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Bloody sex, Tea Parties and the TamPap test

September 16, 2011 By

eve appeal kiss of lifeThis month is (if I can spell the word correctly) Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month. It is organised by the Eve Appeal and they are raising awareness through virtual kisses and getting the correct information out to women.  1 million women a year worldwide contract a form of Gynaecological Cancer, and in the UK 7, 500 and in the US 18,000 women die from it.

Cervical Cancer had it’s profile raised immensely by the untimely death of Jade Goody, a TV reality star. Jade was just 28 when she died and she left behind two young sons.

Cervical Cancer is more common in  women aged 30-45 and therefore younger women have found it harder to get tested and their symptoms taken seriously, they can be misdiagnosed easily. Gynaecological Cancer is tough to detect in the early stages at any age. 

But there is good news.

Over the last three years our teenage daughters in the UK have been vaccinated against the HPV virus which causes 99% of Cervical Cancer. That’s a good thing right? Well I thought it was. But our friends across the pond seem to think that firstly their teen daughters are not having any kind of sexual activity and Michele Bachmann has said it shouldn’t be rolled out as it can cause retardation.

During Monday’s debate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., criticized Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s attempt to require the shots for schoolgirls. In TV interviews Tuesday, Bachmann attacked the vaccines themselves as “dangerous,” relating a conversation with a mother who blames the shots for her daughter’s mental retardation.

There’s no evidence that the HPV shot — or any other vaccine — causes retardation, says O. Marion Burton, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement,” Burton said in a statement. “Since the vaccine has been introduced, more than 35 million doses have been administered, and it has an excellent safety record.”

No Evidence that HPV vaccines are dangerous by Liz Szabo

As I understand it the injection has to take place before sexual activity starts and teenage years are the perfect time. The jab is very good when it comes to side affects and after checking  the facts with cancer expert Sally Church, I had my daughter vaccinated.

So our girls, the young women of the future, are being protected except when it’s a political scoring point.

As I mentioned earlier, cervical cancer is deemed an older woman’s disease and that means younger women are sometimes misdiagnosed as it’s rare in the under 25s. The symptoms of  Gynaecological Cancer as my friend Suzan St Maur   puts it “are silent and deadly”.

Bloody Sex

If you have any of the following symptoms  you should have a chat with the doctor and arrange a smear test.

The symptoms of cervical cancer are:

Any unusual bleeding from the vagina particularly

  • after sex
  • after menopause when your periods have stopped
  • persistent vaginal discharge that is blood stained or smells unpleasant
  • Pain in your pelvis
  • Pain during sex
  • Blood in your urine
  • heavier / longer periods than usual

Cervical Cancer is also known as the silent killer as it can be there, but not showing any symptoms at all until it’s too late to treat effectively. This makes smear tests very important, they detect the abnormal cells early enough to treat the cancer.

Of course if you are a young woman that can be quite tough to go to the Doctor about the symptoms but there is an alternative to a doctor that doesn’t listen.

There is the TamPap test

The TamPap test is quite innovative and unlike a smear test, it doesn’t hurt. Now these tests are not a replacement for a smear test (which is a damn shame, the sooner they sort out a cervical cancer test that doesn’t hurt, the better).

FAQ – General HPV Right click, and save as to your desktop to read more frequently asked questions about HPV.

The TamPap kit consists of

• Three barcoded stickers, which will be unique to you. These enable TamPap to identify your sample in the laboratory. You will be asked to write your name and date of birth on the stickers before you attach them to your sample in order to track your result.
• Two plastic containers. You personalise these with the barcoded stickers. The containers will contain your sample for posting.
• A guide to how to use the kit.
• All you will need to provide is an ordinary tampon, as this is what you will use to collect a sample of your cells from your vagina.

When you have collected your sample, you send it back to the TamPap lab and you get results within 10-14 days. The cost of a kits is approx £40 plus postage and packaging.

The TamPap tests work by detecting HPV so it won’t be helpful when it comes to Ovarian Cancer but the testing kit is a step in the right direction. I can see this being as commonly used as a pregnancy testing kit in years to come, part of a woman’s routine when checking for lumps and bumps etc.

What do you think? Would you use a cancer home testing kit? What do you think the pro’s and con’s are?

Sarah

PS Tweet this post out please to help raise awareness  of Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month

I dedicate this post to my beloved Grandmother, 25 year survivor of Ovarian Cancer. Diagnosed swiftly by an up to date NHS Doctor and to my estranged sister Laura, 2 year survivor of Cervical Cancer.

 

Filed Under: Sarah Arrow

Screencasts for beginners – software

September 2, 2011 By

This is part of a series of blog posts about video for bloggers, if you want to get advanced notification of the ebook you can subscribe to our launch list. You can even grab the launch day discount.

In my last post I spoke about screen capture software.  This software records your screen whilst you talk allowing you to record handy tutorials and videos for your blog :) It’s easier than sitting in front of your webcam and presenting :) you don’t have to worry about your make up for starters.

Are you ready to create your first screencast?

