Archive | August, 2018

You subscribe to a certain marketer’s emails, blog and tweets. He writes a blog post saying he’s headed to the Incredible Fantastic Marketing Symposium tomorrow. The next day you get tweets he sends during his airport time, and a little later he sends you another update telling you he’s arrived and he just met Joe Rich Bucks Guru!

Have you had this experience? Next, he sends you updates via his blog, tweets, Facebook status and emails filling you in on all the details and sharing some of the new ideas he’s picked up. Really, you can’t help but feel like you’re there yourself, and you’re really into it. Near the end, he tells you to watch out for an incredible deal he’s putting together with Guru’s 1, 2 and 3, and when he sends the offer, you can’t help but check it out (and maybe even pounce on it, what the heck!)

So how did he manage to hook you into sharing the whole experience with him, and maybe even making a purchase you hadn’t planned on?

Sharing a live event with your readers isn’t magic, but it does take some skill to pull it off effectively. And this isn’t just for Internet marketers attending conferences – this is for anyone in any niche who is at a live event. Maybe you cover local sports on your blog, or you’re a foodie at a culinary show, or you’re a book reviewer going to a writer’s conference. Whatever the event, if you can effectively share it with your readers, you can amp up your professional credibility by several notches in one weekend while increasing your readership and even your sales.

Here are 9 tips for effectively live blogging an event…

1. Know your purpose. What do you hope to get out of your live blogging? Do you want to better connect with your readers? Educate them? Increase your readership? Sell a product? By knowing your purpose going in, you’ll have a much better idea of how to proceed. For example, if you’re looking for new readers, you’ll be spending more time on Twitter with real time updates. (Don’t forget to ask for the retweets.)

2. Get it right the first time. At a live event you don’t have time for rewrites. That’s why you’ve got to get it right the first time so that you can spend as little time as possible rewriting and correcting mistakes. Speed is paramount – after all, if you have to spend 100% of your time writing, you won’t have time to network or even enjoy what’s happening.

3. Go for quality, not quantity. Maybe you’re at a weekend training and you’ve got six different classes to attend. Go to all six and blog about each one, right? Well, no. It’s better to pick and choose what you’ll be writing about so that you can provide high quality content your readers will enjoy. If you’re trying to cover everything, you won’t cover anything well and you’ll just end up fried because you’re not taking breaks. Not to mention the fact that your readers may not appreciate getting six full blown 300 – 700 word updates in one day.

4. Share golden nuggets, not War and Peace. Let’s say you’ve chosen 3 of those 6 classes to attend. Now then, don’t cover them play by play or word for word. Instead, simply pick out the juiciest bits and share those. And if you’re tweeting, don’t forget to use the hashtag for the event so that people can find your tweets.

5. Make it personal. That is, don’t give a book report. Instead, put your own personal spin on what you’re reporting. Have a point of view and SHARE IT – otherwise your coverage will be no different from anyone else’s.

6. Be a real reporter. Real reporters don’t simply take what is offered – they ask questions, they get interviews, they investigate what’s going on and they even get the pulse of the entire event. Who can you talk to? What can you discover? Find angles of your own and not only will your reporting be more interesting – you’ll also find that because you’re being proactive, you’re enjoying yourself infinitely more then if you were simply a passive observer.

7. Team up. If you’re going with a friend or colleague, you might work together on writing and promoting your content. If not, get someone to help you with promotion so that you can focus exclusively on creating great content. For example, they can submit your posts to Digg and other sites for you, thereby freeing you up to focus solely on content creation.

8. Get questions from your readers answered at the event. Your readers will become even more engaged if you ask them for questions they want answered from someone there at the event. Think of yourself as their representative and take polls on what they want to know. Again, if you have an assistant, they can help you with this.

9. Recap the event. This can be your most popular post, so spend some time on it. Recap the highlights, add in things you didn’t write about previously and highlight the biggest takeaways.

Pssst: This is also a great time to plug the recordings of the event if you are an affiliate. 😉

You pour your heart and soul into a blog post and BAM! Someone hits you with a rude, disparaging comment. Should you fire back and show them just how wrong they are?

While it’s tempting to do just that, I advocate you take a breath first. Sit back, relax, go get a cup of coffee, walk around the block or do whatever you need to do to calm down.

