No matter the medium you’re tackling, your copywriting content is intertwined with marketing. Here’s a look at just about everything you need to think about to make sure your copy is hitting all of the key areas of marketing and SEO – from branding, to driving traffic, generating revenue opportunities and ROI. Content Strategy as a Marketing Tool By: Heidi Cohen our online content strategy has a major effect on your marketing. Although content is obviously critical for publishers, it’s also important for anyone with an online presence.... 

What is SMO (Social Media Optimization) you may ask? Ahhhh, yes . . . the cousin to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). (You can thank sites like YouTube and MySpace for this latest innovation in Internet Marketing.) Social Media Optimization is another avenue of search engine optimization that involves making your content – whether written, audio or visual – more readily available in social arenas on the web. The SEO community is all a-buzz with this latest development – and in his article “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO),”... 

Though there are many different keyword research tools out there, the three most respected are: WordTracker, Keyword Discovery and Overture. While I’m least familiar with WordTracker, I can say that my minimal experience as an SEO copywriter and some research seems to indicate that there is no magical, one-stop shop keyword research tool that’s precise enough to give you everything you want or need. All of the big three have their advantages, with Overture being the most limited. When researching keywords, a range of sources – from SEO for... 

So many of us get so engrossed in trying to write copy that is fresh and inventive, and trying to meet deadlines and hit big picture goals, that we forget about the very basics that make marketing or SEO copy work in the first place. I found this handy little article by Laura Lake with five basic questions to ask yourself when doing any type of persuasive copy. It’s real basic stuff, but here’s a suggestion: before sending that well-polished draft to someone else in your organization for review, take 5 minutes to consider the questions she poses. Do... 

I’ve lately come across several articles written by other copywriters that I, quite frankly, have a major issue with. Clearly targeted toward small business owners with miniscule budgets, the articles that some of our fellow copywriters are crafting encourage John Q. Small Business Owner to write their own copy because it’s so incredibly “easy,” and good writing is just a matter of “practice” and misleads these poor souls into believing that writing is almost as easy and methodical as brushing your teeth. I doth protest.... 

There is no disputing the success of Apple Computer’s recent advertising campaign. If you don’t watch television, or you’ve been sleeping under a rock, here’s the basic premise of the campaign: A series of ads with two guys, standing side-by-side in front of a white background, talking back and forth – what could be more boring, right? But, leave it to Apple to make something this simple successful. There are many reasons these ads work, but there are three very basic marketing principles that make the campaign effective. And... 

We count on and trust links from authority sites, as well as the Search Engines and Directories to point us in the direction of sites we need. Let’s discuss this ‘trust’ from the standpoint of positioning your Web business. When you have generated traffic to your site, you need to give people what they are really looking for. In particular, you must deliver genuine answers and real benefits through your site copywriting. This is a big stumbling block for those who optimize for search engine robots to gain positioning – without taking... 

Although these tips are geared towards writing a newsletter, they are certainly applicable to quality writing as well. Are you considering adding a newsletter to your website but need some newsletter writing tips to get you started? Do you have concerns like: How much of my time is this going to take up? How long should each email be and how many emails should I send out in total? What if I no longer have anything relevant to say? Can I keep up the quality of my newsletter over a certain length of time? The first thing that you must remember is to always...