Posts Tagged ‘content’
This Product Sucks! How Opinionated Reviews Will Make You More Money
Friday, December 2nd, 2011
In 1979, Miller Beer released an advertisement featuring several men sitting at a bar, enjoying an ice cold Miller beer. Below the picture, which showed the men laughing and clearly enjoying their activity, was a very simple caption: Miller-High Life is America’s quality beer since 1855 and it is the best-tasting beer that anyone can find. An assertive statement, to say the least. There was no focus on the actual taste of the beer, beyond asserting that it was indeed the best. Instead, the advertiser simply asked readers to trust his opinion.
If you’ve had any part in advertising, particularly writing reviews, in the past couple of decades, you probably know that this ad wouldn’t really fly anymore. Today, the powerhouses like McDonalds use subliminal messages and invest millions of dollars in exploring “nagging” or the effect that a child can have on their parent by simply begging them to make a trip to the fast-food restaurant, or buy him the new Super-Awesome Ninja Play House. After all, a marketing professor at Texas A&M named James U. McNeal estimated that the total market for child “nagging” was around $324.4 billion in 2008.
But the average Internet reader is on to the whole scheme. There are certain things they expect from advertisements and, by extension, product reviews. If you can’t simply assert that a product is the “best” like our 1979 friends at Miller, how do you write a review that will convert visitors? To start, you could try being a little honest. You might be surprised at just how many negative reviews have a history of maintaining solid conversion numbers.
Considering Geography in Reviews
The first mistake you’ll make when writing a review is forgetting to consider what your readers actually want to know, not necessarily what you want to tell them. First of all, you have to reach them where they live. It’s no wonder that Google has placed such stock in localized search recently. If you can make a product more relevant to a person where they live, you lift your review from the anonymous environment of the Internet and place it directly in your readers’ homes.
Let’s consider an example using wireless Internet services, an easy way to get “geographical” on your readers. Obviously, coverage area is an important item to consider when choosing wireless Internet services, particularly those associated with mobile devices, like 4G services. You could simply make the statement that your wireless affiliate covers “nearly every area in Boston.” In the end, however, that really doesn’t tell your readers anything valuable, even though you might think it does.
But take a look at this page on Boston CLEAR 4G services at ClearWirelessInternet.com. It’s pretty clear (no pun intended) that the company doesn’t cover the entire Boston area. In fact, there are some pretty notable gaps in the service coverage. But contrary to what you might think, that’s perfectly fine. While you might not get many conversions from people in South Boston, you are being honest about your coverage area, and clearly demonstrate how the company covers the majority of Boston, without simply stating it. You could try to cover the missing areas with a bit of crap, but your honesty and specificity will go much farther in helping your readers make their decision.
What Readers Expect in Their Reviews
The closer you can get to letting your readers interact with your product in a review, the better. Sometime in the future, we can look forward to 3D models of products that project from your computer screen — allowing you to literally hold a product in your hands before buying it online. But until that day, you’ll have to rely on some compelling and honest content to do the job.
The best starting point is the five senses — sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. Be as descriptive as possible when talking about your product. One of the most brilliant developments in advertising was the Scent Strip, which like our Miller advertisement, first started appearing in 1979. These strips appear in magazines to advertise perfumes and colognes. Love them or hate them, and there are many people that do hate them quite a bit, they accomplish one important goal, engaging the reader’s previously unused sense of smell. And that smell is obviously the most important feature of the perfume. Nobody cares if it comes in a “bottle crafted by Italian artisans,” or that it looks like “bottled raindrops from a lush tropical island.” Readers care how the perfume smells, and with little exception, only how it smells.
You can take the same idea and translate it into your own product reviews. If you’re writing a review on bath soap, tell readers how the bubbles from the soap “soothe and exfoliate skin” and how the soap smells like “fresh lilacs on a warm summer day.” Be specific, but don’t engage too much hyperbole. A descriptive and powerful review walks a fine line with tacky and bombastic.
