And that’s where Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps by Susan Gunelius comes in. Step-by-step, Gunelius shows you how to build good copy. She gives solid examples, showing the difference between mediocre and great writing.

In each section she gives a fictional company case study to show small business owners how to apply the principles she lays down. After reading each chapter, you’ll know how to apply quality copywriting principles to your work.

If you can’t afford a copywriter, this book will help you improve your own writing. And if you can afford to hire one, this book will help you know what to look for in a copywriter’s portfolio. And it could help you when you’re hiring a copywriter, too.

Also included at the back of the book are even more examples. There are real-world and sample ads and campaigns so you can try to use the same tactics to boost your own business. The book is full of great information. Gunelius writing is clear and easy-to-read. She doesn’t talk down to readers, as she’s clearly there to help them. To help you.

If you’re struggling with placing effective ads and having a low response to marketing campaigns, take a look at this book. I don’t think you can go wrong by picking one up.

Disclosure: I read a review copy of this book which I requested directly from the author.

image: Amazon.com

Post from: EveryJoe

Book Review: Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps

Which is why, when I went to our local warehouse store, I stopped in my tracks when I saw a package for neck cream. In big letters — a font you could see from several feet away — was the product’s catch phrase:

Got turkey neck?

I was flabbergasted. I had to wonder what customer would actually buy the product. No woman I know would be caught anywhere near a product with that on it. If a woman is vain enough to want cream for any neck waddle she may have, she certainly wouldn’t want to advertise it by buying something that announces it so… nondescriptly.

While packaging like this may garner attention at first, is it really the attention you want for your product? Think hard about the message you are sending to your customer. Does this send the message that you respect your customer? That you want to help them? Or does it just say that you are trying to embarrass them into buying something they think they may need?

image: Becky Scott

Post from: EveryJoe

Your Product Packaging Sends a Message

3 Ways for Businesses to Take Full Advantage of Facebook
Here’s a great listing of three different ways you can use Facebook for your business. John gives some good ideas on how to make the best of your Facebook experience.

Internet Marketing for Smart People
I don’t link a lot of e-courses, even though there are tons out there. But when a free offering comes from someone with a good reputation, you should definitely check it out. So if you want to learn more about internet marketing from one of the best, check out the free newsletter from copyblogger.

BlogWorld Expo Recap: Day 1
Lisa gives recaps of some of the sessions she went to at BlogWorld last weekend. You’ll find some gems in there, so check out Day 2 and Day 3 also.

Who’s more important: the division president or the customer?
One thing that bugs me when I go to the store is employees who complain about work, their boss, other customers, or their co-workers — in front of me. I find it highly unprofessional and it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to hear you complain, because it usually means you’re so busy with your conversation that you’re ignoring me. Your customer. So Steve’s post here about making sure your employees treat customers the same as the company big wigs hits a bulls eye for me.

Did anything stand out to you over the last week or two? Let us know in the comments.

image: morgueFile

Post from: EveryJoe

Recommended Marketing Reads for Monday, 10-19

The story spread all over Twitter and other parts of the web as concerned people retweeted the original story. Who wants to be separated from their child at the airport, confined to a security area? It hit an emotional nerve, especially with parents across the web.

Concerned about potential public relations damage, the TSA blog posted a video showing footage from the woman’s screening. And suddenly, the story makes a decided turn in favor of TSA. The video — while not complete — shows most of the screening and the woman’s child is either on her lap or next to her in a stroller the entire time.

The TSA Blog Team also posted the rebuttal to Twitter, actually sending tweets to many of the people who had retweeted the original story.

After the video was posted, Nic, the woman who claimed TSA broke its own policy, eventually responded to the story. She says that footage of her phone calls while in the security holding area, and the time when her son was in a separate area, is missing. But that is “being handled between [her] family and the TSA.”

Sometimes people tend toward exaggeration or hyperbole when they’re upset. Is that the case here? We can’t be certain. What I find interesting is that the TSA posted footage of the incident (which the woman states is actually her and her son) on their blog and on their YouTube channel.

In the midst of a potential PR nightmare, TSA (fairly) swiftly responded with their side of the story.

Are you monitoring social networking sites so you can respond in a crisis? Social networkers don’t take weekends off, so make sure you have a way to check in or get notified if something immediately needs your attention. Make it part of your PR or marketing plan.

Post from: EveryJoe

TSA Uses Blog and Twitter to Defend Itself

And that means you need to think about what you post on Facebook. And Twitter. And on your personal and business sites or blogs. And in comments on other people’s sites. When you use the same identity all over the place, people start to know you. Recognize your name. Your brand.

