Network Neutrality: Save the Internet – You WILL be impacted!

Go to this website, SaveTheInternet.Com.  Tell me what you think.  If you believe them, ACT on it.  Your future on the internet could depend upon your being proactive.

Here’s what they are talking about:

Recent censorship by AT&T and Verizon shows us what we can expect in a future where powerful phone companies gain control over the free flow of information.

Big phone and cable companies are trying to get rid of Network Neutrality, the fundamental principle that prevents them from discriminating against your favorite Web sites and services.

How will this affect you?  Find out:  SaveTheInternet.com

Does your marketing promote your brand or expose your bland?

Have you thought about what your brand is? I mean really thought about it. Deciding on exactly who you or your business is and how you want to convey that to others is critical to your success.

Coke has a brand. When you hear or see the word Coke, you visualize something. Your mind’s eye brings back images you have seen time and time again that say, “This is Coke.” Pepsi has its own brand. The differences in the branding are easily recognized.

So is your business branded with a feeling, a message, a look, a consistent icon that says who you are in a split second? If not, you’re missing out big time.

Branding is not as simple as you might think. And it does narrow your focus. You must know exactly who your “target market” is and what gets their attention, what they like and don’t like, where they spend their money, what is important to them and what impresses them.

If you don’t have a distinct branding to your business, then you are trying to appeal to a very broad audience and you will likely discover that you will get lost amongst the thousands and millions of others who look like you.

Be creative. Be unique. Be distinctive. Be bold. Be branded.

Are You a Blogger or a Blahger?

If your blog is full of information that is pretty much useless to anyone except you and your need to talk, you really don’t have a blog.  You have a blahg, and you are officially a blahger.

Blahger:  a blogger whose message is primarily blah-blah-blah

Hopefully that’s not you.  And if your blog is simply for the purpose of you expressing your thoughts to anyone who will read it – or no one – and you don’t really care if anyone shows up, then you blahg with passion and don’t let anyone stop you.

BUT if you have something valuable to say and you want people to benefit from your knowledge or experience, then you need to be a blogger with substance and meaning.

So what do you think, are you a blogger or a blahger?

Eight Steps to Consider Before Writing Website Copy

Super Copywriting Guru Bob Bly says you need to go through these eight steps before writing your website copy:

1 Write down your marketing objective

Is it to generate leads? Build a database of names with email addresses? Give your business a storefront on the Web? Put your product catalog online to eliminate the time and expense of mailing printed catalogs?

2 Quantify your objectives

Do you think having an e-commerce site can increase your sales 10 to 15 percent? Are you looking to attract a million visitors a month? If you don’t know what these numbers should be, make your best guess.

3 Make sure your website has the information your visitors need

If you are selling a product, the prospect won’t buy it unless there is a clear description of each item along with its features and benefits. If you are selling a service, the customer must be able to get a price on the site or at least be given a phone number or e-mail address to contact for an estimate.

4 The prospect may be able to get all his questions answered while on your site

The easiest way to do this is with a frequently asked questions – FAQ – page. The FAQ page lists the most common questions visitors as, along with the answers. A number of software products now allow visitors to interact with a customer service rep while viewing sites, either via 3-mail, on the phone or “live” through instant chat.

5 Use tools that can quantitatively measure site activity

Compare actual performance against your stated numerical objectives. An increasing number of software applications can measure everything from how long visitors spend on each page on the site, to how much and how often they buy.

6 Add strategic hyperlinks and site maps to guide visitors

For instance, if you sell health supplements and have an articles library on nutritional supplements, you might link articles about specific applications to pages describing the particular models that handle each application best. Don’t be afraid to aggressively lead your visitor toward the solution you want to sell – not just the nice free stuff you give away.

7 Study competitive sites carefully

Creatively use site features and web techniques they are using to sell products similar to yours (no plagiarizing, of course!) Despite the emphasis on creativity among programmers and designers, creative adaptation of marketing techniques that are already working for others is more likely to result in your own success. Make sure, however, that you do not steal or plagiarizing copyrighted content or artwork.

8 Take a tip from the Yellow Pages

When people open the Yellow Pages, they have an immediate need and are looking nfor a solution. So the ads are heavy on content, light on fancy design or marketing fluff. Your site visitor may not have as immediate a need as the Yellow Pages user, but she still has some interest or she wouldn’t have come to your site. So while prize-winning Web design is fine, copy and content that SELL are even more important.

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Human Web Browsers and Your Presentation Techniques

Cliff Blake describes the following styles: “Good human interface design should embrace all of these styles and should be redundant enough to allow people a choice of how they will interact with the system depending on circumstances. Most people use all these different browsing styles at one time or another, but one generally predominates over others, and people approach new and unfamiliar sites using that style.

