Interested in a quick SlideShare 101?

Here you go, the basics:

• The site launched in 2006 and now gets over 25 million visits per month.
• Users can upload and share presentations, documents, and videos.
• You can rate, comment on, and share stuff via social media.
• Essentially, SlideShare is a social media because you also follow members and join groups.
• Both Facebook and LinkedIn have integrated apps to make it easy to share your SlideShare assets.
• Zipcast is a new webcasting feature offered free from SlideShare.
• You can create a branded channel for your company.
• For a fee, you can have your presentations shared on the SlideShare home page.
• Various widgets allow you to embed presentation feeds on your page and embed playlists of presentations.
• SlideShare is an enormous library of valuable content.

Interested in becoming SlideShare Marketing Master? (It’s not technical, so no need to fear.) This a nice collection of tips from HubSpot.

Have you used it? Any tips you can share with us here at The Point?

21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website: Part 1

That’s a pretty politically correct headline I just wrote. But what do you say we get real now and examine the wisdom behind swiping ideas? Truthfully, no one will get hurt with the form of thievery I’m about to propose.

I submit the savvy way to get started on a new website is to pickpocket ideas wherever you can find ‘em. Now before you go and call the plagiarism police on me, give me a few paragraphs to explain.

Keep your greasy paws off my intellectual property.

I’m a writer. I’ve been slinging sentences together for profit for 25 years. So as you might expect, nothing fuels my fire like scraping the content I wrote to promote my business or my client’s. Copying copy is a dirty rotten disgrace. I guess to some degree, it’s something I’ve learned to live with because it happens all the time.

Now, as an article writer, or even a website writer, I want you to like my stuff. And if you ask me for permission to republish it, guess what? You’ll get it. In fact, I’ll be flattered. I’ll merely ask for fair attribution and we’ll have ourselves a mutually beneficial little deal. But should you decide to forgo that step and then take credit for it, well, um, then I’m gonna’ report you to the principal.

And now back to my “start smart” strategy for creating a website.

Unless my client has a very clear plan for all the nuts and bolts we’ll use to build his new website, I recommend we embark on a mission to have other sites inform our decisions. Without the tiniest tinge of guilt, I recommend we start by finding a handful of sites we agree are effective. I even suggest we begin our stealing spree at his competitors’ sites.

Gasping? I’m here to tell you it’s perfectly okay.

We’re not going to copy and paste.

That’s dubious. Copying and pasting another company’s property does indeed put a foul taste in my mouth. But finding inspiration from other sites is just plain smart. The same practice happens in every creative endeavor. Okay, every once in great while, someone invents a wheel. The other zillion times they attempt to borrow the basic idea and build something unique. Therein lies the key: build something unique.

Look at some of the many decisions you must make when creating a website.

• What content will it include?
• How will it be presented?
• How is the navigation setup?
• What goes where?
• How does it attempt to capture leads or sell product?
• What type of personality will it have?
• This list may have no end.

Mr. Godin agrees.

I’m going to live dangerously now and tell you the inspiration behind this article, to some extent, is also largely derived from stuff I’ve read online. Though I’m drawing from a commonly cited best practice, I have indeed put my own personal spin on the subject matter. I didn’t steal anything and call it mine. I borrowed a good idea.

Seth Godin, the best selling author and internationally recognized marketing advisor, sprinkled very similar ideas throughout his article “How to create a good enough website.” Seth wrote:

“I’m going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? If your organization can’t find a website that you all agree can serve as a model, you need to stop right now and find a new job.”

Godin points out your car isn’t unique and though you’ve decorated your house to your own liking, it’s not likely it’s unique either. Other people’s houses share the same essential framework.

He goes on to point out the morale of the story is not to commit copyright violations, but to recognize that modeling your site after others that have successfully laid the foundation for you is simply a smart way to start.

Care to share your thoughts? Please do.

