Today (Saturday) is a recovery day for me following three early morning rises this week to attend Jonathan Kantor’s White Paper webinar class. (It was well worth the effort and I’ll have to more say about how I’m applying what I learned there in future posts.)

Flicking through my blog log I came across a heart-stopping post from Joe Pulizzi of Junta 42 and the Content Marketing Institute.

What grabbed my attention was how Joe shared why we do what we do.

For example, take the art and mechanics of top-class white paper copywriting. I’m finding it really is a satisfying feeling to know that applied learning and hard work is paying off over time, as writing skills improve and experience is gained.

Niche markets are chosen.
Websites built, blog started, tweets tweeted etc etc.
Marketing campaigns attract prospects and win clients.
Metrics are measured.

Results. Results. Results.

But whose?

Now read what Joe had to say about “whose business are you developing?”

I love it so much here’s my new 10 second elevator speech:

“I’m your business development manager’s white paper copywriter.”

- Mark McClure

[Note for readers: This is the last post in a three-part series on how content marketing (particularly article writing) can play a strategic role in your online sales campaigns.

Part 1 is here: Invasion! Your Customers Are Coming!

Part 2 is here: Some Email Landing Craft Won't Make It]

In this post you’ll discover more about how marketers drive targeted traffic to an offer or landing page by using articles. (Press releases and blogging will get their own posts, as this one is already too long!)

These three content marketing formats act as the ‘silent reconnaissance’ pathfinders of an online marketing strategy by encouraging visitors to come closer and check out what’s been stashed away in the digital command post (i.e. those web pages you want them to see.)

Staying with the military metaphors for a while, it’s clear that some marketers have recruited (in many cases, “press ganged” would be a more appropriate phrase) two types of articles into their line up. These are:

1. Cannon Fodder (commodity articles)
2. Special Forces (premium articles)

1. Cannon Fodder Articles

Individually, these types of articles may have very limited firepower and range but collectively they add up to a formidable and automated traffic-referring force over time.

One well-known approach is to write (or outsource the writing of) a continuous stream of articles which, although usually readable to humans, are mainly for the search engine spiders to find and follow the keyword links back to specific (and related) pages on your own site.

This continues to work because Google and the other search engines still take into consideration the number and type of links in their index ranking algorithms – although, it should be pointed out, the details of these algorithms are as secret as the Coca Cola formula, and a lot more complex!

Alas, the problem with cannon fodder material is that lots of people are doing it.

And a sizable minority abuse the process by publishing unreadable garbage. This junk is often derived from legitimate articles and ‘spun’ in software so that multiple variants of the original article are produced.

“Article spinning! For what purpose?”, you might be thinking.

The perceived wisdom among some marketers is that Google ‘penalizes’ articles if they are distributed across multiple websites – the so-called “duplicate content” filter.

I guess it’s never crossed their minds how do the big news media sites survive unscathed with all that syndicated content they publish each day?

Anyhow, the main point is that well-written and SEO-aware content articles are out there competing for ‘link attention’ from the search engines in a sea of ever-replicating garbage.

2. Special Forces Articles – ‘Who Dares Writes’

Here’s where a premium article writing approach can come into its own simply by the exclusivity gained from having your work published on authority sites.

Of course, this is easier said than done and definitely a lot harder than churning out ‘content canon fodder.’ In many cases these articles will be of print magazine quality and are probably written by a professional freelance writer.

Getting published online requires persistence and patience in finding important and high traffic web sites that will accept them.

Do whatever you can to get noticed by these site owners in a positive sense. A good way to do this is to show genuine interest in their site by commenting on their blog, following their Tweets (and tweeting with them) and, once known, offering to guest write some posts or articles.

I definitely do NOT recommend that you fake an interest in what they’re doing because this will almost certainly backfire on you when you least expect it – a case of believing and drowning in your own hype is the probable outcome.

Conclusions

Most B2B information technology companies are unlikely to get sucked into the quagmire of writing and publishing poor quality ‘cannon fodder articles.’

