by Ahmed Muzammil | Jul 21, 2017 | Marketing, Social Media |
Ah, List Posts! Readers love them. Writers hate them. Blog owners crave for them as list posts bring in a lot of eager visitors. Especially websites that churn out celebrity blog posts filled with images from paparazzi. Oh, this attracts a butt load of prying eyes.
The internet is swarming with lots and lots of over and underbaked list posts. As writers who prioritize quality above all, you would have decided already to avoid them. But it’s bad for business. Here is how you write proper list posts without compromising your quality.
List Posts are psychological drivers. They appeal to the human psyche. In most cases, they passively tempt us into clicking on them. This is what Mr. Robert Cialdini a retired prominent Psychologist calls the ‘Click, Whirr’ response. It is caused by the influential effect of numbers on us. Seeing them in a headline tempts us at a subconscious level to click on them.
Now you might have started to wonder whether including numbers in your headlines will increase exposure of your work. It may, but ultimately there is no substitute for proper, grammatically well-structured content. If you rely solely on flashy, junk data, your readers will let go of you. OMG! You don’t want that.
Having said that, you are here, to understand how to make great list posts.
#1. If it’s List Post, Don’t Start With Numbers!
You enter the sanctity of your workspace and look forward to manufacturing some hot content that literally burns the keys on your keyboard. But when you see your job sheet, terror strikes! All hell breaks loose when you realize that you have been tasked with the creation of list posts.
You may be feeling an immense desire to log into your favorite internet hangout and express your misfortune. But you have to move on. You have to embrace list posts and accept the grim reality that ‘listicles’ or list posts are now part of your life.
After getting your bearings straight. You might open your favorite word processing app and start filling it with numbers from 1 to 10 and hope to fill it to complete your task. It’s the worst possible way to start out to write a great list post.
You have found the fiery topic which you can fuel with your words. The topic you choose should be like an itch to the audience you are writing for. An itch that requires the much-deserved scratching. Seeds of such topics can only come from your audience. Surprised!?
You cannot hope to successfully sell a killer post on aeronautical engineering to Hello Kitty cosplay enthusiasts. You got to target your niche.
You will realize your best work only after it’s written and afterward, you can reorganize it into a killer list post.
#2. Understand What You Are to Create Solve
To write a killer content, you will have to solve a problem that has been a pain point for your reader. Even if the problem is pure boredom caused by the zillions of entertainment sites out there.
You are a creator. It’s your responsibility to be aware of the likes and dislikes of your audience.
What makes them cheerful? What saddens them? What they like to gain and what they like to lose? Master all these and you will make the perfect concoction to please your readers.
Wherever man is, problems aren’t far away. The same holds true for your audience. So, for you to come up with killer list posts. Research over your audience and their problems. Find solutions to those problems.
Master this and you will end up churning amazing, awe-striking list posts.
#3. Make It Fascinating
Make it useful and interesting. Achieving the first one without the later equals to ‘Wikipedia’ and that’s already out there.
Boring content doesn’t equal a killer list post even though it’s well researched and solves problems.
For example, if your audience is people with diabetes, providing them with posts on how to manage diabetes and informing them about the latest technological breakthroughs in diabetic research will make them come to you.
Make a post about the medical issues they face. Provide solutions, well-researched ones and repeat the process over and over again. You will have a dedicated following of diabetic people.
Fantastic headlines coupled with boring content will keep your audience at bay from your site over time. This is counterproductive especially when you are desiring a following for your posts.
Employ strong writing voice and your audience will follow through your post with enthusiasm. Throwing a few metaphors here and there along with storytelling makes them listen to your posts in their subconscious rather than having the feeling of reading them. These are pretty powerful stuff when it comes to content creation.
Impeccable writing ability and poetic influence make the content top of the shelf, fascinating kind.
#4. Your Strategic Goal
Being a content writer whose sole purpose is to make your advertisers happy by increasing the traffic is one of the hardest livelihoods. Marketing is a highly competitive arena.
You have to attract new visitors, keep them occupied on the site. So that you are able to feed them more and more information about the advantages of the product or service you are gunning for and aiming to sell by nurturing your clientele. So that they buy the product or service you are intending to sell to them.
Content exist for different purposes. Some are there to attract new visitors. Some are there to sustain the relationship with your existing audience and some to advocate why you are the best choice out there.
