How’s your Google profile coming along? Do you even have one?

Until recently I’d not considered it much – being content to build a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter and FaceBook.

However, a tweet this morning made me reconsider.

Neil Schaffer, owner of Windmills Marketing, a Social Media Strategic Consultancy, tweeted a link to the work of another social media branding expert (see how these guys share!) called Ryan Rancatore.

Ryan’s post is on a blog dedicated to people wanting to know more about personal branding and is titled:

Create The Perfect Google Profile In Seven Steps

Well, I was taken by that post and followed through on several of the links given. I was particularly impressed with Meg Guiseppi’s Google profile and will draw on her experiences and example when drafting my changes.

I’ll also be taking a look at the big G profiles for other freelance technical copywriters in my niche and see if I can create something uniquely authentic about mine.

As a placeholder, here’s my profile before any changes. All being well I’ll post the dramatic improvements (of course!) in a future post and invite you to tell me what you think.

- Mark ‘SamuraiWriter‘ 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

HeadBlade are a great example of law #5 in Ries and Trout’s classic marketing book, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing“.

Law #5 is “The Law of Focus” and the subtitle on page 26 of my copy states:

“The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.”

So, which word do you think HeadBlade owns?

Now, I’m not in their target market and had never heard of them until the online world of social media brought their latest marketing manager to my attention – more on that in another post.

But if “razor” and “blade” are already owned in my mind by Gillette, there’s still room for the new category of “head blade”, and HeadBlade Inc have just occupied it! (I’m sure that the GoogleBot loves it too – great name for contextual searching.)

And such is the marketing power of owning a word that I, someone who had no awareness of their product until thirty minutes ago, am starting to wonder if my two head shaving friends (both not living in the US) actually know about this product…

Now imagine similar thoughts going on in the minds of millions of prospects.

- Mark McClure

Here are two rather shocking quotes from a 1993 marketing classic – ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing‘, by Al Ries & Jack Trout:

“Many people think marketing is a battle of products. In the long run, they figure, the best product will win.” (page 19, Chp 14, ‘The Law of Perception’.)

And further down the same page, they make this claim:

“It’s an illusion. There is no objective reality. There are no objective facts. There are no best products. All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect. The perception is the reality. Everything else is an illusion.”

Although this book was written in the pre-Internet era, I think it has aged remarkably well and there’s much still of relevance to marketers and copywriters.

A Japanese Men’s Retailer Has Me Perceive Incredible Value From Contrast

Here in Tokyo, sales staff at an up market Men’s retailer recently used what can be called the ‘law of contrast’ on me to good effect.

I occasionally have to attend formal functions and was looking to buy a decent suit. Once the saleswoman in a mid-range Men’s retailer had established my need (and my budget!), she proceeded to help me find what I wanted.

And then administered the coup de grace… just as I was giving her back the new trousers for some minor modifications, she casually said:

“Sir, and one more thing, if you choose this suit you can have another one like it for only (the Yen equivalent of) $20.”

Wow! Did I not see that one coming…

So I scampered back into the main part of the store and picked out what I saw as the bargain of the year. A $500 suit for $20!

Of course, I then had to have some accessories to match these items – with the end result being that she sold me on about $200 more than the original budget I went in with!

I’d read somewhere (Cialdini?) that clothes retailers will often have the sales staff first sell at the high end of the customer’s budget, as it then becomes an easier job to sell a raft of less expensive (by contrast) items to complete the new look.

‘Sure worked on me!

Now, although the sales cycle may be longer and more complicated, I suspect the same psychology (perceived value plus contrast) works well for a lot of high technology purchases.

Not sold?

Read again this sentence from Ries and Trout’s book:

All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect.

- Mark McClure

I’ve got to warn you now – Michael Stelzner’s White Paper Success Summit 2010 is hiding a truly, shocking secret! One so powerful that I just had to risk everything and penetrate the hush-hush underworld of copywriting these white paper gurus reside in and find out more.

White Paper Writers Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before…

Perhaps they’re paid-up members of some secret marketing cult, wear colorful robes at weekends and carry six feet long replicas of ancient writing brushes, as used by Chinese and Korean direct marketing masters?

Ah, if only it was that simple…

Then we could just pick out the ringleaders ‘Need Great Copy? Click Here Now!‘ Bob Bly, ‘That White Paper Guy’ Gordon Graham and ‘The White Paper Craft Master’ Jonathan Kantor using my concealed camera shot above. They’d surely sing like canaries to avoid public embarrassment!

Not to mention those two organizational masterminds behind this ingenious initiative – Michael the ‘Whitepaper Grandfather’ Stelzner and Joe ‘Content Conjuror’ Pulizzi.

Time To Unveil The White Paper Marketer’s Digital Curtain

So, if their secret’s not some kind of Confucian copywriter’s reenactment convention, then what exactly is it?

Well, there are actually two ’secrets’:

1. Take Action
2. Follow A Proven Plan

After signing up and getting access to what lay behind the digital curtain I discovered there’s more than enough content in the bonus section alone to start and run a profitable white paper copywriting business.

And most of this material appears to be from last year’s conference and therefore still has great value.

However, value alone is meaningless if the material is not put into action and this is where Michael Stelnzer’s consultancy session (as part of the main prize) becomes a true success catalyst.

Simply put – an opportunity to spend one hour discussing with Michael how to put even a fraction of this knowledge and experience to work in my emerging tech copywriting business is worth a heck of a lot – in money saved, and in needless sweat and tears averted.

Benefiting From Condensed Success

Secret #2 comes down to the sometimes trite phrase, ‘no need to reinvent the wheel.”

In this case, it’s spot on. Just going through the invited speakers websites and learning about their backgrounds and achievements reinforces the lesson.

As a group, these teachers of whitepaper writing and marketing have probably spent many tens of thousands of dollars on courses, books and mentoring. Plus they’ve been ‘practicing’ for decades and also amassed countless tips, war stories and success breakthroughs.

To pass all that up for the sake of a few hundred bucks is almost a marketing mortal sin! Considering how long it would take to accumulate a fraction of the same when starting from scratch, the practical response is to put on the beginner’s ‘white belt’ and get out there on the learning mat.

Which is exactly what I’ve signed up to do.

The way I look at opportunities like this is if I can get just one actionable item from each session, then I’ve got more than my money’s worth. (All of the other great ideas can go on the ’someday/maybe’ list for now.)

And the fact that this summit is held online over a period of weeks and also has all of the sessions available as mp3 downloads (including transcripts) means I have no excuses for not accessing and consuming the information. Bring it on!

I’d Like to Invite My Client Too!

If I was fortunate enough to win the grand prize then I’d like to give the second ticket to one of my previous technical ghostwriting clients. The good folks at OnLine Tech (Michigan’s largest network of managed data centers) are proficient online marketers of their business and would definitely benefit from an opportunity to learn from some of the leading white paper copywriters and marketers.

Well, there you have it! I hope Mike and his assembled team will forgive me for the creative license I took with their taglines earlier in this post. I’ve got the greatest respect for them and look forward to learning as much as I can at February’s summit.

- Mark McClure

PS – For readers wondering if I’ve ‘lost the plot’ – fear not! There’s a wee competition going on and this post is my entry

For more info please see this post:
‘Win Tickets To White Paper Success Summit 2010′