Well, last week’s post about alternate ways to drive traffic to your site created a load of interest – particularly around Squidoo.

So what is Squidoo? Squidoo is a community website, started by Seth Godin and some others. People can create pages (called lenses) about single subjects of interest to them.  As a writer (or lensmaster), you can go as deep or as shallow as you like in terms of information – as long as each lens is a single subject.

I like to think about Squidoo as a sort of more fun version of Wikipedia. If you want to know how to create Star Wars birthday cakes – you will find a Squidoo page on it. If you want to learn more about Woodstock – someone has written a page about it.

There are 35 different category areas in Squidoo, of which business is only one category. In business, there are a range of sub-categories including marketing, small business, internet, real estate, employment amongst other things.

Creating a lens is simple. It is a content managed site, so you don’t even have to know HTML – just choose your modules and fill in the blanks.

My lens on Employee Performance Review Tips hovers consistently in the top 20 pages in the business category, so it seems to have captured the imagination of readers. A few people last week wanted to know how to write great Squidoo pages – so here are some of my tips of what works (and doesn’t work).

1. SEO – SEO – SEO. By this I mean, don’t start writing a lens until you know what people are looking for. I used my internet research skills to find out the most searched for keywords in my niche (and what people were looking for). It then made it easier for me to create my lens.  Of course I made sure my keywords were in my title and throughout my lens.
2. Solid content. Give useful & practical information – this is not the place to push a sale.
3. Pictures. Spice up your text with colourful royalty free images.
4. Link back to my blog. My Squidoo lens pulls in the RSS feed of my performance review blog – so it gives even more targeted information back to reader (while increasing traffic back to my blog).
5. Links to my products - I have links to all of my performance review products.
6. You Tube video – I found some funny You Tube videos about performance reviews. People love humour.
7. Humour. I added in more performance review humour with some performance review jokes that used to be passed around in HR circles.
8. A poll. I added in a poll. This does double duty for me – people love interacting, and it also gives me stats on the most common objections or problems people have with performance reviews (which helps me refine my product and my marketing).
9. Link to my Twitter feed. Another way to get people to interact.
10. Amazon books. These are books that I have read and loved. And a % of each sale comes back to me as an affiliate fee (and I also donate a % to Kiva). Yes, you can make money from Squidoo Lenses (although you will never replace your day job from these fees).
11. Reader thoughts.  People share their comments & thoughts about the lens.
12. Adsense. Another way to earn affiliate income.

The main takeaways from this post is to make sure your lens is optimised for search engines, has killer content as well as a bit of fun and interactivity to to. This is not the place to be stuffy and boring!

So what doesn’t work? If the topic is not a “hot topic” that people are interested in (and you haven’t done your SEO correctly), then you won’t be found and you won’t get the traffic. I have a few other lenses with mixed results. They do get some traffic, but these are not as popular traffic wise as my hot topic.

One of the good bits about Squidoo is the amazing amount of support out there to help you. There is an active forum as well as  Squid U – all designed to help you work out any tricky bits of code you want to insert, or learn the tricks of the trade.

And does Google like Squidoo?  Well in many cases new lenses are picked up by Google within 3 hours (which is another brilliant tip if you want your regular website found – create a lens that links back to your site). And if you look in search engine results – Squidoo is right up there (type in employee performance reviews into Google to see what I mean).

Happy lens creating!

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Web copywriter

I have just finished reading Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content by Mark Levy. It is a fascinating read that covers how to do a thing called freewriting – sort of brainstorming on paper.  While writing has never been a challenge for me, freewriting is a brilliant technique to help open up your thinking and explore your unique thoughts (no matter whether or not you can write).

One of the chapters looked at using prompts to trigger thinking (and freewriting). If you have been around any personal or leadership development programs or been part of a coaching or mentoring relationship for any time, the idea of prompts is not new. They are open questions that you complete along the lines of “If I knew I wouldn’t fail I would …” and you fill in the blanks. Most of the prompts have been used over and over (and over and over) – until seeing the same prompt makes your eyes glaze and your brain numb.

But this chapter had a whole pile of brilliant prompts courtesy of Robyn Steely. New ones. Fresh ones. Cool ones. Ones itching to be explored.

So … grab a pen and paper and pick your favourite prompt from this list. Set a timer for 10 minutes and then write as quickly as you can, and without stopping for the full ten minutes, on one of these prompts. I guarantee your brain will be buzzing with new ideas in 10 minutes time!

