Two of my Aussie favourite web experts – copywriter Glenn Murray aka @DivineWrite and blogger Darren Rowse aka @ProBlogger – have joined forces to write a brilliant ebook – Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers.

Why I like it
What I like about this ebook is that it starts off by encouraging you to know your audience, brand, objectives & keywords – BEFORE you start!  This is an absolute must but too frequently overlooked by many first time bloggers.   These ideas from the “Before you start” section of the ebook are very much aligned with what we encourage in Bluewire’s One Page Web Strategy Plan.

Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers

The best bit  (see p44)
For me, the real value of Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers is that it gives you a complete list of how to avoid making of all those annoying, little spelling & grammatical errors we always make!

You know the ones:

“your” vs “you’re”
“its” vs “it’s”
“there” vs “their” vs “they’re”
“effect” vs “affect”
“then” vs “than”
“lay” vs “lie”
“to” vs “too”
“XYZ is” vs “XYZ are”
“complements” vs “compliments”
“licence” vs “license”

In 2 weeks, Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers will be selling for $29.97 USD but as a launch offer the guys are offering this ebook for $9.97 USD.

For me it is excellent value at either price point. I use it & highly recommend it!

So what would’ve earnt Copywriting Scorecard for Blogger a 5 our of 5?  Well it would be ideal if it came with web application where you could copy & paste your blog article or URL and it would produce the report card for you!

And it would’ve earned a bonus half a point if it told me the difference between “earnt” vs “earned”?

*****
If you’re keen to see follow genuinely great bloggers, read Glenn Murray’s copywriting blog – DivineWrite and Darren Rowse’s blogging blog ProBlogger.  Great work Glenn & Darren!

Copywriting Brisbane: And if you’d prefer an additional helping hand with your blogging, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394 & we’ll apply the scorecard for you.

We’ve talked to the gurus Glenn Murray and Jonathan Crossfield about the benefits of blogging – raising your company’s profile, optimising your website for search engines and sharing your expertise to name a few. But sometimes, despite knowing just how beneficial it can be, keeping a regular flow of fresh blog topics coming can be tough. Here are five brainstorming ideas I use to keep the furrowed brow at bay.

1. Brainstorm in down time

During a busy work day, inspiration can often allude. For this reason, I come up with most of my ideas in down time – at the end of the day or on a lunch break when I’m reflecting on what’s been going on, and what I have learnt.

2. Don’t just stare at a blank screen

Staring at a blank screen is hardly an inspirational activity. Get your notebook out – draw, scribble, think about what you’ve blogged about before, and what areas of relevant information you haven’t already shared.

3. Delve into the depths

If you’ve written blog posts explaining certain ideas to beginners, why not refer readers to those posts with a link and then go on to discuss the idea at a more intermediate, then advanced level? Let your readership’s understanding of an idea grow, through providing foundational knowledge and then building on it.

4. Read, read, read!

To write, you need to be reading all the time. It will give you an idea about what your target audience is interested in hearing more about, plus chances are you’ll stumble across an opinion you disagree with or can elaborate on. Blogging is an ongoing dialogue – link to what you’re discussing, offer opinions, give advice and share stories of your own experiences.

5. Bookmark pages

Bookmark sites of interest through the day and then once a day or once a week collate them into a directory of resources for your readers. For an example of this, check out our “weekly round-ups”.

Blogging Brisbane: Fired up and ready to share your wealth of knowledge with your clients? Bluewire Media can help you integrate a blog into your site and start climbing the Google ladder. Call 1300 258 394.

Bloggers book prize!

Here’s the deal:

We love blogging and are constantly being inspired by the multitude of talent in the blogosphere. Here we’re sharing some of our favourites.

Thing is, we’re always on the lookout for a new read.
That’s where you come in.

All you need to do is comment us with your blog’s URL and you’ll go in the draw to win a copy of David Meerman Scott’s fantastic book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”.

