Pyjamanating

One of my tumblr articles still hasn’t appeared, but the other one is now at position 28  for phrase search after  18 hours. It’s had a bit of socialposting so hopefully it will creep up.

Socialposter has one site where all of today’s posts are of tumblr blogs which are almost certainly part of the 30day challenge, so that’s fun. I voted them up and added as friends within the tumblr dashboard. They all seem to have found phrases which are potentially more lucrative than mine!

What else.  Oh yes, I’ve submitted an ezine.  It was tricky working out whether to sign up as myself  or as the author, and the video didn’t help much by using an example where the reviewer  is the same person as the product.

I’ve used up a lot of my copywriting now, so I’ll have to get some more written over the weekend. It’s also tempting to spend too much time just checking Google to see if the ranking has improved!

Last night I wasted an hour adding feedburner stats to the themes in tumblr, when today there’s a video which shows an easy way to add google analytics.

learning, learning.

Off to check the forum now.  Have a great weekend

Published on Enterprise Nation today

A note from the Editor

Are you trying to write that one sales letter that will pull in the millions and guarantee your retirement to a small island in the Caribbean? Maybe you have just sent out 5000 letters and wondered why you haven’t had one response. Crafting an effective (and profitable) sales letter is an art, but one that can be learnt.

Nicola goes on to offer a 15 point plan to making a perfect sales pitch. Here are the first 5…

1. Headlines – grab ‘em early

It all starts here. Grab attention, make it interesting. As the world becomes more cynical and consumers more advertising savvy, you need to be clued up about how to switch a reader on. There are numerous types of headline from the question format to the shocking fact. Just make sure they are highly relevant to your audience.

2. Know your customers

What is the point of mailing 5000 people with details of your product if 4999 already own an identical product? Do your homework, find the right customers in your database, check that their details are up to date and when you do the letters make sure they are addressed to a person rather than Dear Sir/Madam. I don’t know about you but I’m more likely to read something that has my name at the top. Sales letters don’t always have to be mass mailings – if you haven’t heard from a customer in a while why not drop them a personal letter to develop your relationship.

3. Let’s talk about you

We’ve all read them, ‘Dear Mrs X, My name is Dave and I’m writing to tell you how wonderful our company, Doofus Ltd is. We’ve got loads of great gadgets and we are based in a town near you’. I’ll say this just once, so listen carefully, your potential customers have one question when they read a letter ‘what’s in it for me?’ If you don’t answer that immediately you’ve lost them and your letter will be winging its way to the circular filing tray marked ‘bin’. Speak to your customer and put their needs first, there should be few, if any, uses of the word ‘we’ and lots of incidences of ‘you’.

4. The truth, the whole truth

Building credibility is key in a sales letter. If you have testimonials then use them, don’t make over exaggerated claims about your product or service and don’t use millions of exclamation marks!!!!!!

You can use success stories or short case studies to illustrate how you have helped customers; remember to keep the focus on what you can do for the customer, not how great you are.

It is important you have some brief information about your company, but it should be further down the letter, to the point and unique to your business. No standard corporate speak thank you!

5. Blow your trumpet about benefits

The biggest trap most people fall into is talking about the features of a product or service, not the benefits. You need to think about all the reasons people would choose to use your product/service and why they should choose you over your competitors – can you save them money, get rid of hassle, increase their profits, change their life in undiscovered ways? Think about what causes your potential customers problems and how your product or service solves them. Don’t talk about the colour or size of your new super widget, instead explain how the super widget saves 10 hours and is half the cost of the product they are currently using.

PS. If writing your own sales letter scares the pants off you, call me on 0161 374 2752 for a free quote, 10% off all orders placed in September. Plus a place on my Caribbean island…

Before I turned in last night I dugg and stumbled my two tumblr blogs. Then I lay in bed wondering whether Google will pay me an overnight visit.

No such luck, but never mind.

In the morning I decided to organised Firefox sessions so that I can switch between the two seperate projects more easily. I still prefer Camino really, but Firefox has some benefits as well. That’s one of the things I will be able to take away from the 30daychallenge at the end.

Then I checked out Facebook, and pondered what to do about our dead group. I’ve sent a group message to individual team members inboxes on Facebook which says the following:

Ok, this is a message to all members of the thirtydaychallenge team which is called “30DC for mac”. The team is comprised of people who joined 30DC late, or didn’t have a team earlier so it may be kind of hard to catch up in some ways, but we really do need to have a functioning team, get to know each other and be able to trust each other for mutual support with our niches.

So please come on over to the group discussion area and say hello or something to break the ice. There’s just myself and Linda there at the moment, and for us there’s no point in carrying on like that. We’re going to need a lively group and so will you if you are ata ll serious about the challenge. If perhaps you have actually dropped out of the challenge, then you’re missing a great opportunity but it does require some application. Maybe other priorities took over, anyway If that’s you then we need to know so please leave the group now and maybe we’ll see you next year.

Everybody else, it’s nearly the weekend so we can relax and maybe catch up if necessary. It’s the exciting time now when we are publishing our tumblr blogs, netscaping then and watching to see if they ranked on Google. How’s yours doing? Fun!

If that doesn’t get any response by Monday we’ll close the group down and try and start again with a different approach.

So what’s on for today – three videos, one with Ed getting overexcited, one tutorial about how to post to 25+ social bookmarking sites at once, and one I haven’t watched yet on submitting an ezine article.

On the subject of social bookmarking, is using SocialPoster doing it the way the internet works? It’s a long way from what was the original intention of the first social bookmarking sites – Furl and delicious. Why does the internet need dozens of such sites anyway? And why don’t they all just provide a different interface into the same database?