Join Brian Loebig and I, Thursday, May 17, for a free introduction to Twitter: “Twittorial: Using Twitter for Business.”

Register for the webinar here.

After, I’ll offer you a recorded version of the webinar as well as the entertaining slide deck we’ll present. Today, I thought you might get some nice tips from this infographic…

It sucks to be in advertising and before you even ask I’ll tell you why.  The marketing pundits of today (who I mostly like and respect) have tagged us crusty old advertising fossils as bad guys. We’re mad men. Con men. The more sensitive types may just call us liars.  And then, who’s the dirtiest rottenest of the liars? Copywriters, of course. Having been one of those for more years than I want to admit, it’s a wonder I sleep at night.

But don’t go turning your back on my profession quite so fast. We’re not so bad. Sometimes we are sincere. Sometimes we believe in the products we peddle. And sometimes we have good ideas.

My point is we’re not 100% full of it. Sometimes we call ‘em as we see ‘em. And sometimes the wisdom we came to be known for back in the days of newspapers and network television actually apply to online marketing.

Case in point is the thing us old word slingers call the “call to action.” It’s a good label. It’s a good thing. And if you decide to hear me out, it’s very possible you’ll go where I ask you to and do what I want you to do.

Go here and do this.

The call to action is so simple. To do it right is to tell your prospect exactly what you want them to do. For example, “Buy now” is a good one. “Enter your email address here” is good. “For more information call 1-800-4ACTION” seems perfectly instructional. That’s the definition of a call to action. It’s an instruction. People appreciate instructions. Simon says buy my product.

Why then is the call to action so frequently a mangled mess? These missteps come to mind. The host:

• Doesn’t want to be pushy.
• Hasn’t determined what they want the prospect to do.
• Doesn’t understand the prospect’s needs.
• Offers too many options.
• Assumes too much and knows too little.
• Assumes the prospect will take action without being prompted.
• Makes it overly difficult to oblige

What a heap of manure we have here. I don’t want you to make these mistakes. They cost you dearly.

I want you to make one thing perfectly clear.

Tell the person on your website what to do.  Be explicit. Tell them which device to use. Tell them why. Tell them when. Tell them how. If they need to go somewhere to do it, tell them where to go.

You know that sign above the cash register at your favorite take-out restaurant? It says “Pay here.” That’s effective stuff. It’s helpful information. It gets you what you came to get: food.  It gets the seller what they want from you: a sale.

Maybe copywriters aren’t so bad after all. Think of us as helpers. In the spirit of helping you achieve your goals, allow me to feed you some further instructions that will help sharpen your website and make the register go “ring-a-ling-ding.”

Have an objective—What do you want your visitor to do? Buy? Call? Register? Sign up for something? Share content? Complete a survey? These are all valid calls to action. So your first action item: give your site a job description. Learn more about this vital step here by reading “A Successful Website Achieves Objectives.”

Provide a reason—Answer the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) question. For instance: Learn how to increase conversions. Download 21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website” NOW! You can see how the reason and the reward work together here as a one-two punch.

Think singular—If you’re not running a restaurant, resist suggesting a menu full of options. If you are running a restaurant, ask your visitors to “Order Now.” The more explicit you are with your call to action, the more likely you’ll invoke the action, so think singular and call for your customer to do one thing.

Put up a sign—Ever hunted for the button your website host wanted you to press? That’s crazy. Don’t play “Where’s Waldo” games with potential customers. Make your call to action uber obvious. Put your call to action where it’s easily found and consider design tactics such as:

• Creating a sizable button
• Using contrasting colors
• Surrounding it with white (or negative) space
• Employing familiar cues such as arrows, cursors, etc.

Settle for less—If you plan to put a form in front of your offer, don’t be overly needy or unnecessarily greedy with your “price of admission.” More fields = less responses. So if you’re going to ask multiple choice questions or require prospects to qualify themselves at all, it should be because the qualification process is an intentional part of the process. If your objective is collect and nurture leads via email, you really need an email address and nothing more.

Suggest action everywhere—Don’t confuse your website for an ad or brochure. That is, don’t assume linear behavior on the part of the reader. The flexible structure of your website suggests your visitors could wander around any way they please and never make it to your contact us form or POP. So in addition to making it easy to find your CTA, every page of your website should tell the reader what to do and where to go.

Activate with urgency—Your call to action should feature active words such as call, buy, register, donate, and enroll. And, it only helps to up the urgency with limited time offers, expiration dates, or at least a little nudge like “now.”

Deliver pain relief—It’s one thing (and a must) to make it easy to take action. You get bonus points for “selling” the ease too. In other words, as long as you speak the truth, you should tell your prospect just how easy this little act of compliance shall be. If what you’re asking for doesn’t take long, doesn’t cost much, doesn’t involve any risk and does make the respondent’s life instantly awesome, go ahead and put a little extra pep in the step of your soon-to-be-customer.

