 months? Do you want them to buy your product on the spot? Or do you want them to ‘like’ your Facebook page?

First of all, determine the action do you want them to take – give you their email address, like you on facebook page, or buy your product. Then ask the visitors to take the action. And make sure the visitors can take the action easily and within a few seconds of reaching your site.

If you don’t ask them to sign up for your email address and provide the sign up form, they will not subscribe to your newsletter.

If you don’t show them the ‘Like’ button, they will not become your facebook fans.

If you don’t show them the ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Cart’ button, they will not buy from you.

If you give your visitors a dozen options, they will leave your site, confused and dejected. So, ask your visitors to take a single action and ask them nicely.

Add Elements of Trust

Trust signs like Verisign security, VISA logo, Paypal button, etc within the landing pages, and close to the ‘Add to Cart’ button increases trust. Your visitors feel secure because they see familiar signs and logos they trust.

Another element of trust is testimonials from your real customers. People will see how you have solved problems of others. And, when they see real people supporting you, they will feel more secure and will spend money on you.

I hope the points discussed above will give you a fairly good idea why certain landing pages are profitable and others are not. I also hope you will pick the points above, improve up on them and maximize profits from your campaigns.

Web Content Writing – Article Writing

Although web content comes in various forms like blog posts, sales messages, social media messages, info-graphic content, email messages, Tweets, etc, we will talk about article writing. Keep in mind, article writing is only one of the many forms of web content writing. Now, let me tell you how to write an article for the web.

Structure of an Article

An article mainly has four parts, viz. Heading, Lead Sentence/Paragraph, Article Body, and Conclusion.

How To: Writing a Heading for the Web

Write a headline from the key-words of the article. Key-word here means, any word that will fully explain your concept – fast and easy. The headline should be explanatory. When it is explanatory, interested people will click on the link to read your article.

Examples of some explanatory headings:

– Top 10 Lessons to Writing Unique Web Content
– How to Write Articles Fast
– Simple Template to Writing Articles to Grab Instant Attention

Those headlines will tell the readers what they can expect from your article.

In other words, convey the essence of the article in as few words as possible. Your headline is a promise you make. You deliver that promise through the body of your article.

Maybe, you want to see this article on how you too can Write Magical Headlines that Grab Readers’ Attention:

Headlines are the most important factor determining the success or failure of your article.

How To: Writing a Lead Paragraph or Intro That Keeps the Attention

A lead (also known as an intro) is the second most important element of a successful web article. You grab the attention of your readers with a telling headline. Now keep that attention with a telling intro.

Write a short, simple and straight-to-the-point lead. Ideally, the lead paragraph should have a two to five sentences in it. It has to fully explain what is to come.

Keep your lead to less than 160 characters (including spaces). That is the maximum snippet search engines usually show in search results page. If the intro is not self-explanatory, people will click over to articles that have a self-explanatory lead.

Examples for some leads that work:

– More than 90% of journalists follow this simple technique to writing attention grabbing leads. Learn how you too can write telling intros like a journalist.

– Most people don’t get article writing right. They try everything and fail. These 10 simple article writing tips will make you a successful article writer.

– Getting readers for your blog is tough. Learn these seven marketing techniques and you will start attract readers like crazy – works like magic.

Article Body

Article body is where you deliver the promises. Your heading made a promise. Your lead/intro reinforced that promise. Now is time to deliver the promise.

How to write an article body: The following points are pointers for writing articles for the web.

– Stick to a single idea for the whole article. Don’t try to explain several ideas with one article.

– Break down that idea into smaller, supporting ideas. Explain a single point, idea or concept in a paragraph. Too many ideas will distract your readers.

– Write short, simple sentences. They are easy to read and understand.

– Write short paragraphs. The maximum length of a paragraph is five or six sentences.

– Give subheadings to paragraphs when explaining an idea in detail.

– Format your article with bold, italics and underlined text. This will increase the readability of your article.

Conclusion

In most cases, you can write an article without a conclusion. You don’t need a conclusion every time. When you write, remind one or two of the most important points explained in the article. Don’t try to pack everything into the conclusion.

A conclusion like the one below will work nice in most cases.

