As a copywriter, I like to find great ideas I can use right away in my daily copywriting work. I discovered these tips in the article "What can we learn from the 'real world'?" written by Steve Crescenzo in the November/December 2011 issue of Communication World, the magazine published by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).
When it comes to writing great headlines, Steve says you have to look no further than Cosmopolitan. Yes, that's right, the woman's magazine Cosmo, famous for its provocative headlines. The magazine uses several simple tactics that draw readers in.and get them to buy magazines.
1. "The list". People like lists that offer an opportunity to learn a number of points about a specific topic. For Cosmo, these include: "10 Things You Should Never Say to a Guy" or "13 Things that Make Him Act Totally Bitchy". If you're writing for a business audience you can use "7 Simple SEO Tips to Increase Your Web Traffic". Another benefit of using lists is they provide an outline or frame for your article, breaking the content into easy to read sections.
2. The "direct address" or "it's all about YOU". Talking directly to your readers gets their attention. Which headline would make you want to read more: "How to Tell if a Man is Keeping Secrets" or "10 Secrets Your Man is Keeping From You"? Exactly.
3. The "dot, dot, dot". To really get a reader to take notice, ask them a question followed by an ellipsis (...). "Are You Obsessed..." or "Have You Discovered Your...". What is this obsession or life-changing discovery they don't know about, the reader will ask --and read on to find out.
Thank you to Steve Crescenzo for the inspired headline writing lesson. Since I've read these tips I've been using them whenever possible, in my own writing and in the articles I edit for a client's newsletter.
Here are two more tips to optimize your headlines for online writing.
Use keywords. Remember to use the top keyword in your headline. Be sure to repeat this keyword in the first paragraph, in the first line if possible.
Don't forget Twitter. It is always satisfying for a writer to have their work appreciated, and the "retweet" is the "thumbs up" for the digital age. Think about how easy it is for others to publish your headline on Twitter. In the tweet put your URL right after your headline and finish up with a call to action.
-Lynda
We are inspired by food blogs, in part because they are examples of remarkable, authentic content. Our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers handed down their favorite recipes over the years, often scribbled on a card or a piece of paper. Stories about the origin of the recipe were often told as well, and these collections were prized and shared again and again over the years. Contemporary food writers adapted quickly to blogging and tell their stories to much larger audiences. They are the new creators and historians of recipes and food memoir and it's helpful to have a guide to the very best.
We asked one of our favorite food writers, Pat Fusco of the Pacific Sun newsweekly in the San Francisco Bay Area, to give us a selection of her ‘must read’ food blogs are and tell us why they are at the top of her list. Pat’s feature stories are well known and loved by her readers. She often incorporates moving family tales of her childhood in the South and her young married life in NY with her Italian in-laws. These are her choices when you are looking for more than a recipe. (To read more of Pat Fusco food writing, visit: www.pacificsun.com.)
www.teaandcookiesblog.com, Tara Weaver
“Tea” (I know her by that name from another time in our world) is a gifted writer, a published author whose passion for food shines through in her journal-type entries of life in – now – the Northwest. She is also a photographer whose sensitive images catch the mood of landscape and food, people and places. Her recipes are invariably simple, always seasonal . She writes openly and honestly about her personal experiences as a single woman, and is not afraid to appear so very human in her work.
www.eatthelove.com, Irvin Lin
I knew Irvin before he began his blog and have loved following his smashing success in the San Francisco food-writing scene – and he has gained national recognition as well, with awards for his blog. He is Asian, proudly gay, and irreverent. His passion for creating new desserts is boundless, and it’s infectious. He has been using a lot of gluten-free ingredients lately, proving that sophisticated sweets can be “righteous”, but not everything is geared to that niche and his recipes are seductive. I so appreciate the way Irvin takes the reader along as he tweaks each cooking experience. The photos on his blog are by his partner A.J. Bates, a very good photographer who is also a scientist and helps Irvin explain a lot of “whys” (especially about baking).
www.101cookbooks.com, Heidi Swanson
Heidi is a respected cookbook author and proponent of natural foods cuisine. Her blog brings us a sense of joy-in-freshness, simple-is-best philosophy and it’s exciting to read, making me feel in touch with her curiosity about ingredients and her discoveries in world foods as well as those of our own California sources. She is unfailingly careful in her recipe writing; there’s never any questioning her authority.
