web-traffic-blog

Billy Kay over at Revenews shares some great tips about how to build out a promotion wide and deep. Once you find a product that converts, try Billy’s approach for bigger profits.
Multi-Pronged System for Success with Affiliate Products
“Once I find a merchant with whom I can develop a relationship with - and has products that […]

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Can they build suspense? Do they capture your reader’s interest? Can they make you rich?

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Posted by randfishThere’s no doubt about it - being a startup in any economic condition is rough, and in the current tumult, mind-bending challenges aren’t out of the ordinary. However, I, like most other entrepreneurs I’ve encountered, am a staunch optimist and thus, even in the face of hardship, seek the silver lining. Tonight, I’d like to share a few of the diamonds in the dung pile that are closest to my heart.

#1 - Living on No Income is an Advantage
The first few months/years of startup life are often waged with salaries that would make college students cringe, but later on, this austerity can be a tremendous asset as you have massively talented engineers & execs that can live on a fraction of what larger firms would need. That extra income can be re-invested in the business for a significant competitive advantage.
#2 - If You Can’t Afford Talent, You Have to Learn It Yourself
There have been many times at SEOmoz when we couldn’t afford to outsource or hire a specialist (particularly in our early years), so we had to get good at "it" (whatever "it" was) ourselves. In fact, this is how I got into SEO - we couldn’t afford great outsourced help, so I had to learn SEO to help our clients who needed the service.
#3 - Surviving Tough Times Frequently Leads to Success
Gillian & I started working together in 1997, and in 2000 felt that we had a pretty good plan for building a web design/development company. Then disaster struck the tech startup world, no one was paying 5 or 6 figures for websites anymore and our business was in for a rough ride. When we emerged on the other side in 2004, we were stronger, smarter and better prepared to take advantage of the next boom cycle. No matter how bad it seems in 2009, this too shall pass and those who emerge will be better poised for growth.
#4 - Guerrilla Marketing is Valuable No Matter How Big Your Marketing Budget Gets
As a startup, you don’t have money for big advertising pushes to brand your company/product/service, so you have to rely on word-of-mouth and the viral spread of your business. This is an incredibly valuable skill that will serve you well no matter how big your business grows. Learning what it takes to spread the idea virus will give your business a huge leg up on the competition.
#5 - Chaos Breeds Creativity
Early-stage businesses frequently have a lot of disorganization, lack of protocol and structure starvation. These are certainly hurdles you need to clear, but they’re also opportunities for improving the old ways and building a smarter, more creative, more agile company. When every role is set, "outside the box" thinking isn’t necessary - and necessity is the mother of invention.
#6 - Freedom from Rigidity Can Increase Productivity
That same lack of process that drives you mad can actually be an advantage, too. Although control and regimen do increase output in large organizations, they can cramp the style of small groups and individuals. I was always amazed by what we could do with a single designer/developer, and even more impressed by what a few guys with a pie-in-the-sky goal, a small bankroll and the freedom to find their own path accomplished last year.
#7 - No Room for Error Means Early Visibility Into Successes & Failures
When you’re locked into succeeding or collapsing, every move is analyzed for signs of impending doom. This relentless oversight means that when you fail, it’s early enough to make a course correction and when you succeed, you know exactly what went right and wrong. Fear of failure is a powerful motivator, and it breeds a culture of critical thinking that will make you better at your job much faster than a corporate structure that insulates against visibility.
#8 - Limited Hierarchy Increases Empathy & Improves Leadership
A flat organization means the founders and decision makers are close to the troops at all times. I’d argue that this makes you a better manager, as you perceive the day-to-day struggles and are never seen as aloof or out of touch with the realities of your team. There are weaknesses here, too, but knowing your people and having them know you is a powerful force for camaraderie and the fastest way to get insight about where your business is working or faltering.
#9 - Lack of Executive Bandwidth Means Internal Stars Can Shine
A popular article today examined John Gruber’s theory of Why Bad Taste Rules in Business Endeavors. He notes:

The leader with bad taste / poor design sensibility will absolutely salt out the great work of brilliant teams. They’ll add random crap to something that might already be quite good. Or will allow bad stuff to ship. Or, most likely, force a product out to market when it’s not ready. A blind adherence to meeting release dates, for instance, can essentially assure the death of quality in a product. That’s why adding product managers or project managers to an already failing project often is like a bucket of gasoline for a man on fire.

