Horror Movies, Great Copywriting & Profitable Websites
The other night, I was working away at my computer watching “Paranormal State” on Netflix (New to Canada! YAY!) and because it isn’t exactly a show for my kidlet, I plugged in my headphones. The apartment eventually got dark, but because I’m quite a connoisseur of scary stuff, I didn’t pay much attention. It takes a lot for a movie to scare me.
Suddenly, I heard something move to my left, and I admit it: It scared the crap out of me! I yanked the earphones out of my ears and literally looked to make sure I was alone.
Of course, I laughed at myself. It was silly, but the show and my own habits set me up to freak out and do exactly what I did. It did scare me enough to start thinking though…how similar are scary movies to good websites? Is there anything I can learn here?
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Scary Movies Bring Everything Together
Horror movies use our minds to scare us. Every element works to gain our trust, suck us into the story, and make us part of the story…the music, the images, the sounds…it all fits together perfectly.
Websites aren’t supposed to scare us…well, some are, but generally speaking, they’re not supposed to. What they are supposed to do, however, is to gain our trust, suck us into the sales funnel, and make us buy into the ultimate goal. Every element needs to work together to do it.
The Perfect Introduction
If you’ve ever watched Paranormal State, you’ll notice it starts off with a black screen, completely devoid of everything except simple white lettering. The sounds are reminiscent of something banging on the pipes and other sounds you’d normally hear at the scariest points of a movie.
The message is written clearly, simply, and is very much to the point. The text is in a font you’d normally see used on official paperwork, and before the show even starts, you know the entire show will be presented from an investigative standpoint.
Websites and copywriting need to set up the visitor instantly. The first thing they notice should already tell them what to expect from the rest of the site. If you were to think of your website like a movie, it should give hints about the main elements of the plot.
Not sure what the plot for your website or copywriting should be? Here are a few tips:
- Start with the end in mind – Decide where you want visitors to be at the end of their visit. Hopefully, this is at the end of a conversion.
- Decide where each ‘viewer’ starts - Websites are a lot like a ‘choose your own adventure story’. Your job is to figure out where each segment will land and begin their journey. Even though they may start at multiple locations, they should have a similar theme.
- Connect the Dots - Make a note of all the important ‘intersections’ for each of your conversion paths and make sure each visitor can go through the ‘story’ without getting lost. Can they skip to the end at any time?
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Focus Attention On the Most Important Information
In a scary movie, you’ll notice that only one element, sound, visual stimuli, or script, will peak at any one time while the foundation of the story is being laid. At the key points where you’re being drawn into the story, only one element will build tension. This might be a character talking while nothing notable can be seen onscreen, or it might be the music slowly building the tension while all is quiet and still.
Then, as you near the climax of the movie, you’ll hear the intensity build in two of the elements. The music will intensify as the characters begin to realize whatever it is the climax will be. You’re naturally pulled into the storyline and find yourself experiencing the story yourself. Waiting. Wondering. Wanting to know. The climax? All three elements reach their peak.
Now, think of your conversion process.
While it may not be as noticeable in a shorter process, ecommerce stores make it relatively easy to plan out. Think about it:
You start the story by landing on the site. Already getting an idea of what you should be looking for, you follow a category or click on a product page.
Once there, the theme of your visit surrounds this main piece, giving you information, and convincing you to purchase that item. There are other paths you could take, other products you could purchase, but the main focus should be centered on the product you initially chose. In short, even though there are other elements present, the other stimuli should be muted and naturally direct focus on the main path.
From there, you place your item in the shopping cart. The end (the checkout button) should be calling to you, but things like sales, free shipping if you buy $X more, and other offers should be intensifying. They’re all indications of the climax to come.
By the time you’re done, you can’t help but think about how nice it will be to get your items in your home and in your very own hands. Clicking the checkout button? That’s the climax. The moment of relief from all the built up tension.
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Every Story Has a Hero
No matter what kind of movie you watch, they always have a star. There is always one main character you can rely on to find happiness, save the day, or defeat the bad guys. This is where most of the focus is centered, and generally, where the story begins and ends.
