Autoresponder messages, articles and webpage’s
After a nice BBQ at the weekend I got back to trying to do a little work. I concentrated yesterday on methods of generating traffic to commercial websites involving writing pieces of text.
I use the term pieces loosely as, when you start to write for online marketing purposes, it quickly becomes apparent that each different purpose requires at least a slightly different structure and content if it is to serve function that you desire. As I am fairly new to this I thought it would be worth sharing my experience.
A commonly used method of increasing sales is to send prewritten messages in a timed sequence to people who have opted-in to your email list in any given topic. The purpose of these messages is to develop a relationship with potential customers. These generally should contain some informative and useful content with little or no sales pitch and although useful should be partly incomplete as the complete version will usually be one of your products which you hope to sell to them at a future point in time. These are called autoresponder messages and once written require little or no effort as they are sent out by the software as scheduled.
There are a number of providers of autoresponders and the one I have opted for seems to be the most recommended by experienced online marketers that I have spoken to and it is called AWeber. This is a subscription bases service and costs about $20 per month. It is very useful but I have found it has a bit of a learning curve to get used to how it handles email messages and lists. Although it is pretty easy to generate the code for your website for email opt in forms etc.
One of the most frequently used content approaches for these early messages to new list members is brief hints or tips on how to do something that is relevant to the subject of the list.
On writing these messages though in order to maximise the benefits of your time and effort it makes sense to use the information in other ways as well. Examples would include as articles for submission to online article directories or even a web page.
The problem that can arise here though is a straight duplicate will be picked up by the search engines and if the purpose of the feature is to generate traffic it won’t work. The problem being that duplicate content is usually not ranked by the search engines. So this defeats the purpose.
A useful way to try to avoid this is provided by a website called dupecop . This handy little program checks the source and the modified version and rates it in percentage terms for originality. To avoid duplicate penalties you should aim for greater than 50% originality.
In addition to the duplicate content problem the text would usually need altering a little anyway, as an email tip would usually be less complete and comprehensive than an article and would also include some personalised information. So writing a fuller version is usually necessary for this purpose and again a web page has different requirements as well and will require a third slight rewrite.
So for any given topic to write about it can require at least 3 versions! This can make it start to feel a little like hard work. It does make sense though, and I think it can be justified as long as the information is genuinely useful and the rewrites are serving a legitimate purpose.
Obviously online marketers who get more successful would outsource a lot of the writing to free lancers although this does run the risk of losing a large element of the character and personality behind the information.
John
Add comment August 26th, 2007