Did you learn something? Can you add something? Make this article a dialogue. Contribute your thoughts here. It’s easy. Act now. For a limited time, you could be famous.

Want to gather 20 more insightful actions you can take to make your online marketing efforts more effective? Help yourself to “21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website.”

Related articles

• Designing Calls to Action for B2B Marketing Content (marketinginteractions.typepad.com)
• 3 Tips For Creating Great Calls to Action (digitalsherpa.com)

Your website is a vessel. You’re the skipper. Will you guide your passengers to the destination they seek or allow the voyage to end disastrously? If you want to dictate the destiny of those who willfully board your boat, you best understand the importance of navigation.

Map the best route.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Got it? Okay now, what’s the best route? Map it out. Consider factors that could possibly rock the boat, introduce unnecessary turbulence, or even inspire uneasy guests to jump ship. Have contingency plans for these sorts of circumstances.

Welcome aboard.

At the risk of making you seasick, as we go full steam ahead with this article’s nautical metaphor I ask you to think of your home page as the deck, which your passengers first step upon.

Treat them accordingly. Don’t take for granted they’ve been here before or know their way around. Resist coming on strong or overwhelming the guests with too much information, too much stimuli, or too much of anything.

Instead, try to make them feel good about joining you. Reassure them they’ll be glad they came and tell them what they can expect to gain if they stick around and click around. Invite them to help themselves to the content they’ve come for and offer a sensible place (or places) to get started.

Show the guests around.

Now you want to be a hospitable and helpful host. Show them where things are. Make sure everything is clearly marked. Provide a site map for reference.

If new guests tend to have a basic set of orientation-type questions, provide the answers with an FAQ. If you expect more advanced questions, maybe your site offers different content for different types of visitors, have a virtual concierge in the form of live online chat. If you anticipate some will call for additional assistance, be ready to provide it with knowledgeable attendants.

If certain areas or events require special keys or reservations, tell them what you need from them, don’t be overly demanding, and deliver the goods promptly.

Always remember, if someone struggles to find what they want or need, they’ll bail on you. Also keep in mind people don’t have a lot of patience for long monologues. Dialogue is far more effective. So though you may have a lot to show and tell them, go out of your way to listen. This means allowing for feedback, questions and comments. The more you allow for exchange the more engaged your visitors will be.

Make it impossible to get lost.

Larger sites, like larger boats, pose bigger navigation challenges. Like a cruise ship, which is essentially a floating hotel, a large site is bound to have multiple levels, separate wings, and special quarters to accommodate special needs. Of course, you provide these places and spaces for good reason and want guests to find their way there, but keep in mind you want everyone to understand exactly where they are and how to easily make their way back to the lobby, your home page.

Consider these pointers and use them as they apply to your site and the rendezvous the guests will experience.

• From every vantage, offer the familiar house icon, the actual word “home,” or go with the popular convention whereby your logo remains a link to the home page throughout the site.
• Create a naturally flowing hierarchy to make it as easy for users to go from general content to more specific content.
• No need to go overboard with complex navigation link structures. While you do want to minimize the number of clicks it takes to get from point to point, it’s not necessary every page on your site links to every other page.
• Use text as navigational links instead of images. Text links make it easier for the reader to understand what’s what (and search engines too).
• Make “next” suggestions or obvious prompts when your content is best consumed in a logical sequence.
• Organize content with tabs, pulldown menus, or submenus when necessary.
• Learn what breadcrumbs are and apply them near the top of the page. This convention, which may read something like: Site > about us > management team, for instance, allows the user to understand where they are at all times and serves your SEO purposes as well.
• Consider hyperlink-style table of contents atop deep pages where users might want to “jump” down for fast access to a section below the fold. This is a common convention for FAQs and list style pages. The Feldman Creative website’s “Client” page provides a good exampleof this tactic.
• While it’s a smart practice to reference and link to other sites, don’t encourage visitors to leave prematurely. A link to another site should open an additional tab in the browser rather than force the reader to exit.
• Be wary of pop-ups. You need not consider them 100% taboo, but you should reserve the use of pop-ups, or any distractions, for special offers only.
• As your site expands to have social media links, sections, affiliations, copyrights, privacy notices, and what have you, create a footer where the links are neatly organized for fast access.
• Offer a search field.
• Use the plug-ins that organize hefty blogs so that interested readers can find articles by subjects, dates, popularity or other such filing systems.
• Lead the way with calls to action and do so strategically. Don’t confuse visitors with myriads of choices on each page, however, do tell them what to do and/or where to go next on every page. You never want to leave the visitor adrift. Be a good navigator. Better yet, be their compass and its pointer too.

At the bottom of the page, a good navigator says “do this now.” For this particular page, I ask you to review these tips with your webmaster and use the comments section below to ask questions or make additional suggestions.