Now you have learned the techniques of writing an article, attracting readers’ attention, and formatting that article for the web. Apply the techniques you have learned above and you can be the web content/article writer you wanted to become.

You might also like:

Top 7 Tips to Writing Attractive Content for Your Website

1. Bring the Most Important Point in the First Paragraph

Most writers make this mistake. They reserve the most important point for the last. Bring the most important point towards the beginning of the article. In fact, it is a good idea bringing the most important point right within the heading and the first two lines of the article/content. This tells readers what your article is about and what they can expect.

2. Explain One Idea Per Paragraph

Explain a simple point in a paragraph. If you try to explain too many points in a single paragraph, the readers will not absorb half the points. If you stick to a single point rule, readers will understand what you are telling.

3. Use Short Sentences and Paragraphs

Short sentences are easy to read and understand. It conveys the ideas fast. Short sentences and paragraphs give a nice, clean look to the page. If you use long sentences and paragraphs, the text forms a big block. Short sentences and paragraphs break the monotony.

4. Use Active Voice

Always write in active voice. Short, active sentences convey your message fast. In most cases, active voice beats passive voice by a big margin.

5. Format the Text

Use bold, italicized, or underlined words to draw attention to important points. It gives your content an organized look and helps your readers memorize the most important points you want to convey. So, use those formatting prudently and increase the appeal of your content.

6. Include Sub Headings

Sub headings increase readability of your content. In internet, people are more interested in scanning the content. Reading from a computer screen is tiresome for your eyes. Make it easier for your readers to read your content. The sub headings will keep readers focused on the content.

7. Proofread (Don’t Forget!)

Edit any spelling or grammar errors in your content. Otherwise, your potential customers will think you are lazy. And not serious.

Bonus Tip: Research Extensively

Conduct extensive researches on the internet. Uncover what people talk about the product in blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Find out the complaints, requirements, needs, and goals of people using the products.

This will help you understand your prospects a lot better. You will catch their attention if you promise to solve their complaints, identifies their goals and offer a real solution to their problems.

Why Your Gmail Password is Highly Valuable

Most probably, you manage all your contacts through Gmail. You have emails from your friends, family, colleagues and business contacts – saved in your Gmail contacts.

In addition, you also use a host of Google services, like:

• Google Plus
• Blogger
• Youtube
• G Drive
• Calendar
• Adwords/Adsense
• Analytics,
• Web Master Tools and More

In short, a Google account is utterly important for your survival online. If someone can get access to your password, he/she can post very bad comments about your friends, your family, your company and your community – from your Google Plus profile.

If you have a very popular blog, the hacker can post content that damages your reputation.

And, from the Gmail, the hacker can send malicious messages to everyone in your contacts list.

The hacker can reach all the files you have saved in your Google Drive.

If someone hacks into your account, your online reputation and sanity is at risk. This is why you need to protect your Gmail/Google account. Protect your account like a precious jewel.

First Line of Protection – Enable Two-Step Verification

Enable two-step verification. If you haven’t activated it, do it now.

Click here: https://www.google.com/settings/security

Click on the ‘Settings‘ button just below the option for 2-step verification. You will be prompted to enter your cell phone number. Google will send you a security code to your phone. Verify your number by entering the code.

After doing this, go to the bottom of the page, where you can instruct Google to send you a verification code every time you log into your Google account.

Click on the link that reads: “Require a verification code the next time I log in from any other computer.”

Whenever you sign into your account from a different machine, you will receive the security code in your mobile phone. Enter the code into the box to complete your login.

This will protect you against much of the attacks. If someone learns your password and logs into your account from a different computer, you will instantly get a text message from Google. You can then log into your account and change your password, if needed.

Application Specific Passwords

If you access Gmail via a POP3 reader like Evolution or Outlook, you will need to generate Application Specific Passwords. You can do it from the same page. One password works for a specific Application (like Evolution, G-talk, etc).

This is system generated password and you don’t have to remember the password.

How to Choose a Strong Password

You can make very strong passwords from simple words and figures. Take this example:

Lolita 9095 (Lolita is a common password, so, don’t use it).

We will change the word a bit to convert it into a password.