Okay, for sheer escape into other realms I (daily) read two blogs from Italy:
www.rubbahslippahsinitaly.blogspot.com, Rowena
The woman who writes this fascinating journal of life in northern Italy is a native of Kauai, my favorite Hawaiian island, and she writes from both locations. She has been documenting sagras (food festivals) wherever she finds them, often traveling across the country to catch a celebration of a specific ingredient or a saint’s day festival and parade. She cooks, too, and likes to surprise Italians with American and/or Hawaiian specialties and she loves learning from her Italian husband’s family or reproducing some of the almost-disappearing dishes served at sagras. She has a great sense of humor and throws into the mix videos (popular music Italian television commercials, movie scenes) and photos, from landscapes to crazy signage to close-ups of food in shop windows.
www.luculliandelights.com, Ilva Beretta
I challenge anyone to read Ilva’s blog and not be drawn into her very special world. A Swedish woman married to an Italian, she lives in Tuscany (Pistoia) and is a professional studio photographer (food, lifestyle) as well as a woman who finds magic in the kitchen of her stone house, making up recipes as she responds to weather, mood, the harvest. I confess that I’ve been addicted to her photographs and her comfortable approach to cooking/eating since I first came across her blog several years ago. I feel the day is incomplete unless I see what she has posted.
-Jude
Are attention spans getting shorter?
Are we outsourcing our knowledge to the cloud?
Is our consciousness skating over the surface of things?
Lots of theories are arising from the fact that we find ourselves swimming in a sea of information. Frankly, I feel like I might go under some days.
Managing digital marketing has forced me to live in the present moment. Some periods flow like Huck Finn's raft on the Mississippi, but suddenly there are rapids when too many things happen at once and it is impossible to keep up.
It is easy to sit down to write an email and realize you have followed a link, read two articles, shared them over a social network and an hour slips by when you anticipated spending a minute on that email message.
Time tracking is an essential foundation for integrating the virtual world into your life rather than falling down the rabbit hole like Alice.
There are many time tracking tools available now that will show you where your time is going without wasting any of it in the process. It can be an eye-opener to see the gap between where you think you spend your time, or ought to spend your time and where it is really going. Often becoming conscious of your activities and their actual duration is enough to put you on the track to using your time where you really want to.
Here are some of the tools we find useful.
I DONE THIS: "The fun, easy way to get stuff done" is a free and very simple idea. Every day at the end of the day you receive an email asking you to reply with a list of what you have done. The email might include a recap of what you did a week ago (you will be impressed with your accomplishments) or a bit of wisdom from their staff, giving it a nice human touch. These daily lists are compiled in an online account where you can see them on a calendar. It is a creative approach of building on the past that might work better for you than piling things up for the future. https://idonethis.com/
Chrometa time tracking tool can address a seriously out of control agenda. A "Passive Timekeeping" tool, it installs on your device and works in the background. When you come back online it will ask you to enter your offline time if you want. Meanwhile, it tracks your activities so you can see them by time spent on Firefox, Photoshop, Word.
In the screenshot below I see how much time I spend on meetings, webdev and documentation and can switch to Project view to see which clients and what tasks took up that browser time or Skype time. Even more impressive, with an optional email plugin, you can see what emails you spend the most time.
For those who prefer to allot tasks to the future and then record if they get done, a new tool with a spiffy interface is Wunderlist task management tool
Finally, one of my favorite tools is SLEEPYTI.ME bedtime calculator. This tiny tool lets you know when to set your alarm so you don't wake up in the middle of one of those being-chased-by-a-tiger-and-hiding-behind-cereal-boxes dreams that deep REM sleep cycles can induce and leave you groggy and useless.
sleepyti.me bedtime calculator
Let us know if you have any other tools or how you like these.
