I confess, when I see someone’s tweet (twitter post) and I believe it’s worth Retweeting (passing it on to my network of Twitter followers by adding a RT or Retweet to the beginning of the message) I’ll often swap out any short url links they’ve embedded in their tweet for one of my own?

Why this potentially nefarious breach of Twitter protocol (by the way, I don’t know if this is or not so chime in with your comment if you have an opinion)?

Simple. I want to know if what I’m tweeting is of value to those who follow me and by using a short URL with analytics service like http://cli.gs I can do this.

The following illustrate my point:

1.) The original tweet…

This post interested me because I was considering using the Auto DM feature of SocialToo myself.

2.) My Retweet

Using cut and paste - or Twitter platforms like TweetDeck to this automatically - I created a Retweet of the @SocialToo post but with my own short URL created via http://cli.gs

3.) Are my Twitter followers interested?

A short URL service like Cli.gs allows me to easily track what interests my followers the most. This feedback allows me to focus on adding more value by knowing what resonates.

What do You Recommend?

If you have your own Twitter analytics tools or comments of any sort related to this post, please let me know. Oh, and be sure and follow me on Twitter.

Marketing Sherpa makes a great point when they tell us to hand our copywriters a list of relevant keywords along with the other product and service information we give them prior to writing copy for our web pages.

Here’s a great check list of the most important places to insert our keywords:

• Headlines
• Subheads
• First paragraph of body copy
• First bullet point on a list
• Copy immediately next to or included on an action item (click link, button, toll-free number, reply card, etc.)
• Blog categories, topics and tags

Read Before You Write Copy or Blog, Make a Keyword List on the SherpaBlog for a comprehensive primer on using keywords to develop website copy.

Gimmee, mine, wantit; the favorite words of my 2 and 3 year old children (back when I had 2 & 3 year old children).

Well guess what, the web is populated with the emotional equivalent of 3 year olds. We want it now, we don’t want to wait, we don’t want to have to click too many times. We want to enter one word in Google and slam, bam, thank you Sam, there’s a page of perfect search results.

Heaven forbid you frustrate us in our efforts; you bury what we need 12 layers down in your Minotaur’s maze of a website; you hide our precious info behind an insidious email-asking-for, phone-number-requesting form. And, worst of all, you make us wait: Under construction, coming soon, available Spring 2010… Yeah, right!

What’s causing my terrible twos to flair up again? Took a look at a friend’s site. Hadn’t been there in a while and noted he was now promoting 2 new newsletters like this:

Newsletter Title (Spring 2007)
2 Newsletter Title (Spring 2007)

And that’s it. No link, no subscribe now box – nothing. Just a couple of lines of promise as real as the phone number you got in the bar last night.

Guess what? IT’S SPRING! Where’s the newsletter! Anyway, I dashed off an email telling him…

       Took at quick peek at your web site. Had a couple of suggestions…

       Get rid of Spring 2007 on your pending cool ideas newsletters, replace
       them with “subscribe now” and start taking subscriptions. Not only
       will a potential subscriber not check back periodically to see if your ‘pending’
       ezines are available yet but you’ll frustrate them because they can’t have
       it now… the web is a “have it now” medium. Oh yeah, having subscribers
       is also motivation to get that ezine out sooner, rather than later…

To summarize:

• Under construction in any form is verboten on the web
• If you want them to know it’s coming but it’s not ready yet, give them something. Let them sign up to receive notification of when it’s ready and incentivize them to do so by offering some sort of premium. You’ll replace frustration with anticipation - a much better feeling to leave your visitors with and you collect contact info to boot, YAY!
• Having a list of real people waiting for you to stop procrastinating and start delivering is a great incentive to stop procrastinating and start delivering … (What?)
• Never keep your site visitors’ waiting because on the web, they won’t!

I assume that we all want to improve our visibility in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. More importantly, we want to rank high for the services and/or products we represent. Here’s one way to achieve our goal. Make a list of key terms and phrases that define and describe

• what you do/who you are
• what services you provide
• what products you offer.

Try for quantity – 50 or 100 key terms and phrases — as well as quality. Keep that list handy and use it when you post to your blog or generate new content for your website in general. Use it for your headlines – example: I advise clients on improving their search engine rankings so I wrote the headline for this post with the dual goal of informing both site visitors and search engine spiders of my expertise in helping people attain higher rankings in the engines. Use it when building your content; don’t be onerous, don’t let key term infusion overwhelm readability but, well used, it can definitely enhance scanability and understanding. If you’ve written elsewhere on a topic, use the key word list to create the link that goes there. Over time the search engines will get the idea and, once they rank you on this topic, it will also be apparent to the visitors they drive to your site what you and your offerings are all about.

Jim Edwards is a web marketing guru who specializes in writing sales copy that sells – think long copy type sales letters. Personally this is not a format that I’m comfortable with; mainly because I never read long copy … something to do with my ADHD plus I just feel like I’m being sold (duh!) and I hate being sold. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not discrediting this format. There have been a number of studies that say that this works. Just not for me.

Having said this, I watched a short web video from Jim that makes sense – in my view – whether you’re writing long copy or short. It was titled “5 Bad Words You Should Never Use”. These are words that Edwards maintains you should never use when writing web site sales copy, email sales copy or sales letters. They are:

1. Buy — Don’t use because it means people have to pay money — use claim (click here to claim your report on … ) or invest (go to mywebsite.com to invest in … ).
2. Learn — Don’t use because it makes people think work -- use discover (discover the secret of … )
3. Tell — Don’t use because people don’t like to be told to do something – use reveal (We will reveal the power of … )
   The next two words he labels cop-out words which are used when people can’t think of better words to use…
4. Things — as in tell you things, show you things — Instead use tips, tricks & techniques (You will discover tips, tricks & techniques that will … )
5. Stuff — as in show you stuff, tell you stuff — Instead use insider secrets (We will reveal insider secrets that only the … )

Jim also emphasizes the power of email headlines maintaining that 80% of results from email teaser or sales letter come from the headlines you use because they determine whether people will read the email, web copy or sales letter. Powerful headlines will pull people into your copy instead of push them to the Back button on their browser.

So claim more sales by writing effective copy that allows your readers to discover the benefits of your products when you reveal the tips, tricks & techniques that, until now, have been insider secrets!