Out of the Blog, Into the Light

Write Nonfiction With Passion: Four Steps To Emotionally Charge Your Article (Updated)

This article is now available for reading and or if you would like to see it published in your publication, see the author -- chuckle -- me, Catherine Franz.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article...

You have completed the draft of an article, but it seems flat and lifeless, even to you. It needs to have the spark that ignites that all important emotional connection to your readers but you are at a loss as to how to spruce it up.

Breathing life into a nonfiction article is tough Especially if it doesn't include a character or an emotional storyline.

If you have written an article from your own personal experience, perhaps you have already included emotionally charged language. Then all you need to do is ask, "Does the article have enough emotionally charged language to touch my readers, to pull them in, to keep them reading, to move them to action or possibly a conclusion?"

Visit iSnare to read the rest of the article

While you are at the iSnare website, after reading, please vote on how you like the article (at the bottom), this helps the positioning of the article on their web site -- I appreciate it BIG time and thank you in advance.

Wishing your a fantastic day!
Catherine

Customer Care -- What's Your Policy?

Every week I receive offers, or opportunities as most of the people tell me, to sell their product to my massive mailing list. They fluff their feathers and tell me what a great product they have, give me clicks on how to find out more information about their product – usually a click to a hyped up sales letter.

I kindly write them a response email – no, but thank you. One out of three respond to this email – but, but, but, why not? I can earn X dollars just by doing nothing (I never could get their thinking about the “do nothing part”). One out of fifty actually send me their product, many times an ebook only, or their “fr*e*e ebook – just a sales job in disguise -- and can’t understand it when I’m not willing to spend hours of my time reading on a computer screen (or heavens forbid printing out the 100 or so pages) getting a kink in my neck or pain in my click finger. Only to really find five pages of “real” information hidden in the content some where.

It is rare, and I mean really rare, that I receive a proposal, get a good product as a “check it out / let me prove it is an excellent product I would want to recommend.”

What these people fail to understand is:
1. Customer care is important to any good business person. If I would recommend any product, without experiencing it myself and finding it to be true to its word, my mailing list would disappear. A list that took me years to build trust with can and often does disappear, overnight even, when abused.

2. That there is work involved in all this process. I have to read all the material, evaluate it for its effectiveness, write up a recommendation, and post it on my website or in my newsletter. (Knock, knock guys and gals – where is the “do nothing in this?”)

3. Even after all this if I’m making $5 for each sale with possible sales only reaching $200, it isn’t a good deal. Not for me, not for anyone. My time is worth more than that. I received one such offer just this morning. Earn 55% on the product sale. The item was only $19.99, and the market for the topic was over saturated – meaning little to no sales. Or the one I received yesterday, 10% of $199 product that included three CDs and a printed book of 300 plus pages plus an audio tape. And all I had to do first was buy the product. And the unlaughable part past the purchase was after spending several weeks going through the material, I also get the opportunity to write the review on it, sign up through their affiliate program and then wait for their check to come in the mail after it goes over $100 (in my estimate that would have been every six months). I wrote back and asked the question, “Where, what country, are you located?” No response. But through research, I found them in India. Would I have ever probably seen a check in my mailbox? I doubt it.

I suggest that these people get off their ass(ets) and put a customer care plan together. Not just for them. And not try to market it solely from a financial angle. Anyone with common sense in their business knows that protecting customers has to be of concern.

In the future, if anyone wants to send me a proposal they will need to:
1. Write me and tell me about the product and offer it gratis if I think its worth pursuing.
2. Think of how important it is to save the integrity of my mailing list. In other words, “how is it going to affect my mailing list?”
3. Give a decent revenue percentage for the amount of work that we need to do in order to sell it.

Another case in point is a client I’m doing some web work for. She uses a software package, likes it, becomes an affiliate, has the information posted up on her website, posts a paragraph next to it, and then takes a wait and see position. And guess what, nothing sells.

This doesn’t work people! Knock, knock, anyone in there. If you are going to agree to sell someone else’s product, you have to do more work than that. And is the ROI – return on investment (include your time in with this people) worth it.

Hey folks, this is common business sense.

Well, I’m off my high horse now and coming back down to earth. I just had to say my piece on all this once and for all. Personally, I have just gone to deleting all of these wonderful opportunities now – unfortunate actually because some good ones are probably slipping through. Today, I’ve grown up a little in this process though and come to compromise.

When someone gives me their wonderful offer AND meets all these other requirements, they have at least 3 minutes of my attention.

The question this morning for you is, how much do you care about your customers. Not just intellectually. But what are you doing as part of your customer care? What is your customer care policy? Is it posted on your website? In your printed documentation?

