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Commenting on other people’s blogs is a great way to generate back-links to your website. The problem is that many people forget the intent is to add value and become part of the community first, before leaping in with “all about me”.

My personal favourites are the people who post comments such as “I found your site when looking for blogs about (insert your keyword here), specifically sites about (insert long tail keyword here). I agree with what you say and/or you have a great site”.

Ed Dale from the 30 Day Challenge describes the sort of crap comments that I highlighted as making withdrawals from a bank you have no deposits in. It is called robbery!

I personally moderate all comments on my blog before they appear and take great delight in deleting the comment or listing the person as a spammer when they attempt to make these sort of comments.

You don’t have to publish spam comments on your blog just because someone made them. It will significantly reduce its value to the true community members who read your blog (as well as hurt you in search engine rankings). Delete them and stay true to your readers.

So … how can you comment on someone’s blog and not be seen as a spammer? Read the posts in some detail. Find out what the flow of the blog is all about and find a post that is directly relevant and related to a point you want to make.

Take some time to craft a reply expanding on a particular point in the post, commenting on a point in the post or adding in your own point. Yes, you can make a careful and considered link using your keywords back to your post BUT (and this is a big but) you have to add value first.

If you follow these simple strategies and focus on adding value first, everyone wins.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

Heart Harmony - Freelance Copywriter

We put your business into words

I received this great email from Bob Proctor on Insight of the Day.

The greatest stumbling block to achieving anything of importance in your life is circumstances. We let circumstances get us off the hook when we should be giving it everything we’ve got. More dreams are shattered and goals lost because of circumstances than any other single factor.

How often have you caught yourself saying, “I would like to do or have this but I can’t because…?” Whatever follows “because” is the circumstance.

Successful people use circumstances to catapult them on toward their goal, while the masses use them as road blocks. A circumstance may cause a detour in your life but you should never permit it to stop you. …

The next time you hear someone say they would like to vacation in Paris, or purchase a particular automobile but they can’t because they have no money. Tell them they don’t need any money. …

Explain they don’t need the money until they make a decision to go to Paris or purchase the car. When the decision is made, they will figure out a way to get the amount needed. They always do.

The circumstance they are using is one of the most common: a lack of money. The real cause of their problem is lack of decision. You always attract what you need when you decide it must be done. Try this yourself today. You know the task you have been putting off “because…” Make a decision, forget the circumstance … but get it done!

I see this a lot with small business owners. Once they make a deep heartfelt decision to fix their webcopy because they want to attract new clients, even before we have finished with the  web copy and it goes live, new customers start appearing for them. I don’t know why it works - but it does!

So as Bob says - what is a task you have been putting off “because …”. Make a decision to get  it done today.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

Heart Harmony

Brisbane Freelance Copywriters

We put your business into words

As you know the team here at Heart Harmony love and believe in e-books. Information products are a great way to share your expertise with people. But how do you go about writing one if you don’t have the time or can’t string two words together. Hire a ghost-writer!

This article by my UK writing friend and colleague Julie-Ann Amos from Exquisite Writing helps to demystify ghostwriting of books.

Many people are quite surprised to discover than an E-book can be used as a tool for marketing almost any type of business in existence. There is no better method of getting your information into the hands of the buying public than the e-book. E-books are quite versatile, as they can either be downloaded by a customer, or placed on a CD and distributed via that method. Downloading seems to be more popular, as people enjoy getting the information they want NOW, rather than waiting for a book to be delivered to them.

You probably already have an audience in mind for an E-book. You’ve realized that you have specialized knowledge that other people need and want, and the E-book format seems to be the best way to distribute the information. You might be thinking of selling the finished E-book, or using it as a free gift to go along with another product you’ll be offering, or to bring more traffic to your website.

Whatever you choose to do, you’ll soon be able to see for yourself that information products such as E-books are one of the best marketing trends you can find! Information sells like magic, and a quality E-book that contains the info that your audience is looking for is a tool that will promote you and your business 24/7.

So, why don’t more E-books get written and distributed? It’s because not everyone feels they have the ability to write a top-notch product. Rather than release an inferior E-Book, they feel as if they have to miss out on the chance to use this marketing tool. But, they don’t have to miss out on a thing if they hire a ghost writer to write their E-Book for them.

A ghost writer is a professional writer who specializes in writing material that their clients can use as if they wrote it themselves. They will take your information and/or ideas, and craft an E-Book which lists you as the author. Ghost writers are used by celebrities and other famous folk, professional people, plus your average business person who wants to take advantage of the quality writing that these talented writers can produce.

You can do the same thing by hiring a ghost writer to bring your own E-book to fruition. The ghost writer will be able to help you assemble your information by writing a high quality E-book that will list your own name as the author. You don’t have to reveal the fact that you had help from a professional to get your E-Book written, and you can be sure that the person you choose to do your writing will handle you needs in an efficient and competent manner.

