Robert Bruce says, “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s something the immortals — from Aristotle to Ogilvy to Mamet — have known, but few have stated it as directly as I’m about to. By now, many of you know the basics of the craft of copywriting … Know your audience. Know your product cold. Research. Nail the headline. Write plainly, in the language of your audience. Research more. Write great bullets. Craft a great offer. Include a strong call to action. Et cetera. These elements are the standard. They get the job done. But this little truth I’m about to tell... [...]

Sonia Simone says, “On Monday, our good and wise friend Andy Crestodina showed the difference between optimizing for search engines and optimizing for social shares. He also gives us a nice piece of advice about how you can get really crafty and do both. Proofreading might not seem exciting, until the day you publish a post with the headline Making that Shit into the Next Phase of Your Career. Don’t let that happen; read Stefanie’s Tuesday post. On Wednesday, Brian Clark reminded us that search and social get all the attention, but it’s email that pays the bills. He explains why email... [...]

Sonia Simone says, “It’s April! Don’t ask me where March went, because I have no idea. But it’s time once again for a pair of Content Excellence Challenge prompts. Each month this year, we’ll give you two prompts — one intended to make you a better writer and one intended to make you a more productive one. This month’s prompts both share a creative dimension and an ultra pragmatic one. Because creativity and pragmatism are like air and water — you need both of them to make it. Ready or not, here we go: The April Creativity Prompt Remember last month’s creative challenge to... [...]

Brian Clark says, “Two weeks ago, my side project Further had one of its highest traffic days ever. If you’re not familiar, Further is a personal development email newsletter in which I curate content from around the web. It’s basically whatever I find useful and interesting related to health, wealth, wisdom, and travel. So what sparked the traffic? After all, the newsletter’s primary function is to send traffic to other websites. Was it a significant social share from a relevant influencer? Did I spend a fortune on a pay-per-click advertising campaign? Had I caught a link in another... [...]

Stefanie Flaxman says, “Whenever someone questions the importance of proofreading, my go-to response is: “Pubic relations is quite different from public relations.” We all sometimes make a typo that omits or changes a letter in a word. A typo like that is difficult to spot when the mistake is still an actual word (or words). Just last week, I wrote “head lice” instead of “headline.” Again, two completely different things. But I have an effective proofreading process that helps me find and correct errors before they are published. (Except, of course, when the error is a joke.) Do... [...]

Andy Crestodina says, “It’s as if they live in different countries: Searchlandia and Socialstan. Search optimizers and social media marketers don’t get together a whole lot, at least not in the same piece of content. But there’s no reason they can’t peacefully coexist in one article, in one URL. Imagine. One topic, one message, united in quality, but with two separate and equally powerful sources of traffic: search and social. Is it possible? Can one post be optimized for both? Yes. And when it happens, the traffic is greater than the sum of its channels. Um. Actually, the traffic... [...]

Sonia Simone says, “So today is April 1, which usually means we’ll try to feed you some stupid joke that will just make you roll your eyes when you realize the date. Not this time, internet. Brian kicked things off on Monday with three ways to get links that you haven’t heard 20 million times from people whose websites have no links. Plus he gets a little snarky, which you never want to miss. On Tuesday, our friend Jon Nastor showed us how we can actually get listeners for our podcasts. It’s a useful thing to know, since the #1 question on the minds of new podcasters is: “For the... [...]

Loren Baker says, “In the world of SEO, user experience on websites has always been a factor, as has the time it takes for a site to load. However, with the use of mobile devices surpassing desktop use (in most consumer-facing industries) and the wide adoption of broadband, people expect sites to load instantly. Long gone are the days of waiting 10 seconds for a site to load. If a page takes more than a couple of seconds to load, users will instantly hit the back button and move on to the next result. Accordingly, Google officially started paying attention to site speed and declared its... [...]

Jon Nastor says, ““Three … two … one … Ready or not, here I come!” My daughter Sadie hides anxiously behind the living room couch, while her best friend is searching, calling out her name, and trying to find her. Hide-and-seek, a game played out millions of times. If you don’t know, hide-and-seek is a popular children’s game in which any number of players conceal themselves in the environment, to be found by one or more seekers. The hiding is not what makes it fun. Kids will play for hours and hours when they continually find each other. When one of the children stays hidden... [...]

Brian Clark says, ““Link building” is something I’ve never done in my 19 years of publishing online. In other words, I’ve never spent any time whatsoever emailing strangers and trying to convince them to link to my content. I have, however, been on the receiving end of many link-building requests. And they’ve never worked on me. Now, I know there are smart people who work on behalf of clients to get links through these outreach initiatives. Strangely, I’ve never received a link request from a smart person. It’s usually just dopey people using bad email scripts and automation... [...]