And, if you found the pointer I’ve offered you here today helpful, there’s 20 more where this one came from. I invite you to read and apply a new series of site creation tips in my fun and informative primer “21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Site.”

Check it out…

New business cards (miniature MacBooks). Notebooks. Branded pens. Caps.

How much? Free for the asking. Just shoot me an email or use my contact form.

Why? No real reason. It’s fun to see my new logo on stuff. It feels good to spread the love. And, I want to make it easy to find me when you need to tell your story.

Thanks for shopping at the Feldman Creative company store. Come again soon.

Your home page ain’t it.

Why are you still reading this article?

It’s about you. So far, I’ve alluded to you, the subject of this article I wrote for you, about your website, ten times (not including this sentence). Not a word about me.

Oh sure, I could tell you about myself, Barry the freelance copywriter, Feldman Creative the content marketing experts, my experience, my accomplishments, and my clients. While we’re loving on me, I could tell you about my affection for guitars, tennis rackets and things with strings. But you haven’t asked me to.

And let me make this clear: I don’t want to risk losing you. We just met. Who knows? Our relationship might take us to some amazing places. So let’s get back to that problem you’re having with your website.

You’re focusing on you.

Most companies do it. They don’t even realize it’s wrong. However, if they measure and analyze their bounce rate (the percentage of site visitors that leave without clicking anything), they do realize they have a problem.

Don’t beat yourself up about it. Just fix it.

When you start the conversation talking about yourself you turn people off. If they can bail, they do.

The secret to turning them on is very simple, but so misunderstood. You talk about them. You employ the power of “you.”

Your new website visitor just described their problem by entering some version of it in Google. Or maybe your great reputation earned you a referral. In either case, one reality looms ginormous.

Your website visitor has a problem.

The good news? You probably have the solution. And the reason you have a website to begin with is you want people like this to learn more about it and buy it.

So here’s what you do: assure them they belong here at your site. Make it clear you get their problem. Make it clear you want to help. You do this with headlines, photos, illustrations, videos, diagrams, invitations, offers, and more.

Let’s look at how to lose them from the start.

Sadly, most websites provide very good examples of how to turn-off and turn-away prospects. Scraping together examples to share with you certainly wasn’t hard. In fact, I just turned to a small sample of clients I’m doing websites for right now. Forgive me for the edits I made in the name of anonymity. I didn’t want to have to grovel my way back to my clients’ good graces. I want to (and I will) help them understand why their home page is a turn-off.

Example 1:
Software development

The “before” version of a site I recently rewrote read like this:

COMPANY senior level team is comprised of professionals who have worked with the world’s leading technology, advertising and design companies. Our “get it done” philosophy is why much of our work is repeat business from happy clients. Our goal is to establish a strategy that is tailored to your company’s goals, objectives and budget.

Did you see how the “us” thing trumped the “you” voice in every way? Did you feel any sensitivity the company understood your challenge? Did you even feel they recognized you were there? This self-congratulatory approach is more dreadful than a resume. If you were looking for a reason to keep reading, click something, or capitalize on an offer, clearly you’re going to have to keep looking.

Example 2:
Personal assistant services

This company made it abundantly clear in the first sentence as to which company they wanted to talk about.

Our network is vast, our ideas are unique and our delivery is prompt. If it can be done, we can do it. We are boutique firm, which opened in 2005 dedicated to any project you just don’t have time for.

They’ve managed to stay open 7 years now. Wow. One has to assume they are more customer-centric offline. As a side note, if a test of a good home page is “assure your customer they’ve come the right place,” they failed gloriously. They seem to suggest they can solve any problem. Ever met a company like that?

Example 3:
Law firm

I hear this all the time, especially from professional services firms, “These online marketing strategies sound good, but things work differently in our business.” (Vapor escapes from the consultant’s ears.) It’s hard to help naïve business owners such as this, but as you’re about to see, the obvious place to start would be their pointless home page copy.

