Let's face it: on the web, writing is king. Sure there are cool graphics and nice pictures, but if your writing isn't there-neither are your visitors (and potential customers). That's why I think copywriting is so important. The bad thing is that it's a skill that really can't be explained or taught over a lesson or two. Good copywriting takes practice and lots of it. It also helps to have a good teacher along the way, plus two or three good critique partners because what you think you said isn't always what you really said!

Nonetheless, I think that there are some things I should mention at this juncture so that what you are writing in the way of contact letters and press releases (and those items to come) have a greater potential to grab the readers you are contacting. So let's go through some points when it comes to copywriting.

First, spelling and grammar. (I am a former English teacher you know!) There's no way around it, if you mess up here no matter how great your message is, you've lost some of your readership. Thankfully the computer does make it far easier to catch your own mistakes. I encourage you to use the spell check on everything. Sometimes you may even know how to spell a word but it gets lost in the translation from your brain to your fingers.

I will confess I am not the world's strongest speller. I have words in my head that I honestly couldn't throw a stick at and hit how to spell it. Therefore, in addition to my computer spell check, I have two dictionaries on my desk at all times. Don't be afraid to look something up-it's the best way to learn how to spell it for the next time.

As for grammar, this is a little more difficult in that the grammar check on my computer sometimes suggests changes that don't make a whole lot of sense. My advice is to read what the computer says, correct those you think they are right about, and then take your finished copy to someone who can give you an honest evaluation of your grammar. Learn from the lessons you are given in your self-made tutorial.

A note about words: I have a rule that unless I use a word for emphasis (or just cannot find a better word), I will never use the same dominant word twice in one paragraph. (There I just broke my own rule four times over!) This sounds complicated, and sometimes it gives me fits. However, I find that my writing flows better, is more easy to read, and sounds better when I follow this rule. Definitely stay away from using words over and over in the same sentence. There are times to do this, but when you're starting out, be conscious of the overuse of words. It can kill a message.

With that said, know that just because a word is listed under another in a thesaurus, that doesn't mean they have the exact same meaning. Pay attention to what you are saying and use the right word.

(Did I say writing is easy? Oh, forgive me. It's not!)

Finally after I've muddied the waters so much, let me now say your primary goal is to keep what you say simple. Impressing people with big words doesn't impress anyone but you. A short story on this: When I was in college I had a high school friend of mine call me needing help on an English paper. I told him to come over. We sat down with his paper, and I read it. The ideas were great; however, those ideas were covered up in stilted, immense words that made it hard to even read.

When I finished, I put the paper aside and asked him to tell me what he thought of the poem he was supposed to be critiquing. He then proceeded, in normal understandable English, to tell me what he thought. When he finished, I said, "Okay, say that." He looked at me confused. I explained, "Teachers don't want you to use big words that you don't understand. Just tell her what you think like you just told me." He got an A on the paper.

Crafting a website or a marketing campaign is a game of words, and the better you can play that game, the more likely you are to win. Learn the game by practicing every chance you get. It will pay off in the end!

Where To Go From Here:

--Practice your writing skills by going back and rereading the contact letters, articles, and press releases you have already devised. Is the message clear? Is the grammar and spelling accurate? Where can the document be improved? Would you take the next step if you received a letter like this?

--Always set a document aside for a period of time before you send it out. Then go back over it and see where the message could be made clearer.

--Continue working on the strategies we have covered. I know how much time they take, and this will be good catch-up time to implement them!

Okay, so you've got the grammar and spelling thing down to a science (you do, right?). The next step is to hone the message you are sending out.

The first admonition might sound simplistic, but it is the foundation for all of your promotional copy. You must believe in what you are selling. Be it a product, a service, or an organization. If you don't believe in it (and you're only selling it to make money), you've already failed. Go back and find something you believe in that you can get excited about.

Now, I firmly believe that most of you had no problem with that part, so let's go on to promoting this fabulous creation of yours!