Finally, if a product sucks, let the reader know what you didn’t like about it, but highlight things that you feel make up for those deficiencies. Don’t be afraid to let your personal opinion bleed into the content. Readers will browse thousands and thousands of reviews and advertisements in their lives — yours needs to target a small, focused demographic with honest information. Your goal is not, or should not be, to trick your customers into buying one product from you and hope that interest in that one product doesn’t drop. Instead, you should be focusing on creating an overall product with your reviews — a community where readers will trust your opinion because you give honest information on products in which they’re interested.
We talk about advertisements a great deal when referring to reviews, and with good reason. An advertisement understands the natural impatience of consumers, and is really no different than a well-crafted product review. While this does justify keeping your written reviews on the short side, you should also consider studying as many advertisements as possible to get some ideas for your own reviews. If you can engage a reader in the product and form an honest opinion that a reader can trust, you stand to make more money on your visitors, and you don’t even have to abandon those pesky ethics.
Why the Facebook Like Button Might Not Be Right for Your Blog
Friday, May 21st, 2010
I read a blog post today that distressed me greatly. The post was about the new Facebook like button and the poster was explaining to readers why the Like button was not right for everyone. Darn. I knew that. I should have posted it and explained why first! Maybe I can make up for being tardy on information by providing additional information that might explain better what has already been said on another blog.
What does the Facebook Like Button do?
The Facebook like button can be embedded into any website and allows visitors to share content over Facebook. When content is shared, the link is displayed in the News Feed (the ‘what’s on your mind’ field) with a thumbnail and description. Shared links have potential to bring in social networking traffic from the Facebook friends of the sharer or liker if you will.
The Best Way to Find Guest Bloggers and Guest Blogging Opportunities
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
Guest blogging has become explosively popular in the year 2010. Not only do guest posts bring fresh, alternative perspectives but they also make life easier for the blog owner and build strong blogger-on-blogger relationships.
Finding guest posters and blogs to guest post on isn’t any easy task however. Sometimes the top blogs in the niche are unwilling to publish or even look at guest post requests or it may be very difficult to get your posts accepted because of the sheer volume of other guest posts the blog owner receives.
25 excellent ideas to blog about
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
A guest post from the Idea Lady, Cathy Stucker. Get free ideas for small business and sign up for her IdeaLady Insider newsletter at http://IdeaLady.com/.
Do you find it hard to come with things to blog about? A few years ago, I had a weekly newspaper column. I had to turn in 500 words every Friday afternoon, even when I was not inspired. There were some Fridays when I was an hour or two from my deadline and had no idea what I was going to write about. Even then, I got my column written and submitted on time.
My secret? I kept an idea file, stuffed with topics and titles I could fall back on when I didn’t have anything to write about.
New study suggest blog post quantity trumps quality for online popularity
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Still believe all that hogwash about quality over quantity? According to a study presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference last Wednesday, bloggers who post frequently are much more “attractive” than infrequent posters, regardless of post quality.
Yahoo to release a new style guide for web writing
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
If it’s one thing serious bloggers need, it’s an objective style book like what print publications have in The Associated Press Stylebook or The Chicago Manual of Style.
Is website one word or two? Is internet capitalized? Is it re-tweet or retweet?
Why you should use images excessively on your blog
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
This morning I went to a visual communication arts class and everyone formed a circle to discuss the evolution of newspaper layouts. I learned that the most striking difference between modern newspapers and those of the past are the ratio of pictures to text.
The first newspapers in America of course did not have images because of the limited printing technology available.
"Publick Occurences: Both Foreign and Domestick," the first multi-paged newspaper in America.
Frequent blog posting or consistent blog posting?
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
When I first stumble upon a blog, I usually read the first lines of the newest post. If the lines intrigue me or make me want to read more, I will read the rest of the post. From that point on, I can pretty much tell if the content on the blog is relevant or worthwhile to me and I only check one more thing before subscribing: the number of posts in the past few days.
I have sort of psychoanalyzed myself on numerous occasions to determine what it is exactly that causes me to subscribe to a blog. A primary factor is always the frequency of posts. The truth is, I don’t want to be bothered with a blog that is not updated frequently. Visiting the address of a blog which remains not updated is like opening up the morning newspaper to find yesterday’s articles printed again. If I am going to be committing as a subscriber, I at least want to know that I will be fed something on a consistent basis.
