For marketing purposes, the power of Twitter is essentially the presentation of short bursts of content that capture peoples’ attention quickly and move them in a particular direction. The best way to do this is through the creation of the short, clear, and effective headline that draws readers in right away. The Twitter audience is a very impatient one; if these readers are not enticed by what they read in a single, short line of copy, they will probably go elsewhere.

How do we maximize the effectiveness of the headline? One current method that provides focused and powerful results is the 4-U copywriting technique taught by the American Writers & Artists (AWAI). This method consists of the following four components:

1. Be USEFUL to the reader
2. Provide him/her with a sense of URGENCY
3. Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow UNIQUE
4. Do all of the above in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way

The Re-emergence of the Short Headline

The rise of Twitter brings us back to a time when the best, most effective headlines were very brief. This was shown by Julian Lewis Watkins in The 100 Greatest Advertisements, in which he stated that 95% of the most effective headlines from the early years of magazine advertising consisted of 8 words or fewer. According to Watkins, the reason for this was that magazine copywriters needed to write headlines in a very limited amount of space–just like Twitter users. With the emergence of the web page, the space limitations became a thing of the past for a while. However, Twitter’s 140-character limit has reintroduced the need for tight headlines. This is especially true now since the mindset of the web audience is use short, catchy headlines.

Retweeting

One other important factor in Twitter headline writing is retweeting. Retweeting is the rewriting of other people’s content. Retweeting can potentially have a large impact on your own Twitter following through the act of helping to make someone else’s words stand out in the crowd. According to Twitter etiquette, you must still acknowledge the author whose words you have edited. If you do that, people will be aware that you are a part of this process and will give you credit for your work.

When it comes to retweeting a headline, this can add words because of the accreditation to the author(s). If the 4-U technique is maintained throughout, good results will follow and more and more people will recognize and trust you and want to find out what you have to say. Your past performance and editorial judgment in selecting and producing quality content is what leads to that trust. And this begins with the quality of your headline writing.

For ways to improve your Twitter headline writing, please visit us at CompuKol Communications (www.compukol.com).

• Start Social Media Marketing right away. If you don’t begin leveraging social media websites to promote your business, and, especially, if your competition is already doing so, your business could be negatively impacted.

• Dedicate some time to Social Media Marketing. You must either put the time in yourself for Social Media Marketing or outsource the work by hiring an expert to do it for you. This should be a person who knows the ins and outs of social networking.

• Create the right impression. Online networking has reached a new level and you need to show your networking savvy by creating a more lasting impression on the readers. This will result in further opportunities and, ultimately, new clients.

• Maintain a level of professionalism in your Social Media Marketing writing. Professional behavior should be the norm, especially for business social media writing. Prospective employers, prospective clients, current clients, and anyone who wants to look you up, can and will. Once you’ve put something out there, it is out there, and you will be held responsible for what is presented.

• Frequency matters just as much as content: Blogging once a month or writing a tweet once every week or posting a FaceBook update once every other day will not significantly affect your visibility. All marketing activities, including online marketing, require frequency, consistency, and long-term effort.

Three Ways That Blogs Improve Your Business
Well-crafted blogs can significantly impact your business in 3 distinct ways.

1) Advertising.  A good blog containing the right keywords and key phrases can give you higher ranking in the organic search engine result pages, which increases the liklihood that visitors will find you and be interested in your business or products/services.

2) Public Relations. Since a blog offers a more personal touch as an information resource, it may cultivate greater brand reinforcement and more interest and trust in potential customers researching what you have to offer.

3) Direct Subscription. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) capability gives rise to a kind of modern day direct marketing technique that will enable you to be easily found by your prospective customers.

The Value of Blogging on a Regular Basis
Blogging can increase the visibility of your business because search engines favor content-rich blogs over websites. Blogs include timely information on various topics, which is an important complement to other marketing tools; however, it must be done on a regular basis to create the necessary interactive dynamic between your prospective customers and you. It is a discipline that you must adhere to in order to get results. If you can’t do it yourself, you should consider paying someone to blog for you based on the things that you want to showcase.

Free Blogs Are Frequently Not the Best Choice
For those business people with the interest and inclination to create and maintain their own blogs, a lot more is involved in the whole business-blogging process than one may realize. Some of the issues include the exact brand design, security, ownership, and search optimization needs of the business. It may pay to bring in outside help. When maintaining your blog, there will inevitably be maintenance challenges. If well managed blog solutions, service, and a reduced learning curve are available in a cost-effective manner, it is probably worth a great deal to a business. In truth, there are good free blog technologies available; however, what appears free is never really so. 

