Web Content

Is there a market for more social media experts?

nick usborne social mediaEvery week I seem to find an article, post or tweet that mocks social media experts.

Granted, most of these pieces are written by social media gurus themselves, who are anxious to separate themselves from this influx of new competitors.

As I say in the video below, there are two sides to this story.

Yes, in one respect these gurus are right. A lot of people claim to be experts, based only on their own, personal familiarity with various social media sites.

But they are also wrong, because there are also plenty of other people who are taking the trouble to dig deeper and learn the skills of true social media marketers.

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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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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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My favorite way to make money as a writer [VIDEO]

money-making website videoFor most of the last 30 years I have earned my living by writing for clients, as a freelancer. And I have no complaints about that. I wrote promotional materials to help companies sell more of their products and services and, in return, they paid me for my time.

But over the last decade I have branched out a little, using my writing skills, and my love of writing, to make some money in a few different ways. I have written books, ebooks, courses and programs.

But my favorite way to make money as a writer is to generate passive income from the websites I create for myself.

The most successful of these sites, so far, is my site about coffee – CoffeeDetective.com.

As you`ll see from this video…

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My interview on writing killer headlines for web content [VIDEO]

Wordtracker interview with Nick Usborne about web content headlinesRecently Ken McGaffin of Wordtracker interviewed me about the craft and art of writing great headlines for web content.

As always, I spoke for too long, so we had to divide the interview into two separate videos. In addition, these aren’t the most finely produced of our videos. I think I sat way too close to the camera!

That aside, we covered some interesting ground.

Too many web content writers pay scant attention to writing a great headline. This is a problem, because headlines have a huge impact both on how many people actually read your content pages, and on how widely shared those pages are through social media.

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