There are a number of different screen capture programs out there to choose from and you need to take into account a few things before you rush out and grab the first piece of kit that smiles saucily at you.

  • Price Range

Screen capture programs can range from free (CamStudio) to as much as  £550 ([easyazon-link asin="B003SUU0MC"]Adobe Captivate 5[/easyazon-link]) with other screenshot capture tools priced somewhere in between. I chose to use Jing Pro which I found a very reasonably priced $15[easyazon-image-link asin="B003SUU0MC" alt="Adobe Captivate 5" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41YzKZCyLzL._SL160_.jpg" align="right" width="134" height="160"]

  • Editing Capabilities

Do you have video editing experience? Do you have your own [easyazon-link asin="B003L51CZ8"]video editing software?[/easyazon-link]

If you already know how to edit video in third party software, then the built-in editing software isn’t that important.  A lot of external  video editing software will be more powerful than in-built systems.

If you don’t have video editing experience, the built-in  video editors can really help make life easier and less time consuming. I don’t know about you but I don’t have enough time to learn a new software package. You should be able to cut video, add annotations and subtitles and edit sound tracks without too much difficulty on in-house software

  •  Output Quality & Formats

Want to burn your screen casts to DVD? Hand then around some trade shows? Networking events? You’ll  want to use software that can save to a high resolution format. Many of the lower end programs only export to Flash, which is compressed and can be difficult to edit. Ok, I find Flash difficult to edit, you may love it.

Don’t think “awww, it’s only You Tube, it doesn’t really matter” When determining the output keep your audience in mind, even on You Tube there are people who prefer high resolution videos. If you want your screencasts to reach high end people, people with money then you have to look the part for where your ideal customer hangs out.

Membership site? If your screencast is going to an audience that’s paying, you might want to put out a higher quality video. On the other hand, if it’s for free videos, it’s up to you to decide if it’s okay to use a lower resolution video to save the money on the video editing software.

  • Operating System

Mac? Windows? Something else? Whatever screencast software you use it has to be compatible with your operating system.

In conclusion (gosh, I sound an awful snob there)  you take the price point, the editing capabilities, the video quality and the operating system into account, you’ll have a pretty good sense of what kind of software you need for your screencasts.

All you have to do then is upload them to You Tube and share them on your blog.

Sarah

PS Video Pro Tips for bloggers can be found here, subscribe to get the launch day discount

Filed Under: Latest, Sarah Arrow

Sales Copy Master Class Review

August 26, 2011 By
Kent Austin

Kent Austin - Improves your sales copy, a must read

Over the last few days I have introduced you to Kent Austin, the Copy Doctor. He’s just released an ebook called the “Sales Copy Master Class” and I offered to review it. As a blogger I am always looking to improve my writing but not get obsessed with it.

One aspect of writing that I don’t like writing is sales copy. There. I’ve said it out loud. I know the statistics that long copy well-written converts but I hate trying to write it and I hate reading it. It has been pointed out to me what actually I hate is reading bad sales copy, that sounds about right. Bad sales copy can only be improved with practice and I resent being the guinea pig!

As a blogger I have products to sell and promote and quite often the resistance that I feel is resistance towards writing the sales copy and not actually writing the products themselves. It’s the fear of the sales page that is preventing me from getting my ebooks uploaded and online.

Sales Copy Master Class – The review

The Sales Copy Master Class is a downloadable PDF, so no physical delivery, hence zero emissions and no paper or corrosive ink, unless one chooses to print it. Personally, I seldom print e-books, as I prefer to read them on screen. This ebook is more than just a bland PDF, it’s got good quality graphics and is well laid out making it easy to read. It contains two exciting bonus products, more about one of those later. I find this reassuring, that means to me this was not written by someone out to make a fast buck but by someone who cares about what I am reading and my learning experience.

Here’s just a fraction of what you are about to learn in The Sales Copy Master Class:

  • The #1 rule when writing effective sales copy… (It’s not what you think!) – page 10
  • How to formulate a killer USP that sets you apart from the competition – page 12
  • Why feature-driven sales copy doesn’t work and exactly what you can do about it – page 17
  • The secret of creating effective headlines – and why most people get it wrong! – page 21
  • How changing just ONE WORD in a headline transformed a dud advertisement into a mega success that ran for ten years – and how you can tap into this powerful psychological formula (and, no, it isn’t the word ‘free’!) – page 21
  • ‘What’s in it for me?’ Understanding the psychology of the buying process – page 30
  • The powerful three-step psychological sales copy formula that compels people to take action – page 47
  • ‘Wet Fish Sold Here’- the little-known rule that distinguishes the professional copywriter from the amateur –page 59
  • How to connect with your readers’ ‘resident emotion’ and have them eating out of your hand – page 77
  • How to create irresistible offers to order that your reader would be crazy to pass by – page 85
  • How to compel your readers to take action NOW – and not put off that critical buying decision – page 97
  • The letter that alone scooped one my clients more than half a million pounds in orders in just 2 weeks – page 82
  • The letter that brought in the equivalent of four months’ normal income for a client in just one week – page 87
  • A nine-step tried and tested sales letter formula that is proven to work for virtually any product – page 113
  • Kent’s 15-point pre-project copywriting research plan that enables you to begin writing with total confidence – page 115

Sales_copy_master_classAs you can see there are a huge variety of techniques being taught that make this a valuable ebook for bloggers and internet marketers. It’s not just us “online people” who will benefit, the copy writing techniques will also help SMEs write great sales letters. And sales / marketing professionals and other businesses that have to write sales letters on a regular basis. The Sales Copy Master Class will improve the copy of your “corporate” literature and help you increase conversions.