Does your site have a hero? Does it have a product, a group of information, or offer that everyone can look to for help? Will it save the day?
The next time you watch a horror movie, or any good story, watch it, enjoy it, and be entertained, but watch it a second time. Take time to watch it with the sound off, listen to it without watching the screen, and if you can, read a script from the show. Make note of how the elements work together and how the movie draws you in until you convert and buy the story. Then, look at your own website, or get someone else to do it, and see if it does the same.
Is Google Getting Into Flight Comparison Shopping?
While looking up the distance between my hometown and Vancouver to find out how far away a friend was from me, I came across this:
If you look at that, you’ll notice there is a spot for you to enter your departure and return date. It seems Dean Cruddace was able to reproduce the same results with his query:
Google now selling flights? No! They’re pushing travel sites. When you click the link, you get this:
Interesting right? But wait! There’s more!
The site links below the title link are as follows:
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Expedia – Travelocity – Priceline – Orbitz – Hotwire – Kayak – CheapOair
Now, the title link has several referrers: http://www.expedia.com/pub/agent.dll?qscr=fexp&flag=q&city1=YXH&citd1=YVR&time1=720&time2=720&cAdu=1&cSen=0&cChi=0&cInf=&infs=2&date1=10/29&date2=11/05
The site links? As Thomas Fjordside pointed out, some have ref=googleflightlink. Others have what looks to be affiliate codes, and others have nothing really substantial aside from tracking codes.
So what’s the deal here?
Are these sites simply authority sites? Has a deal been reached with the companies? Or is this something they’re just testing and those are the sites they picked out of their magic hat?
Google Beating Up On the Small Guys By Profiting Off the Big Guns?
This has me asking lots of questions:
- Has Google entered into partnership with Expedia?
- What about the little guys who are missing out on the profits?
- Will this spread to hotels, cruises, tours, car rentals, and other competitive niches in the travel industry?
Not sure I like what’s going on here, but I’m sure we’ll find out more in the near future. I’m going to do a bit more digging around, and I’ll get back to you when I find out more. In the meantime, have a look yourself and let us know what you find!
What are your thoughts on the new feature? How could clients use that to their advantage?
Content VS Context — Which Is More Important?
Is the material more important than where you publish & promote it? Or is your priority the other way around? Should you worry about where your content appears rather than what you’re actually publishing? Can crap content be successful if it’s advertised in the right space?
A short while ago, Charlie Southwell of the soon-to-launch Screendrip asked these same questions. I certainly don’t claim to have answers he was seeking, but I do think the answers are subjective. I think the right answer depends on how you look at the situation.
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Content Is More Important
As humans, our instinct is to judge and assess everything we encounter. Our brains automatically want to identify friend from foe, good from bad, and helpful from harmful. Since the days of cave dwelling and spear throwing, our ability to assess our surroundings and place everyone on the scale from 1 to 10 contributes or harms our chance of success and survival.
When you meet a complete stranger for the first time, you use all the information you receive about that person consciously and subconsciously to form an impression of them. Their bad fashion sense, for example, will influence your opinion just as much as, if not more than, their posture and the way they carry themselves.
By the time the stranger opens his mouth and extends his hand, you are already 80% sure of where he fits in your mind. If he speaks poorly or says something distasteful, it will surely lock him into a lowly position in your mind. If, contrary to his appearance, he speaks positively and impresses you, you’re likely to reassess him. The stranger will stick out in your mind, at the very least, just like lawyers with long hair and hippie clothes or the clean business suit-wearing punk rocker.
Think of your site as the stranger. His clothes are your design, his posture, your navigation and layout, and his words are your content. The hand he extends? Your comment system and contact information. If you routinely say things (produce content) no one wants to read, use, or enjoy, the visitor’s opinion of you is going to decline sharply regardless of where you put it.
The bullshit posts on Techcrunch or the poorly researched content CNN has published in the past are good examples. If this happens too often, it will severely damage their credibility, if it hasn’t already.