So, understand what you are aiming to achieve and attain it. Set the crosshairs on your target and gun straight for it.
#5. Make It Worthwhile To Spend Time On
Once you have something worth reading and problem solving for your audience expressed in an interesting way, add some poetic tune to it. You still have to wrap it up in a way that is pleasurable to consume.
Content as long as the Great Wall of China and audiovisual content with poor sound quality are big crowd thinners than a smoke screen. Over time, they tend to keep your readers away from you. The same thing goes for mediocre content wrapped in colorful words.
But when good content is presented with a mixture of poetry and strong narrative. It becomes unforgettable. Making it more appealing to your audience. Something worth spending time on.
#6. You Still Got To Promote
As you accomplish manufacturing content worth your audience’s time, you have to think of promoting it. This is huge. Nothing sells on its own. You have to take it seriously when it comes to promoting your content.
Social media helps in a big way. But it’s imperative to have a lot of eyes on your content. Promoting your content among targeted audience achieves desirable results.
Remember, if you have amazing content and if you don’t have anyone to read it and cherish its useful insights. It a giant waste of your time.
#7. Your Next Move?
Execute the first six perfectly. Then you have to have a plan for your audience, for afterward. You have captivated them with your writing. Feed them more engaging, informative content which helps them solve many other problems they are facing.
Target your loyal readers with ‘Call to Action’ buttons. Have your readers enroll by email for more informative and worthwhile content from you. It may be more content or product/service promotional emails. Informing your loyal subjects of the latest updates in your sphere of influence in the web.
Before you publish and promote, have your next step worked out and ready to be executed. To be a professional copywriter, master straightforward calls of action and attract more audience to you.
That’s all, good luck.
by Ahmed Muzammil | Jul 21, 2017 | Business, Marketing, Startup |
Powering the Sales Funnel through targeted content is your opportunity to achieve more. More of what? Attention, towards whatever you have to offer to make more money. If you are focusing on products then its products and if you’re are a service provider then it’s the service you are offering.
The purpose of creating content in the first place is to generate more interest to the particular page so that you attract more attention. This attention increases the interest in your page and more interest means that more people are currently either actively or passively gathering information about your product/service.
You might wonder, why should I bother about content when am spending piles and piles of cash on the advertisement. You are rightful to question if you had spent or have been spending piles and piles of cash on the advertisement. But read and ponder.
Before there was Radio. Then came the TV. After that there was internet and Social Media came about creating many more ways to get to know about well anything. Not only can people look at a product or service, but they can also inquire about the aforementioned product or service by doing a few searches on Google or Facebook or Twitter.
This arm twists every one of you (the product or service provider) to mellow up to the would-be customers even before they know that they want to make avail of your services or your products. Here is where targeted content comes in to save your day.
Today’s marketing is not what yesterday’s marketing used to be. One bad post about you can make you lose a few of your future customers if not the existing ones!? So it’s very important for you to engage with your audience in a positive way through all existing platforms.
Why targeted content? An advertisement is far too good. You can argue all day. But with today’s smart devices, be it phones or tablets allow people to peer into numerous blogs and hundreds of posts before come knocking at your brick and mortar showroom to purchase anything. Hence the targeted content comes into play.
You have to maintain a good social presence. A positive social opinion about your products and service to widen the lower end of the sales funnel. You know you want it that way! So learn to master a content powered sales funnel.
R & D – This D Stands For Discovery
You need to get into the thought process of a person who may or may not pay to avail your service or product. This takes research and discovering the customers’ interests and targeting them from there. Many people who buy stuff are idle surfers of the internet. They just surf, mostly that’s what they do. If they like what they see, they will get it.
Others are informed ones who dig deep about you and your offerings to figure out if there are any shortcomings what so ever. For both these customers, there is an absolute need for your product. But the approaches they take are entirely different. Either informed (actively) or uninformed (passively) state they look for solutions to their problem or to eradicate the issue they are facing.
Your product or service may be the solution they are seeking in the first place. This process that leads up to the decision is called the buying cycle. During the decision cycle, the people will be searching for solutions or with the problems itself. The words they use become your key to unlocking the door towards your customer pool.
It is imperative that you use keywords that are targeted towards your business. For example, let’s assume that you are a networking connection accessories provider. You offer routers, modems, Wi-Fi range extenders and etc.