In startup life, the bandwidth to oversee projects and nitpick details is tough to come by, which seems, at first, like a disadvantage. However, on the optimist side of things, you do get to see the great work your people can produce sans filters - and when that work is remarkable, it gets to shine on its own.
#10 - Loneliness is a Rite of Passage
I’ve had a number of startup CEO friends tell me that leading a company is the loneliest job they’ve ever had. They hire friends, only to get into fights, lose them to layoffs, or find themselves needing to build distance to maintain the professional relationship. They get the sense that so few people understand their position or go through the emotional and intellectual cycles of excitement and dismay, fear and hope. But the startup community, particularly in the tech world, is forging more and more bonds and those connections are helping to make all of us stronger & smarter. Don’t take your detachment as a cue to devolve into a hermit; consider it the hazing process for entry into an exclusive new club forged by shared experiences and then reach out to your fellow entrepreneurs. You’ll find a lot of empathy and passion to connect, mentor & commiserate.
 

I’d love to hear any tips you’ve got to share for making the best of the oftentimes rough hand startups are dealt.
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Posted by Lucy LangdonAfter Obama’s inauguration speech last week, a lot of attention was paid to his speechwriter, Jon Favreau. Listening to Obama and reading about how he and Favreau wrote the speech got me thinking about how we use language when writing for the web. I spent some time analysing Obama’s oratory and reading about the subject.

Of course there are other mediums for communicating online, but the written word is by far and away the most important. I’ve focused on advice for social media, but a lot of this stuff holds true for all kinds of copywriting, from title tags to proposals.

Here are five points that I came up with that I hope will help you when you write for the web and, in particular, social media.

1. Headline Act

In Obama’s victory speech, he ‘teaches’ his audience what to want to hear next, both with his language and with the syntax of his speech. We learn to expect what’s coming, and to feel rewarded when it happens. For example, as David Crystal expertly explains on DC Blog, Obama opened his speech with an ‘if’ clause:
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America…”
When we hear an ‘if’ clause, we know it has to be resolved at some point. Obama daringly drew out the sentence, holding off on the punchline for a record breaking 41 words. By keeping his audience with him (using a few tricks you can read more about on DC Blog), the satisfaction felt on completion of the clause is significant.

By rewarding your audience in this way you’re getting them on your side.

Online, headlines operate in much the same way:

They get people to listen/click through. Like Obama’s ‘if’ clause, write a headline that is not resolved there and then.

They set the audience up for what they’re going to hear/read. Write a headline that ‘teaches’ your audience what to expect. For example, "The 5 Geekiest Sci-Fi Movies at Sundance 2009".

Delivering on the promises you make in your headlines is crucial to the audience’s enjoyment.  If your content isn’t all that, but you still want people to pay attention, the skill lies in making them chose to click through, and then delivering on whatever it was they hoped to find.

2. Conversation: "Oh yes we can! Oh no you can’t!"

For me, the beauty of Obama’s slogan ‘Yes, we can’ is the implication that someone, somewhere has just said, ‘no, you can’t’. A conversation is in progress. The natural reaction is to want to be a part of it.

This is particularly true online. There are countless ways to communicate and the most successful (forums, blogs, social media sites) are those that invite conversation. It’s the equivalent of turning up first at a party and having to awkwardly chat with the nervous host for 10 minutes, instead of arriving half an hour later when there is a lively discussion about who would play a Mac and a PC in a movie already in progress. Getting a conversation into your content can be done in a number of ways, depending what kind you’re after:

say something controversial in the headline or early in the content

get a friend to say something controversial in the comments
make a fairly obvious mistake; someone will correct you.