In any sales letter (and let's face it everything you send out, even if it isn't specifically a sales letter is designed to bring visitor/customers in to your site), always thing "rapport." When you write your copy, talk to the person not at them. Technical language and jargon will only work if you are targeting a highly selective audience who will understand every term you use without running for a dictionary (or clicking off your site). Remember to keep your message simple.

There is a simple rule of thumb when it comes to sales copy: "Benefits are better than features, and solutions are better than benefits." Present someone with the solution to a problem they are having, and they have just bought your product. Instead of saying, "Roses on Sale," you can say, "In trouble with her? A rose can send the message you really wanted to send." Always think of what problem your product can solve for a potential customer, and then point that out to them.

As for benefits, it might help to make a list of the features that your product has. Then to the side list all the benefits of each feature. If a feature doesn't have a clear benefit, mark it off your sales letter. When you have finished this list, look at the benefits you have listed and much like you did with your keyword list, work them into your sales copy. Keep asking yourself: "What can my customer gain from this?" Then point those things out.

We passed over this quickly before, but transfer of ownership is extremely important. The you vs. I ratio is extremely important. If it isn't two to one in favor of the you's, then go back and rework your sales letter.

Technically, you should never use capital letters to emphasize a point in a sales letter. In the world of cybertalk, capital letters equal shouting. Think about it. If you walked into a store and a salesperson walked over to you and started yelling about "THE FABULOUS SALES WE HAVE TODAY…" How long would you stick around?

Instead of capitals, if you want to emphasize a point, use either bold or italics. These are much more effective and much less jarring to the reader. However, a word of caution, use even these with common sense. Bolding every third word is as annoying as yelling at your customer.

There are words that enhance sales copy such as love, safe, sale, now, value, save and gain. The best known of these words is "free." This is a great word when used properly. "Free" cannot have any stipulations such as additional shipping and handling charges, hidden fees, or having to buy one component to use the "free" merchandise. Free must mean just that-free. Nonetheless, if you do offer something free, it can bring people to your product. For example offering a "free" article if a visitor subscribes to a newsletter is smart marketing. Offering free samples, provided you can get those samples to the customer, is also a good idea. Bottom line is remember, free is free.

As there are words to use, there are also words to avoid. These include: Buy, Difficult, Failure, Cost, Loss, Deal, and Bad. An even more important tip to remember is to never bad-mouth your competition. Pointing out how your product has better features or more benefits is fine-slamming the other product is not. I remember this lesson from a basketball game I attended when I was teaching. One of the students was behind me yelling things like, "Give it up. You can't play. Boo! You're horrible" at the other team. After a few minutes of this, I turned to her and explained that there is a difference between yelling for your team versus yelling against the other team. That difference is called class.

Make sure your sales copy and everything you send out exudes class, and people will want to join you. Making your copy full of negatives and slamming others will not encourage people-it will chase them away. Show them how your product can solve their problems, point out benefits to them, and keep the message positive-you will go a long way to accomplishing what you've set out to do.

Where To Go From Here:

--Look through your sales copy. Is your message positive? Does it make use of "good" sales words and avoid bad ones? Does it give solutions or at least benefits rather than simply listing features? Does it exude class from every pore? If not, now's the time to make some changes.

--If you would like more information on this topic, again I will recommend Corey Rudl's material. In it, he goes through Testing Your Message, Headlines, Specific Website Tips, and many more good words versus bad words than we had space to cover here.

--Continue working on the strategies we have already covered. Keep implementing! And let me know how things are going. What are you having trouble with? What things have you had success with? I'd like to know.

That great place to list a used car or a computer that's just taking up space has a twin on the 'net. That's right. Classified ads have a place in cyberspace, and they may warrant space in your overall campaign.

There are several things to consider before you go out and place classified ads all across the web. First many of the free sites rotate ads. As new ads are placed, old ones get pushed down. On some of these your ad may only be near the top for a day-if that long. Also, after a month many of these free ads are taken down-in order to stay on top or to run an ad longer than a month, you must pay for it. And that decision is one not to be made lightly.