Founded in 1994, COMPANY is a full-service (specialty) law firm with vast experience and expertise in all aspects of (specialty) law and litigation. Throughout its history, the firm and its attorneys have represented (third person reference to client types) ranging from individuals to multinational corporations, and over the course of this time, COMPANY has helped successfully negotiate and complete hundreds of millions of dollars worth of (category).

Ouch. Not a “you” in sight. I’d like to ask you to wake up now. We’re going to look at how you do engage your customers.

The most important lesson I can offer you.

Even if you elect not to hire a great copywriter to work on your website (which is a mistake), I beg you to look at it from the point of view of the visitor—especially your home page.

I’m trying to do this in this article. I’m thinking—and writing—about your challenge. What is it? You want people to “get into” your website.  Remind yourself why they are there. It’s not to read about you.

I’ve written a lot about what not to do and shown you examples of the “we, we, we” epidemic that plagues most websites. By now, you’ve bought in. If you haven’t, you have no business reading this deep into the article. (And you probably should fess up to the fact that you have no business thinking your website is a marketing tool for you company).

But since you’re still here and my lesson is sinking in, let’s agree that what every woman who visits your site DOES care is herself and every man, himself.

So what are you going to do turn ‘em on… to get them into your site, into a conversation, in your sales funnel?

You are going to understand why they showed up at your website and come up with some version of “You have this challenge? Right this way please. How can we help you?”

Soon after you discover who your website is for, you’ll discover what it can do for your business.

This “pointer” is one of “21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website,” which will help you understand how to make your site more effective (and is available here for free).

People get the wrong idea about social media influence. We gravitate to thought leaders in our industry and hope to get a crumb of respect from them to elevate our own status and reach. I’m here to tell you right now that’s completely wrong. Influence is about building real two-way relationships that are mutually beneficial. I’ll give you a prime-time example that happened to me recently.

Barry Feldman is an influencer in his own right. He’s a great writer working as a copywriter and blogger. He gets it right when he calls himself a “good storyteller”. If you haven’t checked out his website and blog, you should. The skills that Barry wears on his sleeve are both rare and precious in these free-for-all days on the Web. Barry and I have been trading tweets and quips for a few months now, but never anything truly substantive, until last week.

Last week Barry read my blog post “Top Challenges in Modern Website Design – #3 Marketing“, and it apparently resonated with him. He responded with his own blog post “Do These Things Only If You Want to Be a Successful Online Marketer” in which he expounded on my post and reinforced it with his own spin. He added value by providing important tips like:

“Make a great site. Don’t skimp on copywriting or design. Tell a great story. Make it easy to speed-read and enticing to spend time with.”

Aside from the fact that Barry dropped us some very nice compliments, what he really did was reinforce some important strategies for his own customers as well as for ours. The two blog posts together are more influential (and consequential) than the sum of the parts. Now we’re talking about the power of social networking and relationship marketing. Now Barry and I are collaborating and moving the industry forward. Cool.

My point here is that what happened last week was the realization of an extremely important goal. By putting yourself out there with a heart-felt blog post, you can attract like minds (as well as antagonists). By responding in kind and reinforcing (or arguing with) someone’s point of view, you are creating a valuable conversation that’s far more interesting than a simple one-off post. By working together, Barry and I now have reason to continue and build on that relationship. We have influenced each other, and now we can influence others – to do what? It doesn’t really matter. We have created a spark, and sparks have a tendency to become flames.

You can do this too.

Note: This article is the second in a 3-part series in which the subject changes from marketing a website to making meaningful connections via social media.

I became a blogger just this year. I sprinkled my articles around the web quite a bit and offered a decent chunk of my best attempts to articulate online marketing ideas right here. I feel welcome at Social Media Today. Thanks for having me fellow bloggers, new media maniacs, and readers.

Being new to this crazy little thing called blogging, while I penned 25 or so articles, in the name of research, curiosity and just plain fun, I must have read about 25,000.