Change the letter and number combination this way:

L – l, o – 0 (zero), l – L, i – !, t – t, a – @, 9 – (, 0 (zero) – O (letter O), 9 – 9, and 5 – 5.

The password will be: l0L!t@(O95

The beauty is you can remember the word and letter combination. You have modified the letters and numbers. If you can remember the word and the letter combination, you can easily enter the password. The password looks complex. Below that complexity is a simple word and a number combination that you can easily remember.

Here, we changed the letter O to number 0 (zero) and vice versa. The letter ‘i’ converted to ‘!’ and a to ‘@’, making the password strong and secure.

Unique Password for Every Online Account

You can make this password even more secure. For example, you can use the same password everywhere – with a twist.

Gmail password can be gM@!Ll0L!t@(O95
Yahoo password: y@h)0l0L!t@(O95
Paypal password: pPl0L!t@(O95

That is, you prefix your password with the name of the service. You prefix your master password with modified names of the service. This way, you have a unique password for every one of your online accounts. You can remember them all by remembering your original, strong password.

Tip: Don’t use the password mentioned above. That is a bad password now. It is published in the internet. Get a new one. I’m sorry if you have used exactly the same password above. After all, others too have guessed it.

It looks complex. But, it is not.

Keep Your Password Recovery Options Safe

While asking security questions, never give easy to guess answers – like mother’s maiden name. At least, not the correct answer. Make up a name. And use it as the security answer. Others will not guess it, however hard they try.

If you turn off the two-step verification process, uses an easy to guess security question, or use your girlfriend’s name as password, keep in mind you are leaving the key to your house in plain sight. Don’t come crying if someone takes the key, opens the doors and loot everything you have in your house.

– Web content (Articles, product descriptions, sales copy, how to guides, and more).
– Email messages
– Blog posts,
– Social media posts (Facebook updates, Google+ posts, Tweets, etc).
– White papers, special reports, product guides, and a lot more.

All these types of content can attract people and help them understand what your business is and how your products or services can benefit them. Hastily produced content can’t deliver the goods. For your content marketing to work, you need writers who understand marketing.

You need writers who know the nitty-gritty of producing top class marketing content. Your content must be:

– Unique
– Educating
– Motivating
– Convincing
– Strong Enough to Make Sales

If the content you create meets all the requirements above, your business will be on the growth path, attracting prospects and closing sales like crazy. Create original content consistently and share it via website, blog, social media posts, and of course via email. You will be in the radar of your potential customers, and they will do business with you when you make the right offer.

Creating Content is Not an Easy Job…

Of course, anyone with the right knowledge of your business, products and procedures can create content to attract customers. However, it is a massive job creating all different types of content. Soon, it can get tiring, especially if your marketing department doesn’t have a wing dedicated to creating amazing content.

If you mistake marketing is all about creating eye-catching graphics, slogans and TV ads, you are wrong. The cheapest and most profitable marketing is now done online. The new kind of marketing is a lot more persuasive, compelling and profitable. It is very powerful that it attracts customers and generates sales – without fail.

Marketers can also test the effectiveness of sales copy, content strategy at a fraction of the costs of advertising in print media, television, and radio. You can fully test the effectiveness of a new piece of sales copy, email sales letter, product offer, etc at a tenth the cost of booking a slot in TV, or buying ad space on a single day’s newspaper.

Creating content and delivering it online costs next to nothing. In addition, you can limit the delivery of content to people interested in your offers. No wasted time, resources and precious ad dollars.

You can always chuck out the pieces that don’t work and continue using the materials that bring you great returns. And, the sales materials at work here are sales copy, web articles, blog posts and the like. You can see the results almost instantly. It takes only a day or two to find if the marketing material brings customers to you or not.

Finding a writer who can convert a casual visitor to a paying customer is a hard task. Find one and your marketing will be on a different plane. You will cut advertising costs and increase returns – almost instantly.

As in everything else in business, you need to test the profitability. While it feels great hiring a new writer, it may not be that profitable. The truth is, if the writer can’t persuade readers with the right choice of words, persuasion techniques and arguments, it is going to be a loss-making deal. If, the writer can produce sales messages that motivate readers to buy your products, it is a great deal.