18 Reasons Why You Need to Read Copyblogger

Home » Blog » Marketing » 18 Reasons Why You Need to Read Copyblogger

Copyblogger, which started back in January of 2006, is a wealth of information useful to any marketer or content creator. If you’re not reading it, you’re missing out on a tool that should be in the arsenal of anyone who writes content online. They cover virtually everything you might want to know about blogging and writing online copy, including how to use Twitter more effectively, overcoming writer’s block, and using your content to get new customers.

Still not convinced? Then check out the eighteen articles we’ve covered here, as just a small taste of what Copyblogger has to offer.

1. Learn the Habits Standing in the Way of Your Creativity and Success

In the article 8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity and Stifle Your Success, Dean Rieck discusses some of the most common things that people do that prevent them from reaching their creative potential, and stop them from being successful. It’s broken down into list form, with in-depth information about each habit, as well as simple steps you can take to break those bad habits.

…even if you’re no smarter than most people, you still have the potential to wield amazing creative powers. So why are so few people highly creative? Because there are bad habits people learn as they grow up which crush the creative pathways in the brain. And like all bad habits, they can be broken if you are willing to work at it.

As you can see from the quote above, the information in the article can be applied by almost anyone, whether you consider yourself “creative” or not.

2. Create Winning Openings for Your Blog Posts

In 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post with a Bang, Brian Clark shows us five great ways to open a blog post that will grab the attention of your readers. The five methods described here can be implemented on virtually any kind of copy, regardless of what its intention is.

A great headline mixed with a lame opening is like inviting someone into your house, only to slam the door in their face as they approach.

This post will make sure that your opening paragraph ushers your visitors into the rest of the copy, rather than slamming that door.

3. Learn to Stop Being Invisible

How to Beat “Invisible Content Syndrome” will teach you how to make sure your content gets seen, rather than just languishing on your site for weeks or months with few readers. It’s filled with practical advice on how to get traffic, specifically tailored to blogs.

Invisible Content Syndrome is an equal-opportunity menace. It doesn’t just hit lazy people, or people who don’t care about good content. In fact, every blog starts out this way. But some grow out of it quickly, while others get stuck there. And being stuck with Invisible Content Syndrome is amazingly frustrating. So let’s get you out.

Invisible content can hit any blog, with little regard for who the blogger is or what they’re writing about. This article gives concrete advice, like being useful and a good friend, that can help you overcome invisible content.

4. Set Your Social Media Efforts On Fire

Why sit back and wait for your content to go viral? It’s a risky strategy, and often results in no visitors and no views. Instead, try the techniques in Fanning the Social Media Flame for Viral Exposure. Don’t leave the viral potential of your content up to chance.

What is more common is that marketers need to fan their content to help it ignite and go viral. And sometimes that means stepping in when an accidental hit shows signs of life. How do you recognize those signs to take advantage?

The rest of the article goes on to tell you some specific ways to foster the spark a piece of content might have, to get it even more attention. And it’s all backed up with real-world examples.

5. Learn Better Information Architecture Through Helpful Analogies

We’re all familiar with window shopping, but rarely do we think of it in terms of online marketing. In her article, Does Your Site Hold Up to the Window Shopping Test?, Pamela Wilson explores the concept of window shopping and how it relates to website design and information architecture.

Online businesses have window displays too – or at least a good counterpart. If you’re doing business online, you may be surprised to know that your window display could be making promises that your store doesn’t deliver on.

We’ve all had the experience of seeing a beautiful window display and then being disappointed upon walking into the actual store. Don’t make the same mistake on your website that a lot of brick-and-mortar stores make; make sure your entire website meets the expectations set by your “window display.”

6. Get Expert Suggestions on How to Become More Influential Online

A lot of marketers out there would love to be able to tap the brains of online marketing experts to get ideas on how to increase our online influence. Copyblogger did just that, with their 60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online. This article collects the wisdom of sixty experts, all brought together on Twitter for The Influencer Project. Included are the “one thing” each of these experts said during that Twitter conversation that were found to be unique and essential to building online influence.

#46. Brian Clark. “Learn to be a storyteller. Narrative – it’s what makes us human. Big media does it great. You have to as well.” [email protected]

That’s only one tiny bit of advice included in this article. If you read nothing else included in this collection of Copyblogger posts, read this.

7. Become a Better Marketer with Some Help from Mad Men

Mad Men made copywriting sexy. And now you can tap into their tools of the trade with the The Mad Men Guide to Changing the World with Words. Taking quotes and concepts mentioned in the show, this article offers a great overview of what it takes to write great copy that sells.

They sit around thinking up the perfect ad. Then they convince their clients to spend beaucoup bucks on it. Millions of people fall all over themselves to buy the product, shifting consumer culture, spawning billion-dollar industries, becoming household names.

It’s what we’d all like to do, right? Create copy that spawns a new industry, one we’re at the top of. And the article here shows how to apply these principles not just to copywriting, but also to blogging.

8. Get More Blog Subscribers—Fast

We’d all like to add a few thousand subscribers to our blog in a day. And if you follow the advice set out in How to Get 6,312 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day, you might just be able to.

Existing businesses have incredibly valuable assets that others do not – customer and prospect lists. That being said, telling your existing customers about your new blog full of press release content and expecting them to come running is a recipe for mediocrity. If you don’t have an existing list, you can create an offer that is attractive to social media news site users and your results will be similar.

So instead of sitting back and expecting your customers to come running to check out your new blog, employ the tactics covered here to create a blog that your customers really want to subscribe to.

9. Write More Effective Copy

Writing copy that sucks your visitors in is the dream of every writer, whether online or off. 10 Secrets to More Magnetic Copy teaches you to do just that, in ten easy steps.