If you become somewhat “internet famous” then it’s even more important for you to think about how your actions affect your brand. If you’re seen as dishonest, it will hurt your brand. If people think you’re a bully, that you abuse the “power” you have by having many fans and customers, it will hurt your brand.

Your brand is your business. Your income. If you hurt your brand, you can hurt your income. If you rely on web site traffic for your income, say though advertising, then controversy can actually increase your earnings. But that type of income is fleeting. You can’t sacrifice your long-term goals for a little extra money right now.

Or, at least I hope you’re not.

It can be tiring to always watch what you say, what you do, how you come across to others. And therein lie the perils of building a personal brand. The brand of you. Many entrepreneurs are doing this quite successfully. They don’t attack people on Twitter. Or leave snide comments on Facebook. Or get so preoccupied with trolls that they get mired in the mudslinging.

It’s not easy, but it can be done. Think before you post. Or tweet. Or start that next marketing campaign. Make sure that what you’re doing enhances your brand and your company. Don’t let short-term thinking hurt your long-term success.

image: morgueFile

Post from: EveryJoe

The Importance of You as Your Brand

But I hate that store. I will do as much shopping as I can at the one about 3-4 miles away whenever I can. You see, this store is horribly organized. Items are scattered all over the store and even though I’ve lived near this store for over ten years, I can rarely find what I want with the first try.

It’s not designed well. In fact, it is designed to make customers go to several aisles to get things that should be placed together logically. Yet due to some genius store designer, they break things up so you’ll have to visit more of the store to find what you need.

And it hurts them, as I go to another location whenever I can.

If your web site is not designed to be easy-to-use, if your customers can’t find what they want within a few clicks, if your site search is horrible, your customers will go to your competition. And it’s losing you money.

How you arrange your web site shows how much you care for your customer. Is it designed to give them the information they want? Or is it just there to make you look good so you can say that you have a site? Is it set up for the customer or is it set up for you?

Make it easy on your customer. Give them product information, warranties, prices or sales information right up front. Help them buy from you. Don’t make them click all over your site just to find one or two things. Don’t frustrate them. Delight them.

Show your customer that you want to help. Ask them what they’re looking for. Order your site logically. Study web usability principles. Figure out what makes sense to the customer and organize your site that way.

But don’t hand them over to the competition by having a horrible site. Make it wonderful and make them love you. Now, if only I could get the grocery store manager to apply usability principles, then we’d really have something.

Have you looked at your site from your customer’s view recently? Maybe it’s time to take another look.

image: sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

Your Web Site Could Be Losing You Business

This past week I’ve seen a lot of posts about the new guidelines and we’ve already linked quite a few of them. So instead of linking more of them here, I’ve tried to find a few other topics to discuss. But if you find a really great synopsis of the FTC updates, please let us know in the comments.

They’re All Going To Laugh At You
Sometimes we need a little encouragement. This post isn’t going to seem like encouragement — at first. Would you consider someone telling you that people will laugh at you as a pep talk? Keep reading. Because you need to remember that what you’re doing is worth it. That you can handle the failures and keep going. Be a fighter.

The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing for Your Blog
If you’re thinking about starting or improving your email marketing, read this post. Michael goes into a lot of detail about how you can use email to market your blog. And yes, you can use several of these strategies for your newsletters that market your products and services. Or maybe you’ll get some new ideas from it.

In Social Media, Collaboration is King
When I worked in a customer service call center, I was frequently frustrated. Customers would have great ideas and feedback, but it was hard to get that information up the ladder to the right person. If I could have, I would’ve done something about it myself. That inability to follow up and make things better counteracted customer satisfaction. With social media so popular, and customer feedback so easy to find, you have the chance to change all of that. Seek out customer conversations. Collaborate with consumers. Engage them.

From WTF to WTF – How a Blog Caused a Logo Change for Wisconsin
This just made me laugh. You need to be aware of how your acronyms can be taken. Just like Humvee makers really should have thought about calling their vehicles Hummers, Wisconsin really should have consulted a few more people before going with Wisconsin Tourism Federation. At least they did change it…

Your Social Media Presence Needs Substance, Not Just Style
If you’re going to jump into social networking, make sure you’re using the right tools. Just because Twitter is popular right now, it doesn’t mean that’s where your customers are hanging out. Do the research and find the right place to add substance to your strategy.