• I’d really impress myself, if starting today, I …
• I’d like to tell you a story …
• The two things I could do today to make things more exciting are …
• The simplest thing I could do to make a difference would be …
• If I did the opposite of everything I normally do, my day would look like this …
• This sounds insane, but my business would be 500 per cent more productive if …
• I’m great at …, but I’d rather not do it because …
• I stink at …, but I’d like to do it because …
• The two things I really want to do in my work life, but haven’t yet, are …
• Do you know what I’d like to do again? …
• I know there are three ways to make a difference in this world, and they are …
• Two days from now …

I definitely recommend Accidental Genius if you want to open up your thinking (or even to find your personal thought leadership) … and have fun in 10 minute intervals.

I would love to hear how you went with your prompts – or any other cool new ones to play with!

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

If ever you have had the “joy” of watching late night TV, you get to see hours of infomercials. Infomercials are simply extended ads that follow a fairly set pattern. Usually the problem is identified in wonderfully emotive terms, with the product presented as the solution to the problem. You then get to see the product demonstrated (more than once), followed by people talking about how great the product is. You see another demonstration and you then get your first whiff of the low low price.  You get an incentive to take action and then, depending on the length of the infomercial, you get more people talking up the benefits of the product, more product shots and an even better reason to pick up the phone and call.

It’s all very predictable … and the reason it follows a set format is it works like gangbusters!

Normally I am immune to infomercials – I think I am one of the few people on the planet that deliberately turns on the TV to watch the ads and checks if the “pattern” has changed.  So, imagine my surprise when I found myself hand on wallet the other day after watching an infomercial. What happened?

Well for starters this ad wasn’t on my home TV – it was on a TV in a pet store window right where the cute puppies and kittens were located. Yes, we had stopped to admire the pets and our attention was caught by the TV in a pet pen. The TV was on a loop, demonstrating the latest and greatest pet shedding tool and the demonstration was simple and darn effective.

This was very clever marketing as the pet shop had a captive audience of the right sort of customers who did not have their barriers up against buying. People who look at puppies and kittens generally have their sales defenses down. They are not expecting the sales pitch so it sneaks in under their radar.

In addition, people who love pets usually have the problem of pet hair at home. So the placement of the ad was extremely clever. Now normally no-one gets excited about pet combs, but thanks to the infomercial these extremely expensive pet combs were walking out the door of the pet shop.

Given our fur family (and tumbling tumbleweeds of pet hair), we rapidly became one of the proud new owners of this particular pet hair comb.The point is we were not intending to go out and buy a pet hair comb when we went shopping – yet the cleverly placed product demonstration sold us.

So was it a good buy? Heck yes! We have 3 cats and by the time the comb had done it’s job we had enough fur to knit another 2 cats.  A few less fur tumbleweeds will tumble through our house this week.  It was a win-win solution for both us and the shop. (The comb was a Furminator if you are looking for a pet comb).

So, the next time you think about your business, think about where your ideal customers hang out and how you can visibly demonstrate the great qualities of your product or service to them.  A simple infomercial may see your business boom just like the little pet shop in the shopping centre.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Following on from our post about business cards, the next most common piece of business writing is your email signature. When you write an email, you want to save a signature file into your email program that automatically completes certain information on the bottom of each of your emails (included forwarded and reply emails). So how should you go about creating email signatures?

1. Your close. You can go traditional with “regards” or “yours sincerely”. If you want a more chatty close, then “cheers” is popular (but in my mind it always sounds as if you are about to clink a glass of cheap red against the computer monitor). You can also go creative in your close, for example my close is “exuberantly yours”. The reason I chose those words were that clients often commented on my exuberance. Have fun choosing  a creative close that matches your personality or your business.
2. Your name. You decide whether you want your full name, or just your first name – but make sure it is included in your signature.
3. A point about graphics. Many people put all of their signature information into a graphic. This looks great but has problems with being displayed on some computers – so you may end up with a lovely box with a red cross through it instead of your image. It also means people can’t copy and paste your details into their contact log.  One way around it is to have a combination of graphics and regular text, to cover all computer eventualities.
4. Your company. If you are a business, then having your name in close alignment with your company name or logo helps to build brand awareness.
5. Contact details. The same rules as for business cards apply here – only keep the contact essentials in your signature file.
6. Key link. This is where you include a link to your blog and/or website … and a reason for people to follow that link. Make it worth their while to click on the link and your mailing list will grow.
7. Social media links. Some people go overboard here, and end up with 10+ social media links. I go with the minimalist approach and recommend including the one or two sites you are most active on if you want people to connect with you via that medium.