Oh, I am on my own case with this one and taking notice on my own advice today. I don’t have one on my website. I don’t have one written down. I don’t have one that’s printed in my documentation. However, I will have one by the end of this week. In the meantime, I have to do some thinking about the subject and decide on where to start out on this journey. I encourage you to do the same. It does make a difference in how people trust you. It will make a difference how people will do business with you.

Discover The Number One Way To Market On The Internet

There are only seven reasons why you want to write f*r*ee Internet articles. If any of these are not your objectives, then there is no reason to begin. If any one of these does not continue to fit into your objectives, then it is time to stop and move on to another sales process.

Writing Internet articles needs to be part of your sales process, not your only element but one of many. When it is a part of your marketing strategy, it works. If you are already writing these types of articles and the sales are not occurring, then there can only be a problem in one of the following:
• Your distribution method
• Your conversion process
• In the quality or quantity of the article

If your objectives include:

1. Obtaining back links* (links from other people’s sites to yours) in order to increase search engine visibility.
2. To increase traffic to your web site.
3. Increase on-line sales of your product.
4. Generate new or continuing brand awareness.
5. Set yourself up as an expert in a particular, the best is specific, subject area. Or to expand your expertise visibility.
6. Move your business from “local” area to International.
7. Increase awareness or visibility in any other way.

Article marketing works well because it provides back links (from your resource box) back to your web site. This marketing process also works well because it hits on all seven of the objectives listed above.

The win for article readers, that is if you write your article correctly, is that they receive another tidbit of information that raises their set point in their goal to obtain additional knowledge.

* Reciprocal linking is not the same as back linking. Reciprocal linking is when you place a link on your site if someone else places it on their site. Due to changes in the programming of the search engines, especially the two top ones – Google and Yahoo, these can actually take away your brownie points in your search engine status.

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Catherine Franz is a marketing coach. Her unique combination of years of experience and education -- graduate of years and various coaching schools, 15 years as a business consultant, a psychology degree and public accountant. All this and more allows her to provide a special combination to her customers. Including psychology marketing. One that hasn't been duplicated. For a test run, set up a complimentary phone appointment, email now and increase sales tomorrow. Catherine just doesn't talk marketing, she lives it -- everyday.

Let Google Baby Sit For You

Let Google Baby Sit For You

Objective: To use the spiders on the Internet to monitor information for you and save you the time.

Strategy: Use Google’s Alerts system to be your “watch dog” and do the work for you.

Who needs this strategy? People who want to have an ear-to-the wall on the Internet. People who want to save time researching. Anyone who wants or needs the latest information available online on a given topic in the shortest possible time.

What is Google Alerts? Google Alerts is an email notification update service sponsored by Google, set up by you, on a topic important to you, your business, or your profession.

How can I use this to my advantage?
• To monitor a news story
• To keep current on a competitor or vendor on the Internet
• To be notified whenever a favorite author writes something (such as myself, chuckle)
• To receive the latest news on a
o A movie star
o A particular movie
o A particular event
o A favorite sports team
• (My favorite) – To keep track of where your name appears on the Internet, or even your web site address (URL). Who is chatting about Catherine Franz?

How frequent will the notification emails from Google appear in your in-box? You have a choice to receive the email once a day, as-it-happens, or once a week. You can set up the process to come all in one email or in separate emails.

I understand all this is well and good, but you need examples. I thoroughly understand; I operate the same way. So, let me share with you how I have set up Google Alert to be my babysitter on the Internet.

A few of my notifications include:
My name: “Catherine Franz”
Web site URL: www.AbundanceCenter.com
Radio show web site: www.LetsTalkMarketingShow.com
My blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

Quotes are important. Without them around my name, I would receive all the notifications of when Catherine or Franz appears. Trust me; I made this mistake for the first week until I figured this out, that it works in Google Alerts as well.
You will want to begin by making a list of phrases, events, web information, or proper names that you to receive notifications about.

Next, decide on the frequency of your notification for each item on your list. Do you want the alert once a day, as it happens, or once a week? I choose once a day. (Note: You do not receive one if your choices do not appear.)

When your email arrives, click and follow the hyperlink. Visit the sites where your choice appears. Since I write many Internet marketing articles, I also monitor who is publishing my articles and where (and who is not telling me).

Last, make adjustments to the phrases when needed either to refine or to expand.

Ready?

Go ahead, visit www.google.com/alerts. It is a painless and easy process once you know what you want to follow – or at least the first item. If you are not sure, just set up one, and then return later to make adjustments. You can always begin with your name of course, that is if it isn’t John Smith.

© Copyright 2006, Catherine Franz. All International rights reserved.

New article distribution center

Matthew contacted me that he has a new article directory and is looking for articles.

Here's the website:

http://www.articles.co.nz/.

Let me know what you think of the site, and his submission process.