Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Speak up and stand out: How to cultivate creativity in your article marketing

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We've been discussing the top three skills you'll need in order to make article marketing magic. We started with clairvoyance, moved on to clarity and today it's time for:

Article Marketing Skill #3 – Creativity

If your article was relevant enough to attract her attention, and written clearly enough to keep it, chances are that your ideal client clicked through to your website. Hopefully, there was a pink spoon waiting there for her, and so she joined your mailing list.

Now she'll be receiving your articles directly by email. But will she open them? Will she send them to others? Will she make the leap from your site to a sale?

If you continue to send her relevant, well-written articles, she'll probably keep reading them. But to keep her attention and really stand out as the solution she needs, you're going to need a little extra oomph.

Here's where you can distinguish yourself from similar products and services, by showing her your personality – your quirks, your strong opinions, your likes and dislikes, and a peek behind the scenes of your business. 

Warning: Being more creative and quirky in your writing means that some people (gasp!) won't like you. If you try to please everyone, you won't attract anyone. What makes this person your ideal client is that she "gets you." She speaks your language and you speak hers. So speak up!

To cultivate your creativity, read articles by people who express their personality in their writing (some of my current favourites are Havi Brooks, Karri Flatla and Scott Stratten).

As well, open your mind to creative ways you can get your information across by making unique connections. What can your daughter's finger paints teach your readers about marketing? How do today's news headlines reinforce the point you were making in your last coaching session?

Here are two other examples from Julia Stewart and Kathy Mallary.

Successful article marketers apply these three key skills (clairvoyance, clarity and creativity) and receive magical results as a result. But it didn't happen overnight. They had to learn and practice these techniques, and you can, too!

If you feel like you're lacking the discipline, skill or structure that you need to apply the power of article marketing to grow your business, please contact me today about how I can help!

Your article marketing magic won’t work if your reader doesn’t stick around

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In my last Article Marketing Fundamentals post, we discussed the article marketing skill of clairvoyance – getting into the mind of your ideal client so that you can write what she wants to read. Today's it's on to:

Article Marketing Skill #2 – Clarity

Great! Your ideal client searched online for a solution to her problem, and found a link to your article. It matched what she was looking for, so she clicks (while checking her watch – she only has a few minutes to spend on the computer).

She skims through the article, searching for key points, but only finds large blocks of text, one after the other. She dives in, but finds herself stumbling through long, run-on sentences that lose the point they started to make.

After a few minutes, she gives up, feeling disheartened to be no farther ahead with a solution. She clicks away from your article and moves on.

There are so many things competing for your ideal client's attention, including plenty of high-quality, free information. People simply do not have time to figure out what you're trying to say. If you don't say it clearly, they won't stick around long enough to read your author resource box and click through to your website.

To cultivate clarity in your writing, aim for shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. Shorter sentences make it easier to focus on one point at a time. Shorter paragraphs create more white space on the page, which is easier on your reader's eyes.

Also, get in the habit of reading your work out loud before you publish it. That one simple step can highlight many common errors.

There are plenty of online resources to help you improve the clarity and readability of your articles, as well as reference books and style guides.

Watch for a discussion of the third article marketing skill – creativity – in a future blog post.

If you feel like you're lacking the discipline, skill or structure that you need to apply the power of article marketing to grow your business, contact me now to see how I can help!

Are you clairvoyant? If you want to make article marketing magic, then you’d better be!

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Have you ever played a song on the piano, skated across an ice rink, rode a bicycle, put on makeup or cooked an omelet? Even if you haven't done all of those things, I'm sure you've done at least one or two of them. But can you guess what they all have in common?

These are skills that take practice. No one does them well the first time they try. Article marketing requires skills just like these, which you can learn, practice and improve.

Here are the three top skills that will help you to make article marketing magic and grow your business:

  1. Clairvoyance
  2. Clarity
  3. Creativity

In today's blog post we will explore the first skill, and then stay tuned for future posts in the Article Marketing Fundamentals series.

Article Marketing Skill #1 – Clairvoyance

Imagine your ideal client, just rising to start her day. It was another restless night, worrying about the issue that's been bothering her for months now. She doesn't want to spend another night like that, so she searches online for an answer to her problem.

The question is – is she going to find that answer from you? Do your articles – especially the titles – use the same language that she would be typing in to the search box?

Article marketing cannot work for you if your prospective clients never read your articles. And they can't read them if they don't find them. And they won't find them if you're not writing about what they're looking for.

To cultivate the skill of clairvoyance, tune in at a deeper level in conversations with your clients, prospects, colleagues and friends. How do they describe the problems that you solve? How do they describe the solutions they're looking for?