You must have a very good idea if anyone is actually seeing your ad. It may be that the site gets 2,000 visitors a day, but if none of them go to the page where your ad is (because of categorizing), an ad in that venue is not worth it, and it certainly isn't worth paying for. The big problem with this is there are not many good ways to tell how many people are actually seeing your ad. Alexa can help and the information the classified ad site provides as far as page views can also be mildly helpful.

One possibility is to track your own ads (which will be discussed in Flight IV) to see which ones from which sites pull the best, but beyond that classified ads are all but a shot in the dark.

If you decide to try this strategy, I recommend that you write two or three ads making your offer. Be mindful of the following in writing your ad:

Headline (copy which introduces the reader to the topic): Short and to the point but informative. Headlines can make or break an ad like this, so make the best one you can and then make it better.

Body of the ad (where you make your offer). Again short and to the point but with more details than the headline.

Contact information (where you can be reached). Don't forget this one! The best classified ad in the world won't work if that reader can't click directly to you to get more information. Make it easy on the person to find you.

Review the lessons on copywriting. In classified ads copywriting can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Word count must be adhered to and an offer not well-thought out will not be effective here.

If you find either a site that pulls well, be sure to make a note of it and use it in to announce the next point in your campaign. If you find an ad that pulls well, try to figure out why and use those same techniques in your next ad.

Classifieds are a trial-and-error-figure-out-what-works kind of game.

Where To Go From Here:

--Write up three or four ads, and get a friend to choose which they would click on (or if they would click on one). Take your best ad and make it better. Remember you have one shot and only one shot with this-25 or so words to get someone to click. It has to be better than fabulous or it will get passed over and never seen again.

--If you would like more information on this topic, again I will recommend Corey Rudl's material. He has worked far more with classified ads than I have, and many of his copywriting suggestions can give you a leg up in this realm of promotion.

Banner ads are probably the type of advertising you are most familiar with on the web. These are those ads that are featured at the top of search engines like Yahoo! and at the top of many websites that are part of a larger group of sites. For example, Geocities, Tripod, and Homestead are mega sites that offer to host free or small fee sites-with the stipulation that the owner of the site allow banner advertising from the host on their site. Banner ads can also come in the form of banner links, in which instead of a text link, a link partner chooses to make their link a banner. There are also advertisements that are not strictly banner ads are used along the same lines.

First, banner ads on sites. These are generally divided into pay-per-click or pay-per-visitor ads based on how you intend to pay for the ad. Pay-per-visitor ads are not as popular as they used to be simply because they can be very expensive for the amount of traffic they generate. With this type of ad, you pay for every visitor who viewed that page, whether they clicked-through your ad or not. Let's say that you have an ad for a floor cleaner, and you pay to put it on a site about home décor and on a site about linoleum. Say that the home décor page received 1,000 page views while your ad was up, but the linoleum page received only 300 page views in the time your ad was up. Which was the most successful ad?

Ah-ha, here's where it gets tricky. You might automatically conclude that the home décor ad was the most successful. But what if I told you that the home décor ad only received twenty click-throughs, and none of those people bought the product. How successful was that ad? Now, consider the possibility that the linoleum ad got 30 click-throughs and sold 10 products. Which was the more successful ad? This is why pay-per-visitor advertising can be dangerously misleading.

Pay-per-click ads are purchased based on how many visitors actually clicked-through your ad to go to your website. They still don't tally how many people actually bought your product, but they can be more cost-effective than pay-per-visitor ads.

Banner links can be a good way to attract visitors as if you make them a part of your linking campaign, they are not purchased, but exchanged for a reciprocal link with another site. Often these banner links look similar to banner ads-although most banner links don't technically try to sell anything in the ad itself. Their purpose is to intrigue someone enough so that they want to visit your site, where you can then sell your product. The strategies for banner links are similar to those for a straight linking strategy; however, many sites don't have a place for banners. Therefore, I recommend if you want to use banners in your linking that you have several different banners to choose from and also have a text link that the partner can use as well.

