Valuable information on email copywriting

The first live webinar I was exposed to at Mequoda Group was the Email Subject Line Smackdown.

It was a very refreshing 90 minutes with three of America’s top copywriters, Peter Fogel, Mark Everett Johnson and Peter A. Schaible. Years of experience were shown through the guest panelists’ commentary and the light-hearted nature of the webinar, which made it quite enjoyable.

Among the highlights from this webinar was the “Smackdown” portion. We had asked attendees to send us their best performing email subject lines, which we then asked our team of copywriters to re-write.

Each copywriter created his own email subject line based off the previously submitted entries. The panel then discussed the reasons why they created the new email subject in the specific manner they did.

From here, we let the audience vote on the best subject line. Who would win? One from three of our copywriters, or the control? Despite the original subject lines being considered “best performers” by the publishers who submitted them, in every Smackdown the prevailing subject line was never the control.

These tips will get your email read

The Email Subject Line Smackdown taught a lot about the art of copywriting. Nowadays, I feel the information from the webinar can be utilized more than ever as everyone from CEOs to interns are asked to create original promotional copy.

During the webinar, Mark Everett Johnson offered four tips to follow while writing copy for email subject lines. They are as follows:

Email Subject Line Tips:

- Offer a quick and easy way to do something.

- Talk about the readers’ self-interest. While doing so, give something that benefits them and they will be more responsive.

- Give your readers information that is newsworthy. It helps greatly when the news is good news.

- Arouse curiosity in your readers. This works the best when it directly relates to the previously mentioned guidelines.

Other helpful information on email copywriting

The average email user gets dozens of emails per day, while others may receive hundreds of email messages per day. As a publisher I’m sure you’re aware of this. An email subject line that fits the above criteria has a better chance of getting read. If you don’t follow specific guidelines while sending out email promotions, there’s a good chance your messages may be labeled as spam or end up in your recipients’ bulk folder. Pay close attention to the words you use, and be sure to familiarize yourself with these spam trigger words.

It’s true; the explosion of electronic media has put the burden of copywriting on different team members, many of whom do not like to write in the slightest.

If this applies to you or your team members, don’t worry too much. There are resources that can be utilized to learn the art of copywriting and we can help provide these resources. For instance, do you know about all the email copywriting archetypes that exist? We have compiled and named them for the benefit of all writers. All of these archetypes can be found in The 17 Best Email Subject Lines white paper for free.

If you were part of the Email Subject Line Smackdown, or wish you were, be sure to attend our upcoming Email Copywriting Workshop for more insight and critiques from Mark Everett Johnson. Register early for the chance to submit your own email subject lines.

Last chance to sign up for our webinar on keyword research

Register now for Keyword Research Step-by-Step

Spend 90 minutes participating in our Keyword Research Step-by-Step webinar and you will experience the exact process needed to build a Keyword Universe and a Google Visibility Report (GVR) for your website.

This information will help you:

-Set guidelines for your editorial and marketing staff.

-Create titles for articles, books and products.

-Discover niche topics your audience is searching for that you weren’t aware of.

-Develop a style guide for tagging articles and other content.

-Target, track and manage your SEO efforts and results.

Are you doing keyword research yet?

If you aren’t, you should. Knowing what keywords are being searched for will leave you with concrete knowledge surrounding the mentality of your audience. You can then optimize your website and content to coincide with the results. Chances are your website will rank higher in Google if properly designed.

Keyword research will also tell you what keywords you shouldn’t bother with due to an excess of competition. It’s likely that other phrases will be more beneficial for you.

Other important topics covered in our Keyword Research Step-by-Step include:

-How to understand and compile keywords

-How to research the popularity of your keywords

-How to determine your website’s visibility

-How to perform the process of deleting insignificant keywords

-How to add new keyword clusters

If you publish a blog, newsletters, eBooks, magazines, or any type of digital informational products, then SEO campaign management will help your content get found and indexed by Google. This in turn will help generate visibility for your work.

Keyword research will definitely make you consider how you create content for now on. After learning from this webinar you will find yourself paying more attention to titles you create, articles you write, meta tags you use and design options when updating your website.

Does keyword research make a big difference?

We have seen proper keyword research help websites grow. In fact, KnittingDaily.com grew by 65% in only 12 months.

