THINKing » Copywriting

9 Compelling Content Resources You May Have Missed

Harry Hoover — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 14:30:17 +0000

THINKing has been focusing recently on developing compelling content for your blog. Below is a simple-to-navigate digest of our posts.

Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Blog Content – I have been thinking a lot recently about creating compelling blog content, and at first blush, there seem to be a lot of barriers. But like getting over a barbed wire fence, you just have to step back for a minute and think through your approach so that you don’t catch something important on a barb.

How To Be A More Compelling Writer – If you can afford it, hiring a good writer for your blog is solid advice. If you can’t, then you need to become a better writer. A few simple things can help take your writing to the next level.

Great Images Make Content More Compelling – Good pictures alone are not enough. Photos can help draw attention to a post, keeping it from looking like a huge gray mass of words. But – to be most effective – the image must complement, or support the the story in some way.

WIIFM? - Today we’re going to take a look at WIIFM, or What’s In It For Me. You must answer some questions and perform a little research to find out what your readers or prospective readers truly want from your blog.

19 Free Photo Sites For Bloggers – Here is our list of sites where you can get free images for use in your blog.

Top 11 Free Resources To Improve Your Blog’s Content – Here is a list of the top 11 online resources to help you improve your writing skills.

Top 17 Tips For Developing Compelling Blog Ideas – I’ve put together this post with the tips that have most helped me come up with solid blog ideas.

The Bloggers Guide To Photo Attribution – If you use other people’s images on your blog, here is what you need to know in order to provide proper attribution.

Top 7 Rules For Creating Compelling Headlines - Your headline is the first impression, which must entice the reader to take the next step. Let’s take a look at our top 7 rules for crafting compelling headlines.

Top 7 Rules For Creating Compelling Headlines

Harry Hoover — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:30:22 +0000

You can write the best email, ad, article or blog post ever and no one will read it if you have a horrid headline. Your headline is the first impression, which must entice the reader to take the next step. (By the way, did you enter our headline writing contest?)

Now, let’s take a look at our top 7 rules for crafting compelling headlines.

Keep It Short & Simple. The best headlines are less than 15 words in length and typically use simple words and concepts that convey your message quickly. Readers prefer simplicity. If your headline is long or confusing, they’ll move on to something else. Write your headline first and spend as much time writing it as you do writing the post. Don’t be like Mark Twain, who said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Short & Simple Example: How To Invest Like Warren Buffett.

Use The Right Words. Advertising’s best copywriters know that there are certain words which always are effective. You’d think these words would be worn out, but they continue to persuade and compel. Here are a few of them: advice, amazing, breakthrough, discover, enhance, extreme, facts, free, learn, mysterious, new, protect, and secret.

Use The Right Words Example: Free Facts To Protect Your Family From Fraud.

Convey The Benefit. Readers like to know in advance what they will get for taking the time to read your article. Will this benefit me in some way, they ask? Your headline should truthfully tell them what they will get out of it. Don’t lie to them or craft a headline that doesn’t deliver on the promise.

Convey The Benefit Example: Learn How To Present Like Steve Jobs

Be Direct. Simplicity, as we mentioned earlier, is crucial. That’s why we prefer the direct to the indirect headline. A direct headline tells you exactly what is coming. An indirect headline may be subtle or use double entendre that can be confusing to a time-stressed reader.

Be Direct Example: Get A Free Media Relations White Paper.

Questions? A headline that just asks a question is OK, but one that asks a question with which the reader can empathize or a question he really wants to know the answer to takes it to the next level. Bob Bly, the man McGraw-Hill calls “America’s top copywriter”, offers this headline example from Psychology Today, “Do You Close the Bathroom Door Even When You’re the Only One Home?”

Questions Example: Who Else Wants To Make A Fortune While Sitting In Their La-Z-Boy?

By The Numbers. You have probably noticed that we really like using numbers – particularly uneven numbers – in our headlines. This is a classic headline approach that seems to have been done to death online. But it still works. This type of headline gives structure to your post before you even write it. And my number posts consistently do better in terms of traffic – and retweets – than do my other posts. Additionally, it tells the reader how much reading time the article will require. Three to five tips won’t take too long to read, while 9 – 13 tips may require a greater time investment.

