Mantofa Articles Directory

A website is more than a brochure; it is an opportunity to start building a relationship with your prospective client or customer. The best way to do this is tell a story.

Everyone loves a story. As small children, before we could read, our teachers and parents used to read us stories. But even after we’ve acquired the ability to read, a story captures our attention and imagination. The most successful professional speakers are also known for telling engaging stories to their audiences.

A good website tells a story and engages the reader. The homepage of a website is probably the most important place to tell a good story. What you want to do is grab the attention of your visitor and keep them reading through the content of your homepage.

When you tell a story on a website, you are presenting the information with a beginning, a middle, and an end, as if you were telling a story to group of people seated in front of you.

Here is a simple plan to follow that will help you write better content for the home page of your website:

(1) Decide What the Purpose is for Your Homepage

This is probably the biggest mistake people make when putting together a website. Instead of targeting the homepage for a specific purpose, it becomes convoluted and the visitor becomes confused by multiple ideas that are presented in a disorganized fashion.

The information on the homepage may be excellent, but if it is put in the wrong order, without the right emphasis; the message is not clear.

Right now I’m working with a client who has excellent information throughout the whole website. However, that is the problem. In order for a visitor to find all the information they need to make a decision, they need to click through page after page to gather information. The homepage only answers some of the questions a visitor might have. It forces the reader to click from page to page to get answers. This is a big problem because people don’t want to take the time to click from page to page.

The first thing I did was ask the client what they wanted to accomplish as a result of having a website. The answer they gave me told me what was most important to emphasize on the homepage.

(2) Grab the Reader’s Attention

When someone lands on your website’s homepage, they need to immediately know that they have arrived at the right place. So make sure you have a headline that immediately captures the attention of your website visitor.

Create a headline that lets the visitor know you understand their pain or problem. You want a headline that in essence says to them, “Stop right here, you’ve arrived at the right place to get the answers to all your questions. We know what your problems are and we have the solutions.”

One way to do this is to ask a question. “Are You Looking for Innovative Sales Training?” is the type of headline that engages the reader and causes them to think.

Another type of headline technique is to use startling statistics such as: “Did You Know that One Out of Three Women Will Have Heart Disease in their Lifetime?” Headlines such as this will pique the reader’s interest and make them want to learn more.

(3) Decide on a Logical Order to Present Information

A homepage contains many ideas. It is an opportunity for a company to give an overview of who they are, what they do, and why you should do business with them.

Because you’re going to be presenting multiple ideas, it becomes very important that you have a logical order to your information. Here’s where you use the template or outline for creating a story to put the content together for your homepage.

The content of the homepage needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Each of these three pieces needs to be tied together so that there is a smooth flow and logical progression. One idea needs to flow naturally into the next idea without awkward breaks or disturbances.

Imagine you were telling a story to someone about how you discovered a new grocery store that had all sorts of interesting food. Just as you were getting to a really funny part, your cell phone rings. You stop telling your story and begin talking into your cell phone. The person who had been listening to your story with great interest, is now bored and walks away.

The same thing happens on a website. If you stick information in the wrong place on the homepage, it becomes like a cell phone ringing; the visitor becomes bored and leaves the site.

Conclusion

Use the storytelling writing technique for your homepage as a way to shorten the sales cycle. Give your audience the information they need to make a decision by keeping them engaged and entertained. Gently guide them to the right sales path without interruptions.

Michelle Howe, MBA, president of Internet Word Magic, specializes in writing irresistible copy for websites. Transform the way you do business. Visit her website at http://www.InternetWordMagic.com for a FR^EE chapter download of her new book “Turn Browsers into Buyers.”

When you’re writing a sales letter or creating a landing page for your site, one vital thing you definitely need to have is an extremely good headline. What a good headline does is to help capture the attention of your visitors, increase the length of customer visits, improve your website conversion rate, increase the number of your subscribers and more.

In a powerful headline, as in copywriting strategies, you need to tap into your customer’s emotions. In order to do this your headline must have a huge impact on your visitors.

Thus, the top 3 things you need to have in your headline are:

1. Make It Credible

Ask yourself if your headline is credible. Consider a headline like this: “Lose 10 Pounds In Two Days! Normally only a small amount of people will believe that headline if it comes with a good body copy. However, do you think a majority of people will bother to read the body copy with that kind of headline? As you can see, credibility matters on whether the headline makes sense to the reader.

2. Does It Invoke Curiosity?

Your headline has to make your visitors curious about what you have to offer. The more curious your headline is, the more your visitors want to know what product it is and how much impact it can have on their lives.