As a blogger I am fascinated by conversions, as an unsexy transport blogger I have a terrific conversion rate. On another of my sites where I write solely about blogging I have a crap conversion. On the my personal sandpit site I have increased my page views from 1,000 a month to 24,000 since I have read the Sales Copy Master Class, so I know the Sales Copy Master Class has helped me to engage my readers better. Last week I wrote a post about digital share cropping. 32 Tweets of the post and 6k of page views. On digital sharecropping! Not exactly a high traffic subject but…. that’s the Kent Austin influence on my writing.

Bad Points.
I have had to study the Sales Copy Master Class. After reading it didn’t magically improve my copy, I had to do the exercises and adapt the swipe file. To be fair Kent doesn’t promise any improvement by osmosis. To improve our writing and sales copy we are going to have to study a bit. As a small amount of reading and application can improve a blog post to 5 times the monthly reads I can imagine what it will do elsewhere in my business :)

Kent says this is useful for beginners. Beginners with a little knowledge and experience under their belt. Complete beginners with no writing skills may get overwhelmed, although that really depends on how tenacious they are.

Things I loved.

The swipe file. I thought I would save the best for last. The swipe file Kent sends with the ebook is a powerful tool. Budding copywriters should buy the ebook just for the swipe file and adapt every part of it. Okay I’m not going to rave too much about the swipe file; I have competition and I don’t want my secret weapon falling into their hands. If you are my competition, don’t buy this. It’s crap, you won’t like it…

Kent is based in the UK and if you have been looking for non sleazy copy writing techniques that convert, this could well be the ebook for you.

Price: A very reasonable $47.

Kent is confident and offers a terrific deal, buy the ebook for $5 and pay the remaining $42 in 21 days time. I was expecting this to be more expensive for the quality of information at least $97. You can even try the first chapter free, and that is what I suggest you do. Go and download the first chapter free. Read. Apply. Buy the book.

Sarah

Aff link here, if you buy via our link you are doing a good deed as well. Our revenues go to Our Girls in Uganda. Ping me a copy of your receipt and I’ll send you a copy of my Easy Guide to Google Plus ebook to say thank you.

Filed Under: Latest, Popular, Sarah Arrow

USP's, your Copy and Features and Benefits

August 25, 2011 By

Ok, USP’s have been around some time, in this video Kent Austin shares his thoughts around USPs and why they work. As well as some examples of how they work for other businesses.

Now, we need to talk dear reader and we need to do it before Kent tells me off for my appalling grammar (again ;) ).

Writing is important, but not the be and end all of everything unless of course you are a writer. The more we write, the better we become at it and the easier it is to produce something of value to our audiences. There are no short cuts to improving but there is a choice when it comes to your writing teacher. The choice of course is yours.


If you are just starting out you might find Lesley Morrissey’s Market your business in 30 days useful.

But where do you go when you are are at the next level? How do you even know you are at the next level? The answers to these questions are not obvious. There is a saying that goes along the lines of “When the student is ready, the teacher appears” and if you are reading this then consider it an omen, your teacher has appeared…

And it’s not me. It’s Kent.

Sarah

The Sales Copy Master Class has some bonuses that make it extraordinary value, you can go and take a look now and get a head start on the rest of the world, or you can wait until you read my review tomorrow where I will reveal all.

 

Filed Under: Latest, Sarah Arrow

The 3 things you do that make your copywriter rich

August 24, 2011 By

Ever felt that the online world was dominated by good writers, and that you could never be that good?

Meet Kent Austin, he’s going to show you how to stop making your copywriter rich.

In the video Kent talks about a series on concepts that will help you “crack the copywriting code” and having read his
Sales copy master class I can tell you he knows his stuff. I am currently working through some of the exercises, so full review will be up on Friday.

The 3 things you do that make your copywriter rich…

1. Rely on Word to be your spell checker, grammar checker and “it sounds ok doesn’t it?” checker.
Word is good, but it’s not idiot proof (the day it is… well, I’d have a much better quality of life). Word is no substitute for knowing what went wrong in the first place and how to put it write, I mean right ;) .