I was looking for good insights delivered with elegance and wit. A dose of tongue-in-cheek humor scores points with with me too. I suppose to keep my Google Reader queue to under 1,000 unread posts and budget my time wisely, my appetite for devouring articles online in 2011 was partially driven by a desire to be more selective about who and what I read in 2012.

But trust me, I didn’t announce to anyone anywhere I was in search of the best zinger line from a blog post. I wasn’t. I didn’t conduct any contests. And if I did, who’d enter?

In fact, at the beginning of this week, I vowed to complete one or two of the five to ten unfinished articles I have in the works. I was actually working toward this goal when I got derailed by my favorite whipper-snapper of the whole year.

And the winner is…

“… in today’s consumer-is-king world, redesigning your website earns you precisely nothing.”

That’s just precious. It comes from John McTigue of Kuno Creative. John’s stuff is consistently great and though I have no affiliation with Kuno, they provide a veritable bounty of insights and practical advice.

John’s memorable line slipped into sight December 29, merely hours before the clock struck 2012.

What makes it such a great little quip? Above all, truth. Secondly, I love the irony. This company, Kuno Creative, actually sells web design. In fact, on their site’s sparse nav bar, they offer only two services, web design being one of them.

Uh John… hello? Are you switching professions? Are you trying to sabotage your company? No? And no again? Okay, what are you doing?

The man is sticking his neck out.

John’s telling it like it is my friend. In fact, in his wonderful article titled “Top Challenges in Modern Website Design – #3 Marketing,” he opens dangerously with:

“We get a lot of our business from website owners whose sites deliver precious few sales leads to the bottom line.”

John’s not nuts. He wants to dramatize his point, which I suspect is a constant mantra in one way or another at Kuno Creative: website-based marketing is a process—not a project.

To validate the notion, the pros at Kuno Creative, and practitioners of inbound marketing everywhere, must stomach the risk that comes with telling potential new clients the large investment they will make make in their websites may deliver zero ROI. Cool.

I gave my work a good hard look.

The article really captured me. (Of course, it didn’t hurt that it featured the album cover of Bob Dylan’s classic “The Times They Are A-Changin’). And then it sent me reeling in a self-examination of sorts.

Creating, improving, editing, and expanding websites represents the majority of the work I’ve done in recent years as a freelance copywriter and creative director. Generally, before and after studies of these sites validate my skills pretty well. I know what I’m doing, so a good many clients listen to and embrace my advice—at least they do temporarily.

Therein lies the burn. Try as I might, with painful regularity, my clients will veer from the course I thought I plotted for them. John’s article inspired me to ask myself, “How many of my clients have become successful online marketers?” The answer isn’t zero, but it pains me to say, you can probably count them on one hand.

Where have so many online marketers gone wrong?

They created some customer-driven content and then let it lie. Their sites became bloated brochures. We succeeded in publishing useful content, but doing so was an event, a moment in time. The failure? We provided little or no reason to come again, no reason to converse, no reason to rant or rave about anything. We failed to feed them a steady stream of timely content. Consequently, we failed to accomplish the monumentally important requirement of a lead-generating, loyalty inspiring website. We failed to engage the site’s visitors.

Why would you, or me, or any company do such a thing? Laziness.

John states, “Marketing these days is a process of making connections through content and engagement.” Doing so isn’t a nifty bonus; it’s a necessity. In his article, he offers a short list of tips for creating and then maintaining an engaging website. I suggest you read it. I also suggest you give my suggestions a serious looking-over.

Must-have propositions for successful online marketing.