Design your site so that there is something for everyone. Don’t limit it to how YOU like to take in information. It’s all about your prospective customer.

Here’s a great guide from Super Copywriting Guru Bob Bly that will help you cover most, if not all, styles of web browsing and how you can appeal to the person stopping at your site.

ARTISTS
Artists are graphical users. It’s easier for them to find what they’re looking for from a picture than from a list of words.

Lay out text in digestible chunks to please these users, giving them space between text blocks for visual relief.

WRITERS
It’s easier for writers to find what they’re looking for from a list of words than from a picture.

Be sure graphics don’t delay your load times. Don’t make these users derive meaning from graphics; tell them in words.

EXPLORERS
Explorers like to take time to investigate their surroundings. MOST PEOPLE ARE EXPLORERS THE FIRST TIME they enter a site.

Give explorers plenty of content. They like many different areas to visit.

SEEKERS
Seekers want to go in, get what they want, and get out again in the shortest time. PEOPLE FAMILIAR WITH YOUR SITE tend to become seekers.

Give seekers one-click access to what they want whenever possible. Your most valuable repeat visitors are very likely to behave as seekers.

RECOGNIZERS
Recognizers like to pick from a list rather than coming up with tactics on their own.

Be sure to include pull-down menus of choices and charts for product comparisons for recognizers.

REQUESTERS
Requesters like to be in control. They prefer to type in their request.

Include fields in which these users can type in requests.

VERIFIERS
Verifiers are analysts. They will test each feature on your site, and will e-mail you with suggestions and changes.

Keep your content current, accurate, and synchronized. Check the quality of your site thoroughly.

Graphics or No Graphics, That is the Question

Illustrating Your Web Copy

The Internet is a visual place, full of photographs, illustrations, videos – you name it. Visuals instantly communicate a message and add interest to your online publications and websites. They help readers quickly and easily grasp relationships, comparisons, and sequences.

We often think that pictures and words complement each other, yet there is a subtle animosity between “word people” and “picture people.” Many word people think words get more of the message across than pictures. Picture people believe the opposite is true. “Today’s generation was raised on TV and video games.”

What is the truth? There are two myths floating around about the effectiveness of words versus pictures when it comes to marketing.

Myth 1: People Don’t Read

Look around. There are more than 15,000 newspapers in the USA, 10,000 magazines, 4 million websites, and 70,000 books published every year. If people don’t read, then who is buying these publications or visiting these websites? Just think about when you visit a website, don’t you spend a lot of time reading, trying to get as much information as possible?

What “People don’t read” really means is that “People don’t have time to read everything they want or need to read.” Your challenge is to make your copy interesting, relevant, and concise so that your visitor/prospect pays attention to it, starts to read through it, sticks with it all the way.

Myth 2: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The idea that you can explain things with a picture and without using words is, well, just not true. Try to teach people with a picture and you may discover that you NEED a thousand words to tell them exactly what to look at, what it is, and why they need to look at it.

Nearly everyone has been moved by a story – whether the words were in a book or the actors’ words from a written script turned into a movie. Painter, scientist and Yale professor David Gelertner says, “We believe ours to be some sort of visual age, but painting is today the least popular of the arts. For the most part, crowds at big shows barely look at the paintings; there are more people gathered around the signs and labels than the pictures.”

So is one better than the other? Should you use only words or only pictures? Or maybe you should just use videos and audios. Your decision should be: Use them all. Tell the reader of your e-mail, ezine or website what he is looking at when you use a graphic, and what it means to him. Do not expect him or her to draw the impression from the visual that you intended; usually they won’t.

People who visit your website or read your ezine or e-mail are different. They have different personalities, life experiences, talents and interests. Try to appeal to the senses of your visitor. And use lots of descriptive and well thought through words.

Sometimes Your Spelling Checker is, well, WRONG!

We all just want to “get it done.” Our lives are busy, we’re trying to move forward to the next step towards our dream goals or just take care of daily living projects. But when you’re selling your product or service on the internet, people will judge YOU and the quality of what you’re offering by the quality of your sales pages. If they’re full of spelling errors, lousy grammar, and boring sales copy – well, you get the picture.

Don’t lose customers because you just didn’t take the time to earn their trust by being careful with your web site. Use your spell checker – and if you’re not sure about a spelling or the grammar, ask someone who’s really good at those two things to read it over for you.

People tend to believe that if you are careful and professional with what’s written on your sales pages, you will be careful and professional with them as customers.

Here’s a fun poem that shows how a spelling checker can miss spelling and grammar errors:

SPELL CHECKER
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
–As seen on the internet