2. Call to what?
Having no call to action, good copywriters will write compelling copy that moves the soul of an individual to buy or click through but if there is no call to action, then the reader is just charmed by your prose. Nothing to say “subscribe here” or give us a call? Then you are making your copywriter rich. Get a great one or do it yourself. Go and check your copy right now… I mean it. check if for a call to action and then come back and read the third tip. See what I did there? ;)

3. Know what you sell
I know, I know… it’s the UK and everyone thinks selling is a dirty word. It’s a dirty phrase. Poor copy = bad selling, so obvious the reader feels they need to go and have a shower and they are praying that the Old Spice man is there to scrub their back. Great copy doesn’t make you feel “eeew”, and by knowing what you sell you cross the line between good and great copy. You don’t sell delivery services you sell peace of mind. You don’t sell underwear you sell a fab night out. You don’t sell hair cuts, you sell looking great and feeling confident. A great copywriter helps you work this out and a good one sits back and gets rich instead of making you rich.

If you can’t wait for the review, you can check out the sales copy master class and let me know what you think.

Sarah

Filed Under: Latest, Sarah Arrow

Review: Marketing your business better in 30 days by @lesleywriter

August 18, 2011 By

Having known Lesley Morrissey for a few years now, I am thrilled to be reviewing “Marketing your business better in 30 days”. Disclosure: I am reviewing an advance copy of the guide, I didn’t pay for it.

Lesley has been a writer since she was 12 years old, and this book is packed with her writing and marketing experiences. So after a brief introduction Lesley jumps straight in with crafting your marketing message and how to go about it. What I love here is the open and honest part about mistakes

Here’s a few that I’ve made:

  • I printed lots of postcards I never used
  • I employed someone to do telephone marketing (because I don’t like it) and found they weren’t keen on doing it either
  • I’ve launched unfocused marketing campaigns because I thought ‘everyone will want this’ – but nobody did and, at the time, I didn’t understand why
  • I’ve gone networking and met lots of nice people, but got very little business – because I didn’t know how to network properly.

Now everyone has access to the web your written material has the potential to reach a huge audience. That’s a huge opportunity – and a potential minefield!

Lesley understands what it is to be a small business and how easy it is to make mistakes, because she has made them herself and I find learning from someone’s experience very beneficial.

Each section has action points for the reader to complete.[pullquote] I like Ebooks that have action points – what is the point of knowledge if you don’t act upon it?[/pullquote]

Writing for your website is a good section in the ebook. Lesley talks about the crime many of us small businesses commit. I’ll give you a clue… it’s not all me, me, me… It’s We, we, we.

The “Marketing your business better in 30 days” ebook covers quite a few areas in its 51 pages:

What’s in “Marketing your business better in 30 days”
1. What is your message?
2. Who is in your audience?
3. Giving them what they want

Writing for the web
4. Why is your website so important?
5. Writing for your reader
6. Your reader’s journey through your website
7. Do it now!
8. 5 reasons why people don’t get your message

Core writing skills
9. Language, language!
10. Which word is right?
11. Do you write like you talk?
12. Stylish publications!
13. Editing skills for beginners

Brochures
14. Creating hard copy brochures
Writing to persuade
15. Read me!

Marketing copy
16. Emarketing secrets
17. Direct mail campaigns that work

Article marketing
18. What is article marketing?

Blogging skills
19. Blogging basics
20. Making one blog go further!
21. Creating consistent blogs
22. Spreading the word

Online marketing
23. Integrated online marketing
24. Social media and your business
26. Microblogging – what is it really all about?

Newsletters
27. What makes a great newsletter?

Writing for the media
28. Press releases: the importance of the story
29. The structure of an effective press release

Award presentations
30. Writing a winner

As you can see a lot of different writing types and styles are covered and many will find the information useful.

The downside?

Ok, this guide isn’t meant for me. As an experienced blogger there are things that Lesley suggests that I would never do – I don’t automate blogging content and I have a different system of getting readers to my blog posts. I learnt these techniques through experience and this book is aimed at businesses not used to marketing themselves online. I’m not saying that they are wrong, just that these sections are not for me. Also there is a mention of 8th grade English. No idea when 8th grade is being based in the UK and other UK readers may prefer to know the English age equivalent. No big deal, just little things that bugged me. As I mention above, I am not the book’s ideal customer so you can forgive me for being a little pickymarketing ebook cover.

There are plenty of action points throughout the book to help small businesses get their marketing message consistent and compelling and over time it will become more effective. If you are starting out marketing your business online then this is a great place to start as you will learn the basics in all the right areas.

This book is ideal for

  • Businesses just starting their online presence
  • Businesses needing consistent communications
  • Businesses that have no idea where to start with their marketing.
And if you are looking to get started with online marketing then you will love “Marketing your business better in 30 days”
Sarah
You can grab a copy of “Marketing your business better in 30 days” here – link (not an affiliate link)
Filed Under: Latest, Sarah Arrow, Small Business

Get more eyeballs on your blog posts

August 11, 2011 By

You have written your blog post, checked for Spellos, Typos and Grammos (Grammos are a bit like cheerios but less happy) and added an image that has a caption to your blog post, what next? In this blog post I am going to talk you through how I promote a blog post. Here at Birds on the Blog we get approx 136k of page views every month. Each blogger here uses a variety of techniques to attract search engines and human beings. The secret, the key to successful blog post promotion though is to attract human beings.