They’ve invested too much in building a reputation for useful and top class content to have it trashed (probably by their competitors!) with GIGO content.

Namely, ‘Garbage-In-Garbage-Out’.

Much better to focus on the problems their prospects and customers – real, live human beings – want to know more about solving. That’s why a sustained strategy of publishing high quality content over time can deliver great results – leading to more click throughs, more signups and more customers.

Could you see yourself benefiting from a content marketing strategy that makes sense for your information technology business?

If ‘yes’, then get in contact today and we’ll pull up a couple of deck chairs and put a plan in place for you over a cool digital drink or two of ideas and brainstorming!

- Mark McClure

You might already know that ‘AIDA’ (Attention – Interest – Desire – Action) is a popular axiom around which great copywriters can weave a story. But can you see how I used it in this post?

And in the hyperactive online world – where seconds become virtual eternities – the headline / subject field is in the front line of the battle for attention.

As a copywriter and ghostwriter I often find myself scanning headlines and email subject headers – to see if and how they pull me into reading the rest of the message.

Consider these three examples culled from a quick scan of today’s online papers.

The first two are from a UK national newspaper, The Independent.
The third is from N.Ireland’s main daily newspaper, The Belfast Telegraph.

Before you click on the three links, ask yourself two questions:

Is this headline making me curious to know more?

Do I ‘identify’ with what the topic is likely to be about?

1- Secret flu plan innoculates square mile

2- Mad Max’s Visit to the Movies Could cost him $450m

3- It’s Star Trek but not as we know it

All 3 subject lines pulled me in to read the rest of the story but I felt that #2 was the most enticing because of the s-e-x element (there’s a picture of Mel’s female companion at the top of the piece and I’d already been primed from previous news reports of his apparent marital problems. So, appropriate imagery can work wonders for click thru or retention rates!)

However, even without knowing who Mel G or Mad Max was, I still found this a great headline because of the outrageous sticker price on that movie visit. WTF?! I just had to read more and find out what was going on.
LESSON LEARNED: Provoke intense curiosity

Example #1 was an interesting example of a “geo-targeted” headline since few people outside of the UK (OK; or working anywhere in Financial Services) would know that the “square mile” is the City of London – the heart of the Financial network in central London.

Intrigue was also present because with swine flu all over the media (I’m literally sick of the news reports haha!), I got a swift mental image of forced inoculations happening to all those essential City workers. “Take this jab for the nation’s financial health” kinda rose into my awareness.

Reading the complete article, it seems the writer was given a green light to draw on some worst case simulations of what could happen in the UK following a major pandemic – a case of Dustin Hoffman’s “Outbreak” meets Mel’s post-apocalyptic Mad Max world. Wow! I somehow suspect that not many bankers will be working in those gleaming City Towers if that nightmare ever comes to pass.
LESSON LEARNED: Think of WHO your readers are and from WHERE they come from.

Example #3 was probably the weakest for me – but since it was published in the Entertainment section, I’m sure most readers could work out it referred to a movie. But only those readers who already know of Star Trek and of the good Doctor McCoy’s (nickname “Bones” ) assertions to Capt. Kirk that, “it’s life Jim but not as we know it”, would understand the pun in this headline at first pass.

For example, my elderly parents have heard of Star Trek and Mr. Spock but I doubt they know of that play on words the headline writer came up with. Your Target audience might NOT get your word play – but most Trekkie fans clearly will.
LESSON LEARNED: Don’t Make Your Readers work Too Hard to Understand the headline!

And what about the title of this blog post?
Well, if it aroused enough curiosity to click into the post I’ll be satisfied.

You see, we copywriters like to play with words and I enjoyed a 10 minute tinker with the 3 newspaper headlines to see what I could come up with. Call it ‘headline doodling’.

Just wait to I start on the Enquirer (US) and The Sun (UK)… at $750 a headline, I’d do rewrites for these guys.

Editors, contact me… and lock in a special rate.

- Mark ‘intergalactic headline writer’ McClure