The goal here is for you to help you could be customer get well-informed about the various types of devices you offer. Not only just this. If for instance, you provide a tool of sorts which helps them get to the conclusion to what they need to get, will make them more comfortable.
Not only are you helping the visitor decide in what should be purchased to eliminate their pain points; but also you are earning their trust. This also improves their confidence. A confident customer is the one who is more likely to purchase from you.
A Helping Page – Full Of Info
Now, you have to utilize this confidence that you have earned in the right way. At this moment the customer is interested and you have to provide them with more accurate information about what types of products you offer and what’s the difference between them.
Not all people know everything. By providing the additional information you are making them well informed about what they should get to fix the problem they are having. In this case, in this case, it’s the necessity to get a Wi-Fi gateway.
But you have to assume that the person making the decision doesn’t differentiate between an ADSL modem with Wi-Fi and a Wi-Fi gateway. Here, if you provide the necessary information to the site visitors in helping them discerning the obvious difference between the two. You will be a hero, who just saved their day.
Give And Wait For You To Receive Back
Now, you have to provide targeted information about all your products and how they are better than your competition. You are welcome to include simple infographics which a common man can understand.
In this phase, you are being weighed against your competitors. A pivotal moment for you as this is the stage the people will show loyalty. Provided, you show some sweet deal. You not only have to show them that you have the best to offer but also, to show them that you care for them and you are here to make them happy.
After all these processes of researching, finding, understanding, and sweet deals. They will choose the best possible offer which suits their pocket. If you do all the above correctly. You would have gained a customer.
Testimonials Go A Long Way
Also, you need to have testimonial page for each and every product or a mechanism to rate your product. People (your existing customers) should be able to log in and post their thoughts about your products/services.
You can’t convince people (would be customers) like the people (have been customers). Positive replies and positive ratings will promote your products for you. And if you have a social media presence, it’s a great plus. Get communities for your products, encourage people to talk for you.
Provide the opportunity to the people, like lucky draw and so on. Many people talking is much more advertisement. Opportunities means, people who might not be otherwise interested will line up to try their luck. Also, reward your customers. Publish about your customer engagement activities in social media.
The more people feel welcome, the more you are persuading them to buy from you.
At The End Of The Day
You need to have targeted content which is properly filled with the appropriate amount of keywords. Keyword research tools help in a big way, for example, AdWords form Google. This will improve your exposure from current levels and increase your popularity. All these will help you gain customers. Through these efforts, you will power your sales funnel with your targeted content.
by Ahmed Muzammil | Jun 20, 2017 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing |
In my last blog, we spoke about Certainty and Variety. It’s the reason behind:
+Why some stick to a day job and some start their own company
+Why some pursue a normal life, and some pursue an adventurous life
+Why some people like to eat the same food and why some people like to try new food all the time.
Makes sense?
Now onward to the next two human needs:
3. Significance:
The need to be feeling unique, valuable, special or proud.
The need that motivates somebody to become a celebrity, or an attractive person.
Or for some to show off an expensive watch or an expensive handbag.
Or for some to buy a Lamborghini just because that makes them feel significant.
4. Connection/Love:
The feeling of closeness or affection with someone or something. It‘s the craving for love, sex, relationship.
People act differently for some people because they like them. A rogue fighter, or a terrorist, maybe a very caring father and a loving husband at home.
That brings us to another paradox. The paradox between love and significance.
Everybody knows that you need to make your partner feel significant and let your ego down to be successful in love, or in a relationship.
If you don’t let your significant self, relax for the sake of the relationship, you cannot have a great relationship. Thus you have to find a fine balance between significance and connection.
Have you ever given up on something for the sake of love? Reply and tell me. I would love to hear from you.
by Ahmed Muzammil | Dec 25, 2015 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing |
It’s the new year soon; you would be getting ready to set your goals and resolutions. Well, we all do. Are you someone who sets goals like:
- Make my company more profitable
- Get more customers
- Get more exposure
- Meet more partners
If you are, then you should read this post. I am going to give you a step by step formula to achieve these goals at the end of this post. Let’s rock 2016 together!
Subjectivity vs. Objectivity
Can you hope to lose weight next year and lose 10 pounds? Can you hope to get more customers and make sales? Does it even make sense to hope for the best next year? Hoping is high-level thinking feeling.
“I hope I can have a million dollars in my bank account” will not magically bring in a million dollars to your bank account. You need to work for that.!
