Maine Creative Services – Page 13 – Affordable web design and SEO copywriting for small business

Fixing up the old blog house

Clean up, fix up, paint up” used to be the springtime motto. After a long winter of laziness and neglect (or was that just me?) the air is warm, the sun is shining, and everyone feels energized to spiff things up. It's spring!

For the past day or so, I put a scaffolding around this old blog and started making some long-needed repairs and and improvements. Have you noticed? Let’s see…

I finally got around to putting rounded corners on the top image. Now it matches the graphic below it.
A drop cap (i.e., an oversized first character) has been added to the first word in each post, thanks to a nifty plugin by Rodney Campbell (Remorhaz). Elegant, no? Like a magazine… ~~(Update: Hey, it didn’t show up in this post!)~~ (Update #2: Got it!)
I changed the body font to Calibri and bumped up the size one click. I liked the font that came with the theme, but this one is much easier to read. And hey, this blog is all about your comfort!
I finally got the Photo Dropper plug-in working. This is a terrific blogging tool that lets you to search for Creative Commons-licensed photos on Flickr by keyword, right from your WordPress post page. Highly recommended!
Technorati tags now grace the footer of this and all future posts, via Will Garcia‘s plugin. (I installed and auditioned about five others before finding this one. Nice work, Will!)
Finally, I added a Share this button so you can email my posts, or send them to any of the big social networking sites. Ahem. Of course, that’s assuming I ever write something worth sharing.

And that’s coming, too. Buckle your seat belt. I’ve got big plans for this old blog home!

Photo by… me!

Google says I'm the #1 copywriter

Well, for the search term “b2b sales letters” anyway.

#1 copywriter says Google - sort of It’s true. Of all the millions of copywriters in all the gin joints in all the world, my modest copywriting site shows up first when you Google that term. That’s way cool, I gotta admit. Even cooler is how I found out.

I got a call the other day from a guy in Austin. He’s seen my work and liked it, and wanted to hire me to write a couple of direct response sales letters for a new financial product his company was introducing in Austin. OK, great.

Like any good businessman, I always ask new clients, how’d you find me? A referral, perhaps? My blog? That outstanding warrant?

No, he said, Google. Do you remember what search term you used, I asked. I didn’t really expect him to remember. Half the prospects who find me via search can’t remember which search engine they used, much less what words they typed in the little box.

But he remembered: “B2b sales letters.”

I was a bit surprised. It’s one of my favorite kinds of copywriting — I love all forms of direct response — but I hadn’t optimized my site for that term. So I tried it myself, wondering how far down the listings I’d appear.

OMG, that’s me in first place, right at the very top of the results page! Whoa. That is very cool.

So remember what they say, folks: Don’t settle for anything less than #1. At least not when you need a sales letter or any kind of direct response copywriting. 😉

(Unless you’re searching on Yahoo. Then you want to demand #3.)

PS: Not to brag, but (ahem) I also show up #1 in both Google and Yahoo for “Maine copywriter.” (SEO? I’ll show you SEO…)

Spring: A great time for creative constipation

It’s ironic, because it’s spring. The azaleas are blooming and the forsythia are absolutely blinding in the sunlight. Nature is busting out all over, so you’d think this would also be a time of soaring creativity and output.

Maybe it is for you, but not for me, I’m afraid. I’m only just plodding along. After a very long, cold winter, the work and the words are coming slowly. I’m working on several larger- than- usual projects simultaneously (including a couple of information products that will be of great use to small business marketers like you and me. More on that later.)

But the creative work is taking a lot more time than usual. A lot more time than I’d like. But now I think I’ve finally figured out the problem.

Mental exhaustion. I haven’t had a real vacation in years. I’m self-employed, so I work every day. I love what I do, so sometimes it’s hard to push myself away from the computer. I desperately need to take some time off and just. have. fun.

It’s easy to forget that relaxing, recreation and fun are essential ingredients in a balanced life. Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way, calls the process “refilling the well.” Our storeroom of creative ideas and images eventually runs dry and must be replenished regularly. I haven’t been doing that. All work and no play, etc.

As the great George Bernard Shaw said:

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.”