So, here are our favourites:

Marketing

Seth Godin – Brilliant, short marketing posts.

Web Ink Now – Thought provoking web marketing ideas from David Meerman Scott. We loved his book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” and the blog is an ongoing source of inspiration.

Square 2 Marketing – Marketing advice from the authors of Reality Marketing Revolution.

Search Strategy – SEO tips from the Reload Media team.

Writing

Divine Write – Glenn Murray is the author of the two fantastic ebooks SEO Secrets and SEO Copywriting. These DIY guides are accessible and jargon-free, just like his blog.

Copy Write – Thoughts on writing from Netregistry’s Communications Manager and blogging extraordinaire Jonathan Crossfield.

Copyblogger – A blog that’s been listed in more “super important writing/marketing blog lists” than you can poke a stick at. A constant resource for web writing that works.

Snappy Sentences – A snappy (surprise, surprise) tip-laden read for anyone who wants to write effective copy.

Design

ffffound – Not only can you upload and share images, but this nifty site works out what you like and gives recommendations! A staple for designers.

FormFiftyFive – This site is a constant stream of images that intrigue and inspire. It also features handy links to design support tools.

Graphic Exchange – The web home of French graphic artist Fabien Barral.

Booooooom! – Film, art, design, music, all the things we all love, go to Booooooom! to get inspired!

Inspiration

TED – This video blog features really exciting presentations on a range of topics from leaders in their fields.

101 Cookbooks – Reward your hard work with these delicious feeds! Seriously amazing healthy, generally vegetarian recipes photographed beautifully and using all those crazy grains and vegetables you’ve never experimented with before.

Tim Ferriss – Author of “The Four Hour Work Week”, Ferriss has amazing ideas about living life and prioritising what’s important to you.

Emma’s Design Blog – This one feeds our designer’s obsession with mid-century scandinavian interior design and superb photography.

The Selby – For the voyeur in all of us. Beautiful photographs featuring beautiful homes and their beautiful owners.

So? Where can we find your blog?

Have you ever heard of or seen the “the long tail” below?

It’s a statistical phenomenon that has been popularised by Chris Anderson to describe the impact of the web on the business world. I’ve just finished reading the updated version of his book called “The Long Tail” (surprise surprise!).

To quickly illustrate the “Long Tail” concept, I’ll use Amazon.com – one of Chris’s examples in the book.

Amazon.com sells books (and many other things, but we’ll leave at that for the moment). It sells the bestseller titles (the “head” – green in diagram) that you’ll find in any of your local bookstores, but it also sells thousands of other titles (“the long tail” – yellow in diagram) that you will not be able to find in a store because:

1. Stores have limited shelf space and therefore have to allocate this space to books they think will do well
2. Demand for the book was small in comparison to the bestsellers (maybe it wasn’t fantastically written, maybe the topic was too specific, maybe the marketing of the book was terrible etc…)

Why then, is Amazon selling loads of these lesser known titles, the ones that hadn’t enough demand or were too specific for the book stores?

1. Amazon is not limited by shelf space because all of its inventory is online and directly links to publishers’ and distributors’ shelves rather than its own.
2. The web has enabled them to reach a market size that is simply impossible for a physical bookstore. All of a sudden the small demand that made it unfeasible in the market size of a physical store with restricted space, becomes feasible online with a world wide audience.

So that is the concept of the long tail. Thousands upon thousands of options, all previously unavailable to you, now only the touch of a button away… Feeling daunted?

The antidote for feeling daunted is one of the really interesting ideas from “The long tail” – the importance of the “filter“.

If you now have thousands of book options, how on earth do you decide what you would like to read? How do you sort through “the junk”? (Remembering that your “junk” might be your friend’s “treasure”!) How do you find something that is useful and relevant?

That is where search, social media and recommendations become so important.

What I love about Amazon is that when I login, it provides me with a whole host of recommendations filtered by what I’ve bought in the past and related purchases from all of Amazon’s customers.