That being said, the value of content is subjective; how much content is worth varies from person to person and depends specifically on the individual’s knowledge base and situation. For a small business owner new to the Web, a guide to creating a successful website would be worth its weight in cold. For the Internet marketer who has been online since the mid 1990s, it’s redundant, old news, and wasting his time.
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Context Is More Important
Have you ever come across an amazing tool, a great resource, a smart individual, or a wonderful business and thought it was a shame that no one else knows about it? Or, thought about how sad it is that it’s on an unusable or horribly ugly platform? This is a case of bad context taking away from the value of the content.
It’s sort of like handing out $100 bills to everyone who walks passed you. If you were to offer me a $100 bill with no strings attached, you can bet your bonnet I’d take it. I wouldn’t think twice. What’s it worth? $100!
For me, that money has value. It would pay my power bill, put food on the table, or pay my son’s school fees. If you were to do the same thing in the middle of the cow pasture, however, it’s not going to work out quite how you’d like it to. To the cow, that $100 bill is getting in the way of what he really values: Food!
If you were to create a comprehensive travel guide on Antarctica, this bit of information would be priceless on a travel site. This information isn’t exactly widely available, and for travelers interested in going somewhere different, it would certainly fit the bill. If you were to promote this content on the financial social site Tip’d and publish it on CNN Money, however, most visitors would be disappointed in the content, if not annoyed.
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Great Content, Publishing and Marketing Go Hand In Hand
The way I see it, you can’t create content without considering where you’re going to publish it and where you’re going to market it. You also can’t decide where you’re going to market the content or where you’re going to publish it without considering the content itself. It’s sort of like trying to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without bread, peanut butter, or jelly. You have to consider all three, at the same time, by putting each element in priority.
If you want to market in a particular place, you need to choose a host for your content that performs well on that platform or in that niche. You also need to create content the visitors there are interested in and would find valuable.
If you have a particularly great piece of homeless content, you need to identify the right site to host it. You also need to determine which social site or marketing platform that content would do well on. The same can be said for your host. If you’re asked to create content for a specific site, find the right marketing platform and determine which content would be best.
Which is most important for you? Content or context?
The Fine Art Of Creating a Guest Posting Strategy
When was the last time you created a guest posting strategy? How carefully do you choose the host sites for your content?
Guest blogging (content placement) is one of my favorite ways to build good links, expand a company’s reach, build authority, and bring more traffic to a site.
Guest posts can also be a smart alternative to paid links — many believe the links acquired through guest posting are worth more because they’re located in the content, rather than in a sidebar, or list of links. They’re less likely to disappear; they have a one-time cost, and give you the most bang for your buck.
If you want all this, however, you can’t just drop guest posts on the first site you come across. You have to choose the destination sites very carefully.
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Find Authority Sites To Guest Post On
Social Media Today recently published a list of the 10 Places To Find Blogs To Guest Post On. In it, the author listed several places that maintain collections of authority sites. This is excellent advice. It works well, but you can’t rely on this alone.
First, use search to find the ones the lists above have missed. Advanced search queries are a powerful way to find good guest posting opportunities.
You can find out more about advanced search queries here:
- Google Search Basics — Google’s Web Search Help
- Link Building Search Queries Collection — Search Engine Journal
- 21 Link Builders Share Advanced Link Building Queries — Search Engine Land
- Long List of Link Searches — SEOmoz
- Link Building Tools and Content-Based Link Opportunity Analysis– Ontolo
- Link Search Tool — Solo SEO
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Sort the Great Guest Posting Opportunities From the Good Ones
Finding the best places to guest post involves more than just locating authority sites on a related topic. In fact, if you focus purely on the link value of guest blogging, you’re missing out on the real SEO and marketing value this tactic can generate.
You need to find a spot to guest post that matches your goals and attracts your specific target audience. It should reflect the skills or strengths of your business, and open the door to future opportunities.
Being a copywriter, you’d think I’d post mostly on copywriting sites. This isn’t true. Instead, you’ll find I frequent SEO, social media, and Internet marketing sites, as well as various industry-specific sites. Why?