And as we all know, the bigger your audience is, the better chance of more revenue.

If you’re looking to have an advantage over your competition, register for Keyword Research Step-by-Step now and make keyword research part of your daily publishing routine.

Apple iPad Brings 3rd Generation User Interface to the Masses

The iPad seems to be exactly what we need to move computing forward. But the internet verdict is in: iPad will be a flop. All these complaints sound just like “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.” comment made about the iPod when it debuted eight years ago.

The internet is always quick to lampoon new Apple products because those who are vocal on the internet are big nerds. The nerds are focused on the technical limitations of the device (no Flash, no access to the filesystem, no multitasking, no webcam) while completely missing it’s strengths, and therefore, the big picture.

The big picture here is that iPad, like iPhone before it, is a massive step forward in usability. It brings us closer to computers as appliances and therefore makes them easier to integrate into our everyday lives.

The Third Generation of Computer Interfaces

A touch interface is fundamentally easier to use than a point-and-click interface, or even a stylus-driven interface. We interact with the world by using our fingers, why wouldn’t we want to interact with our computers in the same way? A touch interface, because of the size of our fingers compared to a pointer, forces everything to be bigger and therefore easier to find and manipulate. An infant can use an iPhone. Think about the first time you used an iPhone or an iPod touch. Did you have to read the manual? You probably didn’t. The way the interface worked with your fingers made everything easier to find, and reaction to your inputs made the experience seamless and intuitive.

A touch interface sacrifices the precision and power of a point-and-click interface for intuitiveness and flexibility. In nerd terms, it’s a new level of abstraction. Abstraction hides the details of how something works in order to make it easier to use.

Years of failed Windows tablets have taught us that trying to paste a touch interface over what is meant to be point-and-click interface is a recipe for disaster. Your fingers are far too cumbersome to replace the precision of a mouse and keyboard which are required to interact with a traditional desktop operating system.

iPad is a reinvention of personal computing, designed to make “computing” so easy that it isn’t even really computing anymore. You can pick it up and use it without all the headaches of using a “proper” computer.

With iPhone OS, many things have been abstracted away from the user, much like an automatic transmission abstracts the need to shift gears away from the driver. This means less power, but it also means that the entire thing is easier to use and gives you less headaches. There are many people (myself included) who prefer a manual transmission because it provides more power and control than an automatic, but most cars sold these days are automatics. Most people aren’t interested in the filesystem, multitasking, etc, just like most people aren’t interested in clutching and shifting. They want their car or computer to just work and more often than not, the things that enthusiasts want to give them more control over a device add unwanted complexity for the average user.

The nerds, of course, don’t get it, because they are so adept at dealing with the headaches brought on by complexity that they don’t even register anymore. (This is also why engineers make horrible UI designers.) But this doesn’t mean the snags created by complexity aren’t significant. They are very significant and tend to get ignored by the very people who have the power to fix them.

iPhone OS excels at abstraction. It gets the computer bits out of the way so you can use it as a phone, web browser, game device, or more than a hundred thousand other things.

Why It Matters in the World of New Media Trends

iPad is the computer so easy to use that it can do anything. And although iPad appears to be lacking in some places, it’s much, much better to add features to a product in the future than it is to pack them in too early and risk making the product too complex.

iPad (which builds upon iPhone, of course) is nothing short of the third generation of computer interfaces. First we had text interfaces, which were really only suitable for nerds; users who truly grokked what was going on underneath the hood of their computer. Then Apple popularized the GUI interface which brought computers to the masses, but not quite everyone. Even a GUI requires training, experience, troubleshooting and maintenance.

The touch interface is an entirely different beast. Almost anyone can use a well-designed touch interface because it requires you to be familiar with nothing more than your fingers.

The original Mac was considered to be nothing but a toy by power users in 1984. Today, I don’t know a single person who doesn’t use a GUI as their primary interface. Even users like myself who are comfortable using a command line interface prefer the GUI because it is easier to interact with on a day-to-day basis. It does a better job at getting out of your way when you need to do something. A point-and-click interface makes the same tradeoffs over a text-based interface that a touch-based interface makes over a point-and-click interface: precision and power for intuitiveness and flexibility.

For this third generation of interfaces, the leap forward is less extreme. The point-and-click interface has almost completely replaced the text interface; only programmers still need to use a command line. In contrast, touch interfaces and point-and-click interfaces will live side-by-side.

