Jim Connolly Marketing

How to be more magical than David Copperfield

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I went from being broke and living in a slum, the son of immigrants with no contacts, to being financially secure for life in just seven and a half years.  Here’s how I did it.  It’s all about the magic that happens when we learn to embrace change.

The magic

Change can be either positive or negative.  It is something we can either embrace or fear.  What we can’t do, however, is avoid change.  The lesson I learned at the age of 21, which was to transform my life forever, is that change is actually our friend.  Change brings improvement and progress.  In fact, the process of progress always begins with the need to change from what was failing us, to what will serve us.

This is why successful people and those who struggle have such different attitudes regarding change.

  • The happiest and most successful people I know, embrace change: They see change as an opportunity to grow.  They enjoy “living in the now” because they look to the future with excitement.
  • The gloomiest and least successful people I have met, fear change: They see change as a threat to their security.  They live in a state of apprehension, because they are fearful about what the future will bring.

The magical process of progress

Thankfully, the moment we change our mindset for the better, everything else changes too:

  • When we change from blaming others for our lack of success, to accepting it is always down to us, we start the process of progress.
  • When we change from talking about what we will do one day and start actually doing it, we start the process of progress.
  • When we change from seeing problems in our lives as proof that life sucks and start seeing them as opportunities to improve, we start the process of progress.
  • When we change from being the zombie who spends hours watching others achieve their dreams on our TV screens or computer monitors, to being on “the right side of the glass” with them, we start the process of progress.
  • When we change, everything else changes too.

Most importantly, when we change from wondering what we might be capable of, if we went for it 100%, to actually going for it, we start the process of life-transforming progress.  That’s where the real magic is!

To those of you who want more from life: I promise you, if you knew right now just what you could achieve and how your life would improve in every area, you would start that process of change this instant.

The Robot and The Guinea Pig

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Marketing genius Seth Godin made a great point with the title of his book; “All marketers tell stories.”  He’s right.  As small business owners, we each have many stories to tell, as we seek to connect with, inform and of course engage our marketplace.  Our ability to get the message right, so that our story has the desired impact, is pivotal to this.

A great story

My 5 year old son recently wrote a story, called; “The Robot and The Guinea Pig.”  His storytelling contained a number of elements that really impressed me.  His title was very catchy, which is why I used it here.  The story wasn’t too long and it showed a lot of creative thinking.  It’s wonderful to watch him develop his vocabulary and creativity.

I wrote a while back about Earl Nightingale and how he used to talk about the inoculation theory of education. It’s where young adults study, get qualified and then use their qualifications / graduation as a way to inoculate themselves from having to study any more.  I believe that as business owners, we need to adopt a very different approach.  We need to constantly strive to learn more about the elements of our business that matter, and in the 21st century, this includes the ability to create interesting content.

Over on Internet Marketing Jam, I talk a lot about content marketing.  One of the cornerstones of content marketing, is to produce valuable information, (blog posts, newsletters, videos, articles etc) as a way to inform your target market, build your reputation with them as an expert.  You then need to convert them from being a (passive) reader, to being an (active) participant.  You want them to get active, so they; subscribe to your blog, join your newsletter list, email you for information on your services or buy from you etc.

Building your storytelling muscles

With content playing such a pivotal part in the success of your marketing, it makes sense for you to invest as much time as possible, learning how to share your story and earn people’s interest.  For example, we should always bee seeking to improve how well we:

  • Capture people’s attention with our titles and headlines.
  • Inspire people to share our material with their social networks.
  • Compel people to pick up a phone and call us or email us for more information about our products or services.
  • Motivate people to buy from us or hire us.

I genuinely don’t believe that there are any quick fixes to learning how to be a great copywriter, but I do know how you can massively increase how well you write in the medium and longer term.

Are you ready?

Do it – And do it often!

One of the best ways to improve your ability to produce great content, is to practice.  Get your best written material out there and measure the feedback.  Listen to what the marketplace is telling you, something that is especially easy with online copywriting.  You can see, very clearly, how a page on your website or how a post on your blog is working.

Even basic tools like Google analytics will allow you to see how many people read that page and what they do once they arrive.  You can tell how long they stay on the page, and what exit route they take.  You can literally watch how “traffic” flows through your site and see what’s blocking people from getting in touch with you, subscribing to your newsletter or buying from you.