By The Numbers Example: Top 19 Free Photo Sites For Bloggers

Be Active. We use active voice, active verbs and action-oriented words as much as possible in our posts and in headlines. These words can add color and power to your writing, as well as encourage the reader to take action. We like the works “Learn” and “Discover”.

Be Active Example: Discover Effective Headline Writing Secrets

Related Articles

27 Of The Most Effective Headline Words

How To Write Headlines That Work

My BFF Says LBD Is Now In The Oxford. LMAO

Harry Hoover — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:48:58 +0000

There are a lot of new words and acronyms in the latest Oxford dictionary, and because of that you could win a copy of the dictionary from me. More on that at the end of this post.

But first, kudos to digital colleague (DC) Joan Stewart for pointing this out:

Lexicographers have added 2,000 new words, phrases and new meanings to the third edition of The Oxford American Dictionary.

New words include: bromance, unfriend, turducken, tramp stamp, eggcorn, nimrod, agroterrorism, megachurch, staycation, steampunk, truthiness, tweet and waterboarding.

New phrases include: get one’s arms around, my bad, job something out, less is more, what’s not to like?, have skin in the game, talk the talk, and the ubiquitous “heart” as a synonym for love, as in “I heart publicity.”

The new edition also recognizes a variety of abbreviations as words, including TTYL (talk to you later), LBD (little black dress), BFF (a girl’s best friend, which originated from best friend forever), and LMAO (laughing my *** off).

So, want to win your own copy of the New Oxford Dictionary? First, register as a user here on THINKing, so that I will have an email address with which to contact you. Then, in the comments below, write a headline using some of the words you find here. Best headline, as judged by me and maybe a couple of DCs, will win a copy.

What’s not to like?

UPDATE:

Here is a headline sent via Facebook from Bob Taylor: OMG. My bad. Forgot to help my bff, bromance partner (LOL) with a “be all that” headline. I hope he doesn’t unfriend me, or turn into a hater.

Bob wins the dictionary. Congratulations.

Top 17 Tips For Developing Compelling Blog Ideas

Harry Hoover — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:30:20 +0000

Sometimes I have to really put on the thinking cap to come up with a blog idea. Are you struggling with this, too? I’ve put together this post with the tips that have most helped me come up with solid ideas, as well as provided a few related articles you may want to peruse.

Take A Hint. I’m going to develop a post soon about website design based on a question I received from a reader at our Facebook fan page.

Start A Fight. Is there someone in your business who has opinions with which you disagree vehemently? Passion makes great posts.

Talk To The Expert. Is there someone in your business that you respect? Interview him or her. Chances are others would like to know what that expert is thinking, too.

Search The Dusty Archives. I often look at previous posts, pull five or six that have been overlooked and present them in a new post.

Go Serial. At the start of 2010, I began a weekly installment providing links to creativity-related items.

Lessons Learned. Has something happened in your personal or professional life that you learned from and can turn into a post?

Go Random. The link to the left takes you to a random idea generator. I just used it and was presented with these three random thoughts: transparent, musical, sex toy. I’ll get back to you later with the post idea that comes from that!

Be Historic. Write something on a figure from the early days of your profession like this piece I penned on PR pioneer Edward Bernays.

By The Numbers. Write a piece that gives 3, 5, 7, 9 or 11 tips in your area of expertise. As you can see, I like using odd numbers.

Cliff’s Notes. What have you been reading about? Develop a post that summarizes your reading and link off to your source material.

Go Supernatural. Select something from science fiction or horror and marry it with your business. I did it in a post called What Marketers Can Learn From Zombies.

Be Statistical. Look at your analytics to see what keywords are bringing in your readers. Post on a keyword-based topic.

Personal Best. Make a list of your best posts by topic.

What Would ____ Think? Look at your business through the eyes of another. For example: What Would Leonardo da Vinci Think About Facebook?

Reader Favorites. Ask your readers about their favorite resources or tools.

Weekly Riff. Take a topic and write something about it each day for a week.

Steal With Style. Have you read something recently that you really liked? Well, write a piece on the topic giving it your own unique spin.

Top 11 Free Resources To Improve Your Blog’s Content

Harry Hoover — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:18:27 +0000

As part of our continuing series to help you in developing compelling content, today we provide you a list of the top 11 online resources to help you improve your writing skills.