Ok, maybe if you win a lottery then there is a chance of getting the million dollars in your bank account. A sidebar fact about Lotteries, there is a higher probability for a human in this world to get killed in a terrorist attack than for her to win a lottery!
Sidebar aside, and back to “Hope”. As you can already make out what I am going to say, “Hope is not a strategy!”. Setting subjective goals like the ones I mentioned above is like hoping for the best.
Subjective goals are broad goals that you will not be able to measure by the numbers. You can’t measure progress for a subjective goal as well.
To have clarity, to achieve, to drive your team, to reach the goal, you need to see progress. To have the motivation to achieve your objectives, you need to measure progress!
If you can’t measure it, you can’t see the progress. Not seeing progress will affect your motivation as well as the team’s motivation towards the goal.
Cut subjectivity and bring objectivity to your business. When you bring objectivity, you bring organization, you bring seriousness, you bring progress, you will produce results.
So, “how can I set objectivity?”, Is that what’s running through your mind? Let’s see that in detail:
Bringing objectivity means bringing three things to the table:
- Measurable Goals
- Measurable Progress
- Measurable Results
Measurable Goals:
When you decide your goals. Make sure your goals are measurable. There’s a saying by someone, that “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.”, Same way if you overwhelm with plans (Goals) then you are setting yourself for failure. Goal setting can fail you let me show you some examples of subjective vs. objective goals.
I’d advise you to pick one big goal for your business for the next year. And three other Key Three goals for making the Big goal possible. Let me show you some examples of subjective vs. objective goals.
#1 The Big Goal
Subjective: Make my company more profitable
Objective: Increase my company’s profits by 50% (From $63,000 to $137,000)
#2 Key Three #1
Subjective: Get more customers for my business
Objective: Add 1200 new customers by 2016
#3 Key Three #2
Subjective: Get more exposure
Objective: Add 12,000 subscribers to my email list
#4 Key Three #3
Subjective: Meet more partners
Objective: Sign 12 strategic partnerships
Measurable Progress
If you thought through your goals and set it as a measurable goal already, it’s easier to track progress.
When you track progress, it’s best to adopt the model of sprints. Usually, large companies go for a three month (12 weeks) sprint. It’s a short and sweet time period to make some progress. And to review your goals.
It goes like this, divide your goal measure into twelve and set targets for each month, where you should be. Note that, during a few months your sales may surge due to external factors like climate, or political conditions. That’s the reason the 12-week sprint is going to make more sense to you.
The point is that, even if you fail to make the goal for a month, you can catch up the next month, however, your hard goal is to achieve the Quarter’s goals.
There is a book on how to make this 12-week plan work out. Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book yet. But a respectable person recommended me the book. So, it should be good.
Here’s the link to the Amazon page, if you’d like to buy that and read more about this topic: The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months
Book aside, I’ve prepared a spreadsheet dashboard with the Big Goal and Key Threes and charts for the same to track progress. Read on now.
Measurable Results
In order to measure your results, you need to have the proper systems and processes in place to report the numbers in real-time.
The best way to do something related to sales and marketing is using a reporting tool such as Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Hubspot CRM, Salesforce CRM, or others.
For finance, your existing financial reporting software can already do a good job. The free and easy way to get your finances together would be to sign-up for an online Finance software. The one I recommend is WaveApps, it’s free and also reporting is really good and user-friendly.
For other custom workflows and solutions, you can implement using manual process documents as I outlined it here. But the problem about manual process documents is that measuring requires manual effort and it will be error-prone.
Another option to have custom workflows could be by using google docs and forms. I’ll explain this in one of the upcoming posts on how you can use google docs to set up a workflow.
Even there, the measurement will be error-prone. Google docs are not the best way for you to build a custom workflow.
The best way is to use a Business Process Management software to build the workflows and also generate the relevant metrics for you automatically. You can go for custom software, but for building your business processes they are not the best way to go about.
Here’s the giveaway I promised: Google Sheet to define the Big Goal, Key Threes, and Track Progress For 2016
For a limited time, I’m available for a 30-minute strategy session. We can talk about how systemization can help your business to INCREASE YOUR PROFITS. You can schedule a 30-minute call for free at my profile here: https://calendly.com/mzee/30min
GET THE GOALS AND PROGRESS SPREADSHEET
by Ahmed Muzammil | Dec 23, 2015 | Business, Management, Marketing |
I discussed 7 different ways to double up your profits in an earlier blog post. In this article, I am focussing on teaching you how to build more revenue for your business. Additionally, you will find some random ideas I have brainstormed for making it possible.