But, if the task you are trying to accomplish doesn’t require the power and precision of a point-and-click interface, there is no need to deal with the associated overhead of the point-and-click interface. You don’t need a mouse to read a book. You don’t need a mouse to watch a movie. You don’t need a mouse to look at a map. Hell, you don’t even need a mouse to surf the web. Why deal with the additional complexity when you don’t have to?

The portability and connectivity of iPad is the other piece of the puzzle. You will use iPad to do things you would never use a computer to do because a proper computer would be too cumbersome. Read a book or watch a movie on the go. Use it as a map in an unfamiliar city. Use it to draw with nothing but your fingers. Use it on the couch, the classroom, or the meeting room. With the App Store, we’ve barely scratched the surface.

Why You’ll Want One

iPad is the “magical” third device that finally moves our consumption of all media types”written, spoken, and watched” into the digital realm, and will even begin to blur the lines between the different ways of consuming media. (Imagine an issue of Sports Illustrated with pictures that, when tapped, become videos.) Some people argue that there’s no room for such a device, and the failure of Windows tablets proved this. I argue that the key to success for a device such as this is simplicity. A device designed for simple tasks needs to be simple. It needs to do what you want it to do, it needs to do it fast, and it needs to do it without you having to put any thought into how you are going to do it. iPad is this device.

Removing this complexity means we finally have the device we need to move away from dead trees for good. The only options we had until yesterday morning are inadequate. The laptop computer is too cumbersome. The smartphone is too small. The netbook is small, awkward, and slow. The Tablet PC is too complex. The eInk reader doesn’t do color or video. The iPad, however, is perfect.

iPhone, of course, can do these things already. But iPhone is and always will be hindered by a small screen and slow processor. A bigger screen and a faster processor makes for a better experience, but even if the next-gen iPhone has a bigger screen and faster processor, it won’t be on the same level as iPad simply because iPhone needs to be pocketable. These two enhancements make the device more intuitive and flexible than even an iPhone, and that’s the entire point of this third generation of interfaces.

As we march forward into the future, iPad will become both cheaper and more capable, and other players will enter the market. iPad computing is computing for the 21st century. It will integrate technology with our daily lives like science fiction has been predicting it would for decades.

iPad will be huge because the abstraction it provides simplifies the computing experience in a way that allows it to be integrated with our daily lives. At $499, this thing is going to fly off the shelves.

Insight from Kathleen Cubley, Editor of Knitting Daily

Kathleen Cubley, Editor of Knitting Daily

“I’ve been a knitter for about eight years, and my job at as the editor of Knitting Daily combines my editorial, marketing, and knitting skills. It’s not the easiest skill set to find!” – Kathleen Cubley

After having her own knitting blog for several years, about six months ago Kathleen Cubley became Editor of KnittingDaily.com. She’s been in publishing for twenty years; twenty-three if you count her time on a college newspaper. Until Interweave,  she worked in print media, both books and periodicals. Cubley’s experience ranges from editorial, production, print buying, and management. She’s even done a bit of marketing and catalog work.

Mequoda - Which CMS (ie: WordPress, Typo) are you using?
KC - We are currently using Community Server by Telligent.

Mequoda – Are you blogging for your company as part of your job (ie corporate) or is this a personal passion?
KC - I’m blogging for my company as part of my job.

Mequoda - Has your blog enhanced your professional reputation? How?
KC - Yes. It’s put me in the knitting community as an expert on Interweave and its products, and as a knitting colleague.

Mequoda - How often do you post a new blog?
KC - Three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Mequoda – Who is your target audience?
KC - All knitters and craftspeople.

Mequoda – What are you doing to grow your audience and to create customer loyalty?
KC – We put out freemiums several times a year. Additionally, we have a great Facebook fan site, and we post on Twitter as often as possible. We provide interesting, informative and inspiring blog posts, too!

Mequoda - How are you using social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin) to promote your blog? Has that changed the way you blog?
KC - Yes, we use those sites, but I don’t think it’s changed the blogging process for me—although I do try to post things that will translate well on those social media sites.

Mequoda - What is your main source of revenue: ads, sponsor, products sales, donations?
KC – Product sales are our biggest source of revenue, but we sell ads, too.

