10 Elements of a Compelling Story Sundeep Kapur | February 9, 2012 | 1 Comment inShare51 Keep your consumers engaged by telling a compelling story so you can build and thrive on engagement. Social media is about creating engagement. Real people, real stories. Keep them engaged! Sundeep Kapur has been assisting organizations with their converged channel marketing strategies since 1990. He is an industry-recognized expert who has delivered keynotes, run panels, and delivered "relevant, inspirational, and outstanding" education for organizations around the world. Sundeep is also an avid user of social media, having leveraged words, pictures, and video into a conversational digital book.
10 Reasons Why Your Content Doesn’t Attract Links 78inShare So we have all heard time and time again, “to attract links you need to build great content”. But very few actually talk about what good content looks like. Bad Title A bad title is often times the first barrier to attracting links. Bad Design I know you are probably confused with this one, but the truth is, pages that have bad designs or poor user experiences attract less links. No Hook How do you pull a fish out of the water? No Point of Difference So you wrote a post about iPhone apps for real estate? Too Long We now live in a world of 140 characters and text messaging. No Social Traction “If you build it, they will come.” No Unique Voice If you have ever read anything by, or spoken to Lisa Barone, you know she has a unique voice in her writing, and her speaking. Bad Topic Do you know how many people are talking about Doctor Who online? Not Engaging Which post do you think would get more links: “Joe Hall Eats 23 Hot Dogs in One Day” or “How To Eat 23 Hot Dogs In One Day”?
How To Write Your Own Website By Jackie Barrie, Copywriter, Trainer & Author at Comms Plus These days, more and more businesses have a Content Management System (CMS) website, or use a blogging tool such as Wordpress to build their own. Quite right too. Why should you have to pay a web professional every time you want to update something? But if you don’t know what you’re doing, you might be losing custom. Here are my top tips for effective web content. Your home page Don’t use a ‘splash page’ (any extra click e.g. ...it’s dated and unnecessary! • DON’T write: ‘We are X, based in Y and we specialise in Z'. • DO write: ‘Looking for A, B or C? More than any other, your home page should answer ‘What’s In It For Me?’ DOs and DON’Ts • DO use direct language (it makes your copy more persuasive and appealing) • DON’T write: ‘in order to allow the client to concentrate on their core business’ • DO write: ‘in order to allow you to concentrate on your core business’ • DON’T write ‘We work closely with our loyal customers’ Bookmark
Increase Online Sales With The Product Context Method There are triggers that persuade people to buy… …and when you know how to activate them, it can be the difference between making or losing the sale. Today, I’m going to tell you about one of my favorite buying triggers. Is $5 Always Worth $5? The short answer is, no. Back in the 1980s, two researchers, the nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, stumbled on this fascinating facet of human buying behavior: When people make purchases, they create a product context before pulling the buy trigger. What’s a product context? It’s the facts that surround your product (and yes, smart online marketers know how to take advantage of this to sell more stuff). Question is how does it work? Here’s How “Product Context” Persuade People to Buy To understand how it works, let me take you back to the psychological research… Kahneman and Tversky posed this question to research participants: Imagine you’re about to purchase a leather jacket for $125. How many people do you think said yes? Offer A Sales Bonus
How to Increase Online Customer Loyalty You know the facts. Increasing customer loyalty… yields big profits over the long haulcreates raving fans that promote your products for freeis cheaper than finding new customers But the question remains. How can you increase customer loyalty online? How Artificial Advancement Increases Customer Loyalty Not long ago, in a major metropolitan area, two consumer researchers named Joseph Nunes and Xavier Drèz conducted a customer loyalty experiment at a local car wash. On two consecutive Saturdays, they gave out a total of 300 customer loyalty cards. This means, in both scenarios, customers still needed to make 8 additional purchases before they could redeem a free car wash. Now the question is, would this “artificial” progress increase customer loyalty? During the next 9 months, 28 out of 150 people without a head-start earned a free car wash, but 51 out of 150 people with the head-start earned a free car wash. Artificial progress worked. Can Endowed Progress Increase Customer Loyalty Online?