If your content is NOT getting the results you want, make one change and then measure the impact.  By repeating this process, it’s possible to significantly increase your online results and learn how to write the kind of content you need.

Disclosure matters

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I decided to add a disclosure page to this blog.

I assumed that as I seldom link to the only affiliate product I have and the blog’s sponsor is clearly referred to as such, there was little point.

I then saw something that made me reconsider, very quickly!

I was prompted to write that brief page, after reading several disclosure pages on some popular blogs; which had so many caveats that just about anything they wrote could be some kind of paid endorsement.  It was extremely illuminating and I suggest that you check out any disclosure pages on the blogs you read.

My affiliate partner and sponsor

I am an independent blogger, with no cross marketing agreements with anyone.  If I say I think a particular blog or product or service is great, it’s because I believe it.  For example, I was openly recommending my hosting provider, WebFusion, before they started sponsoring the blog.  Five months after going onto one of their dedicated servers, I am still on 100% up time!  It’s easy to recommend something like that, knowing how many people are stuck on unreliable hosting.  I wasted a long time on deadbeat hosts before finding them.  BTW: I get paid nothing if you click their banner, it’s just a link to their site.

With my one and only affiliate, it was a very similar story.  I had been recommending Headway (the WordPress theme this blog’s built on), to people for 6 months, before I decided to become an affiliate.

Even if you have little to disclose, I think it’s a very good idea to put it up there so people can see.

92 reasons to invest in your business blog

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Thursday morning, I checked my email at 7:30, to find that 83 of you had emailed me following Wednesday’s post and a further 9 people had called my office.  The post offered a place on my mentoring program and was not published until 3:45pm Wednesday, making those 92 requests even more amazing.

Your incredible response, both in volume and in speed, confirmed the marketing effectiveness of having a blog.  Yes, like every other form of marketing, blogging only works when handled correctly.  Copying what 99% of sites do, will all but guarantee failure, but for those who decide to learn how to blog effectively, the results can be stunning.  As of Friday morning, I have had a total of 117 genuine inquiries for that single spot on my program.

Based on my fee and typical conversion rate, the small blog post I wrote on Wednesday would have generated at least £90,000 in fee income, if I had an empty client list!

You, blogging, time and money

How different would your client list, income and lifestyle look right now, if you could generate over 100 client inquiries from a post like the one I wrote on Wednesday?  OK, that was a rhetorical question.  Here’s a direct question for you:

“Is that kind of potential inspiring enough to you, for you to commit to invest the time and money needed to make it happen?”

Sadly, very, very few small business owners are willing to resource their blog properly.  Some will invest the time required, but refuse to pay for expert help, even though their blog clearly isn’t generating what they need.  Others will invest in the expert help that’s essential, but refuse to invest the time that’s required.  Many will do neither.

My investment

I’ve invested the time required to write around 800 posts.  That kind of commitment means I wrote for you on days when I was ill and days when I had other deadlines to meet.  But I still turned up.  I have also invested  around £6,000 on this blog so far, though my hosting is now sponsored by WebFusion (that’s not an affiliate link, just a link to their site.)  That’s my commitment so far and I will continue to invest more time and more money.

What next?

If you have a business blog that’s under-performing, get serious about it.  Listen to what your blog is telling you.  If it isn’t generating the results you need, stop!  Invest in some expert help.  There may be one small element you are getting wrong, which when corrected will transform your results.

As Einstein said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!” Be one of the tiny minority of small business owners, who does the right things, correctly.  Oh, and if you DO pay for expert help -TAKE IT!

If you don’t currently have a business blog and are thinking of starting one, start off with a commitment to do it right.  If you can’t afford to do it right, save some money, do some research and then launch correctly; knowing what to do, so you start off in the right direction.

Give your blog everything it needs and it will give you all the high quality business you can possibly handle.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Content scraping: Someone built a site from content scraped off my blog

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17th May UPDATE:

The person identified in this post has now been in touch with me and explained that the issue was not caused by them directly, but a web-designer, who was apparently using my content on this person’s site, without the person being aware.  In view of this and the damage it would cause to this person’s reputation (and because I am a very nice guy) I have removed the mentions of this person’s name from the post and the 2 images, which showed how a replica of this blog was made using my content.