Also, fine-tuning your website navigation is but one of a series of helpful hints I offer in “21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website,” yours free here.

Related articles

• Improving usability: links (marketing.yell.com)
• Is Poor Navigation Driving Visitors Away? (jackiepurnell.com)

About 3 years ago, a client pointed out to me that my website seriously lacked SEO. He appeared to know a lot more about the subject than me (which at that time definitely wasn’t saying a lot), so I thought it best to listen. We did lunch. He talked a lot. I nodded a lot. When I was a kid, my parents made me go to this school where they spoke Hebrew. My first SEO lesson felt a bit like that.

That level of ignorance didn’t set well with me.  I knew this was important stuff and the longer I allowed my head to remain buried in the sand, assuming Google would remain master of the world, the shorter I’d stay in business as a copywriter.

So I went to the bookstore. One title promised I’d master SEO in an hour a day and another claimed it’d catapult me to the top of the rankings. I bought them both. I dug into one, but didn’t dig it. I tried the other one. Same story.

You know what happens when you read books about SEO? You get overwhelmed. You get frustrated. You feel stupid. You get sleeeeeeeeeeeepy.

SEO is boring.

We both know it’s true. It’s technical and complicated and you can rack your brain all you want, but you’re never going to come up with a reason why anyone should care for such a monster.

I don’t even like the name:  SEO, search engine optimization. When you get the hang of it, whatever it actually is, you don’t get to optimize the search engine, do you?

And I’ve saved the most loathsome of all its traits for last. SEO can’t be mastered. Don’t believe me? Ask the masters. They’ll tell you SEO’s deepest, darkest, not-so-secret secret. Its one and only truth is it never rests. It’s ever changing. You can’t catch on to something that can’t be caught. You might as well try and catch the wind (thanks, Donovan).

We can all understand one simple thing.

Read 10 stories on SEO and you get, well, 10 different stories. No one agrees on anything. Or should I say everyone agrees on nothing?

I lied.

Everyone seems to agree on one eensie-weensie word of wisdom. The word is relevance. While 1,001 SEO schmoes may have 1,001 different fail-safe, white hat, field-proven tactics, everyone agrees the one thing all search engines are after is relevance. So come what may, scholars and simpletons can once and for all agree: the most effective SEO strategy of all time is to produce relevant content.

I wish I could be more helpful.

400-plus words into this article… the big build-up… the word play… the lame jokes and all you get is this big honkin’ no-duh revelation? Sorry about that.

But wait. Maybe I can offer some pointers to help route your way to relevance. I put in the time, so I’d like to try to save some of yours. I’ll tell you what appears to be the best of what I’ve gathered and share some of the sources from which I did the gathering.

You start with keywords. Search is a word business. Carefully select keywords and use them with care—not too much, not too little. Your keywords must relate to your niche and the content you create aims to establish your authority in it.

Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People Inc. unravels methods for identifying keyword opportunities in HubSpot’s “Learning SEO from the Experts” free guide.

Get your website right. Please understand the days of gaming Google have gone by. So nix the tricks and sack the shortcuts. They’re for rank amateurs, not top rankers. That said, you need to get a handle on the SEO basics, which allow your site to be properly indexed. Most importantly, you have page titles, description meta tags, headings, site maps, properly structured URLs and “alt” attributes for your images.

It’s not as complicated or overwhelming as you may think. Google offers a “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.” Trust me, it’s best to learn the rules of the road from the ones who mapped it. Even if you’re going to outsource your on-site SEO, read this.

Build links. Notice the use of the word “build” and the absence of  “buy.” Inbound links, often called backlinks, influence your authority and relevance, hence, your rankings, more than anything. This most important of all search-related tasks takes time, commitment, and perseverance. It also calls for some knowledge, so allow some smart, stand-up content marketers to clue you in on this subject.

Kuno Creative gives you need-to-know definitions, rationale, and a good grounding on right and wrong in its concise “2012 Marketer’s SEO Guide to Link Building.”

Author Jon Wuebben spells out techniques in “Writing Link Friendly Content,” a good read from a good writer.

Write well. Let’s get real now. Over time SEO gets you ranked. Getting ranked high gets searchers to visit. But getting visitors gets you nothing unless readers find what they’re after in the form of informative and engaging content. So get a professional website copywriter on your team. Get a professional blogger. Get a content marketing consultant to help forge a smart plan and execute.

While I don’t agree the term “SEO copywriter” amounts to much, I will tell you your website copywriter should understand SEO principles, offer sound advice for helping you achieve the relevance you seek, and above all, know how to appeal to the living, breathing humans who consumer your content. Robots have no buying power.

Allow me to point out one great young writer, Jeff Goins, who writes extensively on SEO for humans, in a fun article series as well as an email course.  Much like yours truly, Jeff aims to help you understand how SEO and copywriting work together.