There are places on the web called Banner Exchanges where you exchange banners with another site, agreeing to post their ad if they will post yours. Some of these sites are:

http://www.linkexchange.com
http://www.hyperbanner.com
http://www.123banners.com
http;//www.linktrader.com

One other option that you have in this realm is to do an ad swap with another newsletter or e-zine. Generally you should have more than 100 newsletter subscribers before you approach another site about ad swapping. In an ad swap, say you have 100 subscribers and someone else has 500. You agree to post their message, ad, or banner five times in your newsletter if they will post yours once. You always want to do these types of swaps with people with more subscribers. However, don't go after a big fish like say 10,000 subscribers if you only have 100. Start small and attract those just bigger than you. Eventually you will be swimming with the big guys.

I do have to say for me that articles are my more effective way of doing this as I have found it rather difficult to find a qualified newsletter with someone who wants to ad swap. Nonetheless, this is an option you should consider if your promotion campaign relies heavily on advertising.

A smart tip about banner ads: Always offer a benefit in your banner ad. Tell the customer right in the banner what they will get by clicking there. You will increase the pull of that ad exponentially.

Where To Go From Here:

--Compose your ad. There are several free banner production sites you can visit to help you (be prepared though, they can be terribly frustrating if you are just starting out).

--You need to be rather proficient in HTML coding so that once the banner ad is composed, you can put it into a format that another site can use without immense trouble. In fact, I had some ads that were composed for me a year ago that I couldn't use because I didn't know how to couple them with HTML so I could actually place them on the web.

--Consider ad swapping with another newsletter. Most of these will be done with text type links rather than strictly banners, but it could be a good way to jump start your campaign.

--Check out Corey's information. He has done a lot more of this type of advertising than I have, and he has some really great hints and tips if this is a promotion technique you really want to implement well.

Newsgroups are a special bread of animal on the web. They have their own special place, and you have to be a member to sign up for strict newsgroups. However, there is a way around all this so that you can use newsgroup techniques whether you join newsgroups or not.

The idea behind a newsgroup is that a certain group of individuals with similar interests get together to discuss a certain topic. There are topics on technology, raising a family, writing, camping, or any one of a number of other topics. Members post messages which can then be read and responded to by other members of the group. A spin-off type of newsgroups are called message boards or forums on individual sites. They are similar to newsgroups, but you don't have to jump through many of the hoops of the newsgroup area of the web.

There are several things to keep in mind when deciding whether or not newsgroups fit into your campaign. First, do you have the time to be an active member of the group? Signing up and posting an ad in a newsgroup, thinking you are advertising there is a good way to get flamed or shut down altogether. DON'T DO THAT! To effectively use newsgroups as a promotional tool, you must get into the group and contribute. Learn who else is in the group, the topics they discuss, and how your product or message meshes with theirs. As you become an active member, you can then "toss off" comments about your own experiences with the area and thus mention your product or service.

Second, you must find a group that you mesh well with, that is active, and pertains to your subject. This is sometimes easier said than done. There are a lot of message boards and forums out there that are dead. No one visits them to talk about anything. Also, if you get into a newsgroup and realize that you are not a good fit, find somewhere else. There are enough choices in this area, that you don't have to stay somewhere you hate just to get your message out.

Finally, you must find the appropriate time and way to invite people over. This can be rather easy if you take the first two points to heart. Once you begin discussing with these people, they become friends. They know you, and throwing in a comment about your business or announcing that you just had an article placed or some other major development in your life is more like a friend-telling-a-friend rather than "advertising."

I have had some success in this area. In fact, the second book I had published was the brainchild of just such a group. In the midst of discussing a television show (the topic of the newsgroup), I tossed off a comment about how one of the actors in the show would be a great pairing with another actor. One of my friends said, "Yeah, what would it be about?" On the spot I came up with this plot, and that ended up being "Eternity."