Simple and visual blogger code of ethics
While I like the concept, it needs some work. There are more situations than can be represented with these buttons. For instance, if I were to put some of those on my personal blog as-is, I would need several of them. There needs to be a simpler way to do it, like Creative Commons, or some of the categories need to be combined. What do you think?

image: sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

Recommended Marketing Reads for Monday, 10-12

So what do you need to know? If you offer free products to bloggers in return for reviews, or if you pay for reviews, you should review the revised guidelines (PDF). Any positive reviews could be influenced by a free product or payment — and the FTC wants that disclosed to the consumer.

While it has been noted that the guidelines are mostly educational, you’re not off the hook. You need to make sure that any reviewers you use are honest, that they don’t make outlandish claims about your product and what it can do, and that they disclose their relationship with you.

Whether the reviewer writes on their own web site, on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, or even a forum does not matter. In any of those places – anywhere their opinion can influence consumers – they must disclose the relationship. And you need to make sure that they do. Even if you have no control over the review, you need to emphasize to the writer that they must disclose the relationship — so you’re not liable for their compliance.

If you’d like to find out more information about the revised guidelines, there’s no shortage of information. The New York Times has covered the story a couple of times. NPR interviewed Rich Cleland of the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices, and other sites have covered it as well.

But the best thing you can do for you and your company is to read the guidelines yourself instead of relying on any of us to interpret it for you. All eighty-one pages of it.

Have you had a chance to read it yet? Did you even know the guidelines had been released? And do you worry about staying in compliance? If so, will this affect your outreach in any way? If you’ll be curtailing your review giveaways, I’d like to hear about it.

image: sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

New FTC Guidelines Can Affect Your Marketing

Of course, you’ll want to set up some rules about how your affiliates can market your product. But once you set things up, you can get the word out to a much larger audience than you could by yourself. And you make efficient use of the money it takes to get set up with an affiliate program, and should make even the costs of upkeep worthwhile.

For instance, Amazon has a pretty well-known affiliate program. Any time anyone mentions a product that can be found on Amazon, all they have to do is insert their affiliate link. Then they’ve just done the work for Amazon (for a very small percentage of the sale, too).

There are some well-known bloggers that offer teaching courses or workbooks. They, too, offer affiliate programs. Sell a few of their courses and you get a nice little commission. They get a sale and put forth little effort toward it (I’m not counting the time spent in developing the product, just the effort of that particular sale).

Affiliate marketing can work for both products and services. Think of it as a referral program. Someone sends you a client, you thank the person by giving them a portion of the sale. Win-win, right? Have you thought about how you can use an affiliate program to your advantage? What’s stopping you?

image: Grafixar from morgueFile

Post from: EveryJoe

Affiliates Can Help You Market

But if a company wants to take over the page, they’ll need to pay Squidoo/ Brands in Public $400 a month for that “privilege.” You can look at it a couple of ways. It’s a lot cheaper than paying a social media company to collect that information for you, with not too much effort on your part. Or, you can view it as hijacking your brand and hosting yet another conversation without your (company’s) input.

A lot of people saw it as hijacking. Or brandjacking, if you will. Posts accusing Godin of such tactics garnered a lot of comments both pro and con to the new idea. It’s not the conversation gathering, though, so much as it was the sample “unofficial” pages that had already been set up that got people talking. It was decidedly an opt-out situation. And if you’ve read Godin any length of time, you’ll know his disdain for opt-out marketing.

So how could a marketing guru stoop to an opt-out tactic? I don’t think he saw it as such. Godin truly appeared to feel that he was providing a service and helping companies, not putting them on the offensive. Multiple posts and comments, though, thought differently.

What was most impressive, though, was Godin’s comments on several of the sites I read. He didn’t accuse or get defensive. He didn’t attack the people criticizing him. He explained his viewpoint, thanked them, and moved on. Yet later, he did go ahead and adjust his strategy and take down the 200 sample pages. So instead of being opt-out, the service was opt-in instead. The way it should have been originally.

It just goes to show you that we all can make mistakes. Even those in the big leagues. It’s how you respond to (perceived) missteps that count. And Godin stepped up and amended his model when he found it wasn’t working the way he intended. Instead of digging in his heels because they had spent time and money on 200 sample pages, he pulled them off of the site. He changed. Adapted. A lot of companies could learn to do that.

Squid logo is a trademark of Squidoo LLC and is used in accordance with Squidoo’s rules.

Post from: EveryJoe

Why Opt-Out Marketing Can Hurt You