Curiosity makes your readers head on over to your sales letter, where they can read and feast their eyes and minds on the product and its benefits.

3. Is It Benefit-Driven?

Your customers want you to answer this very important question, which is ‘What’s In It For me?’ This is the first and foremost question you have to answer before you fill up their head with even more benefits that can make them excited and whip out their credit card to get your product.

Customers want to know how the product can improve their way of life. People normally get sensitive when they have to impart with their money, so they want to know what the product can do for them in exchange for their money and if the product is worth to buy.

These top three strategies for your headlines can help play a huge part in giving your customers a good first impression of your product. This is what your customers need as an assurance that your product is not a sham and that it is something authentic.

Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code. Unlock the code for unlimited online profits for yourself by visiting his website today at: http://www.SuperFastProfit.com

Online press releases are one of the most inexpensive and highly effective marketing methods for a small business owner. Yet, many people think only “big businesses” use press releases. Wrong.

The Internet gives a small business’s website the same visibility as a large corporation’s website and online press releases work the same way. Once an online press release is distributed, it’s out there in cyberspace generating hits and driving traffic to your website for years to come. Just last week I received an e-mail from someone who read a press release I wrote two years ago!

Unlike an offline press release that is distributed directed to journalists at newspapers and other media outlets, the online press release is “evergreen,” it never goes away. A simple keyword search could turn up your press release years later. Compare this to the offline press release that may or not be used by the journalists and then is trashed, never to be seen again.

An online press release also has a worldwide distribution to thousands of media outlets. Popular newswire service PRWeb.com, e-mails “press releases to between 60,000 and 100,000 global contacts points including journalists, analysts, freelance writers, media outlets and newsrooms.”

Along with its large distribution and staying power, an online press release can be even more effective in driving traffic to a website if it is search engine optimized. Here are five tips on how to create a more powerful online press release:

1. Have a newsworthy angle. A press release is not a sales pitch. Provide the media with information that answers the questions of “who, what, where, why and when.” Make it interesting by telling a story that engages the reader

2. Choose the right keywords. What words would someone use to find your business when using Google? Experiment to see which words are most popular. When you type in a phrase in the Google search feature, it now lists the number of times that particular phrase has been searched in the last 30 days. This is a new free service being offered by Google; use it to your advantage.

3. Vary keyword placement. Don’t get so carried away with your keyword phrase that it shows up in every other sentence of the press release. Have a reasonable balance in your writing so that the keyword placement is invisible to the reader. Include the keyword phrase in the first sentence and then two or three more times throughout the press release

4. Use eye catching headlines. Make sure to include the keyword phrase in your headline and at the same time, make the headline interesting. Write the headline after you have completed your press release and it should easily come to you.

5. Use anchor text. Although it will cost you more to place a press release with anchor text, it is well worth the money. Anchor text is the hyperlinked words on a Web page that you click on to take you to another location within the website or to another website. Search engines love anchor text because it tells them what the page is about. It’s a great way to boost your ranking with the search engines, especially Google.

Consider using search engine optimized press releases to publicize your business and drive traffic to your website. It’s simple to get started and hugely rewarding. One of my clients had over 1,400 media outlets pick-up his press release within two weeks after I wrote it. A keyword search found the press release as top ranked on both Google and Yahoo. Needless to say, we are going to continue with monthly search engine optimized press releases.

Michelle Howe, MBA, is an expert in online copywriting and author of the popular book, Turn Browsers into Buyers. Visit her website at http://www.InternetWordMagic.com for the FREE report, “Five Steps to Article Success.”

Writing sales copy is a learnable skill. You aren’t writing the next great novel but a short novella that persuades your reader to your desired action. Sales letters are really salesmanship in print. Have you listened to a good salesman before? Not the typical used car type but the smooth salesman who has a quality conversation with you. You have walked out of the store with a new widget and you are convinced it is the smartest purchase you’ve made all year.

This type of salesmanship is learnable and easier since it’s in print. In print you have the opportunity to change your mistakes before publication. However, you don’t have the chance to modify your information based on the reader’s objections.

The first step is to outline and plan your information so that the points flow seamlessly through the letter. In order to do that you have to know where you are going. In a statement, define the objective of your letter, beyond ‘get the customer to buy.’ You want the statement to outline what your want your readers to think, feel and eventually do. Use that statement to guide your reader from the beginning to the final sentence where he will take a specific action.

The second point is to make your copy more conversational and engaging. Most people write copy in a straightforward factual manner producing dull and boring reading. Conversions revolve around emotions and feelings, which is beneficial to the sales page since people buy on emotion and justify by logic or features. People purchase benefits, not features. Features are facts and objects you can touch. Benefits are emotions you can feel and experience.