Your website can, and should, be your most valuable marketing asset. Here are the things you need to do:

• Document a marketing strategy. Execute your strategy on your site every day, in every way, on every page.
• Develop a brand. Your brand can’t be bland. Differentiate it. Make it memorable. Give it a suitable personality.
• Make a great site. Don’t skimp on copywriting or design. Tell a great story. Make it easy to speed-read and enticing to spend time with.
• Practice content marketing. That is, offer valuable content that answers your customers questions and solves some of their problems. Charge nothing for it.
• Employ social marketing. Your site must be a conversation starter and the conversation should never end.
• Network. To some degree, if your site doesn’t focus on building a community you need to take a giant step back and attempt to understand what makes the Internet the best marketing medium ever.
• Care for your customers. You know that old axiom “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care?” Live by this and enjoy the rewards.
• Review. Revise. Repeat. Don’t allow analytics to be optional. Review your failures and successes. Revise the stuff that isn’t working, but appears workable. Identify where the numbers indicate you’re doing things correctly and repeat, repeat, and keep repeating.

Should I repeat myself? I probably will, but here and now, I’d rather wrap it up and would love to hear more about what is and isn’t enabling your company to be a successful online marketer.

Top Challenges in Modern Website Design – Marketing

We get a lot of our business from website owners whose sites deliver precious few sales leads to the bottom line. Why? Because they were never designed and filled with content with lead generation in mind. Their sites were created as Web brochures just in case anyone stumbles upon them and wants to know more about the company and its products or services. As Bob Dylan wrote, “the times, they are a-changin’…”. Bottom line – it doesn’t matter how good your SEO guru is, how much money you spend on PPC ads or how beautiful your website looks. If your website isn’t designed to capture sales leads, you are wasting your money. If there isn’t at least one compelling “hook” on your home page and throughout your site, you have no way of capturing leads. If you are in business to make money, you might want to consider a design refresh.

Best Marketing Practices for Web Design

All of the usual rules for attracting visitors and making your site “sticky” still apply. You must state who you are, what you do and what’s in it for your visitor. The best designs do this without a lot of text or too many images. A great logo and tagline go a long way towards identifying you and stating your value proposition. After that, it’s all about your target market. You have to anticipate what your potential customers are looking for and what “grabs” them. There’s a lot of range to an effective design, but in general the following elements must be highly visible:

• Clear calls to action to download, participate, become a member etc. It’s the offer itself that counts. It must be something truly unique and valuable to your potential customer. They will surrender contact information if the offer is good enough.
• Benefits statement. Rotating banners are often used to highlight your visitor’s “pain points” or needs and an invitation to find the solution.
• Smart navigation. Show your visitors (and Google) what’s really important by placing the highest priority items first in your menu. No, your About Us page is important to you, but not your visitors until they become leads and want to know more about you. Place your Products and/or Services links first.
• Fresh information. There is no reason for any visitor to return unless you are constantly updating your content with new blogs, webinars and other advanced content. Remember, no one cares what’s up at your company. What they care about is what’s new that can help them solve a problem or be entertained.
• Easy connection. Don’t make people search for your Contact Us page. Make it easy to contact you and connect with you via social media.

Make Your Website Memorable

We do some pretty snazzy designs for our clients, and there are good marketing reasons for that. Let’s face it, if you’re like most people, you’re online way too much these days. And yes, you see a lot of websites that are nicely optimized for marketing. So, you see a lot of calls-to-action and banners and “click here” links and buttons. It all starts to look like one big advertisement, which is one thing we are trying to avoid. A unique and beautiful design can go a long way towards alleviating that oversaturation problem. If the design itself is truly captivating, you stand a much better chance of keeping your visitor’s attention and causing them to explore, click-through and interact with your Web presence.

It’s a Process, Not a Project

I won’t use the “i” word here (hint, it’s the opposite of outbound marketing), but I want to emphasize that in today’s consumer-is-king world, redesigning your website earns you precisely nothing. Marketing these days is a process of making connections through content and engagement. If you take a day off, your chances of capturing qualified sales leads go down. If you work at it consistently and follow a comprehensive strategy, they go way up. If you think of your website as a static piece of marketing collateral, you have already lost the battle to your competitors. You must dedicate talent and time to keeping your site fresh and targeted, alive and vital. You must work it constantly and measure everything. It’s time to put your website to work for you as one of your most valuable marketing assets. Don’t redesign your website, redesign your marketing strategy.