Mequoda - Approximately what percentage of your overall revenue comes from product sales vs. advertising/sponsorships or other sources?
KC – Advertising is responsible for about 14% of our total revenue goal.

Mequoda – What is you main source of referrals?
KC - KnittingPatternCentral.com

KnittingDaily.com December 2009 statistics from Compete, KeywordSpy and Yahoo Site Explorer

Mequoda - What key metrics do you monitor to analyze the health of your business?
KC – Delivery rates, open rates, click through rates, total revenue, RPM, unique visitors, opt in 1 and 2, Email Conversion Rate and Google Visibility Index.

Mequoda - How many sites have you linked to in the last 30 days?
KC - Approximately 30.

Mequoda - What changes have you seen in your market since you began blogging?
KC – Users have become more adept at online navigation. There’s been rapid community growth and participation. We’ve benefited from the instant feedback we get from the e-newsletters and we’ve seen a higher demand for free projects, tips, tutorials, etc. (as they can get it elsewhere) and a stronger need for video tutorials (as they can get those elsewhere, too). There’s also a surprising level of crossover with our other craft markets.

Mequoda - Any interesting experience you’d like to share?
KC - Readers seem to respond most positively to video tutorials, even over a free knitting pattern. They love having the video to refer to.

Mequoda – What advice would you give a new blogger?
KC - Get to know your audience before you begin blogging—it’s easy to alienate some of your audience if you assume demographics. It’s also important to respond to comments on your blog in a timely manner. I do, however, wait until there are a couple of questions and answer them at one time.

Mequoda – What ways are you planning to expand over the next year?
KC - We’re planning some iPhone apps, more digital product offerings, a wider range of freemium offerings (i.e. video), more work on social networking sites, collaboration with referring sites as well as our own to create more inbound links, implementing specific Knitting Daily branding in the Interweave Store, adding more subjects / definitions to the Knitting Daily glossary, and expanding our keyword universe.

Contact Information:
Kathleen Cubley, Editor
www.KnittingDaily.com
kcubley@interweave.com
Twitter @knittingdaily

A meeting of social media minds in Davos, Switzerland

Seven out of the world’s 15 most trafficked websites are social media sites, according to George Colony of Forrester Research.

A recent CNN article divulges this information. Sure, we all know that social media is the hot thing right now. However, I for one had no idea how extremely scorching it really is. Combined, Facebook and Twitter experience 155 million visitors per day.

Colony went on to say that media consumption is between five and six hours per day for average users.

I get roughly six hours of sleep per night, yet average users are getting that same amount in media exposure.

Why has social media taken over?

What has brought us to this point? What compels us as humans to participate in social media to the degree that we do?

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta believes it’s because the internet is becoming more social.

It’s hard to argue with the social nature of the web. Right now I could have a conversation in a chat room with someone from Australia. I can share photos, videos, and audio clips with this complete stranger and potentially form a bond while being thousands of miles away.

Van Natta definitely knows a bit about the social aspect as MySpace was a pioneering social network that allows people to share music, video and games.

In a similar vein, Twitter’s creator Evan Williams noted that more people are doing things since they are now motivated by like-minded individuals who they are connected to via social media.

The issue of privacy

Privacy was discussed at this convention as well. Some of these social networks practice different policies when it comes to the topic, and some have been scrutinized for their policies before.

Do you recall when Facebook adjusted its privacy settings? This adjustment made much more personal information available to the whole of the internet community who were not designated Facebook “friends”.

This of course raised complaints and brought up the notion that the sharing of personal information could negatively impact your professional life.

So how true are these notions? As publishers and business owners, do you agree? If you are hiring for a position do you consult Facebook to see if your potential hire is on there? And if so, what information do you look for in that person’s profile? I would love to hear from you on this.

What has social media taught us?

For one, social media has taught me that regardless of the niche subject, there is an audience for it out there, somewhere. Furthermore, it has made it possible to directly communicate with that audience. Surely all niche publishers can agree with this.

Social media has brought everything from daily minutia to extremely intimate elements to a computer near you. In my mind, that fact alone makes it a social and technological masterpiece.

How about you? What has social media taught you? Please comment, and then feel free to Tweet your answer to all your loyal followers…

And if you want to explore different strategies for successful social media marketing, attend our Social Media Strategy session at the Mequoda Summit in Napa Valley.