Consuelo Meux, Ph.D.

You do all you can to grab the attention of your web readers, right?  But are you being effective? The trick to writing anything whether it is a sales page or a how to article is to hook your reader’s attention immediately.  Of course you have to hold on to that attention too but that’s significantly easier once you already have it.  Here are three must do’s if you want to grab your reader’s attention right away:

1.  Headlines are the end all be all of copywriting.  Newspapers know this, advertisers know this and you must too.  What makes a compelling headline?  Several things actually:

* A promise.  A good headline can make a promise - Lose 30 pounds in 30 days-guaranteed.

* Make it newsworthy.  New diet guarantees fast, healthy weight loss.

* Ask a question.  Is the food you eat making you sick?

* Offer a benefit full of emotion.  You’re going to absolutely love your new body-guaranteed.

* Appeal to their self interest.  Know the secret to losing weight permanently?

* Offer value.  3 easy steps to losing weight naturally.

* Headlines must use strong verbs and powerful words.  Compare these two headlines:
- Lose weight with our enzyme based diet
- Weight literally falls off with enzyme based diet.

2.  Make sure your most compelling copy is above the fold.  First, let’s clarify what the ‘fold’ is.  When you look at a website, the fold is the point at which you need to start scrolling down.  This means that anything above the fold is what you see immediately on your screen.   If your good stuff is below the fold, most people won’t stick around to read it.  You must make sure that your most compelling copy, your headline and your first paragraph, are immediately viewable.

Of course everyone has a different screen size so you want to work for the least common denominator - the smaller screen sizes.

3.  Make sure your copy is scannable.  There’s an old joke about what people read on the web.  The joke is - they don’t.  What people do is scan. They spend about 20 seconds evaluating your web page, if it isn’t easy to read they’re gone.  If you want to grab your reader’s attention immediately - make your copy easy to read.  Use bold lettering for words that you want to stand out.  Space the copy well so that it is easy to read.  Use bullets and numbers to list benefits or steps.

While you can find multiple expert copywriting trick, these three give you a great start.  Remember, make your headline strong and compelling, keep your strongest copy above the fold and make sure your copy is easy to scan.  You’ll have visitors that are more than happy to spend time reading your web content.

Have you seen YouTube videos? If so, you know they’re a great way to market your website or blog. Adding video to your website as a marketing concept is a fantastic way to add interest, to communicate with your audience and to demonstrate a technique that may be easier to show than to explain.  Whether you’ve found a video on YouTube that you just have to share with the world or you have created a video and placed it on YouTube, adding it to your website is as easy as click, copy, click, paste, done.

Ready?

1. Open your web page file where you want the video to show up.  If you want the video to be on your home page, then open up your index file.  You’ll want to be looking at the page with the HTML code.  In FrontPage you simply click on the tab at the bottom which says HTML.

2. In your web browser, get to the YouTube site and Click onto the video that you’d like to add.

3. On the right hand side of the video page you’ll see category, tags, URL, and embed.  Copy the code in the embed space.  It will look something like this:

<object width=”425″ height=”350″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/k5c8-OLBWAQ”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/k5c8-OLBWAQ” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed></object>

4. Paste the code where you want it to appear on your website and viola, you’re done.
 
5. Preview it to make sure the video has been placed where you want it.  Save your page and publish. 

One of the great features about embedded YouTube videos is that they are already compressed to the most optimal viewing size.  This means that it takes mere seconds for most visitors to view the video.  There’s nothing to download and no lag time.  The only drawback is that the visitor is then taken to YouTube’s website and if you’ve ever been there you know that it’s easy to get sidetracked.  Either way, this is a great marketing and promotional idea for you to use in your Internet marketing efforts.

Have you ever recommended a good movie to a friend?  Have you ever stayed away from a restaurant because someone told you they had a bad experience there?  This is “word-of-mouth” advertising and it can have a huge impact on your business.

In most cases of “advertising,” the business owner has control of how the ad looks, feels, and the message it conveys to the potential customer.  The exception to this is “word-of- mouth advertising”.  With word of mouth, your prior customers have all the control over potential customers.  If they rave about you, you’ll attract new customers.  If they gripe about you, they will deter people from becoming your customer.

Good word-of-mouth advertising can work wonders for your business, and the best part is that it is free.  Your prior customer may run into someone who needs your services, and if you have provided quality products or services, chances are they will recommend you.  If you sought out ten customers through your own marketing efforts and they each told one person about you, who then became your customer, you would have doubled your customer base.

Bad word-of-mouth advertising can have the same effect, only in a negative way.  When you mistreat a customer or sell them a poor product, they will definitely let people know about it.  When someone is spreading good word of mouth advertising, they will usually wait to tell the good stuff until someone specifically asks about it. 

For instance, if they recently worked with a great graphic designer, they will be more than happy to recommend them when someone asks if they know of a good graphic designer.  However, with bad word-of-mouth advertising, the hurt party isn’t going to wait for someone to ask if they know of a bad graphic designer.  They are going to tell everyone, whether they want the information or not.

The fact that the angry customer is telling this to people who may not even be interested in hiring a graphic designer doesn’t sound so bad, but unfortunately, these people will probably remember the story.  When they are asked if they know of a good graphic designer, they will retell the angry customer’s story.  The person in need of a graphic designer will stay away from the designer who made the angry customer so angry in the first place.

You can protect yourself from the negative aspects of word-of-mouth advertising by consistently providing quality products and great customer service.  Of course, you cannot please everyone, but if the majority of your customers have only good things to say about you, you will have plenty of great word-of-mouth advertising for your business.