If your copy is conversational and engaging you’re probably touching the reader emotionally and have a greater chance of conversion. Is it difficult for you to write with passion and animation? You aren’t alone. Most people are much more compelling and passionate when they speak than when they write.

There is a shortcut to use to get the copy started. Remember, copy is nothing more than spoken language in written form. Use a tape recorder and sit down with a friend or business partner. Explain your product; tell them what you want them to know so they’ll purchase your item. Now go back to the computer and transcribe your speech. This transcription can be the basis for your first draft. It will be compelling, passionate, animated and exciting. Try not to tone it down too much!

An important criteria to conversion is how well the letter flows. If your reader gets stuck in the middle of the sale because your points don’t flow and the copy is choppy you’ll find the reader leaves quickly. This is where the objective definition also is essential. Within the objective statement should be 3-5 points, or benefits, you want to discuss.

When you come to the end of one benefit ask a question and leave a “cliffhanger” to encourage the reader to move further into the sales letter. You can use subheads between the points to place emphasis on parts of the benefits. However, you should never give a complete answer in the headline or the majority of the subheads. Although a reader should be able to read all subheads and get the general gist of what your topic is covering you shouldn’t give all the answers in the subheadings.

There is a line between giving too little and too much. Too little information in the subheads and copy and your reader is left feeling motivated without direction. Too much information and the reader wonders how much more could be in the information product? Is there really anymore or was it all left on the table? Give your reader enough information to understand that you are an expert in your field but not enough that the reader now knows just as much as you do.

Write your sales letter with intention and direction. Persuade your reader to take a specific action that you desire. You writing skills will improve and your sales conversions will increase.

Jo Han Mok is a #1 bestselling author and frequent featured speaker at Internet Marketing bootcamps and conferences. Visit his website for a simple step-by-step plan to profit online in 21 days or less!

http://www.SuperFastProfit.com

Copywriting is an art.

It is the art of writing sales related materials such as sales letters, e-mails and advertisements. It uses the direct response or direct marketing technique to persuade the reader to ultimately act upon subscribing or buying products or services.

Have you ever been stumped as to why you feel compelled to buy a certain product when you do not really need it? Ever wondered why you feel that the product is extremely necessary even though it really is as normal as it gets?

If you answered yes to both questions, this is what great advertising can do to you. It makes your brainwaves all react and become vigorous, wired up and active when you hear or read of a certain product and how grand you suddenly think it is. It makes you need that product and you think about it most of the time until you get it.

If there is a great product on the market, but it is not advertised correctly, the response to it will be much lower than expected. Sales will not be soaring for that product as consumers were not aware of its benefits and how it would dramatically improve their lives.

Only through a great sales letter can optimum sales be achieved. I’ve written tons of sales letters in my life and how do you think people have reacted to them? Like brown bears fighting over honey. With that being said, how would you like to be the brains behind a sales letter that forces people to buy?

How would you like to obtain the iron-grip power to influence people and maximize your sales?

The thing is, in this world, copywriters are not born, they’re made. It’s a skill waiting to be perfected only by the right copywriting training. The chance to learn copywriting is simply too valuable to be set aside, as it is considered the heart of every sale.

When you have mastered this skill, you can actually use it to promote your own products or other people’s products on the internet or in the offline world. Studies have shown that through direct response copywriting, sales have increased as much as 63% and that’s a VERY conservative number. Instant sales conversion rates of websites selling physical or digital products have boomed just by adding miraculous power of emotional direct response copywriting.

Copywriting training is beneficial for you if you want to become a top-notch copywriter or if you want to increase the sales of your products. Extremely skilled and experienced copywriters have been known to charge as much as US$15,000 to US$25,000 per sales letter. That goes without saying that copywriting is one of the most highly paid skills in the world.

With the right copywriting training you’ll learn:

* How to properly administer the step-by-step selling techniques used in the best sales copy.
* How to use advanced mind control techniques to stir the prospect’s emotions.
* How to make your customer desperately need your product.
* How to make that customer practically beg to buy your product.
* And much more!

Copywriting is the skill you must master if you’re serious about building and maintaining a great career or business. It truly is the golden opportunity to transform yourself into someone desperately sought after by large organizations or into being your own boss.

Jo Han Mok is a #1 bestselling author and frequent featured speaker at Internet Marketing bootcamps and copywriting training conferences. Visit his website for a simple step-by-step plan to profit online and become the next big internet success story! http://www.InternetMillionaireCode.com