Publish and promote

After you have written your blog post  the next step is to publish the post and then get promoting. Blog post promotion can take up to an hour when you first start actively promoting your posts. You will find you get faster as you get used to doing it.  In this post I am going to focus on what I use, please add your methods in the comments :)

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Scribe
  • Comment Luv
  • Forums, public and niche
  • Email
  • Asking for help

Using Twitter

If you use a Twitter tool called Crowdbooster or Buffer you will see what times are the best times to tweet a post for interaction. Mine are 10am and 2pm and  5.30pm. That makes sense to me, morning / afternoon teabreak and going home from work time (people using their smart phones to read tweets). So when I publish my posts at lunchtime, I also schedule a tweet about them for 10am,2pm and 5.30pm.

Crowdbooster

Click to enlarge image

I also Direct Message two Twitter  friends and ask them to comment on the post. I didn’t used to do this and then I had a post go on a bit of a tear, 5k of views  in 4 hours and no comments… I looked like Billy No Mates, all social proof  (Twitter shares) but no conversation. So I now ask for two comments before I start the rest of the blog post promotion techniques. Just in case.

Using Facebook

A while back I wrote a post on why blog post  automation tools will kill your audience. I suggest you take a look, a precis of the post is as follows – manually update Facebook or your posts won’t reach the audience.

So when I have written the post and published it, I “like” is so it shows immediately in my Facebook stream.  My next step is too hit the Facebook send button and send the post to an appropriate Facebook group. If it’s a regional based post I add it to the regional groups I belong to. If it’s a post about women, then I send it to women’s groups. Remember the human factor, we are marketing our posts to human beings.

I don’t target groups that would have no interest in the post, because that is spamming. I don’t share on the Facebook walls of Mashable when I have written a post about the strength of knicker elastic these days. I target the groups and pages that are relevant and the information in the blog post is useful to  the majority of the readers.

If I have mentioned people in the post or written it for them or with them in mind, I tag them too. Be careful with the tagging some people get annoyed about it.

When I have done that (usually takes about 10 minutes) I move to the next tool.

Promoting blog posts on LinkedIn

On LinkedIn I belong to a variety of regional, trade and interest groups and three alumni groups of courses that I have taken. Again looking at what the blog post is about, I choose a group to share that information with. I know that I belong to several overlapping groups, so I don’t submit the post to every group I belong to. I choose carefully which ones would appreciate the content.

I’ll assume that if I post in one motoring group, then another motoring  group will have the same members and will see the content again. Some people will post there anyway but not on the same day as they shared in the other group. I also add the blog post and some info to my LinkedIn status updates.

This takes about 10 minutes and I then pop back to Facebook and add the blog post url to my Facebook news stream. 20 minutes have passed since my original Facebook like showed in my stream, so by manually adding the blog post URL I can choose a different image and amend the title if I want.

Using Google+

After promoting my blog posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn I then move onto Google Plus. I look at what circles I have and which circle would benefit the most and tag them in the post I am sharing. If I am looking to thank a person for inspiration or have written a post for someone, I tag them too.  I also hit the “public” button and share publicly as well as in the niche circles. I try and start a different conversation in the circles to the ones on LinkedIn and Facebook. This is useful for future blog posts research as well as good conversation.

Using Scribe

Scribe is a terrific tool, not only will it help you optimise your content for the right words it will help you find influencers who may be interested in your blog post.

If you have the Scribe plugin in your sidebar you will see under your “Analyze” box that there is a link building box. If you click that then click the social tab, you can then select a keyword and Scribe will search and find influencers on Twitter who may be interested in your post. You can then reach out to them and start building a relationship, you can also ask for feedback. Be humble in your contact and be human.

Promoting posts through blog comments.

If you find a blog in your niche and you would like to comment on it, grab the url of your blog post and place that in the section for website. Write a decent comment and people will click through and find your post. If you write a naff comment like “great post” or ” I agree come and look at my blog post that’s written better than yours” then you will be lucky to be published let alone attract people to click through.

Comment box for blog promotion

Comment box for blog post promotion

If the site uses Comment Luv (like we do) you can have two different links, you can add a blog address in the website box.

2 links from comment luv

Click to enlarge image

Go to the comment section and write your comment, as you type Comment Luv will pick up your latest blog post to show. When you have finished your comment, go back to the website section and add a link to another post you are promoting. Providing you don’t click the comment writing area again, you will have two different links for one comment. Make sure though the links are relevant to the audience that are reading that blog post or all you will get is curiosity clicks.

Using Forums

I have never found forums particularly useful for promoting blog posts. I write a lot about unsexy transport related things and although everyone gets deliveries they are not interested in the actual logistics, just that they get their goods quickly and cheaply. So forums are tough for me. I can get traction when I give away free fuel saving guides but not when it comes to the nuts and bolts of getting an awkward item delivered. In trade related forums these type of posts tend to get ignored and the competition is fierce and unfriendly. So be prepared for forum promotion not to work in some niches. When that is the case focus on the other types of blog post promotion you can do.