If you have the time and you genuinely like to interact with people, this may be a good place to campaign. Just remember that 90% of your interaction will have nothing to do with your product. Think of it as making friends rather than selling people, and you can make this work.

Another type of advertising you can consider is one we've talked about briefly before. Webrings. Webrings are groups on the web who come together to form a chain of similar sites. You submit your site for consideration to join a ring, then when you get accepted, you put a piece of HTML code on your page that links to the other sites in the ring. As people surf around the ring, some will land on your site. Many of these will be qualified visitors as they are interested in the topic of the webring.

Remember a couple of things: Be sure to place a link to your homepage from the page where the visitor will come in (where the webring is located). If you don't, bye-bye visitor. You also have to place a link to the page where the webring is located on every page of your site. If you don't, you will not be allowed to join the webring.

Webrings are a very passive form of advertising. You put the link on your page, and visitors come-not in droves, but for the amount of time this promotion takes, it might be worth it.

Where To Go From Here:

--Research the newsgroup section of the web by typing Newsgroups into a search engine.

--You can search for message boards in your area of expertise by typing "Message Board" or "Forum" and the keywords you want to find. You can lurk around several message boards before you actually post anything. Find one or two that look like good matches. Then jump in and offer your opinion or your expertise on a subject being discussed.

--You can search for compatible webrings at the following sites:

www.webring.com
www.ringsurf.com

Now that you have some promotional components in place and they are bringing in traffic, you might consider asking other sites to review your site or consider surveying your visitors. The benefits of this strategy are that you can get people's honest reaction (and thus tease out problems with the site) also if you ask for permission, you can then use their comments in your other promotions.

For example, you can survey your visitors by posting a link to a survey page say once every six months. This will require writing some script unless you figure out a way around that. You do need to consider giving the person taking the time to be surveyed something in return (an article, a percentage off something, etc.). Or you can send out surveys to your email capture list. Ask them to revisit the site and let you know how you're doing.

Email capture list at this point could include: places you've sent press releases, newsgroup participants, webring leaders, places you have placed articles, newsletter subscribers, and link partners.

There are a number of items you might include on this survey such as overall layout, ease of navigation, quality of information, what specific pages they have visited and what they thought of each. You can also add in lines like, "Would you like to subscribe to the newsletter?" And "What suggestions do you have for improving the site?" Give them several places for "free" responses-not just a rank each think 1 to 5. These comments (again if you get permission) can then be used when you send out press releases under "What visitors are saying" and in other promotional campaigns down the road.

Also, if you are going to survey, you really should be sincerely interested in what your visitors are saying. Don't just do it hoping to get great quotes. Be willing to listen and to improve.

Reviews are a little different. These can be done by contacting link partners mainly, and you are asking for an honest critique of your site. These comments too can be used in promotional material if you ask permission (and I would offer them a link back to their site anytime I used their quote).

I also use reviews in a slightly different form because I am an author. When I approach a reviewer about my book, I always include a very short invitation to my site. One way I do this is by asking which book they would like to review and after the short blurb for each one, I then tell them there is more information on each at my site. Many of these reviewers come over to my site just to check it out, and I then get comments about the site in the letters I receive back.

Where To Go From Here:

--Devise a survey and ask one portion of your email capture list to respond. (You will be able to see holes and problems with the survey when you start getting some of them back.)

--Revise the survey as necessary and then send it out to the whole email capture list.

--Consider the suggestions and comments of the people who respond. (And be sure to get their permission if you plan to use their comment in later promotions!)

--Not at the same time, but you might consider asking a select group of site owners to review your site. Responses on this can vary, but you may very well get some valuable insights.

--Finally never quit thinking out of the box. In any and all business correspondence have at least a signature file that points back to your site even if you do not directly mention the site in the correspondence. If nothing else, it will get the site name ingrained in the brains of those you contact most often.

Flight I	Flight II	Flight IV
Online Promotions Course for Writers

 

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