So let me ask you… how do you stay refreshed and effective? What kind of leisure activities would you recommend? I really need a kick in the butt to get started.

Is this the ultimate product placement?

Look – up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane. No, it’s a corporate logo!

clouds An Alabama entrepreneur and former musician has taken product placement to new “heights.” Francisco Guerra has invented a cloud machine that creates clouds in the shape of corporate logos, then floats them off into the sky.

His “Flogos” machine produces tiny bubbles filled with air and a little helium, forms the foam into shapes and then pumps them into the sky. A single Flogo can travel as far as 30 miles and as high as 20,000 feet, Guerra says. It’s environmentally safe because the flogo is mostly water, air and a soapy agent that creates bubbles.

First in line to try out the new promotional medium is Disney, which will use one of the machines next month to send clouds shaped like Mickey Mouse heads into the air above Walt Disney World in Orlando.

Does that mean Mickey will soon fade into the sunset? Not likely. When it comes to advertising and promotion, I guess the sky is no longer the limit.

Photo by WTL

Did you let a good one get away?

Seth reminds us of the first rule of b2b selling:

“If it gets to the RFP (Request for Proposals) stage, you lost.”

In other words, you should already have dazzled the prospect with your knowledge and ideas and closed the deal — long before it ever reached that point. As Godin put it:

“The RFP is an organizational punt, it’s a way of saying, ‘it’s all a commodity, we can’t decide, cheap guy wins.'”

And who wants to compete on price?

Info-marketing for attorneys

Lawyers are the latest professionals to use their written work as marketing tools to attract clients.

JD Supra is a Web site that gives consumers legal information while helping lawyers raise their profile. The site hosts its members’ articles, court papers, legal briefs and other tidbits of their craft. Along with each document is a profile of the lawyer who wrote it. Thus, if you have a legal problem and want to do some online research, you’ll presumably find not only the information you want — but a lawyer who can help.

Says the New York Times:

Contributing lawyers get publicity and credit for the socially useful act of adding to a public database, and visitors get free information, said Aviva Cuyler, a former litigator in Marshall, Calif., who founded the business. “People will still need attorneys,” Ms. Cuyler said. “We are not encouraging people to do it themselves, but to find the right people to help them.”

It also levels the playing field in a competitive field. “The site puts solo practitioners like me on an equal footing with huge law firms, providing exposure that would otherwise be nearly impossible to get,” said Mitchell J. Matorin, a lawyer in Needham, MA, who launched his own practice last summer.

Free Credit Report: deceptive advertising?

“What the headline giveth, the small print taketh away,” grumbles the old advertising cynic. Sad to say it’s true, even in this era of supposed transparency.

Take the TV ads for FreeCreditReport.com. A young guy dressed like a pirate, singing (OK, lip-syncing) a catchy little tune about he’s stuck in this nowhere job because his credit was whacked. If only he’d taken advantage of the sponsor’s free credit reporting service.

Except the free service isn’t really free. First you have to enroll in their (paid) Triple Advantage program. But that fact is kept hidden until (literally) the very last line of each spot. The net effect is to admit that everything you’ve said up to this point has been a lie. The truth is, you have to pay $15 per month for X before you get the free Y. Which means Y isn’t really free.

Clever, I admit. They build the ads around the “free” offer, the bonus, even though what they’re really pushing is the paid service. FreeCreditReport is from Experian, the big credit reporting agency, not some fly-by-night. So I assume they honor their promise to cancel your membership within four days after you ~~come to your senses~~ cancel.

But it’s understandable why you might be hesitant. Any company that’s deceptive about a supposedly “free” service might also be the kind of company that makes it really difficult (read: nearly impossible) to cancel once you’ve handed over your credit card information. After all, why would a company like that suddenly play it straight when it comes to letting you out of your contract?

My purpose is not to knock Experian, but to caution against this kind of “gotcha” marketing tactic. They can backfire and cause grave harm to your brand. Think about that next time your marketing guru suggests making pie-in-the-sky promises. If you deliver real value to your customers, there’s no need to be deceptive or sneaky.

And in the Internet age, you will be found out.