If you feel like you're lacking the discipline, skill or structure that you need to apply the power of article marketing to grow your business, contact me now to see how I can help!

Article marketing magic: Consistency is the key

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Article marketing works like magic – IF you know the right tricks. One of those tricks is consistency. If you can persevere with your article writing efforts and apply them consistently, articles can provide a steady stream of readers, prospects, clients, customers and money.

There are several reasons that consistency is so important for effective article marketing:

How you do anything is how you do everything

I first heard this important truth from Andrea J. Lee, author of Multiple Streams of Coaching Income, and I have never forgotten it. When you have a service-based business, your customers are buying YOU just as much as they are buying the results that you will deliver.

Since everything you do is a reflection of you, that means that whatever you do, wherever you go, whenever you are interacting with people or the world around you, you are teaching people what they can expect from you.

Your prospective customers want to know they can rely on you to show up when you said you would and deliver what you promised (but don't worry – they don't expect you to be perfect). Are you curious about what else your customers want you to know about what they want? Sonia Simone has a list of 50 things. 

If they see you publishing a newsletter or blog consistently, especially if you keep up with a schedule that you've posted, you're giving them a little taste of the level of service they can expect when they hire you or buy from you.

You'll build on your own momentum and success

Action creates action and inaction creates…well, inaction creates nothing (more inaction). I have proven this to myself time and again as I have sometimes vacillated between working too little and working too much. 

Accomplishment is so gratifying. Once you've taken time to rest and celebrate your successes, you can also reinvest some of that energy to do more of the same.

Your content collection will snowball

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. When you consistently generate new content, you will build an empire of information one article at a time and you will be amazed at the volume of content you have produced.

Here are three strategies that can help you develop the discipline to write consistently:

  1. Set a schedule. Make a commitment to yourself (e.g., a monthly newsletter and one additional article in between issues). An editorial schedule will help you avoid feeling overwhelmed because you can plug in potential topics ahead of time. 
  2. Declare your schedule. Make a commitment to your readers; let them know exactly when they can expect to hear from you.
  3. Turn article marketing into a team sport. Whether it's professional assistance with ghostwriting, editing or article submission, or simply a buddy arrangement with another coach, all of a sudden you are accountable for finishing the article a few days before you need it, so whoever is helping you has time to review it.

Article marketing can have magical results; growing your mailing list, increasing your visibility, enhancing your credibility and bringing you new customers, clients and revenue. So why would you stop after only one article?

If you feel like you're lacking the discipline, skill or structure that you need to apply the power of article marketing to grow your business, contact me now about how I can help!

On the subject of subject lines

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Here is a slightly paraphrased version of an email I sent to a client, Chronic Illness Coach Sylvia Lippman, reprinted here with her permission:

Hi Sylvia,

While we’re on the subject on subject lines, I wanted to mention that I very nearly deleted your last email without opening it. There were two reasons for that.

1. The From line: Counseling and Wellness Innovations

The email was from Counseling and Wellness Innovations, who I didn’t recognize – and all I could see on my Outlook screen was actually “Counsel,” so I thought it was some legal thing and probably spam.

When you’re building a brand (and what they call “brand recognition”) it’s really important to reinforce the same key names and phrases in all of your marketing materials and messages.

I’d suggest your “From” line either read Dan & Sylvia Lippman, or Feel Better Now-CI.

[Sylvia explained later that they used that return address because so many of the people on their list were familiar with Dan’s former business name]

2. The Subject line: Your very personal opinions (read ’em here)

This didn’t tell me enough about what was inside or who it related to. For that reason, I like to include the name of the ezine and/or business in every subject line, e.g., [Idea Generator] This week’s writing prompts and updates.

Also, I think it’s wonderful to be conversational with your readers, and yet you have to remember that since you last “spoke” to them, they’ve gone in and out of hundreds of other conversations, and they may need some help getting back into yours.

In this case, a more effective subject line may have been: Thanks for your feedback on our Feel Better Now-CI website.

Here is some more reading you can do about good subject lines.

I have three subject line suggestions for your first ezine that we recently worked on together:

  • [Feel Better Now-CI] 3 self-care tools that do the trick (this option highlights the solution)
  • [Feel Better Now-CI] Firstname, are your challenges piling up? (this option highlights the problem)
  • [Feel Better Now-CI] Firstname, are you taking time for joy? (this option highlights a key emotional benefit)

Where it says “Firstname,” you’ll use your email service provider’s personalization feature.

Thank you Sylvia, for sharing your learning process with the rest of us!