Get More Customers
- Increase your customer base.
- Bump up your marketing efforts.
- Build your authority figure.
- Get a front-end offer. (a small ticket offer to onboard a client)
- Hire more experienced salespeople who have already been there and done that.
- Get advice from experts. Hire a coach.
- Get your messaging clear on the product or service. Hire a copywriter to sketch it out for you.
- Use social media to generate more leads. Put up youtube videos, use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
- Build up your email list.
- On-board JV partners, bring in more clients through them.
Increase your prices
- Increase the price of your product to at least 50% above market price – this gives your product some additional perceived value. Of course, you should deliver the value and the product should be worth paying for.
- Add a bonus and increase the price.
- Add more value to your product and increase the price.
Get People to buy more from you – Increase the Customer Life Time Value (LTV)
- Add upsells to your product – build up your value ladder.
- Sell products of your JV partners to your existing customers.
- Add additional product lines to your business.
- Add different versions of your product.
- Provide training packages.
- Provide consulting packages.
by Ahmed Muzammil | Dec 20, 2015 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing |
1. BOOST YOUR MARKETING
Increase your marketing efforts. Bring in more leads. Get the word about your company out.
More leads count to more profits, as you will get more clients. You can use online ads or leverage on an efficient offline method to do this.
Sometimes cold calling your earlier prospects, and leads can also help. Also, you can ask your existing customers for a referral.
2. REINVENT YOUR PRODUCT OFFERING
Optimize your product or service offering to improve conversion. Re-inventing your product or service offering can increase the likability of your product.
Eventually, it can drive to an improved lead to customer conversion. Sometimes even adding a bonus would help.
For example, a car wash services company can offer a gift of a non-slip dashboard mat. Although the mat may cost just $1, it might end up convincing the customer to accept a higher price. Plus, when they compare two car wash companies, your offering can stand out.
3. BUILD A PRODUCT PATH FOR YOUR BUSINESS
It’s about increasing the Customer’s Life Time Value (LTV). Add more products and services to your business, so that you add sensible offerings for your clients.
It’s called a product path or upselling. So a customer can buy a cheap ticket item and gradually you can move them through the product path to a higher ticket item.
An example of a Cleaning Services business would be to offer a yearly contract or a painting service.
So imagine, that the customer pays $50 and signs up for the cleaning service. The next step could be that the cleaning services company can offer them a monthly contract that runs for a year at $100 a month.
That’s a $1200 in extra revenue for one customer. Or, in the case of offering a painting service, it could lead to a sale of $2000 to $4000.
4. SYSTEMIZATION & AUTOMATION
Decrease your operational cost by systemizing parts of your company operations. You could do this by using,
- Operational guides (which I showed you as an example in my previous post)
- Build a Custom Software
- Using Business Process Management (BPM) tools.
5. CHARGE MORE
Increase the price of your products and services. Are you charging market rates or below market rates for your products and services?
If yes, you should consider raising your price. Raising your price will filter out the cheap buyers who sometimes end up being the most demanding customers.
Also, charging more means you achieve higher revenue with less number of customers. Which will also bring your operational costs and customer service costs down.
6. OUTSOURCE
Outsource your operations. Are some roles in your company good enough to work from a remote location?
You can find Virtual Assistants online costing about $200-300 a week from the Philippines or India. You can also find plenty of freelancers on Freelancer.com and Upwork.com from other countries.
Freelancers and Virtual Assistants can offer a wide range of services from design and development, to cold calling and event organization even personal errands like scheduling a doctor’s appointment.
7. JOINT VENTURE PARTNERSHIPS (JV)
Create partnerships. When you create connections with fellow business owners, it could also add more revenue to your business.
Some JVs will be reference providers for your business, also known as Affiliates. They might be running a business similar to yours but your product could be an upsell for them.
And for some JVs, you could be the affiliate for their business. i.e. You could upsell your customers their products. And take a commission out of the sale.
These are 7 different ideas to increase your profits two-fold. If you want to read about 3 ways to increase the revenue of your business, then read my next article: 3 Ways To Add More Revenue To Your Business
