Ever read an “About Us” page that made you want to work with the business, or just grab a coffee with the owner? Didn’t think so. Most About pages read like they were written by someone trying to impress a bank manager. Buzzwords. Bullet points. Boring. But that’s not your story. You built something real. Maybe from your kitchen table. Maybe from pure grit. Either way, people don’t want your mission statement. They want your why. They want to feel…
In 2014, Derek Sivers did something wild. He rewrote a confirmation email. That’s it. Not a campaign. Not a product launch. Just an email. Here’s what it said: “Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized gloves and placed onto a satin pillow…” It went viral. People laughed. They shared it. They remembered CD Baby. But why? Because it felt like something. Because it sounded like someone. Because it had what most brands are missing:…
The last couple of years have been difficult for many people. People struggled with all kinds of issues. Some publicly and some privately. I was in the later group. I tried my best to keep a happy appearance, but honestly it was easier to withdraw and focus the little energy I had on my family. I don’t regret it at all. My friend Alan Stein Jr, author of Raise Your Game & recently Sustain Your Game, shared an incredibly powerful…
Over the course of almost two decades, Jeffrey and I have worked directly with hundreds of content writers. Many of them were our secret weapons in many of our most exciting client success stories. Once the writers understood the personas they were writing for, had a clear sense of the narrative flow of the scenario and the context (where their content piece fit with in that scenario) they almost always delivered content that was both relevant and persuasive. However, a…
Good Copywriters Are … “What makes for good online copywriting?” Both marketers and copywriters have their reasons for asking this question. “Can you recommend a good online copywriter?” Ah. Unfortunately we have considerably fewer answers to that one (although we wish we were busting at the seams with them). So one day, I enlisted my colleagues in brainstorming the answer to this related question: “What qualities must a good onlne copywriter possess?” Here are 13 things that we would look…
Last week, my partner and brother, Jeffrey and I were doing an in-house training for a large B2B marketing team. At the end of our training, we had them review a bunch of landing pages across the web to see how they could apply what they learned over the two day training. One source of inspiration for the landing pages they reviewed was this list of 30 beautiful landing pages. There were a few good ones (beautiful isn’t good), but…
Last week’s conversion optimization challenge was to take a look at the webinar invite sent out by WriterAccess.com with the subject line: Webinar Invite: Lessons Learned From 90,000 Content Orders. The email contained two major obstacles and a handful of smaller obstacles. The major obstacles are the copywriting perspective and the second one is the overuse of jargon. The smaller issues are related to building credibility in the host/presenter, the calls to action and point of action assurances. This is what…
Last week, I visited ComicCon Austin with my 7 year old son. The people in costumes, the famous actors and characters were not what caught my attention. What fascinated me is the engagement that people had with these characters many of whom have been around for more than 50 years. That is the value of great content. I caught up with Shane Gibson, Chief Social Officer for WizardWorld and ComicCon to discuss the power of these iconic brands and to…