Oh, so you’re starting to like this stuff?

I take it all back. SEO’s not so bad. The trick is to keep it in its proper perspective. When it becomes an obsession, your work gets calculated, less credible, and less compelling.

If you’d like to dig in even deeper, I recommend:

SEOmoz — This company knows the turf. Check out their site and blog and help yourself to their free “Beginners Guide to SEO.”

QuickSprout — Neil Patel claims to be “kind of a big deal.” His site’s quite frank and a good source of SEO wisdom.

WordTracker — Great site offering great tools and a whopper of a deep-diving freebie in a 99-page guide called “SEO Made Simple.” I think that may be the most oxymoronic title I’ve seen anywhere. By now, I imagine you know why I say that.

What say you?

Sure, we could find more fascinating subjects than content management systems, but if we are to get good at this Internet marketing thing, it’s vital we tackle the basics.

Tell you what: we’ll get in, get out, and get you all set to move on to a far more interesting subject—your content. Here we go, Q&A style…

Do you need a content management system (CMS)?

You tell me:

• Do you understand  (or would you like to) how important it is to update your site’s content frequently?
• Will your site have a blog?
• Would you like to be able to update your website without relying on a web developer every time?

If you came up with one, two or three “yes” answers, you’re bound to get something valuable from this article. If you said “no, no, no,” this piece no longer merits your time. Bye now.

What is a CMS?

It’s your publishing application. Yep. You’re a publisher now and there are apps for that. You’re going to use your CMS, much like a word processor, to publish and manage content for your website. And you’re going to be oh-so-nimble.

How do I know you need a CMS?

Because you want to achieve greater levels of success with your online marketing. You want your website to be the most serious tool in your marketing mix. If you don’t, I’ll ask you again to please give up your seat to someone who wants to know this stuff.

Here’s the thing. The key to being successful online is to get qualified prospects to your site. The key to getting qualified prospects to your site is being found on Google. The key to being found on Google is be hip to what’s happening in search. What’s happening in search? Website’s that regularly publish relevant content are getting much greater prevalence.

I’m not making this stuff up. And I’m not an SEO dweeb either. I’m a website copywriter who’s keeping close tabs on online marketing practices and am seeing the relevance + recency formula prove all-powerful.

Isn’t a CMS system for blogging?

Yes. Guess what? You need one of those too. Sites with blogs generate way more traffic. Sites with blogs get shared via this insane cyclone called social media. Sites with blogs engage your customers to interact with you. (Please agree you want that to happen.) Sites with blogs create customer loyalty. Loyalty creates advocacy. Advocacy creates sales.

You don’t have to have a blog to justify having a CMS. There are many additional benefits. So, sure, you blog-snubbing snobs can stick around if you want.

Won’t a CMS make my website look like a blog?

No. Your website can be anything you want it to be.

How does a CMS make things easier?

The answer is simple. I mean, simple is the answer. Working on websites used to be for those who graduated from HTML University. Not anymore. CMS can be a friend to every man, woman and child, technically inclined or challenged. It gives you a WYSIWYG editor much like the apps you actually like. Don’t know what a WYSIWYG editor is? LOL. And C-U-L8er.

Why is a CMS good for the website design?

Two answers for this one. First, your site can go from zero to amazing in six seconds. No kidding. Popular CMS’s have massive aftermarkets. Amongst them are “themes,” which is another word for “template,” which is a bland term to describe designs. I’m not talking about bitter little green things, which in time will ripen. I’m talking about some gorgeous, fully developed, highly flavorful fruit fresh from the vine (and online).

Have at ‘em. They’re cheap. And they’re all over the place. Go to themeforest.com for starters and you’ll have your pick of 5,144 of them. (Don’t go yet.)

The second reason CMS is good for your website design is it maintains continuity and order. Writers can write without messing up the graphics and vise-versa.

What else will you love about your CMS?

Tidy archives—You can store hundreds of pages, photos, and what have you. I stash little sparks of ideas there and use my CMS as a halfway home for articles in the works.

Team-working—Set-up your CMS to grant various levels of functionality to contributors of different stripes. People can work separately and together and help make your site a well-attended company picnic.

24/7 access—There’s no war room. Any authorized user can sign in anytime from anywhere.

Calendar control—You’ll have an auto-timer, that is, you can schedule content to post immediately or at a future time.

Suiting up for search—CMS’s make it easy to fiddle with keywords, titles, tags and all that SEO stuff.

Friendly little feeders—CMS systems work like a charm with really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, which will automatically push content to subscribers and sites you select.

The price—CMS systems are free. Okay, truth be told there are a ton of them, some do have subscription fees and/or various priced-tiers. The three most popular, WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, which account for more than three-quarters of the systems in use, offer free open-source CMS.