Though you must pay a fee in order to have a ghost writer work for you, you will think the finished product was well worth the cost. Why not look into hiring a ghost writer for all of your writing needs?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

Heart Harmony

Putting your business into words

Yesterday I tripped over a strategy used to write an e-book in less than 2 days. Now this is not “War and Peace” and nor is it great literature, but it is an e-book used to entice people to sign up for a newsletter.

So how did he do it?

Well this guy is very active in LinkedIn - the social networking site for businesses. One of the features of LinkedIn is you can ask questions about any topic and people from around the world share their knowledge and advice.

Depending on the question you ask - you could get a LOT of advice. Some of the advice will be brilliant and a lot will be very average.

This guy’s business is all about building brand’s for business, but rather than using LinkedIn to ask a question about branding to create his e-book, he asked something along the lines of “I have an introverted salesman who has trouble making cold calls. What advice would you give him to improve his sales technique”.

He then collated all of the responses and listed one per page of his e-book. Formatted it nicely with a lovely front cover and header on each page and released it with a hot title as “The Reluctant Salesperson. An introverts guide to selling. Proven selling tips from reluctant sales people from around the world”.

Two days = instant book. If you want to check it out go to the Branding Experts ( you need to sign up for the newsletter, but as always you can unsubscribe at any time).

Brilliant concept … but to me they have missed an amazing opportunity. The topic is obviously a hot one and they will get a lot of traffic as a result of it.

The problem is when you open the book you get every piece of advice the LinkedIn people offered - some good and some trite. There was no removal of the average comments - and because they were generally only one or two lines they tend to stand out as he has one piece of advice per page.

There is also no “value-add” to the advice in the e-book. It would not take much for his company to add in a few paragraphs exploring the theme of the particular piece of advice and offering further advice from their own experience. They could even hire a freelance copywriter to do this part for them if writing is a challenge.

For example one person said to put your elevator speech on your business card. Great - but wouldn’t it be even better to go on to explain what is an elevator speech and how to create one that reinforces your brand (in other words link the example back to your core business - in his case branding).

If people receive trite advice when they ask for your services, without a deeper demonstration of your expertise then they will tend to back off as a customer.

Business is all about building a relationship. Don’t blow it by offering a half-hearted service!

For me the lesson is about adapting his strategy and using it properly for your business. Now … how can you use this strategy of compiling answers and then fleshing them out further in your business?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

Heart Harmony

Putting your business into words

PS: See you on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ingridcliff

We finally bit the bullet and moved our Small Business Ideas blog from a ftp published blog to one hosted on our own website.

Why did we do this? Well … the main reasons were to boost the page rank for our website combined with much better features and options on our own hosted blog.

While we have a permanent redirection in place, please amend your blogrolls to our new blog address

http://www.heartharmony.com.au/blog/

You can now also subscribe via RSS using the orange button on the top right of the page, or the subscribe feeds on the top left column. As we get to know our software a bit better, there will be more fantastic features joining our blog.

I look forward to keeping you up to date with copywriting tips, human resource strategies and business trends.

Ingrid Cliff

Heart Harmony

Putting your business into words

Hi again

When businesses start out, they often want to use email to promote sales, publicise events or just keep in touch with clients. Fantastic - exactly what it is designed to do!

But … there are a few common mistakes newcomers to email marketing make.

1. Addresses - You see a dirty great long list of everyone’s names and email addresses in the To section. Aside from the privacy problems with this (remember you are not permitted to share email addresses from your list without explicit consent), you leave yourself open to sharing viruses between computers. All it will take is for one person on your list to have a virus and it suddenly is broadcast throughout the list of names. Put all names in the BCC section if you are not using a merged email through Word or a formal auto-responder/broadcast program.
2. Subject lines - They are all about “ME” and not about the person reading the email. Subject lines are teasers to make people want to open your emails. (And don’t include hyperlinks in your email - spam filters will generally eat your email).
3. MASSIVE attachments - Most email servers won’t accept attachments over about 3MB. Even if your attachment is 3MB, people on dial up with curse you as it will take ages to download. Save your attachment as a PDF. The free way to do this is use a program like Cute PDF Writer. Save it to your hard drive and just hit print and select Cute PDF = Instant PDF document.
4. Accidental spamming - You meet someone and then add them to your mailing list. Right? Wrong! Just because you met someone at a networking event doesn’t mean they have consented to going on your email data-base. You need to know the Spam Act and comply with it. Speaking about Spam, here are some notes I put together a few years back about Spam Act and small business - yes it is a PDF!

As your list grows it pays to invest in an auto-responder/broadcast program. Choose wisely - as if you move your list to another package in later years all of your subscribers need to resubscribe to comply with spam regulations - you can see a massive list drop by 2/3 in that transition.

Think about what else you may need later on - shopping carts, affiliate programs, whatever. You can put different solutions, but it is easier to find the solution that can grow with you as you grow.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff
Heart Harmony