Where Marketing Automation Meets Inbound Marketing: You-centric vs. User-centric
If inbound marketing is about offering value that is attractive to your audience, will employing automated communication defeat your efforts? The answer can have a big impact on the potential digital marketing offers for your product or service.
Marketing generally refers to promoting, but before the 1920s it meant shopping or going to market, oriented on the buyer and not the seller (1). Inbound marketing is a concept the Internet fostered where your audience can find you rather than be interrupted in their activities by annoying traditional marketing methods. Marketing automation is used to send messages, mainly via email, triggered by a marketing campaign or by activity on a behavior-tracking website.
“The name given to software platforms designed for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks is Marketing Automation.(2) "
SRI’s Centibots, a team of 100 coordinated, mobile robots
Marketing automation arose to save the time of the marketing and sales team members. When inbound marketing meets marketing automation, the purpose of automation needs to shift to user-centric. Consideration is the cornerstone for building successful inbound marketing automation.
Our agency has recently embraced inbound marketing because it reflects our own process of doing deep research and understanding our clients first, so that we can help them achieve their goals. All clients need online marketing, but each one has a unique profile. We have to understand what differentiates each customer. Inbound marketing is about a relationship rather than a transaction.
How might user-centric automated marketing look?
Grouping users is more you-centric. Recognizing their needs as individuals is user-centric. Individuals all have less time and more input today. User-centric automated marketing lets users choose the channel they prefer for receiving messages and lets them choose the format they find most digestable. Do they have the option to receive updates via email, rss, text message? Can they choose daily or weekly digests? Those are automations that are considerate of the user's time.
Generic emails talking about your suite of services and products in a series of automated messages triggered by anyone completing a form on your site is more you-centric. An automated alert triggered by a price drop on a specific product a visitor has put in their basket or visited the page of is more user-oriented.
Say you sell kayaks. A series of messages that only develop the argument for purchasing your kayaks is more you-centric and transaction-oriented. Relating to this individual would be recognizing the desires behind buying a kayak. They are for sport, relaxation, they go on bodies of water, there are dangers and adventures associated with kayaking. Sending a series of messages incorporating the activity as a whole: kayaking spots in their area, safety tips, tips for taking cameras on the water, stories of customers using your kayaks in intriguing ways included with product information would be user-centric.
Marketing Automation has seen huge growth in use, but not necessarily in results. For more information about employing best practices and avoiding pitfalls, check out the information on the subject at inbound marketing software specialists, HubSpot : http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-automation-information/
Summary
- Inbound marketing is about a relationship rather than a transaction.
- When inbound marketing meets marketing automation, the purpose of automation needs to shift from you-centric to user-centric.
- When automating, ask: How does this serve your client?
Citations
1. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/marketing
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_automation
Paris, France - November 9, 2011 – Hoi Moon Marketing is pleased to announce that it has joined the HubSpot marketing team as a Value Added Reseller.
HubSpot recognizes the importance of its Value Added Resellers, and is glad Hoi Moon Marketing is part of the team that is revolutionizing marketing.
"Hoi Moon Marketing will be forging new territory in the very hot Paris market. It is a great opportunity for both companies," says Jeetu Mahtani, HubSpot International Partner Channel Manager.
Hoi Moon Marketing is a full-service global online marketing agency based in both California and Paris. Hoi Moon develops strong brand identities for their clients and helps them deploy this identity across appropriate sites and social profiles. In addition, they manage targeted campaigns and stay current in a constantly changing digital landscape. Hoi Moon has worked with over 50 clients over ten years in the fields of travel & leisure, luxury hotels, transportation, hi-tech, wine, real estate, medical, health and beauty.
HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing software platform for businesses of all sizes. It allows integration of blogging, search engine optimization, social media monitoring, lead nurturing, content management, content personalization, and analytics reporting. With more than 5,000 customers in 34 countries, HubSpot was named the 2nd fastest growing software company in the world by Inc Magazine this year.
HubSpot customers see a growth in monthly unique visitors to their websites by up to 60 percent, an average increase in leads of 25 percent and an increase in sales of 50 percent or more because of their inbound marketing efforts.