A few more things to think about before you create email signatures:

• You may need to check the rules in your particular country in relation to signatures, for example some countries require businesses to include their company registration details in their emails.
• Adding your details as a contact card is great the first time you correspond – but after that it becomes annoying and adds to the size of your emails. To be blunt, most people don’t know how to use or save .vcf contact cards so you may want to rethink using them.
• Legal stuff – if you have to add in clauses in relation to confidentiality, intended recipients only to read etc etc etc, remember that long legal clauses are generally met with glazed eyes and the sudden desire to get a cup of coffee to wake you up. Keep the legal stuff to the bare minimum your lawyer can be talked into.
• Cute quotes & soapbox rants. Many people end with a motivational quote or a “think of the trees before printing this email”.  These may work depending on your audience (and the quote you use).  I am not convinced that an email environmental notice for the bottom of email signatures actually stops people printing your email if they need to – even if it makes you feel good to include it.
• Assorted “stuff” – if you use free virus software, spam check software or any other form of free software, often you get to included a free plug for them at the end of each of your emails. These make you look cheap and as if your business can’t afford the $50 for the paid version. Do you really want to say you are that broke? You want professional email signatures that show the success of your business and build confidence in your offering.

One last thing – make sure you proofread (and have someone else  double check) your cool email signatures as well as your email name (the one you put in when you first set up your email address). You would be surprised at the number of people who make typos of their names, phone numbers or link to incorrect places in their signature file.

So, what are your email horror stories or gold stars?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Copywriting, like all service industries, have people at all ends of the financial spectrum.  You can find budget writers in India and Indonesia, and you can find $20,000 a letter plus a % of all sales in the USA.  In Australia the fees vary dramatically – ranging from the VAs who moonlight as writers, right the way through to highly qualified direct mail marketing writers.

We are unashamedly at the mid-high end of the industry. And here’s a little case study to help you understand why you get what you pay for.

Over the past few weeks I have been working with a very talented and successful natural therapies practitioner on revising her website content. She  understands the value of being found in search engines, so we invested time on conducting a range of searches for her so she could get an idea of how many people per day were looking for particular services relating to her industry.

We used this information when creating her copy. This is termed SEO copywriting and includes creating the metatags, H1 & 2 tags and on-page links that her web designer can then just upload onto her site, as well as keyword rich copy.  Her copy will be on-page optimised before she loads it – meaning step 1 of SEO has been completed when her site goes “live”. SEO copywriting is a unique niche – and one we love!

But, in researching her copy we found she used two machines in her business. We did a quick research scan to see what other businesses and the manufacturers said about the machines – and found all used basically the same copy.  (In most cases the copy was identical. This is termed “duplicate content” and has SEO implications, as well as breaches of copyright implications, but we won’t go there).

We then went back and re-read all the Australian legislation and guidelines from the Therapeutic Goods Administration Act to determine what could be said about these machines.

We did further research to find out the specific wordings of the TGA approvals for each machine – as the wording is unique to each machine. “TGA approved” just doesn’t cut it legally – we wanted to state specifically what each machine was approved to do.

We also checked out legal case law to see if there had been any claims made against the advertising of these machines, and discovered a recent case where the “standard wording and claims” used by most practitioners and the manufacturer had been blasted by the courts. The standard wording and claims had been banned from being used, the person before the courts had to withdraw their ads and print a retraction.

Of course, this also means most of the other websites out there that mention these machines and use the standard wording and claims are in breach of the legislation.

Using all of this data and case law, we presented it to the client, to educate her on the situation. We very carefully crafted her web copy to comply with the legislation, guidelines and case law (… yet still sell her services and use of the machines). Of course we advised her to seek competent legal advice to confirm our draft.

What is the point of this post? Budget basement copywriters or newbie copywriters don’t do the research and don’t “get” the legal and SEO side of things.

Of course in every business you need to adopt a risk management approach to your work – but as one of the USP’s of this client is her wonderful honesty and ethical dealings, we made sure her copy was in line with her USP.

Yes, we do things a bit differently … but we also can sleep at night, comfortable in knowing we are protecting our clients while making their businesses highly successful. And yes, we do charge accordingly.

Until next time

We put your business into words

Ingrid Cliff – Freelance Copywriter