By allowing me to search I can filter my results by topic, author, title, price, relevance, age of book…

By providing uncensored comments of others, I can filter my options by gathering other’s opinions and not just what a publicist thought.

I love this concept of filtering!!

When you are daunted by information overload, how do you filter it? If your customers are daunted by too many options, how do you filter it for them?

If you’re selling products, then learn from Amazon – they know what they’re doing.

If you’re in the service industry though, how is it relevant?

Here’s what I think:

Whether you are an accountant, lawyer or web strategist, your role is to be the filter. To take all of the inputs of your experience, knowledge and client circumstances and make the best recommendations and give the best advice you possibly can. Every client has a long tail of options – your role is to filter these options and help your client find the most useful and relevant for their situation.

The role of the trusted advisor is now very much the role of the filter.

It will be really interesting to follow this “filtering” concept. If anyone has any thoughts around it, please leave a comment or get in contact.

Thanks.

Sydney managed web strategy: Having trouble cutting through all the options on the web? Give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.

Have you ever felt daunted by the number of communication options available to you on the web? I know I have.

There’s my website, Facebook page, YouTube channel, iPhone app, email, Flickr, Twitter, articles, blog posts… The list seems endless sometimes! Now, though I feel like I am starting to get a better understanding.

Back at high school, I remember sitting in classrooms sometimes listening, sometimes not. I knew I should be listening, but that didn’t mean I actually listened. I think of the different teachers I had and the ones that truly stood out have 1 thing in common.

Variety.

My best teachers often employed different methods to grab my attention and help me learn. They used a mixture of routine (eg weekly quizzes – biology) and surprise (eg a spontaneous game of petanque on the school oval – French). They stood in front of the class and lectured us as a group on simultaneous equations and then monitored our individual progress on solving x-3 = y, x + 2y = 30 (answer at the end of the post!). Some lessons would be by audio tapes, other lessons by educational videos, others with handouts. And of course there were always experiments to be done.

How does this tie back to your web strategy?

At the heart of good web strategy you are trying to solve problems for your audience. Knowing, like teachers know, that everyone learns in different ways means it is your responsibility to present your information and solutions to those problems with as much variety as you can. This doesn’t mean you have to take on every possible option immediately, but keep in mind how your audience would most like to learn.

Whether it is by video, audio, download, article, photo or interactive application ask yourself:

1. How can I make it easy for my audience to learn?
2. How can I cater for their different styles?

Then you’ll be able to start making decisions about your web strategy and how you share your content.

Answer: (x = 12, y = 9)

Managed web strategy: If you’re wondering how to solve the simultaneous equations of your web strategy, please call Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.

Have you ever sat down to write blog post and just gone blank?

Have you ever sat down and wondered where on earth you’re going to start?

Have you ever sat down and wondered what on earth you’re going to write about?

I know I have and so I figure there might be a few others out there that could use a few tips! While this is specifically related to writing a blog post, I hope you’ll see that it can be applied to other areas of your web strategy – facebook posts, news articles for your website, email newsletters etc.

Step 1:

Answer this question: What is a problem that you might be able to solve for some of your audience?

You now have your topic. (Note this post – How to get your blog post written!)

Step 2:

Set a deadline.

I was fluffing around with what to write about this morning so I employed a Timothy Ferriss method (author of “The 4 hour work week”, one of the most thought provoking books I’ve read in business). I set a deadline of 53 minutes (on my iPhone timer function) to get this done.

Step 3:

Start it and finish it.

“Perfection takes infinity.” They were some wise words from one of our mentors. Don’t wait til your post is perfect to get it up on your blog. You can’t please everyone all the time and if you’ve chosen your topic by addressing your audience’s problems, then you can’t really go too far wrong. At least you’ll know it’s relevant. (If you’ve left a bit out… well that just means you’ll have more up your sleeve for your next post!)