Customer Satisfaction: 3 Steps to Increase Customer Satisfaction Valeria Maltoni wrote a great article about how you should develop a content strategy for customers who already bought one of your products. To summarize, she recommends that you: Confirm they made the right choiceTell them what they just boughtGive them something to shareGet there early I’m sharing this with you because this is a crucial phase in the customer life cycle. If you execute it right, you can minimize returns, prevent buyer’s remorse, and increase customer satisfaction. What else can you do? 1. When most sales are made, chances are that the buyer will have to justify the purchase to another person – a boss, spouse, or anyone that may pass judgment. To make this go smoothly, you should arm each one of your customers with testimonials from other people and companies. You likely recognize this as social proof. 2. When people spend money on a product, the last thing you want them to think is “was this worth it?” Picture a restaurant that offers mints on the way out. 3.
How to Increase Your Prices by 71% It’s common knowledge that pricing products or services is an ongoing battle with human psychology. If your price is too low, people may think it’s junk. If it’s too high, they may think it’s a rip-off. Now, let’s assume your product (or service) deserves a higher price tag. How could you raise your price and have people gladly pay it? The Power of Perception Let’s say you’re lying on a beach on a hot day. “Hey, want a beer?” The only place nearby where beer is sold is a run-down grocery store. Remember how much you gave him and reread the question. Most people say yes. Amazing, right? Keeping this discovery in mind, the only logical way to raise your prices is by developing the perception of your product (or service). All Thaler did was change a few words and people ponied up more money for the same bottle of beer… What made those words so special? When you want to raise your prices online, you choose words in your description that communicate your desired price perception. Sound great?
How to Increase Online Sales (The Secret is Less is More) There’s a way for you to increase your online sales by 600%. And don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything shady or participate in any shenanigans. When most people start selling stuff online, they often create extensive product and service lists. They think having a little something for everyone will help them get more sales. The problem is, people think “more is better,” but in the real world, long product lists are conversion killers. And if you want to increase your sales by 1,000%, you must streamline your offerings. To illustrate, let me share Sheena Iyengar’s famous field test. How to Increase Online Sales: Fewer Options, More Sales Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia University, set up a free tasting booth in Draeger’s supermarket—an up scale grocery store, known for an extensive product selection—on two consecutive Saturdays. One Saturday, 24 flavors of jam were available, and on the other, 6 were available. Now take a guess. Huge results. That’s a ton of work! And don’t forget.
Noble Samurai Subscribe to Noble Samurai News and get updates every time we publish a blog article. Register for a free trial of our Market Samurai Keyword Research and SEO software Get my free trial! Today I want to show you an easy way to solve a common problem that causes many sites to fail to rank as well as they should. The problem is that web developers are unaware of the principle of First Link Priority. The good news is that once you’re aware of the problem, it’s very easy to fix and avoid in the future. First Link Prioritisation occurs when Google looks at a webpage and analyses its outbound links. The First Link Priority rule states that when a page links more than once to the same target page, Google will completely ignore all links after the first, often with negative SEO consequences. Take a look at this example diagram below. In our example, Page A links to Page B twice. (And no, for the curious, putting an “Alt” tag on the image link won’t serve as a substitute to anchor text). 1. 2. P.S.
17 More Unconventional Link Building Strategies There’s nothing I hate more than rehashed, regurgitated content – and unfortunately, the SEO world is full of advice that’s been repeated so often that the only thing it’s good for is wasting your time. In my last article – 13 Unconventional Link Building Strategies – I broke this mold by showing you a few of the more unusual link building strategies I use to help my clients’ websites gain brand recognition and high rankings within the search results pages. Today, I’ve got a few more techniques to share with you. Strategy #1 – Build a free tool or software program Website owners are always looking for new techniques that will help them to outrank their competitors and tools that will help make the process of managing websites easier. Strategy #2 – Build supplementary micro sites If you’ve worked in web marketing for any amount of time, you know that one way backlinks from highly relevant, high quality sites are just about the best links you can get. Strategy #5 – Buy an existing blog
13 Unconventional Link Building Strategies Need to build links to your websites in order to increase your traffic and improve your rankings? Well, there’s article marketing, social bookmarking, and – blah, blah, blah… Let’s face it – you’ve probably heard the same old link building strategies repeated ad nauseum around the net. Strategy #1 – Get listed with the library Google and the other search engines recognize that public libraries have some of the best cultivated, most extensively researched collections of links on the internet, and they often place a priority on these links as a result. To get started, research the websites of the local libraries in your area and beyond, as the caliber of their websites will vary naturally. Strategy #2 – Host a giveaway People love free stuff, so one way to attract a lot of backlinks in a short amount of time is to host a free giveaway. Strategy #3 – Become a product reviewer Strategy #4 – Set up a guest speaking gig Strategy #5 – Build an app Strategy #6 – Set up a 1-800 number