The most powerful sales approach of all can be found in our craving for certainty.

brain's need for certaintyTo put it at its simplest, our brains have a smart side and an incredibly dumb side.

What’s scary is that the dumb side has way too much influence over the decisions we make. This is particularly true when it comes to our hopes for the future.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at an example.

Imagine two experts, both of whom are going to give us some advice on how to lose weight. Specifically, they are going to tell us how to lose 10 lbs over the course of the next 30 days.

The first expert is a doctor and researcher who has been studying weight loss for 30 years.

He talks about the multiple influences involved – genetics, food choices, exercise, family dynamics, mental health, work stresses, time of year and so on. He explains the complexity of weight loss and how one plan might work for one person, but not for another.

He makes some general recommendations, but again qualifies his advice by pointing out the multiple variables involved.

Now for our second expert. He may be a doctor, or not. It doesn’t really matter.

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Monday Spark: If you’re not doing CRAZILY energetic work, you’re not trying hard enough.

high energy creative with two cellosMost of us set the bar way to low when it comes to believing what we are capable of.

We do good work. We are productive. We put energy into our work.

But how often do you do CRAZILY good work?

How often are you CRAZILY productive?

How often do you put a CRAZY amount of energy into what you do?

We can all do it. It just that we don’t reach up that high very often.

If you want a little inspiration, take a look at what these two guys do with their cellos…

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The importance of pre-selling on your content pages [PRESENTATION]

pre-selling web contentOne way to define the various types of pages on a website is to place them into two main categories — sales pages and content pages.

The purpose of sales pages is self-evident.

But the purpose of content pages is a little less easy to define.

Some content pages are created specifically to attract organic search engine traffic. Others are created to become popular across social media. And a few are created with the specific purpose of informing and educating the site’s readers.

Vaguer still is the connection between the content pages and the sales page.

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Is your web content good enough to be curated?

content curationAs I explain in this video, I think the days are past when you can get away with asking, “Is this content good enough?”

Smart content marketers now need to raise the bar considerably, and ask themselves a much tougher question, “Is this content good enough to be curated?”

Watch the video and then keep reading for some more tips and resources.

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Monday Spark: Remember the very best work you have done.

first prize for good workWe all of us suffer from self-doubt from time to time. We have good days and not so good days. Days when we think we can conquer the universe, and days when we feel we’re not even worthy to get paid for the work we do.

Welcome to the life of a freelancer!

Hopefully you have more up days than down days.

For when you do have the occasional down day, here is something I do to snap myself out of it.

I think back to some work I did that was really good. Maybe it performed incredibly well. Maybe I was just particularly proud of what I created. Either way…

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7 Headline approaches that will hook your readers and keep them reading.

Writing powerful headlines for web content is a forgotten craft.

I don’t mean the craft itself is forgotten. I mean we simply forget to use it.

Somewhere in our minds we know the headline is important. We know it’s what hooks the reader, or not. And we know it has a big impact on whether or not our content is shared through social media.

So how come we keep grinding out boring and unenticing headlines for our content pages?

I don’t know what your excuse it, but for myself I sometimes publish content with boring headlines simply because I have forgotten to rework the placeholder headline I started out with.

This is a side-effect of the way I write any page or post. I throw down a placeholder headline as an anchor to get myself started. It’s often simply a short description of what I plan to write about.

The trouble is…

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