Be sure to read parts two and three in the trilogy created by Kuno Creative and Feldman Creative. If you’re not already subscribed to this blog’s RSS feed, please join us today.

Related articles

• Do These Things Only If You Want to Be a Successful Online Marketer.

30-billion

Pieces of content are shared each month.
Are you piecing content together and sharing it?

225-million

Use Twitter.
Are you one of them?

700-billion

The number of playbacks reached on YouTube this year.
Did customers tune into your program?

60%

Of smartphone users admits to using their devices while going to the bathroom.
Social media is #1. Put down the lid and watch…

The World of Social Media 2011

Brought to you by VideoInfographs.com

HAPPY NEW YEAR. LET’S MAKE IT THE MOST SOCIAL ONE EVER, TOGETHER.

Let’s start with a dead mouse.

When you run down to the hardware store to invest in a mousetrap, I’m quite sure you have a very clear idea of what you’re trying to accomplish. So start with the end in mind. (Ick. It’s not the prettiest metaphor I’ve ever created.)

But seriously, killer, do you know what you want your site to accomplish? Every day I speak to business owners and directors who don’t.

Bad answer: we want visitors to learn about our company. Good answer: we want to capture the email address of the visitor so we can begin to nurture a relationship. Though it’s a very smart, strategic objective, email opt-in is just one possible objective. You don’t need to have this objective, but you do need to have one in mind.

Select the most effective bait.

Now we’re talking content. Though cheese is a popular choice for mousetrap bait, authorities in the rodent reduction business argue that peanut butter is the best bet for the mouse’s last meal. Whatever works.

The idea is pretty simple. You need to know what will draw your target in. The process of learning exactly what that is should involve research, and then testing. And in the world of online content marketing, both have become amazingly simple.

Rats. I hate to bail on my nifty metaphor so soon, but it’s time to introduce a second one: magnetism. No doubt, you’ve come to know the term “magnetic content.” It’s a beauty in so many ways, the first being the function of a magnet: pulling power.

You give your website pulling power with magnetic content — stuff that not only attracts eyeballs, but eyeballs embedded in the heads of the type of people that truly belong at your site, your target market and, hopefully, your brand advocates of the future.

For this next bit, I want to give big thanks to eMarketer founder, Geoff Ramsey, who co-wrote Digital Impact: The Two Secrets to Online Marketing Success, and present some ideas from his informative article, 2011 Trends: Content Marketing is Critical.

Marketers should ask themselves five questions about the magnetic content they are seeking to create to determine whether it will be truly attractive to their audience:

• Is the content unique?
• Is the content useful?
• Is the content well executed?
• Is the content fun?
• Does the content make good use of the channel in which it appears?

Marketing authorities everywhere — and a booming brigade of companies that now embrace the principles of content marketing and enjoy its profound benefits — suggest you resist the urge to pitch your product. Instead, consider, product aside, what can you do for your customer?

To select the most effective bait, you identify exactly what whets your target’s appetite and serve it up in generous portions.

Be wary of stale cheese.

Let’s review. Your site needs pulling power. Now let’s expand the goal. Your site needs to attract qualified visitors and encourage them to stay awhile. But even that’s not good enough. Moving on now: Your site also needs to inspire its audience to interact with the content you put there, bookmark it, share it with others, and return often.

Freshness matters. Think of it as a bakery. It’s the fresh baked goods that’ll produce the aromas that magically waft from the racks and bring people back again and again. Think of it as a newsstand. People will rush to snag the breaking story. Now, think of it as the bait on your mousetrap and, as weird as it sounds, think of the mouse as having a sophisticated enough palate to steer clear of stinky old cheese.

Mostly, you should think of it as a search engine. The one that matters most has been tweaking its algorithm in an effort to recognize the freshness of content. By creating fresh content, you now have a greater chance of appearing in at the top of search engine results for relevant terms.