In forums the conversation will often take place there rather than on your blog post. The conversation is still taking place but in a different location. This is not a bad thing and it’s not counter productive to promoting your blog post.

If you belong to niche forums you can often ask for comments and blog post promotion. This is a two way thing. If you ask for help you must be prepared to help others promote their post and comment when asked. That can be tough, commenting on a topic you know very little about but you can ask in the forum what type of comments they are looking for.

The blogger will then indicate what sort of comments she would like

  • They may suggest you ask a question.
  • They may help you write a comment
  • They may suggest you just adapt and write a better variant of “good post”.

Email

If I write a blog post that is a guest blog, I promote that post even more that my usual posts.  I  promote it via email to my subscribers and write a little note as to why they may find it useful. If it is timeless content I add it to my autoresponder, so that the reader still benefits from that snippet of knowledge long after I have forgotten about it. It’s not about “me” when I do this, it’s about providing value to my readers.

Asking for help promoting your blog post

When I have done all the above, I go back and respond to the comments I asked for on Twitter. I thank then profusely, publicly. They also know they are good for some reciprocal promotion from me and more importantly they are not afraid to ask.

Asking for help is not a bad thing, you can ask people to Tweet, to Like, to G+. Lots of people will help you. Remember though it’s a two way street you should help back and like and tweet their posts too.

I am going to ask you two things now…

  • If you like this post, will you share it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
  • If you use other methods to promote your posts please share them in the comments
Sarah

Additional reading you may like – Why your not dominating google with your blog posts

Filed Under: Latest, Sarah Arrow

Securing, distributing and selling your information products

August 4, 2011 By

A few months back I published Ebook 101 here. Lots of people took inspiration from it and started to write their own ebooks and information products. Having products that are not dependent on you or your time is a very valuable part of your business strategy. There are only so many billable hours, only so many hours you can physically work so it makes good business sense to have products that are not dependent on you being there.

Another reason to have ebooks and info products in place is that they are excellent “try before you buy my services” a smaller investment before a bigger investment in skills or services are needed. My blog coaching business increased by 500% within 3 weeks of releasing my ebook. People and my audience who didn’t know me that well were reassured by the ebook. I went from 200 page views a week on my sandpit blog to 1500 a day (at it’s current levels).

Ok, lets put the reasons why you need an info product or ebook to sell or give away from your blog to one side. Let’s take a look at what happens once you have written your ebook, white paper or info product. I have two volunteers with their products that I am going to write about. Sort of case studies :)

Jackie Walker – Jackie has written and put together a fab ecourse for relationships and learning to love yourself. Her problem is an affiliate scheme. Her course is put together and distributed via email. The main email providers provide stats on their emails and Jackie can tell in an instant if someone has forwarded the emails to another person. This makes it easy to remove buyers who abuse her copyright.

Because it’s an email based course it could seem like it would be impossible to have an affiliate scheme for as it cannot be uploaded to an external site. E-junkie is the fastest, easiest solution I can think of.  Using E-Junkie is quite simple. Write a Word document thanking the buyer for joining and directing them to the email subscription page. Upload this to E-junkie and then put into place their affiliate scheme for this page. You then need to network, source your affiliates and then direct them to the affiliate sign up page on e-junkie. You can also source affiliates via your own newsletter, network  and colleagues. Read recruiting your affiliate army for more tips on how to do this.

Helping your affiliates promote

Set up a hidden page for your affiliates on your blog. On this page add the images to your products. Add some testimonials that they can use. Explain what works best to sell the course -

  • Review posts
  • Tweeting the link (give sample tweets)
  • Email marketing
  • Facebook marketing
Give the affiliate sample copy. Explain that they should adapt that copy for their blog posts. Include sample posts or other posts that are working well.  Make it easy for your affiliates to promote you.
List what you will do to help promote the ebook or product. I suggested to Jackie that she asks for 5 questions and sends them to the affiliate to create an interview with. This means the review is supported by an interview the author and is in a stronger position to sell and convert to sales. 

Email marketing is extremely effective and a series of emails backed up with links to the review and the interview will help convert readers who are hesitant into sales. Honest reviews work best, gushers don’t make sales. People distrust them. Reviews are an excellent way of seeing how your potential customers will view the ecourse. You can offer special audio for affiliates and give them video interviews or video content to support their promotion of your product.

Webinars. A joint venture with another person can also be in the form of a webinar. These are excellent for selling higher priced products. If you have an ebook (or in Jackie’s case a course) add coaching (if you do it) so you have some higher priced and higher value offers. These must be genuine. If you don’t offer coaching don’t add it for the sake of it you will come unstuck. You can also offer in membership forums, something I felt would be very valuable to Jackie’s course. In this forum people can support each other. It can also be a place where people gain deeper connections and relationships.

