The Power of P.S.

Remember when people wrote letters by hand and sent them through the postal service? If they made a mistake, they had to either erase or start over. And if they got through the entire letter and realized that they forgot something, they would add a post script, or P.S., to the end. Times sure have changed.

Or have they? If you’ve perused any online sales letters lately, you’ve probably seen several that have a P.S. attached to the end. Seems rather odd that a carefully planned sales letter would have an afterthought attached to the end, doesn’t it?

But most copywriting experts agree that a P.S. is one of the most important parts of any sales letter. And that’s not just a hunch – it has been confirmed over and over through split testing. The reason is deceptively simple: It’s because of its location.

Think about it. Have you ever looked at a sales letter that interested you, but not had the time or energy to read through the entire thing? What do you do? Chances are, you skim through it, or just skip straight to the end to see what is on offer and how much it will cost. And you’re certainly not the only one who does that. The Internet has a way of perpetuating short attention spans, and with so many sites out there competing for users’ attention, they’re usually looking to cut straight to the chase.

Since effective copywriting involves working with the reader’s natural tendencies, it doesn’t really make sense to try to keep the reader from skipping to the end of your sales letter. It’s much better to put something there that will draw him in and make him want to go back and read more. And that is where the P.S. comes in. Make it noticeable, and it’s almost guaranteed that it will get read.

How to Use the P.S. to Your Advantage

So now you know why the P.S. is so important. The next step is deciding what to put in it.

It definitely should NOT be an afterthought. In essence, that’s what the term “post script” means, but that’s not what it should be in a sales letter. It’s got to be something that will grab the reader’s attention and entice him to learn more.

One tactic that many marketers use is creating a sense of urgency. They mention that the asking price is only good for a limited time, or that the buyer will receive certain bonuses that may not be available later on. This encourages the reader to go back and see what else you have to say, or possibly even to go ahead and make the purchase.

Another strategy that is often used is reiterating key benefits of the product. You may have laid them out in the body of the letter already, but by mentioning them again in the P.S., you make sure that the skimmers see them.

A carefully crafted P.S. can keep your visitors on your site longer, and ultimately result in greater conversions. Try adding one (or tweaking the one you’ve got) and see if it boosts your sales!

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The Benefits of Seasonal Content

With Christmas almost here, I’d first like to wish all of our readers a happy and safe holiday season and a wonderful, healthy and profitable new year. And second, I’d like to discuss the benefits of seasonal content.

Yes, it’s a little late to start thinking about putting up Christmas content for this year. But if you’re really feeling the Christmas spirit, there’s no reason you can’t put that creative energy to use and start writing for next Christmas. And there are plenty of other seasons and holidays coming up between now and then, so seasonal content is something that should always be on our minds.

Why? Because it brings in traffic year after year!

There are plenty of websites that focus solely on seasonal content. They bring in very little traffic during most of the year, but when the season for which they were designed rolls around, they experience a surge in visitors. These types of sites are usually owned by webmasters with lots of online real estate, and they often create sites that are focused on various seasons or holidays to keep overall traffic (and hence income) coming in year-round.

But what if you only own one website, or a few sites that aren’t seasonal in nature? Is incorporating seasonal content still a good idea?

Actually, it is, as long as it’s relevant to your site’s niche. Here are a few reasons that it works so well:

• It gives the impression that your site contains fresh, new content. Even if your strategy is to build websites filled with content and then concentrate more on getting traffic than creating new content, visitors that find seasonal content will feel that you’re providing timely information. And that will keep them coming back for more.
• Relatively few websites feature seasonal content. That means that it’s easier to get good search engine rankings for seasonal keywords than it is for more general ones. And higher rankings, as we all know, equal more traffic.
• It gives you good topics for blogging. If you’re stuck for something to blog about, you can always write a post about the current or upcoming season or holiday. Your readers will like it now, and by the same time next year, the search engines will be familiar enough with it to send plenty of extra traffic your way.
• Holiday traffic can be quite profitable. Just about every holiday has become very consumer-oriented. For Christmas, we buy gifts for friends and family. On Valentine’s Day, we buy cards, chocolates and other goodies for our sweethearts. On Independence Day, we buy fireworks and flags. And so on. Create holiday content and surround it with appropriate advertising and affiliate links, and your traffic will quickly turn into dollars.

Seasonal content can provide a welcome boost in visitors to virtually any website, so don’t let the holidays pass you by! Plan your holiday content ahead of time, and reap the rewards when the holidays arrive.