Pluginability—If you saw a site somewhere perform some fun little trick, chances are good it was the work of a CMS plugin or widget. Programmers the world over conceive, create and customize these feature-expanding gems like crazy. They’re also mostly free.

Which CMS should you get?

Get WordPress. It’s feature-rich and free. I have it, learned it fast, and like it. I usually find it easy to do things with it and when I don’t, it’s easy to find someone to do it for me. WordPress is ubiquitous and silly putty for programmers.

Should you consider Joomla, Drupal and the others?

Go for it. You didn’t hear it here though. I’ve come across more ex-users than current users. However, there are oodles to choose from and the top players offer different sets of features and benefits to satisfy different requirements. Now that you speak CMS 101, you’ll have no trouble finding more information on specific offerings. This article on the 20 best CMS looks to be a strong round-up from a credible source in the round-upping business.

Should you learn more about CMS?

Nah. You know what I know now and I’m getting on just fine and concentrating instead on content, as a marketer should. But don’t let me be the one to fling you in the deep end. If you have advanced needs, by all means advance your command of this stuff. Or, if you know which platform you’ll choose, help yourself to the many publications, sites, forums and fertile resources available about it.

I’ve said what I’ve come to say. If you have questions, easy ones, about CMS, I’ll try to answer them. If you have answers, I’ll try not to question them. Go.

My eguide, “21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website,” touches on the subject of creating  your website on a simple CMS platform and there’s 20 more important points, so you might want to check it out.

Related articles

• Which CMS is best for your website? (itconsultancyservicesusa.wordpress.com)
• Approaching Content Mangement Systems (itconsultancyservicesusa.wordpress.com)

I just love the company featured in this story.

This is the story of a copywriting company. Okay, it’s about Feldman Creative, my company, and how I’ve managed to revive the demand for my services by using inbound, that is, Internet marketing principles.

First, a little back story… I’ve been a self-employed, freelance copywriter for 18 years. When I gave birth to Feldman Creative in 1995, my business boomed. I didn’t do all that much to make it happen either. I was in the right place, Silicon Valley, at the right time, when everybody and their grandmas were going online.

You might have heard about this thing that came to be known as the “dot bomb explosion” (or implosion) in 2001. Many schemes and dreams died. The stock market descended, to put it mildly. Marketing budgets disappeared and many a marketing professional lost their jobs and began working on getting a real estate license or selling insurance. My business tanked, to put it mildly.

I rode out the storm the best I could and realized a minor comeback, but learned to live with a much smaller income, to put it mildly. I searched here and there for answers. I also invested a huge chunk of change and five frustrating years attempting to build another business, a franchise in the motor skill development field, that is, children’s gymnastics, dance and sports. Noble? Maybe. Profitable? No.

My efforts to market both of my businesses were unsuccessful, to put it mildly. How could I characterize those efforts in a few words? Advertising. Direct response. These are the things I was told to do. They also happen to be a couple of things I know how to do. In fact, as a veteran of the advertising and lead generation business, I was able to do more of it for less because I seldom had to pay for any kind of creative services. I was my own advertising agency. I did the writing, much of the design, and all of the media buying.

It didn’t work. Want to know why?

Advertising and direct response don’t work all that well.

What?! Did a 25-year veteran of advertising just shoot down his own business in a bold company colored headline? Afraid so. Did I just write my company’s obit? No sir. I gave it a new life.

I haven’t stopped marketing. I stopped wasting my time and money. I pulled the plug on my attempts to interrupt people with salesy messages they despise. I turned my strategy outside-in. Outside-in? Yes ma’am, outside-in. I stopped trying to find customers and started doing everything I can to have customers find me. It worked.

Inbound marketing works.

What’s inbound marketing? HubSpot wrote the book on it, so we’ll go with their definition:

I got this image as well as the “eat pie” image from a slideshow by HubSpot, which elegantly defines and makes the case for inbound marketing in an easy-to-understand presentation. Watch it here. Not now, please. After my story. (Okay, now’s okay too.)

Before you conclude this advertising veteran denounces traditional advertising media and wants you to believe every dime you put into it amounts to ten wasted cents, hear me out just a bit. I’m not saying radio, television and print advertising doesn’t help build your brand. I’m not saying you shouldn’t create brochures or send out mail. I’m saying:

• - It’s risky. You may or may not increase sales with it.
• - It’s expensive. You have to pay for your media and may wish you could have your money back.
• - Its ROI is low and getting lower all the time.

These aren’t opinions. They are realities.

When you rely solely on traditional advertising tactics you interrupt people with messages they are not looking for. If you fast forward through commercials, listen to commercial-free radio, throw out much of your mail, or have a spam filter in place, you know exactly what I mean.

Your customers welcome inbound marketing.

The marketing tactics I’m talking about, those we can now define as “inbound,” turns the equation outside-in and upside down. The customer comes to you. They want information, information you provide. They want help. So you help them. They’re searching for something, something you have. The customer comes from the outside, the web usually, by way of Google usually, into your domain.