Have two differently priced pitches for your webinar audience and make them exclusive to that audience. For example everyone may get the ecourse and the membership forum but if they buy from that particular webinar they can also have a 30 minute coaching session. For the next webinar on the same/similar topic you can offer an ebook along with the course and some audio. Webinars can also help you grow your email list if you encourage people to sign up mid-way through the webinar. A call to action mid-way, that’s a novel idea :D , you read it here first….

However you work with affiliates, you must promote them. This means setting up alerts and social mentions for your products and when you see a review tweet it out. At the end of each week write a blog post thanking all your reviewers and link to their posts. This boosts your affiliates and raises their profile and reassures your community that they have indeed made a wise investment. You can even invite people who have already purchased from you to leave a comment on their thoughts about the products.

A final note on affiliates, if you are looking to do a lot of products ebook, ecourse, video or email then you will be better of learning and configuring DAP or Digital Access Pass. Not only does this protect your content it will also automatically create affiliates and cross/upsell your products as well as manage your emails. This is currently around the £130 price range and e-junkie is £3.50 a month for the basic option. If a range of products and courses is your aim then Digital Access Pass is the better investment. I would like to add that the support is exceptional, even for those of us based across the pond and 8 hours behind.

Sally’s product is a high value report.

Working in a niche industry, business intelligence is vital and secure distribution of the reports is vital.

The solution that that immediately sprang to my mind was secure ebook, we first used this back in 2007.  You upload the report in two sections. The first section is the sample section and this would show the table of contents and the introduction to the report (a brief one). The second upload is the full report.

Secure ebook locks the report to the desktop of the person who has bought the report. If they forward the report the person will get the sample section until they add an unlock code. This is all automated for you. You can restrict printing as well so if you want your report to remain a digital, it will. Secure ebook is a monthly cost of  approx $30 a month and if confidential and safe is what you are looking for then this is the exact product you are looking for.

[pullquote]E-junkie also offer the option of embedding the clients credit card details into the report. People are reluctant to forward the content with these on them.[/pullquote]
Email marketing and niche groups are the strongest methods of promotion for this type of product. Existing clients will also find value in them and at a later stage it may be worth creating a membership site where these reports can be downloaded for a monthly fee.

Reviews may not be the way to promote this style of product – it’s business intelligence after all so discreet networking is the key here. That and scarcity. By only issuing 10 reports for external sale and the rest for the membership site, customers know they have to get in quick or lose out.

I hope this gives you a better understanding of the options you have to secure, distribute and sell your information products and if you need hand holding throughout the process, I do offer coaching sessions :)
Sarah
Filed Under: Latest, Popular, Sarah Arrow

A history of violence

July 19, 2011 By

Would you report your boyfriend /lover /husband if he was violent towards you?

man with knifeI have been musing on Clare’s law. Clare’s Law is named for Clare Wood. A 36 year old woman who was abused and then set fire to by her former partner. Clare suffered months of sexual abuse and violent attacks before she died. The police were aware of the history but were powerless to warn her.

Initially when I heard about it I thought “No one will use it, no one will report their partner for violence“. Then I got talking about it to a group of women and we’d had a few glasses of champagne and one of them admitted that the neighbours had called the police out for a “domestic disturbance”. At the time she was annoyed, she felt they had intruded on her life and then she realised they were trying to save her life. They are now in counselling and she admitted that she will probably leave her husband. Not because of the violence, she says she deserves that; that she provoked him. She will leave him because she cannot look the neighbours in the eye any more.

That is a good enough reason to leave in my opinion.

When I left my ex husband, I left with a trail of injunctions against him (that he persuaded me to drop) and a police sheet as long as your arm. When he got a new girlfriend, it was a neighbour who had reported his screaming death threats to the police, and I thought – my God, she knows what he is like, how could she? So I asked her. And she told me very honestly that she believed that I deserved it, that I had caused the fights. He’s reformed now. It was three weeks before he flew into a drunken rage. She dropped him like a tonne of bricks and she never spoke to me again. Embarrassed? Maybe, but she wasn’t even with him long and he had her convinced that it was someone else’s fault.

Broken mirror

Domestic violence fractures families

My daughter had asked me what to say when her father’s girlfriends asked why I had left him. I told her to tell the truth, that we were incompatible and disagreed a lot. Not quite the truth, but look at it from my point of view – If I told you after 10 years of domestic violence I finally plucked up the courage to leave, that there had been one black eye too many. That I was sick of the family taking his side and justifying his actions, oh he was drunk, that doesn’t count and it’s your fault for telling him to stop doing something… That enough was enough. Would you believe me if you were already half in love with this charming, handsome man? Of course you wouldn’t.

The Ex was getting serious about a girl, there was talking about them starting a family together. She was 20 years younger than him, in her early 20s. I have to tell you, I knew where she worked. I sooooo badly wanted to walk in and say to her – he is not what you think, go and find a nice bloke to have a family with. Don’t get trapped. You deserve better. But I would look the bitter ex wife, she would never believe me. He had her completely charmed, was generous to a fault and had shown no signs of harming a hair on her head.

