Tishia Saves Time

3 Step Formula to Better Copywriting

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Copywriting is an important of business. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing a blog post, an article, a report, information products, etc., it’s all copywriting in some way. So I’m going to keep this really short and instead, let Michel Fortin give you his three step formula for copywriting. Here’s a little blurb from his article:

Remember the three immutable laws of online purchasing behavior:

1. People never read
2. People never believe
3. People never do

When I first came across his article, Why Some Friction in Sales Copy is Good, I thought it was going to be about sharing some controversial. That’s what the title made me think of. But it’s an excellent read and I recommend if you need some copywriting tips to check it out.

Until next time…

Tishia

 

More Content Ideas

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think-of-it-this-wayI’ve shared before about how one of the things I struggle with (aside from coming up with killer titles!) is knowing what to blog about. Considering I’m a successful VA who’s been in business since 2006 you would think I have lots to write about! I probably do if I sat down and really brainstormed some ideas. But instead I like to find lists that other people share of content ideas!

So I was tickled pink when I came across Piggy Makes Bank (if you haven’t ever checked them out, you should – they’re pretty cool peeps!) post 10 Things You Can Do To Make Sure You Never Run Out Of Ideas for Content.

One of the first things that caught my eye form their post was:

Think of it this way … the more content you have out there, the more potential customers and subscribers will find you and get to know you.

And then moving on to the list of 10 ways to make sure you never run out of content ideas, I was super excited about #2:

Browse Through Email Questions – Open up your email client and look through some of the emails you’ve gotten and responded to. You can often take one, edit it a bit and post it as a blog post. If you’re not comfortable doing that, use the questions and your reply as a starting point for a “how to” type blog post.

It’s funny. I’ve heard this mentioned before. And I even created a label in my Gmail account “FAQ”  for questions people ask me. My intention is to set up a FAQ page on my website, I just haven’t done it yet. So it was kind of like a light bulb moment when I read this – it just kind of clicked this time when I saw/read it! I’m definitely going to do this (and of course still do the FAQ page on my site!)

What do you do when you run out of ideas for content?

Until next time…

Tishia

PS. Speaking of the ladies (Tracy & Susanne) over at Piggy Makes Bank, do you want to learn how to grow your income in just 30 minutes a day? If so you’ll want to check out their new course Profitable Projects. It’s insanely inexpensive right now and so worth it – I signed up as soon as they released it! CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.

Are you one of the 500 million?

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mark-zuckerberg-facebook-messenger-quote

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. And my list of rants about why I “hate” them is long so I won’t bore you with all those. Instead I’ll get right to the point – my main rant with them recently:

The Facebook Messenger App 

I’m sure you’re probably remember all the heck that broke loose when the app was first released. There was all sorts of hoopla going on and people sharing links to articles about how the app could access everything (okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic) on your phone if you installed it.

Of course all that hoopla soon died down and everyone started installing it. It took me awhile to install it and then I actually deleted it not long after installing it. I don’t plan on installing it again either. (That’s another story for another time – and no it doesn’t have anything to do with whether it can access info on my phone.)

So anyways, the whole point of this post is to say that I think I must be one of the very few people NOT using the app. Because according to a recent article I came across there are now:

500 Million Facebook Messenger Users!!!

500 million. Holy crap! That’s a whole lot of people.  I guess I didn’t realize just how big this social media platform was. I mean I knew it was big but dang 500 million – I can’t even wrap my brain around that number!

Here’s a brief blurb from the article:

While Facebook Messenger has previously passed the 500 million downloads milestone, the fact that it now claims this many people are actively using it, suggests that the original shift may not have been as unpopular as first seemed. Either that, or many folks simply rely too much on Facebook to communicate with friends to resist for long.

Alright that’s enough rambling from me. Go check out the article for yourself: Facebook reveals 500 million people are now using Messenger each month.   And if you’re interested you can watch the Q&A session with Mark Zuckerberg now too. That link is: Mark Zuckerberg’s AMA: Messaging app, his favorite unreleased features and Social Network movie.

I’m curious – are you one of the oodles and oodles of people using Facebook Messenger? 

6 Strategies for Writing Sales Copy

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Why-should-customers-buyDo you struggle with writing sales copy?

Now don’t go getting all freaked out by the words sales copy. Oh wait, maybe that’s me (that gets freaked over it) and not you 😉

Ok so back to the point… sales copy doesn’t necessarily mean copy for a sales page. It can be something like writing copy for a opt-in landing page, copy for your newsletter, product descriptions, and more. Even writing a blog post can be considered sales copy (in my opinion). Whatever you’re doing with content – whether it’s selling a product, writing a call to action to inspire your readers to take action – that’s “sales copy”.

And there’s a few things you should do when writing sales copy. In a recent article by copywriting expert Karon Thackston, she shared six strategies (although not her own – she states in the article where she learned them from – they’re excellent) for writing sales copy (in this case for product descriptions). From Karon’s article:

Strategy #6 – Why You?

Why should customers buy from you? With so many choices available online, you need a way to answer this question fast. Dropping hints within your product descriptions can go a long way to building confidence.

Even if you don’t write sales copy, these six strategies are still good to know!

Via Ecommerce Product Description Writing Driving You Nuts? Here are 6 Ways To Describe Almost Anything

If you’re a busy blogger read this

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As a busy Virtual Assistant I’m always on the lookout for things that will make me more efficient not only for my clients but myself too. One of the things I’ve also struggled with over the years is being a consistent blogger. Other things always seem to get in the way and I push blogging down and down and down on the to do list until…well until it doesn’t get done.

So when I came across Pro Blogger’s post about productivity hacks for bloggers I immediately devoured the information to see if any of the 15 hacks were something I could put into practice – either for clients or myself. A few of them I’m already using, a few of them I’ve heard of but haven’t looked into them and others I wasn’t familiar with at all.

The one that I’m most interested in is #7 IFTTT (If this then that). I recently heard about it in one of my VA Groups I’m a part of and I started looking into it but didn’t get much farther than that. It looks like it takes some initial time to set the IFTTT’s up but once they’re set up they can help automate some things.

From the article:

IFTTT lets you “put the internet at work for you”. Basically, it’s an app to automate your online life.

You can set trigger events that are based on cause and effect relationship (if this, then that). The events + triggered actions together form IFTTT “recipes”.

As a recipe example, once you add a new article to read in Feedly, you also have it saved in your Dropbox folder.

IFTTT supports many “channels” such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Dropbox, Evernote, Bit.ly etc. that you can use in your recipes.

If you’re interested in reading the other 14 hacks be sure to take a few minutes to read 15 Quick and Easy Productivity Super-Hacks for Busy Bloggers.