So your content strategy must include a schedule, and those responsible for manning the site must take an oath to abide by it. In general, you should update the content on your site as often as possible. Blogs are the bomb for this.

Warning: Close your eyes for this next part. It gets gross.

Consider the sticky stuff.

You’ve seen those traps where the rodent steps onto an adhesive surface? As you know, the little bugger gets stuck. He’s taken his last step.

While I don’t want you to take this 100 percent literally, I do think a little visualization helps me make my point: A killer site is a sticky site.

There’s no shortage of “how to” material on the subject of stickiness, but today I’d like to focus on the mindset you need to succeed.

In 3 Angles to Create Magnetic Content with the Triangle of Relevance, author Angie Schottmuller stresses that relevance is the key to making content great. She presents a three-part formula for getting people to “click and stick,” whereby you create content for your site that:

• Aligns with your business objective
• Caters to the interests of your target market
• Capitalizes on the “now” — that is, involves an element of timing related to seasons, holidays, events, or what’s trending in the news.

Comfort is another must-have for your ultra-sticky site. If you’ve nailed the relevance requirement, visitors should be saying to themselves, “I should go here.” Next, we want them to say, “I like it here.”

Make your users feel at home on your website. Decorate it accordingly. Don’t make it too busy by bombarding their senses. Show them around. Offer them assurance and invite them to get involved. Ask them questions. Answer them. Give them treats. Ask them to come back often and tell them to invite their friends.

But don’t bombard them with product pitches. Don’t harp on how great thou art. And don’t insist they need to open their wallets in the early stages of your relationship.

And finally, don’t forget flavor.

So you got it going on. The stuff that’s going on your mousetrap is all of the above: useful, relevant, timely, and free of charge. Your site looks like a good place to cozy up with some good content.

Don’t blow it now by being bland and flavorless. The cheese needs to be tasty. I hope you’re not laughing at me. I’m serious. The boring website is an epidemic of massive proportions.

In an effort to please everyone, site operators the world over leave out the salt and pepper. It might be deliberate; that is, the mentality is to not risk offending anyone’s taste.

Stupider still, it might trace to flavorless writing. A lot of companies are too frugal to hire a professional copywriter to write the site’s content. You have to admit, these companies do not subscribe to the Content is King mantra. And then you have your inclination to let non-writers, such as the CEO or a product pro, create the content. You need to resist this strategy as well.

You can’t bore people into buying stuff, whether it’s your product or your ideas. If you want people to bite, make your bait rich with flavor.

So tell me, what are you putting on your mousetrap?

On the first day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
A smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the second day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the third day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets,
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the fourth day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the fifth day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Five G+ circles,
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the sixth day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Six LinkedIn connections,
Five G+ circles,
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the seventh day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Seven bloggers blogging,
Six LinkedIn connections,
Five G+ circles,
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the eighth day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Eight must-see videos,
Seven bloggers blogging,
Six LinkedIn connections,
Five G+ circles,
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the ninth day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Nine SEO tips,
Eight must-see videos,
Seven bloggers blogging,
Six LinkedIn connections,
Five G+ circles,
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the tenth day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Ten Top-10 Tip Lists,
Nine SEO tips,
Eight must-see videos,
Seven bloggers blogging,
Six LinkedIn connections,
Five G+ circles,
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the eleventh day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Eleven expert interviews,
Ten Top-10 Tip Lists,
Nine SEO tips,
Eight must-see videos,
Seven bloggers blogging,
Six LinkedIn connections,
Five G+ circles,
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets,
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

On the twelfth day of Twismas,
my twu love sent to me
Twelve 2012 predictions,
Eleven expert interviews,
Ten Top-10 Tip Lists,
Nine SEO tips,
Eight must-see videos,
Seven bloggers blogging,
Six LinkedIn connections,
Five G+ circles,
Foursquare locations,
Three Facebook friends,
Two Twitter retweets
And a smartphone equipped with 4G.

Merry Twismas to you,
your friends and your followers.