Due to the availability of WordPress and other open source software, it is possible to set up a very attractive looking blog in a very short time.  But what is often overlooked is that creating an effective site involves much more. Getting traffic to your site means nothing if you don’t engage visitors with a compelling story that entices them to click deeper and make a purchase or respond to your other calls to action.  It is the combination of good development, superior design, effective SEO, and persuasive writing that will make your blog capture customers and sales in the end.

The Advantages of Customized Blogs
We use a customized version of WordPress, which is the number one blogging software. It is user-friendly software that can be easily optimized for search engine indexing. We monitor and deploy core WordPress updates and the most important features coming out of the open source community, carefully evaluating and testing them. You should be less concerned about blog technology than you should be about blog content. Let us worry about the technology.  

The best blogs are those that are customized to enhance the special features of your business and increase the power of exposure in search engine results.  All of the following must be considered to maximize the effectiveness of your blog:

The customized blog:

• Should be an integral part of the business website and have the same look and feel
• Should be optimized for search engine optimization (SEO)
• Should have the necessary add-ins for either automatic or semi-automatic syndication of the content to the popular social media networks
• Should have the necessary add-ins for automatic syndication to blog directories
• Should have additional add-ins per customer requirements

The Bottom Line on Business Blogs
The true competitive advantage in blogging comes not through a concern with blog technology but rather through a focus on blog content and its syndication and the ways in which it gains attention for your business by posting interesting and enticing blogs, which the main search engines single out.

All in all, blogs are powerful advertising tools when used to their full potential. They increase your advertising visibility for a potentially unlimited number of topic keywords and phrases, while reducing traditional advertising costs.

CompuKol Communications can help you with all of the steps in the blogging process so that you get the perfect blogs for your business.

There are four essential ones that need to be identified: terms, propositions, arguments, and context. These four elements weave together the fabric of the document, though they must all work together in a harmonious manner to produce a superior piece of writing.  When one or more of them is defective or limited, the message of the writing will not come through.  This can also be judged by the readers’ response: superior writing will hold the reader’s attention and stir interest in learning more; a poorly written document will quickly create boredom and turn the reader away.

Each of the four elements, terms, propositions, arguments, and context, involves a particular thinking function in its own right that the writer must encounter and be familiar with in order to become skillful in the art of writing. It is not necessary to master them completely though a certain level of skill is required to demonstrate competency, as evidenced in the writing itself.  This skill can only come through the practice of writing and from critical feedback of others who are experienced writers.

Terms.  The terms are the keywords that create a foundation for the piece of writing by directing the focus of the reader. The terms are not always completely understandable in isolation since an individual term always points to others within a network where meaning is created. Individual terms, however, must be simple; overly complex terms can confuse the reader.  The terms tell people what you are talking about, whether it be iPhones, potted plants, cars, or underwear.  (They are in the form of nouns, i.e. things we can name.) They direct our focus.  To use them to maximum advantage requires a full understanding of how we focus attention.

Propositions.  While the terms set the focus of attention, propositions create meaning by connecting terms.  Propositions suggest ways to bring terms together.  They stimulate the thinking involved in the creation of hypotheses.  The most basic proposition considers the way two terms are connected; other propostions connect larger numbers of terms.  An example of a proposition is ‘A dog is an animal’, connecting the terms "dog" and "animal".

The most interesting propositions are ones that suggest new connections never before considered.  When say the earth is a planet, it may stimulate some thought but to say the earth is a self-regulating ecosystem is a much richer and thought provoking hypothesis.  Propositions actually enrich terms by creating more lines of connection between them.  The most fruitful propositions make us think about other possible implications that are connected to the initial hypothesis.

Arguments.  The argument is the means of demonstrating the truth of what was proposed in a string of propositions.  The most basic argument has three propositions, two of which lead to a conclusion.  While hypotheses have the effect of stimulating and expanding the possibilities of connection, the argument grounds the possible connections by establishing the truth in a set of hypotheses.  This truth is recognized by the certainty and forcefulness it conveys.  Arguments appear in different forms but all be ultimately reduced to the form A implies B, B implies C, therefore A implies C.  This is called the transitivity rule.  For example: All dogs are mammals, All mammals are animals, therefore all dogs are animals. 