The Elements of Style – there is no better resource for writers than William Strunk’s classic. I have a well-thumbed hard copy, but this online version covers the writing bases.

100 Useful Web Tools For Writers – Whether poet, biographer, journalist, blogger or technical writer, you’ll find a helpful tool in this list.

Problogger – Darren Rowse is one of the best, most successful bloggers on the planet. Problogger provides advice on everything from writing good headlines to how to come up with story ideas.

Poynter’s Fifty Writing Tools – For the auditory learner, there is Poynter’s index of podcasts that cover the nuts and bolts of writing.

Lifehack on Communications – I love Lifehack for its tips on a range of topics like productivity, technology and of course, communications.

Grammar Girl – Mignon Fogarty is Grammar Girl and she can explain split infinitives so simply that a Neanderthal could understand it.

Time To Write – Need inspiration? Well, here you go. This site is full of inspiration as well as tips to help writers along their way.

OWL – The OWL is Purdue University’s online writing lab that features free writing resources and instructional material.

Common Errors In English Usage – If you don’t know the difference between peak, peek and pique, then you need this site.

Grammar Slammer – Need help with capitalization, abbreviations or maybe your participle is dangling! Here it is.

Writing: The Online Community For Writers – Need to get advice from other writers? There are 819,000 members of this active forum.

In case you missed our initial posts on content development:

Compelling Content

Harry Hoover — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:26:24 +0000

Recently, THINKing has been looking at ways to develop more compelling content. Below we’ve compiled our posts into an easy to navigate form.

WIIFM?

Harry Hoover — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:12:28 +0000

The young lady pictured above is skeptical, and rightly so. So many blogs are posting content that doesn’t really relate to her. Will your blog be any different? She thinks not.

We’ve been taking a look over the last couple of weeks at developing compelling blog content. (links to the previous installments are at the bottom of this post) Today we’re going to take a look at WIIFM, or What’s In It For Me so we can erase that look of skepticism and turn your blog visitors into regulars.

You must answer some questions and perform a little research to find out what your readers or prospective readers truly want from your blog. This blog covers advertising, creativity, PR, marketing and social media topics – a pretty broad spectrum.

First, we keep an eye on our blog stats to see what are the top keywords bringing people to our blog.

We have written a series called “New Business Primer”, which has been very popular. The term “new business” brings in a lot of traffic for us. Phrases containing the words “creative” and “creativity” show up often in our top keywords, as do phrases containing “journalism” or “journalists.” Are you using your blog stats to review keywords?

Another thing we do is review our stats to determine which posts get the most traffic, both initially and over time.

Our posts on media relations always seem to be a hit, as do our creativity posts. Writing-related and social media posts do well, too. Advertising posts are not doing as well and we don’t post much on that topic any more.

But it is not enough just to post on those topics. Just as we do in advertising copywriting, we need to think about the reasons people “buy” something. In a blog’s case, visitors are “buying” your writing.Geoff Ayling writes about the reasons people buy in his book Rapid Response Advertising. The 51 reasons people buy include,

to make more money

to attract praise

to avoid criticism

to make their work easier

to speed up their work

So, how does that apply to the blogger? Let’s take the first one and come up with a post title that fits into THINKing‘s list of topics. We know that people like our writing-related posts and Ayling tells us they want to make more money at it. So, how about: Copywriting Tips To Help Build Your Direct Marketing BusinessSo, just remember, give the readers what they are looking for and they will come back. We’d love your thoughts on this topic.

#1 – Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Blog Content

#2 – How To Be A More Compelling Writer

#3 - Great Images Make Content More Compelling

How To Be A More Compelling Writer

Harry Hoover — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:11:34 +0000

We’re examining the ways to make your blog more compelling. A number of Twitterati responded to my request for their ideas. The quality of writing was on their minds:

As we heard from Jim Dietzel, a Fortune 1000 blogger for Rubbermaid, “Hire a good writer. Seriously.”

Colleague Tom Pick of Webbiquity tells us we must do a better job in naming our posts, using compelling headlines like “Common Myths of…” or “Mistakes to Avoid in…”

Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer thinks we need to consider the way we approach the content. He says to think like a movie trailer, not a journalist. Compelling content isn’t reporting. It’s entertaining.