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Evergreen Content: What Is It and Why Should You Care?

There was a time when those who wanted the latest news had to wait until 6:00 pm and turn on the TV. Then came cable news networks, which featured top headlines 24 hours a day. Now, if you want to know what’s going on right now, all you have to do is go online.

There’s no doubt that some of the most popular sites online are those that feature the latest news, gossip, technology and such. But if you’re focusing your content exclusively on what’s hot right now, you could be doing yourself a disservice, especially if you are looking for long-term search engine traffic. Including some evergreen content will help you keep the traffic coming in.

Content that’s evergreen will stand the test of time. It’s about subjects that are relevant today, but that will also be relevant years from now. Whereas that smoking hot news story that everybody wants to know about right now might be long since forgotten a month from now, evergreen content is always useful and interesting.

That’s not to say that evergreen content can’t be seasonal. While articles about Christmas aren’t particularly relevant in June, they are highly sought after later in the year. They make good content for sites that feature information about various seasons, or for stand-alone Christmas sites belonging to webmasters who have other sites that do well the rest of the year.

Need some ideas for evergreen topics? Try these on for size:

• How-to articles – People are always looking for articles that explain how to do one thing or another. Most sites can work how-tos into their content very nicely.
• Historical articles and accounts – History was once news, but the history that we still find interesting today will likely still be interesting years from now. Articles that offer a fresh take on something that happened a long time ago can bring in traffic quickly, and they can also keep it coming well into the future. Encyclopedic articles are useful for many years as well.
• Hobby-related content – While new technology might change the way we participate in certain hobbies, the hobbies themselves will probably be popular for generations to come. Take sewing, for example. It was once done by hand, and now we have programmable sewing machines. But the subject of sewing is still relevant.
• Articles about money – Money is one topic that people are always interested in. They want to know how to make more of it, how to save it, and how to put what they have to use more wisely. And that’s not going to change any time soon.

Every site should have at least some evergreen content. It helps bring readers in from the search engines, and those readers tend to be very interested in your site’s niche. There’s nothing wrong with sharing the latest news, but if you’ll add in some evergreen content too, you won’t have to worry about losing traffic when news is slow.

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Blog Energizer Review

As an online business owner, you’re probably well aware of the benefits of blogging. You know that it helps you build a relationship with your audience and keeps them interested in your business. But if you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you may have also discovered that it’s not as easy as it looks. You have to constantly keep coming up with fresh topics and looking for new ways to promote your blog. Even for the most enthusiastic blogger, it can seem like a chore at times.

Sound familiar? Maybe you should take a look at Blog Energizer. It’s a membership site that provides lots of great resources that can help you breathe new life into your blog. It’s run by Contentrix’s own web developer, Lynette Chandler, and she provided me with a free premium membership to check out. Highlights include:

• Monthly topic ideas – Each month, members get a whopping 90 topic ideas – 30 business topics, 30 health topics, and 30 home and family topics. But that’s not all. There’s also a topic calendar published each month that includes holidays, observances and conferences that provide inspiration for many more topics.
• Buzz topics – Want topics that are hot right now? Take a look at the Buzz Topics section. It contains keywords that are all over the latest news, blog posts and social sites, and it’s updated in real time. You’ll never have to write about yesterday’s news again.
• Guest bloggers – A fresh perspective can work wonders for your blog, and the easiest way to get it is to find a good guest blogger. Blog Energizer members can visit the Guest Bloggers section and find fellow bloggers who are looking for guest blogging opportunities. They can also submit offers to write for other blogs if they’re looking for a way to expand their audience.
• Freebies and special offers – Everybody loves free stuff, and your blog readers are no exception. Members get access to lots of freebies and other special offers that they can share with their readers, as well as products that fellow business owners are willing to provide for them to review.
• Bonuses – Members get access to exclusive discounts, free reports and other great bonuses.

The premium membership offers all of these great features and more. There’s no doubt that it’s a real bargain at only $10 a month! But you don’t even have to pay that much to try it out. You can join for free and try out some of the features for as long as you like before you buy.

If you have a blog that needs some TLC, Blog Energizer is for you. Check it out and see for yourself!

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Social Media: Don’t Set It and Forget It

It’s amazing how far social media has come in such a short time. Ten years ago, people who used their computers to communicate with others were often referred to as geeks. Now, the tables have been turned. If you don’t use Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, people begin to wonder which rock you just crawled out from under.