How sweet is that?

It’s pretty sweet, my friend. The customer grants you permission to state your case. This is the very core of the concept of inbound marketing. So repeat after me: THE CUSTOMER GRANTS YOU PERMISSION TO STATE YOUR CASE. (Sorry about the shouting.)

If you do inbound marketing correctly, you connect with customers the way they want, by giving them what they want, where and when they want it. The sweet story gets even sweeter… You do all this in media that doesn’t have media costs! You do it with an SEO strategy that takes care of itself. Keywords are the new neon signs (nice one, HubSpot).

You do it with your website, blog, contributed articles, with Twitter, Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Pinterest, YouTube, via email subscriptions, via RSS feeds. You do it with press releases, primers, e-books, seminars, slide shows. These tools, created by professionals and presented correctly, position you as an authority on whatever subject you’re an authority on.

It’s just a beautiful thing and I haven’t even got to the best part yet, the real cherry on top of the icing, on top of the addictively sweet cake.

The best part is you don’t have to sell. When the customer is ready to buy, they’ll buy. When you look at the infographic below be sure to make it to the final point. Notice how the leads-to-sales rate is way higher on inbound initiatives.

Now back to the Feldman Creative success story…

I’ve been doing these things for a year or more. I started right after reading the great book “Inbound Marketing.” Though I could live with you calling me a copywriter still, I have transformed into a website copywriter and online content marketing consultant. I’m also a certified inbound marketer (and have the cert to prove it). Yes, I write, as I always have. However, I don’t look for clients as I had prior to 2011. They find me. It doesn’t cost much money, but it does takes a lot time and requires a lot of learning, experimenting, and an ongoing commitment to refining strategy and content.

But it works. In the past 18 months the demand for business has shot up. I have taken on about 30 or more new clients. Traffic on my site is 5 – 10X what it used to be. A few days ago, after an article I wrote about the “call to action” was published on SocialMediaToday.com and LinkedIn Today and shared across the social mediasphere, traffic on my site spiked to an all-time high: about 400% above my previous best day.

The free resources I offer, two aces of my current content marketing strategy, are downloaded and viewed as much as 100 times per day. In addition to being a favorite amongst my site visitors, the ebook I’ve penned, “21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website,” continues gaining popularity on SlideShare, Scribd, Squidoo and UpMarket. I’m starting to field offers to speak and getting interview requests. On most days, my community expands many times over with new Twitter followers, Facebook fans, LinkedIn connections, Google Plus associations, Pinterest pinners, and professional partners.

You could say things have got pretty crazy, but truth be told, it all makes perfect sense. People want to learn more about what I’ve become an expert in: how to use the Internet to reduce marketing spend and expand your business.  I did it. You can too. And I’d be absolutely delighted to show you how. Drop me a note here and now, if you’re interested.

In a few months, I’ll write your success story about inbound marketing. No charge.

And be sure to check this out…

Related articles

• Feldman Creative Achieves Inbound Marketing Certification (feldmancreative.com)
• Why is Inbound Marketing So Effective? [CONVO] (socialmediatoday.com)
• Starting Your Inbound Marketing Strategy (Digital Nirvana) (whattheythink.com)

Sure, we could find more fascinating subjects than content management systems, but if we are to get good at this Internet marketing thing, it’s vital we tackle the basics.

Tell you what: we’ll get in, get out, and get you all set to move on to a far more interesting subject—your content. Here we go, Q&A style…

Do you need a content management system (CMS)?

You tell me:

• Do you understand  (or would you like to) how important it is to update your site’s content frequently?
• Will your site have a blog?
• Would you like to be able to update your website without relying on a web developer every time?

If you came up with one, two or three “yes” answers, you’re bound to get something valuable from this article. If you said “no, no, no,” this piece no longer merits your time. Bye now.

What is a CMS?

It’s your publishing application. Yep. You’re a publisher now and there are apps for that. You’re going to use your CMS, much like a word processor, to publish and manage content for your website. And you’re going to be oh-so-nimble.

How do I know you need a CMS?

Because you want to achieve greater levels of success with your online marketing. You want your website to be the most serious tool in your marketing mix. If you don’t, I’ll ask you again to please give up your seat to someone who wants to know this stuff.

Here’s the thing. The key to being successful online is to get qualified prospects to your site. The key to getting qualified prospects to your site is being found on Google. The key to being found on Google is be hip to what’s happening in search. What’s happening in search? Website’s that regularly publish relevant content are getting much greater prevalence.

I’m not making this stuff up. And I’m not an SEO dweeb either. I’m a website copywriter who’s keeping close tabs on online marketing practices and am seeing the relevance + recency formula prove all-powerful.

Isn’t a CMS system for blogging?