Then one day he flipped. He had to drop my daughter off in Wickford but missed us as he arrived 45 minutes late. The girlfriend and my daughter were in the car, and he was screaming at what a “fucking whore” I was for not waiting for him. In the 20 minutes it took him to drive to Corringham he had worked himself into a complete rage. He met us in a car park in Corringham and screamed the most vile abuse you had ever heard at me. His face was grey and he was completely taken over by his anger, how dare I not wait for him, who did I think I was? I was a fat bitch, I deserved to die, who did I think I was? And yes, this was in a public space in front of my three children and his girlfriend. And she looked terrified. I felt so sad for her. Her dreams were crushed in those 20 minutes. The lies had unravelled. I wasn’t the bitter ex wife, but a human being who had not said very much about her ex husband.

My daughter got in the car, and I got back in the car and locked the doors. My youngest daughter looked at her sister and said “why does you dad scream like a girl?”. It wasn’t the question we were expecting and it diffused a very tense situation, we laughed. Gallows humour?  And from then on my ex was known as “Screams like a girl”.

The girlfriend left soon after. She saw a side to him that she had heard about but never believed. I would like to think that if she had had access to the police records she could have seen and worked it out for herself rather than experiencing it first hand. I would hate for her to think that she could have reformed him, it’s part of who he is. You can’t reform that.

It is my fault.

punchStaying with him for as long as I did, yes that was my fault. I wanted to do the best for my daughter, to have her dad in her life. Even though I knew what he was like, I wanted to do the right thing.

Her dad and his actions have hung over my new family like a dark cloud for years.

I still wake in the night screaming, I still jump when I hear a strange noise and I am repulsed by charming, smooth men. I wonder what they are hiding underneath. They are stereotyped by me based on my experiences. I have a friend who has no idea that he looks like the younger brother of my ex, that when I talk to him I get nervous. I deliberately dress down around him and that I am constantly on my guard. He has no idea and would never understand. It’s all because they look very similar. He would be shocked to think that this is what I think around him, that I sit close to the door; ready to run… but I can’t help it.

The history of violence has shaped me to the point that I struggle to face men, to talk to them. The only person in the world that makes me feel safe is my current husband. When we met again he didn’t recognise me. I was a fraction of myself. Slowly he has rebuilt my confidence and my self esteem. And I see the pain in his eyes when he moves across the room quickly and I flinch. My body reacts to his body language and even though I know he wouldn’t hurt me, I still inwardly curl into a ball.

It’s my fault for being a poor role model to my daughters. I have shown them that when someone behaves badly, you put up with it. You sweep it under the carpet. You pretend it doesn’t exist and you say nothing as you fear what people think of you.

So bring in Clare’s law. When blokes can’t get a girlfriend and start families due to no woman being prepared to take a chance on them, they may change their behaviour. One incident on a police record they may be able to get away with, but not a history of violence. And if you hear your neighbours fighting, you hear a domestic disturbance – call the police. You may save someone’s life one day.

Sarah

PS I apologise for such dark reading.

 

Filed Under: Latest, Sarah Arrow Tagged With: ,

When Facebook goes bad…

July 13, 2011 By
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Ok not Facebook itself, but Facebook users.

I was recently tagged in a video and like a lot of people I get tagged often. I didn’t think much of it. The video looked interesting, I knew the person who tagged me and I watched the video. It was fab. I really enjoyed it and I left the tag in place so people could see it on my wall as I was happy to “endorse” it.

Someone more important than me was also tagged in the video and they viewed the tagging business differently to me.

They saw it as spam and commented to that effect – “Why are you spamming my wall”. Now my first thought was hey that’s a bit strong. It’s a good video, excellent quality and it’s worth sharing. The other person, let’s call them person S so I don’t get confused, didn’t like being tagged and the video showing. They are prominent in social media marketing and they should know that this is a common Facebook technique. If they don’t want it to happen then they can disable tagging and prevent people from posting on their wall. No big deal.

Only it was a big deal.

Here we have a big name publicly chastising a Facebook expert for using Facebook how it should be used – for sharing great stuff. There was more conversation and like the cliche, there were no winners only losers. For me the biggest loser was Person S. I was a big fan, I was a disciple of their teaching and really rated what they said. I was. But in the three or four comments I saw the human side to them and I didn’t like them any more.

For me Facebook is about sharing. I have about 30 people I have met and know well in real life, the rest of my friends are from social networking. My middle daughter uses my account to play games with (fully supervised) and I have photos and catch up with my teenage daughter there. She’s at that age that without Facebook we wouldn’t speak at all.

I can now use Facebook to keep up to date with all the latest blogging techniques and what other couriers are up to. For me it’s an observational research tool and not so much of a marketing tool.

As a Facebook civilian I can’t understand why the tag wasn’t removed and a message sent asking not to be tagged again. Why jump in with the Spam comment first? Then questions later? Why not change the settings if you don’t like people writing on your wall. Why have the conversation publicly so that I can see you for the tosser you clearly are?

What would you have done if you had tagged this person?

Sarah

 

 

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