Context.  All arguments operate in a particular contextual sphere.  In other words, they are dependent upon a particular theoretical model in which they are bound.  This can also be understood as a value orientation.  The context shows the limits of arguments and thereby attaches value to them by revealing the underlying principles for those arguments. The tool of context is a very powerful one because it sets the natural limits to the arena of discourse.

To learn more, please visit our writing services pages on CompuKol Communications Writing Services.

The inclusion of these pages on your web site will assure you that the potential customers visiting the site get everything they need. These pages are listed and described below.

It is hard enough bringing in new customers, so don’t get caught in the situation where the interested visitors to your site have to ask you for one or more of these pages. You need to make the selling process as smooth as possible.

• Contact Us. Every small-business site should have a Contact Us page that offers visitors a complete list of ways they can contact you – from e-mail addresses to toll-free numbers to a physical address. So, even though your company does have the online presence, customers still want as many contact options as possible; and this includes a physical address. This information should be in the navigation bar and the bottom of every page.
• Testimonials. Some companies mistakenly leave out the Testimonials, considering it too self-serving, People are, however, interested in this kind of information; and it is a natural for them to ask how others think of you. And when they don’t find it, they might begin to ask why it has been omitted, or why you cannot find enough people to say nice things about your company. The link to the Testimonials page should appear in the navigation bar.
• Privacy policy. These days safety and privacy concerns are a top priority for web users. A privacy policy page is therefore an absolute necessity on your site. Anytime you collect personal information, you must give visitors the utmost assurance of confidentiality. This will build trust and decrease the amount of form abandonment. The privacy policy link should appear at the bottom of every page.
• FAQ. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are important because they save you time and money by creating a self-service format for the clients, so that you don’t have to answer the same questions over and over. In addition, if you find repeat questions on a solicited feedback form, you can always convert them into more FAQs. The FAQ page should be linked from the bottom of every page.
• About Us. The About Us page is more important than you may suppose. People are always interested in the nature of the business they are dealing with. But they don’t want to be overwhelmed with information. It is most effective to keep your company information short and to the point, and also limiting the technical jargon. The link to the About Us page should be in the navigation bar or at the bottom of the home page.
• Confirmation. The confirmation page acknowledges an order and thanks the visitor for his or her business, along with a statement that you will contact the customer shortly to confirm an order. This page will save you time and unnecessary headaches in dealing with customers trying to contact you by phone to check on their orders. This page should be linked to any kind of form on your site, such as e-mail us, subscribe to our newsletter, or buy a product.

Remember: Though these pages are essential, you cannot forget to update them on a regular basis to keep them fresh and in tune with customer interests and preferences.

Before you begin developing the online aspect of your business, you should consider the following common misconceptions:

1. Building a website will not automatically draw in customers. The problem here is cost: advertising on search engines like Google can get expensive. You need to find more economical ways to draw people to your site on a national–or international–level. Alternate possibilities to consider are affiliate programs, e-mail newsletters, and partnering.

2. Trying to become the seller of all things for everyone is not normally a successful strategy. Today’s marketplace rather favors specialized products and services. The presentation of a specific line of products targeted to a particular market segment will help you distinguish your company from your competitors and draw in interested customers. Sometimes doing less will get you more.

3. Imitating the competition will not boost your business. When you copy what others are doing, you will not stand out to potential customers but will merely be perceived as one among many others.  You need to present yourself in a unique way and blaze your own trail. This can be shown both through innovative presentations and the overall look of your website.

4. Your home page should not overwhelm visitors with content. You have a very short amount of time to grab the attention of visitors or they will go elsewhere. The home page should be attractively laid out and explain just enough about your business in a clear and compelling manner.

5. Websites full of gimmick presentations are counterproductive. These may look great but they load slowly and lack the essential ingredient of functionality. It is more important to secure a balance between form and function.

6. Building a website is not easy. There are many factors involved which you will not be aware of until you have delved sufficiently into the process.  Whether or not you can do it yourself depends on the type of site you want and your own experience and skills. For instance, you will need to become proficient in HTML and demonstrate an artistic sense. Hiring a web design consultant might be your best move.

7. A website that has no real focus or purpose has little value for a business. You might be tempted to get one going just because everyone has one, but much thought is needed in making an effective business website. You must figure out what the purpose of your website is: to sell products? increase awareness of your business? provide information to drive local sales? add credibility? Clarifying your purpose for wanting a website is a perfect starting point.

Please visit us at CompuKol Communications to learn more about our web design services.