Yes. Guess what? You need one of those too. Sites with blogs generate way more traffic. Sites with blogs get shared via this insane cyclone called social media. Sites with blogs engage your customers to interact with you. (Please agree you want that to happen.) Sites with blogs create customer loyalty. Loyalty creates advocacy. Advocacy creates sales.

You don’t have to have a blog to justify having a CMS. There are many additional benefits. So, sure, you blog-snubbing snobs can stick around if you want.

Won’t a CMS make my website look like a blog?

No. Your website can be anything you want it to be.

How does a CMS make things easier?

The answer is simple. I mean, simple is the answer. Working on websites used to be for those who graduated from HTML University. Not anymore. CMS can be a friend to every man, woman and child, technically inclined or challenged. It gives you a WYSIWYG editor much like the apps you actually like. Don’t know what a WYSIWYG editor is? LOL. And C-U-L8er.

Why is a CMS good for the website design?

Two answers for this one. First, your site can go from zero to amazing in six seconds. No kidding. Popular CMS’s have massive aftermarkets. Amongst them are “themes,” which is another word for “template,” which is a bland term to describe designs. I’m not talking about bitter little green things, which in time will ripen. I’m talking about some gorgeous, fully developed, highly flavorful fruit fresh from the vine (and online).

Have at ‘em. They’re cheap. And they’re all over the place. Go to themeforest.com for starters and you’ll have your pick of 5,144 of them. (Don’t go yet.)

The second reason CMS is good for your website design is it maintains continuity and order. Writers can write without messing up the graphics and vise-versa.

What else will you love about your CMS?

Tidy archives—You can store hundreds of pages, photos, and what have you. I stash little sparks of ideas there and use my CMS as a halfway home for articles in the works.

Team-working—Set-up your CMS to grant various levels of functionality to contributors of different stripes. People can work separately and together and help make your site a well-attended company picnic.

24/7 access—There’s no war room. Any authorized user can sign in anytime from anywhere.

Calendar control—You’ll have an auto-timer, that is, you can schedule content to post immediately or at a future time.

Suiting up for search—CMS’s make it easy to fiddle with keywords, titles, tags and all that SEO stuff.

Friendly little feeders—CMS systems work like a charm with really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, which will automatically push content to subscribers and sites you select.

The price—CMS systems are free. Okay, truth be told there are a ton of them, some do have subscription fees and/or various priced-tiers. The three most popular, WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, which account for more than three-quarters of the systems in use, offer free open-source CMS.

Pluginability—If you saw a site somewhere perform some fun little trick, chances are good it was the work of a CMS plugin or widget. Programmers the world over conceive, create and customize these feature-expanding gems like crazy. They’re also mostly free.

Which CMS should you get?

Get WordPress. It’s feature-rich and free. I have it, learned it fast, and like it. I usually find it easy to do things with it and when I don’t, it’s easy to find someone to do it for me. WordPress is ubiquitous and silly putty for programmers.

Should you consider Joomla, Drupal and the others?

Go for it. You didn’t hear it here though. I’ve come across more ex-users than current users. However, there are oodles to choose from and the top players offer different sets of features and benefits to satisfy different requirements. Now that you speak CMS 101, you’ll have no trouble finding more information on specific offerings. This article on the 20 best CMS looks to be a strong round-up from a credible source in the round-upping business.

Should you learn more about CMS?

Nah. You know what I know now and I’m getting on just fine and concentrating instead on content, as a marketer should. But don’t let me be the one to fling you in the deep end. If you have advanced needs, by all means advance your command of this stuff. Or, if you know which platform you’ll choose, help yourself to the many publications, sites, forums and fertile resources available about it.

I’ve said what I’ve come to say. If you have questions, easy ones, about CMS, I’ll try to answer them. If you have answers, I’ll try not to question them. Go.

Addition 03.13.12:
Infographic about WordPress and its popularity.

Certification Awarded by HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University Training Program

February 27, 2012 – Inbound Marketing University awards the Inbound Marketing Certification to Barry Feldman, of Feldman Creative, as part of its comprehensive Internet marketing training program (http://inboundmarketing.com).

This certification acknowledges Feldman’s proficiency in inbound marketing principles and best practices. These principles include: blogging, search engine optimization, social media, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

Feldman joins an elite group of Inbound Marketing Certified Professionals. Over 2,000 individuals have successfully passed the IMU program.

To complete the Inbound Marketing Certification, Feldman completed 16 in-depth classes covering each facet of inbound marketing and passed a comprehensive certification exam. (View the full list of classes: http://inboundmarketing.com/university/classes)

The courses are taught by a knowledgeable faculty of professors, including New York Times’ best-selling author Chris Brogan, Google’s Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk, best-selling author and international speaker David Meerman Scott, and more.

This certification is administered by HubSpot.