So that’s it! Hopefully you’ll find that useful for getting past those small but sometimes overwhelming tasks like blog posts.

PS: 14:17mins left on the timer and the job is done! Pumped!

PPS: Here’s the link to Tim Ferriss’s book if you’re interested in reading/buying it:

The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content.

Managed web strategy: If you’re still daunted by the thought of writing your next blog post and would like a helping hand, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.

So here’s a story. It’s not a new one but I stumbled on it again the other day and was reminded of a few things.

Radiohead are widely regarded as one of the most successful rock bands in the world both critically and in terms of popularity.

Coming into their most recent album InRainbows, they had completed their contract with the record company. Their contract had pre-dated iTunes so the band had received no royalties from iTunes downloads for their previous albums at all… It was time to do something different.

Rather than going down the old path of printing CDs and distributing them, they opted to release the album on their website. This isn’t entirely unusual. What was truly different was that they let their users pay what they thought the album was worth. No limits – you could pay nothing if you wanted.

Wow.

While the exact figures aren’t available, some websites have estimated over a million albums were downloaded and that the band made millions with this strategy. Thom Yorke, the lead singer, in an interview with Wired magazine said: “In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together…”

Why did this work so well for Radiohead?

In my mind, the lesson here is the importance of mutual trust online.

Radiohead had an extraordinary track record for delivering outstanding albums, so the fans were prepared to take a punt – without listening to the music – to pay for it. Equally, Radiohead trusted the fans to respect their music and so handed over the control for payment to the user.

One of the goals of good web strategy is to build that long term trust that was so important to Radiohead’s success.

So ask yourself:

1. How are you building trust with your fan base and the online community?
2. Are you thinking about what your customer would like?
3. Are you prepared to hand over control to your user and empower them to make choices?

Regardless of what you think of the band, the web strategy worked for them because it:

• Was interesting (no one had done the “pay what you think it’s worth” approach before in music and hence generated a huge amount of publicity)
• Was relevant (it was the first album they’d released in 4 years)
• Made it very easy for the customers to go and buy (allowing them to control the price)

If you manage your web strategy with these principles in mind, then you’ll be on the right track.

Managed web strategy Sydney, Brisbane – To find out more about our managed web strategy services, please call Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.

“To blog or not to blog” is a question many marketing managers and business owners grapple with…  Sure the results can be magnificent, yet where do I find the time and how long until my blog ‘breaks through’?

Legendary blogger, Jonathan Crossfield (who also happens to be Communications Manager at Netregistry – domain & hosting company) was generous enough to answer many of these questions when we caught up in Sydney.

In this 7 min interview, Jonathan answers:

- How he got started his first blog?
- Why his blog succeeded when so many failed?
- What his breakthrough moment was?
- The level of commitment required?
- How he hit it big?

Follow Jonathan Crossfield (Kimota) on Twitter

Follow Jonathon’s blogs:
CopyWrite
Atomik Soapbox
Brainstorm

Business Blogging: If you’d like to start your own blog, so you can follow Jonathan’s tips, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.

Bluewire Media’s blog was recently listed in 8 Australian design blogs that deserve your attention! by Webmaster Showcase.

It’s really exciting to be recognised by industry peers.  Here’s what they said:

Written by a team of design professionals with varying backgrounds, the Bluewire Media Blog is a website that gives an all-around look at the design world. There seems to be a trend towards usability and overall design, but it also gives a nice look at the staff of Bluewire media, what they do and how they do it. Beyond that, they do nice weekly roundups of news, tips and bits that anyone can enjoy.

Bluewire Media is a design company based in Brisbane. Keep up to date on the company’s dealings by subscribing to their blog or following them on Twitter.

Thanks for featuring us!

Web Design Blog: If you’d like you a blog for your business, please give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.

]]> http://www.bluewiremedia.com.au/blog/2010/02/blogging-accolade-featured-on-8-aussie-blogs-that-deserve-your-attention/feed/ 1