That’s not to say that everybody is using social media. There are still plenty of people who aren’t. But there are enough people who are using it that if you’re not, there’s a good chance that you’re alienating at least some of your customers.

I just finished reading a post over at the Outspoken Media blog about businesses using Twitter. Most of the corporate big dogs are doing it, as well as a rapidly increasing number of small business owners. But as Lisa Barone pointed out in that thought-provoking post, hiring someone to do your tweeting for you and then forgetting about it can easily backfire.

If you’ve been following White House news, you might have heard that President Obama recently let it slip that he has never used Twitter. Seeing how he has well over two million followers, it’s obviously well known that he has a Twitter account. And being the President of the United States and all, few of us would expect (or want) him to sit around and write tweets all day. But to learn that none of the tweets came from the man himself? I found that a little bit disheartening.

Still, I can get over that. At least he is aware of his social media presence, and the importance of it. Sadly, the same can’t be said for a lot of businesses.

In large corporations, social media is generally handled by the marketing department. They can afford to pay someone to use Twitter and Facebook, and they do so because they know that such efforts can cement relationships with existing customers and attract new ones. But they often make the mistake of assigning someone to handle social media and leaving everyone else in the dark about it. So when a customer mentions that they found out about that big sale through Twitter, the clerk might have no idea what he’s talking about.

True, nobody should expect every representative of a big company to be completely up to date on the latest post to its Facebook account. But they should know about the important stuff, like exclusive promotional offers and such. If they don’t, the company could end up with a lot of angry customers who who can easily get the word out to the rest of the world via their own social media accounts.

And when it comes to small businesses, being literate in social media is even more important. The business owner might hire a virtual assistant to handle it because she doesn’t have time to do it herself, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to harness the power of social media, you must know a little about how it works. And as a small businessperson, your customers will also expect you to know what’s being said, even if you didn’t write it yourself.

Bottom line: You don’t have to oversee every aspect of your social media presence yourself. But it’s a good idea to know how to do so, and to keep tabs on the person who’s doing the writing for you is saying.

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How to Get Effective Testimonials

Visit any sales page, and you’ll probably see at least one testimonial, and usually more. There’s a simple reason for this: they make sales.

Well, some of them do. Others? Not so much.

Some marketers are under the mistaken impression that any positive testimonial is a good one. No marketer is going to post a testimonial that says “This product sucks!” But a testimonial that simply says something to the effect of “This is the greatest thing since sliced bread” really isn’t much better.

In order for a testimonial to do its job, it needs to be more detailed than that. It needs to vouch for the benefits of the product, and tell specifically how it helped the customer. And perhaps most of all, it needs to be believable.

Anyone can say that a product is good. But it takes someone who has actually used the product to tell why it’s good, and what aspect of it benefited them the most, and how to best use it. Here are a couple of examples to consider:

“Joe’s Hot Sauce is very tasty!” – Sue

“Joe’s Hot Sauce is just spicy enough without being overwhelming. So far I’ve tried it on burgers, chicken and scrambled eggs, and adds a nice kick to them all. I can’t wait to try it in my baked beans!” – Jane

Which of those two testimonials would make you want to buy Joe’s Hot Sauce? Would you be inclined to think that maybe Sue just sent in a testimonial to get a link back to her site?

But I Don’t Write the Testimonials, I Just Collect Them

Maybe your customers have only been sending in very generic testimonials. After all, it’s not their job to promote your product. They just want to let you know that they enjoyed it. And depending on your target market, they might not know enough about how to properly promote a product even if they want to help you make more sales.

So if you want specific, convincing testimonials, you just might have to ask. The next time you get a testimonial that doesn’t provide enough information, write the customer back and ask for specifics such as:

• What specifically did you like about the product?
• How has it made a difference in your life?
• How and when do you use the product?
• What is your favorite feature?
• Do you have any proof of how the product helped you that you are willing to share (photos, check stubs, etc.)?
• If you don’t have them already, request the customer’s full name, location, photo and link to his or her website for greater credibility.

Most satisfied customers are happy to give more details about their experiences with your product. So just ask. The worst they can do is not respond, or tell you to stop being so nosy. And they might just send you a nice, detailed testimonial that will help you make more sales.

Editors Note: When collecting testimonials, do keep in mind the upcoming FTC guidelines on endorsements.

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