Some think that magnetic writing is all about talent. But a few simple techniques can make any piece of writing more compelling.

So, follow the techniques laid out here, and you’ll almost certainly write copy that will suck your readers in and keep them reading.

10. How to Find Customers with Your Content

A lot of us look at creating content in terms of pleasing our current readers and providing something they’ll find useful. We hope that that content will attract new readers and customers, too. But we often disregard the content marketing part of the equation. That’s what How to Use Content Marketing to Find Customers aims to show us.

Money doesn’t drop out of the sky just because we produce high-quality material. We need to put some time, thought and planning into the marketing side of the content marketing equation.

Creating great content is sort of pointless if we don’t learn to market it to attract new customers. We need to focus on both sides of the picture to get the maximum benefit from the content we create.

11. Learn to Use Twitter in Marketing Your Business

If your business is not already on Twitter, it really should be. But just being on Twitter isn’t enough to really grow your business. You have to know how to use Twitter to your best advantage. That’s what How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business teaches you.

When people I respect started singing the praises of Twitter, I decided to give it a go. At first I just didn’t get it. However, after a short while I was shocked at the level of access to high profile individuals I was able to achieve. This article reveals how bestselling authors and business professionals use Twitter to grow their businesses and reveals ideas you can employ to achieve Twitter success.

It’s a fantastic introduction to how to use Twitter to your advantage, as a way to grow your business and gain more customers.

12. Never Run Out of Great Blog Post Ideas

If you run a blog for your business, coming up with original post ideas can be time consuming and sometimes feel impossible. After all, you know that just regurgitating your most recent press release will almost certainly doom your blog to failure, but you’re just shot for other topics. When that happens, turn to one of the ideas in 50 Can’t-Fail Techniques for Finding Great Blog Topics.

Are you out of ideas for blog posts? Small wonder, if the only place you’re looking is inside your own head. We all need inspiration and you’re not going to find it banging your head against the desk and hoping an idea falls out. You need fresh inspiration if you’re going to come up with new ideas.

Follow the tips in this article and you’ll likely never find yourself at a loss for ideas.

13. Create a More Successful Email Newsletter

A good email newsletter is a great way to build brand loyalty. But even if you have a decent-sized mailing list, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting results. Sometimes, it just seems like no one is actually reading the email newsletter your sending out. 5 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Email Newsletter might give you some insight into why.

There may be seven thousand reasons why your newsletter won’t get the response you’re looking for. Most of those reasons have the same common problem, though: readers just don’t like it.

Read the article to make sure you’re not making one of these five fatal newsletter mistakes.

14. Learn to Build a Following of Raving Fans

We all dream of raving fans. Raving fans not only buy from us, but they also tell everyone they know about us. The Insider Guide to Creating An Audience of Raving Fans will show you how to foster and create a base of raving fans.

But 99% of the viewers probably didn’t find it the height of hilarity. I’d guess that 75% didn’t even know that the line was a joke. So why did the writers include the gag? Because the remaining 1% who did get it became fans for life.

The principle included here is a fantastic way to get your readers more involved, and to convert a portion of them into raving fans.

15. Write Awesome Twitter Headlines

Twitter brings a whole new set of rules to the art of creating great headlines. After all, you’re restricted to a lot less than 140 characters (when you take into account necessary characters for a link and for retweeting). The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines discusses how to create fantastic Twitter headlines that will get you clicks.

Twitter has become the place for sharing content links. If your content catches attention on Twitter and spreads, suddenly you’re getting significant traffic from people who may have never visited your site before.

We’d all like to get more attention from Twitter, and crafting the perfect headline can go a long way toward achieving that goal.

16. Go from Good to Great

There are a lot of good businesses out there. They have good sales, good customer service, good products. But they’re struggling to go from “good” to “great”. They’re not satisfied being “good enough”, they want to be leaders in their industry. 3 Steps to Take Yourself from Good to Great offers some basic advice on how to take your business to that next level.

There’s always room at the top, the guru says smugly. Don’t you want to smack that guy sometimes? How are you supposed to get to the top? And how are you supposed to pay your bills until you figure that out? But believe it or not, there’s a map to the top. And you don’t have to have superhuman skills, talent, or even perseverance to get there.

Take the advice in this fantastic post to move your business ahead, to go from “good” (where most of your competition is) to “great”.

17. Get a First-Class Business Education Online

Not every entrepreneur out there has an MBA (in fact, I would guess that most of them don’t). And most of them don’t have anywhere near enough time to go back to school to get one. How to Give Yourself a First-Class Online Business Education will show you how you can find all the information you’d ever want to know about business online.

Most of us who run online businesses get an education pretty similar to mine. We get some free stuff from our favorite blogs, we might pay for some information in a home study course or an ebook, and we cobble together a lot from pure observation.

Spend some time with this post to see how you can better educate yourself about business online, without having to invest thousands of dollars.

18. Learn to Shamelessly Self-Promote

From a young age, most of us are taught to be humble. We’re told not to brag about our own accomplishments, and that it’s much better to praise others for the things they do. But that doesn’t help if you don’t having anyone else to sing your praises for you and want to promote yourself online. So how do we get past the idea that talking about ourselves is a bad thing? The Art of Shameless Self-Promotion

If you take a look at the most successful (or talked about) people in any field, you’ll almost always see someone incredibly talented in the art of self-promotion.

Learning to successfully promote yourself is different than simply bragging about your accomplishments. And this post will show you exactly how it’s different.

Copyblogger Also Offers Subject Guides

In addition to their extensive archive of articles on a variety of subjects related to online content creation and marketing, they’ve also put together a number of pages that offer subject-specific information.

Be sure to check out each of these guides for more in-depth information.

About the Author: Cameron Chapman is a freelance designer, blogger, and the author of Internet Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.

Share