Only when you are completely calm and rational should you even think about replying. Now reread the comment and look for something positive. Anything. You might have to look hard, but it’s there.

Maybe they said you don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you? If you did your research, this is your chance to point out the experts who back what you wrote. Perhaps the commenter completely disagrees with your point of view. This gives you a chance to honor the fact that their opinion differs, while calmly and rationally explaining why you hold yours.

The one thing that is paramount to keep in mind is that this is not a fight and should not become a fight. That adrenaline surge you felt when you first read the comment occurred because your primitive brain thought you were under physical attack and needed to defend your life. You do not. This is simply another person on the planet who chooses to view things differently than you do. And that’s ALL it is.

Also keep in mind – as nasty as this person appears to be right now, this is still a living, breathing human being with friends, family, fears, challenges and shortcomings. Don’t escalate the dialogue with confrontation. Instead, allow them to have their opinion. Respect their opinion, or at least give the appearance of respecting it (no matter how off-the-wall crazy it might be.)

Answer calmly, rationally and above all NICELY and politely. Often they will respond to your kindness with kindness of their own, and may even offer an apology. If they don’t respond, don’t worry about it. Your goal is not to win them over; it’s to appear as the same rational, intelligent, level-headed expert your readers expect you to be.

That’s why you’ll always keep in mind that your audience is reading this interaction. If you sink to the level of your detractor, you will lose respect and you will lose readers. But if you fail to take the bait and remain the same cool, calm professional you are, your readers will respect you even more.

The right header can give your website a professional look, attracting attention from your visitors and even increasing your conversions. The header can set the tone for your entire page, and can help visitors decide to linger or leave.

Obviously, you want to spend some time making your header look professional and convey exactly the message you want. After all, if a picture paints a thousand words, then your header can say a lot about you and your product or service.

With this in mind, here are 7 tips on how to make your header work for you instead of against you.

1. Use great graphics. Think of the biggest benefit your visitors get from your webpage, blog or product, and then find a way to convey that in a picture. For example – if you teach gardening, then a luscious, bold garden filled with vibrant flowers will work nicely. If you teach cooking, you’ll want a header that conveys the type of cooking you teach – Italian? Vegetarian? Keto?

But what if your main benefit isn’t so easy to convey? For example, you’re selling a product on how to get massive traffic through social media. One idea is to have a person telling another person, who tells another, who hands over cash to the website owner. Or perhaps it’s one of those diagrams where one person tells 5, who each tell 5, who each tell 5 (think MLM.) There are a number of possibilities – you’ve just got to find the right one for your website.

2. So you’ve got the perfect web graphic for your header in your, um, head, but you’re no graphic artist. Now what? Consider hiring a professional to create your graphic for you. View their portfolios to find someone who makes headers you like, and then hire that person. The money you spend to make your header can pay off very quickly, so don’t sweat the $50 to $200 it costs for a professional looking header.

3. Don’t forget the headline. Sure, you’ve got your website name and your graphic, but what about a slogan or headline? Your header is prime real estate so be smart and think of the perfect headline that tells exactly what your site, blog, product or service does. Make it compelling and curiosity or benefit driven, something that grabs prospect’s attention and persuades them to read further.

4. If possible, place your best keyword(s) in your header. Again, this is to grab the attention of your visitor and get them to read further on your page, rather than passing you by for the next website.

5. Align your header with your theme. If your website is blue and yellow, use those colors in your header. If your website uses a particular font, consider using the same or similar font in your header, and so forth. Your website should look seamless, not like a bunch of disjointed parts slapped together in Frankenstein’s basement.

6. Make your header credible. Don’t claim to be the world’s foremost leading authority on space travel unless you really are. Credibility is everything online.

7. Consider including a simple animation in your video. We’re not talking about those horrible neon flashing things here. But something subtle with a bit of movement will catch the eye and add interest.

Want some inspiration to get you started? Here are 55 Awesome Website Headers. Mind you, some of these are totally out-of-the-box different, and maybe more than you need…

http://www.topdesignmag.com/55-awesome-website-headers-for-your-inspiration/

Here’s another 30+ Cool and Creative Header Designs…

http://www.tutorialchip.com/inspiration/website-header-designs/