While there are plenty of authority sites in the copywriting industry, these sites have very little value for me:
- I’m rarely hired by other copywriters.
- My customers don’t read sites focused on copywriters.
- My business and I are painted into a corner. If I only post on copywriting sites, I’m perceived as being strictly a good writer. And while I do have excellent copywriting skills, I’m much more than that. To be a great copywriter, you need to know about more than just spelling and grammar. In reality, copywriting online involves SEO, social media, conversion optimization, branding, business, marketing, usability, buyer behavior, and much more.
- There’s no opportunity for growth, if I stay in the copywriting niche.
- I have more competition within the industry. This isn’t to say other copywriters disappear once you leave the industry, but unless you’re willing to get out there and stand out, you’ll blend in.
When I guest post, I focus on helping others see the value in quality copywriting and how to use it to their advantage. I help others understand how to integrate content into their businesses and websites, how to create winning content strategies, and how to achieve and surpass their goals because that’s what my products and services do.
In return, my guest posts have earned award nominations, become a recommended resource for governments and university professors, generated clients, and opened the door to opportunities I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. This is all in addition to the buzz, traffic, and additional links the practice initially created. This would have been much more difficult to accomplish if I had stayed on my own blog.
I would say these benefits are worth the time invested in choosing guest post destinations, and far more valuable than a $2,000 paid link. Don’t you think?
You can and should do the same with your guest posting strategy. To get started:
- Make a list of authority blogs and content-based sites.
- Study their style, direction and audience.
- Make connections with the site owners.
- Craft and publish your content.
That’s it!
Do you have a guest posting strategy?
Fun, Free Tools For Writers
Those of us who like words are a special breed. We love words and love to use them, particularly if it means we can psycho-analyze a topic and dissect it down to the letter. But sometimes, when we’re all alone with our laptops, blankets, pillows, and our cats, we just want to let it all go. We want to get all wild and crazy, take off our glasses, and let our hair down.
That’s where these fun, free tools for writers come in. Are they particularly helpful? Not really, but they are fun and they might even get our creative side going a little more.
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The Gender Genie
Did you know I can tell whether you’re male or female just by the way you write? Well, not really, but the Gender Genie thinks it can. Based on a New York Times piece, this nifty little tool will determine an author’s gender by running text through a specially designed algorithm.
I Write Like
Do you have a favorite author? Have you always wondered if you write like a famous writer? Well, now you can find out. I Write Like will analyze any content you’ve written and compare it to their database of content written by famous authors to see which one you match best. It’s fun, cool and sorta quirky, just like us!
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The Brainstormer
If you’ve ever suffered with writer’s block or have been looking for some inspiration for your latest story, you’ll want to check out The Brainstormer by Distraction Beast. In short, it’s a giant wheel of ideas with three movable circles of ideas. Imagine: a “healing journey with a cannabalist samurai” or “a tale of unconditional love with a Transylvanian shoe maker”. Yeah. Tons of wacky fiction goodness.
Make Your Own Comic Strips
(Strip Creator works, but you’ll need to make an account first and use a screen cap to host it elsewhere. The Bubblr project from Pim Pam Pum lets you use Flickr images while Pikistrips uses your photos.)
750 Word Brain Dumps
Admittedly, my vacation and some recent happenings have derailed this little project for me, but I’m waiting patiently to get back in it. I find 750 Words extremely helpful to just ramble on and I’m actually considering the idea of using it to finish one of the books I currently have on the go. I find that, after dumping almost a thousand words here, my mind is clear, I’m less stressed, and much more able to create everything from strategies to articles.
GobbledyGook Grader
Brevity. Clarity. Conciseness. Try the GobbledyGook Grader content analysis tool.
Linkbait Generator
When a little online app comes up with titles like ’8 Things Copywriters Have In Common With Unicorns’, it makes an instant fan out of me. The Linkbait Generator is definitely on my list. Granted, not all of the titles it comes up with are useable and some are a little adult, but they’re fun and they definitely get your mind going in the right direction. The only downside? I’d love to see them add more formats/headlines into the mix.