3. Content Is President (oh, come on)

Obama’s speeches are well researched and often include numerous references to well known themes or specifics. USA Today has helpfully listed a few of these that appeared in his inauguration speech:
"his [Obama’s] reference to ‘our better history’ was reminiscent of Lincoln’s reference to ‘our better angels’ in his first inaugural address. Obama mentioned ‘the full measure of happiness;’ Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address talked about ‘the last full measure of devotion.’"
It’s not hard to make the leap to how this translates online; you know the rules and so do I. In-jokes nearly always work because they make your audience feel clever and very much part of the ‘gang’. As with most things though, go overboard and you run the risk of looking stupid.

4. Inclusive Language: "What’s in it for me?"

David Meerman Scott has done a wonderful analysis of the language in Obama’s inaugural speech, looking at the internal (me, I, my) and inclusive (our, we, us) language and comparing the ratios to Bush’s first inaugural speech. The results are predictable and demonstrate one of the reasons why Obama is a better speech maker: he answers the all-important question, "What’s in it for me?"

By including his audience so completely (he also avoids any gender specific language), Obama is having a direct conversation about a shared past, present or future. Ok, so your blog post about title tags might not be quite so life-changing, but if you make it obvious that it’s essential to our industry, you’re halfway there.

5. Know Thine Audience

The political crowd is one of the most difficult out there. They are hardwired to mistrust you and have a hundred different reasons why you or your policies have personally ruined their life. They’ll string you along until it suits them and then drop you like the out-of-date/manipulative/lying/philandering stone that you are. Sound familiar? The online crowd is a very similar beast. Savvy. They’re fickle, smart and don’t like to be manipulated or patronised. Obama masterfully accommodates for the traits of his audience, and you should do the same. As Crystal again exemplifies, Obama’s victory speech was filled with rhetorical tricks. These fitted the occasion perfectly as the crowd was enthused with victory and more than willing to play along. It’s a bit like going to a pantomime; you know the deal and you’re in the mood.

Obama’s inauguration speech, however, was different. Gone was the clever, heady rhetoric that built to a mob-like climax and sought to pull or push the willing audience in a certain direction. In its place was thoughtful, steady speech filled with actionable bullet points:
“We will build… We will restore… We will harness… We will transform…”
There’s some really interesting stuff about this around the ‘net. You want to start with the difference between hypotaxis (climactic argument) and parataxis (bullet points) and go from there.

Your content should offer the same. Although rhetoric lies at the very heart of persuasion, don’t be tempted to manipulate your crowd unless you’re in the right place to do so. Instead, offer them useful points they can easily access at any point in the future. Your audience isn’t stupid and making the mistake of treating them like they are will inevitably lead to disaster.

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I really enjoyed researching and writing this post and would love to hear any tips or tricks you’ve picked up from unusual places.Do you like this post? Yes No

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Posted by rebeccaAs you may know, one of my job duties here is to manage our user-generated blog. Every day I sift through the queue of blog entry submissions and publish posts about Internet marketing, business tactics, social media, web dev/design, etc. While I publish one or two worthy, relevant blog entries each day, I delete several spam submissions. I’ve seen spam entries about buying World of Warcraft gold, pay day loans, auto loans, Halloween costumes, recycling batteries, hypnosis, GPS, song lyrics, eyeglasses, dogs, Asia travel, India tourism, car rentals, installing car DVDs, cosmetic surgery, t-shirt printing, civil engineering, UK vacation properties, fragrance products, food coloring, music festivals, fashion, and virtually everything in between. At this point not many spam entries surprise or amuse me–I pretty much delete them and continue through the queue.

Until now. The other day I was going through the queue of submitted entries and came across a spam post that was so funny I decided to illustrate it. Below is that spam entry, in illustrated form. All of the copy at the top of each panel is actual verbatim copy from the blog submission (I only provided the drawings). I hope this entry brings you as much joy as it brought me. Enjoy.

 
Actual title. I promise.

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