Persuasive copywriting–the kind of writing that compels the reader to place an order, make a purchase, or do some other business transaction with you–is a different animal. Why? Because it’s so important to build rapport with the reader. If you don’t have rapport, it’s almost impossible to get someone to open their wallet. One of the best ways to build rapport with your reader (or prospect) is to talk to and...

Last night I was honored to be the first speaker in the HypnoThoughts Monthly Marketing and Practice-Building Teleseminar Series. HypnoThoughts.com is the largest social network on the Interwebs for hypnotherapists, hypnotists and NLP practitioners. And, not coincidentally, HypnoThoughts was founded by our client Scott Sandland. We covered a lot of ground! I talked about the difference between advertising and public relations; how to think...

I love to sing. Love. It. I especially love those tight Barbershop harmonies. Recently my business coach (who is helping me investigate this “work/life” balance concept) gave me some homework: contact the Sweet Adelines and find out about joining. The Sweet Adelines is an international organization of female barbershop harmony groups, and there are some sizeable chapters in this area. Since I love easy homework, I dug in right...

Welcome to our new theme, Polished from ElegantThemes.com. We love the professional look and the easy customization of this great new theme. What we don’t love is the corrupt backup file that prevented us from transferring our images from our previous web host. We’re in the process of re-uploading and re-tagging the dozens of images we’re using on the site, so apologies for the fact that you’ll still find empty...

Call me Scrooge, but I hate online video. I know, I’m the only one. More and more internet marketeers are relying on video squeeze pages for one simple reason: they work. Adding a video to your squeeze page can give you a measurable boost in response rates. So, what’s my beef? Here are the peculiar, ideosyncratic reasons why I will not watch the video on your squeeze page: I can’t skim it. I see a blurry still shot of you...

I tend to be a late adopter in everything except science fiction TV franchises (see “Firefly.”) I’m very content to have the world do the beta-testing, and get back to me when the thing is finished. So I was pretty late to the Twitterverse. But back in January I started reading about it in earnest, when more and more clients started asking me for my Twitter name. Eventually I integrated Twitter into a promotional campaign...