I recently had someone build a whole site, from content they scraped from this blog!  So, I thought I would talk a little about content scraping and show you what it looks like, (literally, there are pictures so make sure you have images turned on if you read this post via email!)

Content scraping

Content scraping is what happens when someone takes content from your site, without permission, and uses it to populate their sites; often claiming they wrote it.  Content scrapers are being encouraged to continue, because search engines have still not figured out how to block those sites from their search results.  So, they populate a site filled with other peoples content and then use that content to attract traffic, which they use to sell ads and in some cases, infect visitors with malware.

I have a LOT of sites who use my content every day, without attribution.  The example below, called (name removed), is something different though.  They not only scraped my blog posts, without naming me as the author, they also scraped my pages, including the page that sells my services, my audio program and my “Top Marketing Tips” page, see image below:

Images removed:

Here’s my original. See below:

Before I continue, I would like to point out that I tried to speak with “name removedt” last week but only managed to get through to one of their colleagues.  They are now aware of the site.  I left my contact details, however, name removed has not contacted me back. (see update at head of post!)

It seems that this example is not a regular scraping exercise to sell ads, but rather an attempt to build an entire site with my content, which I assume will then be sold to someone as a business opportunity.  They may decide to keep it and add advertisements later, of course.

Extremely common

In reality, there is not a great deal you can do.  In the above example, I am based in the UK and the site is hosted in The United States.  This means you are dealing with international law.  Other sites using my stuff without attribution are hosted all over the world.

You can contact the company hosting the site and ask them to remove it.  Past experience suggests this is almost always a long-winded waste of time, as the hosting company either refuses to do anything, or the site is simply moved to another host.  Equally, it’s hard to identify who is behind content scraping, as they usually steal someone’s identity, which I think has happened with the example above.  I don’t believe name removed had anything to do with this.

NB: I will update this post if name removed responds!

Content scraping tip: Insert links

The reason I see so many of these scrapers using my work, is that I have at least 1 link in every post I write, which points back to this blog.  As soon as my work is scraped and then published, I get a notification of their link.  I found this to be more immediate and a lot more accurate than setting up Google alerts.

Some scrapers have my posts live on their blogs within 5 minutes of me publishing them.  The reason it’s so fast, is that they usually do the whole thing using software.  As soon as one of my posts reaches their RSS feed, it’s published on their blog as a post.

Attribution

All the content on this site is licensed under creative commons.  In other words, you are VERY WELCOME to use my posts on your site or in your newsletters, so long as you attribute them to me under the terms of that license.  Most sites that use my content do this.  Probably 99%.  In such cases, I actually benefit from them sharing my work.  They allow me to reach new people, whilst being able to share something they found useful with their readers.  Win-win.

Google has recently claimed to be cracking down on scraped content, so that it no longer ranks as highly in their search results.  The hope is that this will make it unattractive for people to scrape content.  It remains to be seen if this will have any positive impact.  Certainly I am seeing no drop in the number of scraper sites that use my work each day.

What are your experiences or opinions?

Do you know of any effective strategies for dealing with content scraping, which you would like to share?  Do sites scrape your content?

Please share your thoughts!

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Marketing copywriting: The power of reasons

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Today, I thought I would share a very quick, yet very powerful copywriting idea with you.  It’s all about the power of reasons and it can dramatically improve your copywriting results!

The power of reasons

If you give someone a request, it has been proven time and again that they are massively more likely to comply, if you give them a reason.  By the way, Brian Clark covers this as part of this excellent persuasive writing post on copyblogger.

As you might expect, if you give people a GREAT reason to do something, there’s a good chance they will do it.  However, even if you give them a relatively weak reason, they are still more likely to take action, than if you give a request, with no reason.  In other words, from a conversion perspective, it’s best to explain WHY you want someone to do something, rather than just ask them.

Here’s an example of what I mean.  Imagine you want people to to subscribe to your newsletter.  You would almost certainly get a significantly better response by offering them a reason to subscribe, rather than just asking them to.  Look at the following 2 requests:

Subscribe to our newsletter today.

Or

Subscribe to our newsletter today, for the latest news, information and special offers.

So, whenever you ask your readers to do something, give them a reason.  The better the reason, the more likely they are to proceed.  If you want to show your friends how helpful, wise (and cool) you are, share this post with them!

…see what I did there ;)