If you can afford it, hiring a good writer for your blog is solid advice. If you can’t, then you need to become a better writer. A few simple things can help take your writing to the next level. Let’s address a few of these basic ideas that we have tackled here in THINKing previously.

Write Tight - My first news editor hammered one thing into my consciousness: write tight. Leave out the frills, just present the facts and move on. You don’t have to create an act of literature every time you sit down to write. But remember, as Jason Falls points out, simply reporting is not enough. Don’t edit out the entertainment while editing out the extraneous.

Tell Me A Story – Since the dawn of time mankind has been a sucker for a story. We may be wearing synthetics now instead of skins, but that one truth has not changed. Storytelling is a way to add some passion, interest and drama to your blogging.

Tell Me A Story About Me – Well, it’s all about me after all, isn’t it? Don’t tell a self-serving story. Tell one that speaks to the self-interest of the reader.

Get Active - My lovely bride and mystery novelist par excellence, Terry Hoover, is the queen of the vivid verb. Peruse the first chapter of her book, Double Dead, to see what I mean.

Storystarters – Sometimes you are just stuck for an idea or an approach to a blog post. Leap those obstacles with these methods.

Do you have some thoughts on compelling content? Well, what are you waiting for…tell us!

Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Content

Harry Hoover — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:41:38 +0000

I have been thinking a lot recently about creating compelling blog content, and at first blush, there seem to be a lot of barriers. But like getting over a barbed wire fence, you just have to step back for a minute and think through your approach so that you don’t catch something important on a barb.

The primary reason I have been pondering the topic is purely selfish.

This blog once had great traffic, but it has fallen off recently due to spam attacks which hijacked my blog and took out my RSS feed. I had nearly 1,000 subscribers to that feed. Not a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but enough interested folk that we had some good conversations going. So, now I find myself trying to rebuild what I had originally built over a span of about five years.

Compelling content brought subscribers here in the first place, and it will bring them back.

I reached out to some of my Twitterati to ask them to define compelling content. Their input will be the basis for much of this series on compelling content. My friend Jim Dietzel from Rubbermaid was first to get back to me and he had a list of five key elements.

#1. Hire a good writer. Seriously.

#2. Write about what your audience cares about.

#3. Pictures are good.

#4. Make it easy to read/scan

#5. Look at what is working and do more of that.

That’s a pretty simple, but effective formula. We’ll explore these ideas in future posts.

I’d love to hear from you, as well. So, please comment on this post with your thoughts on creating compelling content, or take our poll.

I’ll Tell You What You Like

Harry Hoover — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:13:19 +0000

A lot of marketers are into empty chest-thumping when it comes to their content. They don’t seem to care what their audience wants. Instead, they force-feed them a diet of self-serving content that only alienates them.

I know companies who want to use Twitter only as a broadcast medium, sending out links to their content about upcoming seminars, their latest news and the like. It’s as if they are saying, “we know what you need, so shut up and read it.”

It’s not that hard to have a marketing program that meets the needs of your audiences.If you already are investing in self-serving content, it doesn’t really cost much more to develop content that is relevant,original and impactful.

Marketers can survey their audiences to determine content preferences. Just be careful how you construct and evaluate your survey, as we have discussed here before.

Or, marketers can take advantage of the free survey information that is available. For instance, just today eMarketer had a story about what Twitter Moms prefer. Although coupons were high on the list, the Twitter moms said they really wanted was links to interesting and relevant content. Says eMarketer,

Their top reason for following businesses on Twitter was that they provide useful information (68.3%), just edging out that they were already customers (67.3%) and the desire to find out about products and services (66.9%). While about two-thirds said they liked to see businesses tweeting links to sales, moms most wanted (emphasis added) companies to share links to interesting articles or news.

Here are some other tools that can assist marketers in developing the right kind of content:

Content Grid

Content Marketing Today

Junta42

CopyBlogger

THINKing » Copywriting

9 Compelling Content Resources You May Have Missed

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Top 7 Rules For Creating Compelling Headlines

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My BFF Says LBD Is Now In The Oxford. LMAO

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Top 17 Tips For Developing Compelling Blog Ideas

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Top 11 Free Resources To Improve Your Blog’s Content

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Compelling Content

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WIIFM?

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How To Be A More Compelling Writer

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Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Content

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I’ll Tell You What You Like

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