About InboundMarketing.com

InboundMarketing.com is an online community and certification program for marketers. The site’s content teaches a new style of marketing that emphasizes business uses of social media, content creation and search engine optimization for marketing. InboundMarketing.com is hosted and moderated by HubSpot, Inc. Register for InboundMarketing.com at http://inboundmarketing.com/user/register.

About HubSpot

HubSpot, Inc. provides Internet marketing software that helps businesses get found online, generate more inbound leads and convert a higher percentage of those leads into paying customers. HubSpot’s software platform includes tools that allow professional marketers and business owners to manage search engine optimization, blogging and social media, as well as landing pages, lead intelligence and marketing analytics. Based in Cambridge, MA, HubSpot can be found at http://www.hubspot.com. HubSpot’s free marketing tools can be found at http://grader.com.

Cover via Amazon

21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website: Part 3

Business owners and directors come to me time and again saying their website doesn’t work. I can just see ‘em on the other end of the line pointing their finger at their monitor in disgust. Oh, how I’m dying to tell them three more fingers are pointing back at them. I refrain and go with a more sensitive reply, such as:

What would you like your website to do for your business?

(Radio silence.) Hello? You still there?

Okay, let’s work together on this. The site’s a miserable failure. Clearly, it’s a stupid site and it needs to be replaced. We have work to do.

Let’s try to make a smart site.

Or better yet, let’s recognize those of us who will create this thing need to own the challenge and take a smart approach. Remember, the definition of crazy is to make the same mistakes over and over.

If we are to have a successful site this time around, we need to start by defining “success.” Apparently, it’s a tricky thing to understand and do. I say this because it’s usually left undone.

So let’s vow to slay this task right here and now.

Document the objective of your site.

Got a writing instrument in hand? Super. Write your site’s objective down.

Still thinking? Try this…

My new website is working when it _____________________________ .

Nothing? How about this…

I want the person who visits my site to  __________________________ .

We’re ready to create the killer site now.

I really wanted to quote the preciously ridiculous Yogi with his “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

But let’s move on. If you have a clear goal, you have my permission to get to work. I’m glad to help. We’ll be making all kinds of decisions about what goes on your site, what it says, and how it’s constructed and designed. And now, as your website copywriter,  I can help you make these decisions smart ones.

However, maybe you’re saying “not so fast.” Those blanks above are still blank.

Can’t a good copywriter fill them in? I want to say no. You should expect your copywriter to help you achieve your objectives, not create them. It’s your site and potentially an enormously powerful online marketing tool to help your company achieve its business goals.

That said, I’m going to try to be as helpful as I can and nominate a few likely candidates.

Truth be told, almost all sites share a common objective.

I believe a nearly universal objective for business websites is to find out WHO came to visit, to collect a business card, if you will. I’ll expand on this by listing the top three useful website strategies.

• Get visitors. This is a soft objective and perhaps an obvious one, but vital nonetheless. However, millions of anonymous visitors amounts to nothing, so you want to learn who visited and bigger things may come.
  
• Get leads. For good reason, this is strategy numero uno in B2B marketing. It’s realistic and practical. You not only collect a name and contact information, you collect information about your visitor’s business challenges. You learn WHY they came. If you can deliver what they seek, you have a lead, one you can nurture, one you can close.
  
• Get sales. Here’s the grand prize of a website objective: the visitor becomes a paying customer. However, the majority of sites do not sell off the page, so achieving this objective might involve additional strategies and additional interactions.

There are other valuable things your site may achieve.

• Newsletter subscribers—Newsletters provide the classic lead nurturing tactic for B2B marketing and a loyalty building tactic for B2C.

• Blog subscribers—A powerful form of permission-based marketing, loyal readers can learn from the content you share and better understand your perspectives.

• Comments—Getting a visitor to interact with your site means engagement, which may open the door to forging trusting relationships.

• Reviews—Among the many benefits of allowing customers to review your company’s solutions, enabling on-site reviews demonstrates you believe in your product and care what consumers have to say about it.

• Answers—Customers want to be heard. As a supplier, you’ll do well to listen.

• Word of mouse—Social media has made content sharing a form of currency.

• Community building—Forums and online events can bring customers together, which is a meaningful goal.

• Authority—Though I will agree brand awareness can be a website objective, establishing credibility is an even stronger outcome.

Give your website a job description and prepare to succeed.

To conclude, you can have no reasons, bad reasons or good reasons to redo your site or create your first one. “I don’t like it” or “It’s not as good as our competitors” and “We just need one” are bad reasons. Good reasons trace to an objective, a conversion of some sort. And an objective creates a solid foundation for the decisions you make going forward regarding every element on every page.

So there you go. Give your site a job description and take ownership of it. The site itself can’t be stupid, but it is painfully dim-witted to have a site with no clear objective.

Do you agree with me? Please share your thoughts.

My eguide, “21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website,” touches on the subject of establishing objectives and there’s 20 more important points, so you might want to check it out.