Targeting search engine crawlers vs. human readers on your blog
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
My last post on this blog was a bit out of the ordinary. I’m sure if I had a large subscriber base, I would be getting tons of emails asking what the deal was. I wrote an entire post on one very simple thing: how to check which version of WordPress you are using. That little piece of information is probably not useful for any subscriber base. After all, most WordPress users who happened to be subscribed to my blog either already know which version they are running or don’t have a particular need to find out.
So why did I create the post?
The answer starts with a G and ends with an E. Yup, you guessed it: Google.
Yesterday, while I was tweaking the custom theme I built (which is almost ready) for this site, I had to find out which version of WordPress I was using to determine whether or not a PHP function would work on my blog.
Taking advantage of creative commons content for your blog
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Who has the time to go out and snap photos of abstract subjects to use as complementary images in blog posts?
Especially if are not willing to pilfer the copyrighted work of others, it may be difficult finding content published online that the author explicitly allows anyone to share.
Enter the Creative Commons License founded in 2001 by Larry Lessig Hal Abelson, Eric Eldred and a few other cyber-law geeks that you probably never heard of.
Blogging for money part 2: frequent posting
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Frequent blog posting is something that needs to happen if your blog is going to hit success. Remember that success is always synonymous with difficulty, but can be achieved with a good rational, and much determination. If followed literally, these five tips will help you retain a frequent posting status, which will ultimately secure a frequent earning status.
1. Understanding your commitment
When you’re considering blogging for money, it is important to understand the commitment you are undertaking. This is because many people who blog for a living, actually spend more time blogging than they would for a real job. If you want consistent earnings, you need to give your time up consistently. One way you can do this is by setting a time quota like, “I will blog for 2 hours every day,” or by designating a specific time like, “I will blog at 3 p.m. every day.”
Value persistency to you commitment, rather than quantity of blog posts or the amount of success your blog receives. A flaw is rarely found in the commitment itself, but more often found in the resolve to follow the commitment.
2. Understanding your competition’s commitment
The majority of bloggers don’t make any money whatsoever. Although many of them don’t set out to make money, they all set out to gain readers. And guess what? The more bloggers that are out there, the less those readers become available.
Do a simple search on Google and examine a few related high ranked blogs. You might find that their commitment far outweighs yours. If this is true, you might want to consider blogging in a different niche.
3. Train yourself to blog constantly
It takes an incredible amount of discipline to force yourself to blog more than once a day, and it is very time consuming. Blogging for money is pretty much equivalent to being your own boss, and there aren’t many people out there who can boast that they are self-employed, are there? This is because of the fact that it requires an incredible amount of discipline. You need to train yourself to keep a consistent blogging schedule, and you need to stick-to-it if you want to maintain an audience.
4. Avoid ‘blogging guilt’
Not only do we sometimes not feel like blogging, but we simply don’t have the time to. Sometimes, school, kids, social life get in the way of blogging life and that is to be expected. Surprisingly, blog experts say that the best thing to do is to avoid being guilty about your lack of posts because the guilt that is associated from this is in fact, anti-productive.
Many times, bloggers, and all writers alike, enter into a form of writer’s paralysis when they fret over their lack of productivity. It’s kind of like trying to exercise again after not doing it for a while or having negative thoughts about it.
5. Blog when you’re not blogging
A useful piece of advice I’ve been given on several accounts by experienced bloggers is to blog when you’re not blogging. This means to create an archive in your head of things you want to blog about. When something unusual happens to you, or you have an interesting thought, make a mental note to blog about it later.
If you’re the kind of person that is forgetful, bring a notepad around with you; jot down ideas, and possible headlines for your blog posts. You don’t need to write any paragraphs or even sentences, you just need to create an outline. The more you use this method, the better you will become at it. At one point you should be able to create an entire blog post around a single headline without having to look at outside sources. You have a brain, and there’s more information in there than a multitude of books. Tapping that information is just a matter of patience and persistency.
Frequent blog posting is the second level in our wonderful blogging for money pyramid. Read on to part 3 to find out what the next level is. Click here to go back to part 1, the need for unique and quality content.
The Blogging for Money Pyramid
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