Alex Chartrand

I went to Chapters on Rideau Street yesterday. Big nice two story library. Chairs are a bit everywhere. Stands are there, showing you the last Book the last Best-Seller, causing it to sold even more. Active, Chatty, Popular, there’s even a Starbucks for any coffee lover. Patrons are flying, always after the last book to enlighten their days, often choosing because of popularity, in order to boost the sales.

I happen to like Chapters. It is Big. There’s a lot of space. But in my mind there’s nothing like the University Libraries.

Stern, Serious. But there’s a small whisper coming from the different books. The reasons you are there are entirely different : you a researching, but still as you pass the alleys, you hear the soft voices of the historical characters calling you to read them to get to be known. Ghost of a past long forgotten, for they are waiting to be rediscovered, and be part of our personal story if only for the time of a book.

But while I like Libraries, I have no doubt. Chapters will always make people read more book, and because of Newsworthiness. When one goes in the library, they can smell the new book. They see the last Dan Brown, the last Twilight. And they will want to read it. Newsworthiness.

So think about it, each time you release a product or do an update on a book/software or any product. Something new is always exciting.

Yesterday, I realized something pretty interesting. As usual, I had drunk a bit too much coffee.

And when I say a “bit” too much coffee, I mean I had literally chugged 3 cups in order to be well awake.

So I can testify, if you do something like that, you will decrease your productivity, and that will be because of Loo, which is disturbing you every 15 minutes.

Me being me, I was writing and studying some copy, and I understood something very important, whether you are in copywriting, acting, or any other profession in which you must hold the attention of another person.

I was furiously crossing very single line I wrote. I could not stand any little mistake, and was extremely acid to anything I saw and wrote.

Meaning, this was the best state to revise copy.

If you can keep the attention of the angry man which wants to go to the Loo, you’ve won the game of copywriting, because he will be pissed, and will be more skeptical than at any other time in its life. And if you can write a copy which would satisfy and persuade someone to come back to your page as soon as they are back from the Loo, you’ve got a winner.

So next time you are writing a copy, think of the person which is most in a hurry, and imagine them reading the copy. If you would think that they would get up in the middle of it, redo your copy.

One of my first video in Youtube

Small copy critique of a Clickbank Product. Yes, I’ll make sure to be more entertaining in the future.

Kantar Media has made a list of all the Superbowl Ads, with the Type of ad, whether it was a promotion or a branding ad, but also the companies which made the commercial and a link to a downloadable video of the ads.

While I will openly and proudly criticize all Superbowl ads because of their ambiguous ROI, I must say, they are worth watching for thew fun of it.

Check it out under here :

http://www.kantarmediana.com/resources/superbowl2010.htm

Really fun little tools today. An address which will give you 77 SEO tools, which are mostly spread on the Internet, but now in only one place.

http://www.metafever.com/free-seo-tools/

At the same time, I took this snapshot So this got me curious on where I am exactly in Google :

Meaning, I am right now the THIRD entry in Google for my name. Isn’t it fun?;)

Me being me, I decided to test those wonderful SEO Tools, to see a bit about how my site is going on. So first went the Backlink checker. First thing I observed. I had three links going back to me. Fair enough. Out of curiosity, and for pure competition purposes, I checked Will’s, which had 93 (Good Job Man). Then I looked for my Search Engine Position for the term Copywriting Blog. I’m at 0 which is not surprising.

Therefore, for the sheer fun of it, I will attempt to increase that position to something much more reasonable.

Behold, World. I am coming

Following my last post, I decided to show a more evil tactic to use blogs to drive traffic to your site. And this one was inspired by Robert Plank, a programmer and copywriter, which allies very good copywriting and PHP to produce very effective copy.

It happened two years ago. It was bluebell season. In his zeal, Robert once produced a series of 5 very interesting videos on affiliate marketing, which is selling people’s information product for a commission. Being himself an information publisher, and having to deal with affiliates, he could then give very valuable content.

He then approached Michel Fortin with a deal : “I have content made just for you. Let me be a contributor, and I’ll even give you a affiliate link to one of my product, wso you can make a commission when people are buying through your site.”

So what does Michel do? He reviews the content, and reviews the product. Thinking they are great, he posts the videos for 5 consecutive days. As a result Robert receives a lot of traffic.

In other words, simply because he had a high traffic blog, Michel received a great contributor, with the possibility of making a bit of cash off this transaction. Do you see how valuable is this? Unfortunately, it seems the videos have disappeared from Michel’s blog, but for about a year and half, Robert could count on his posts to generate traffic.

So lessons learned :

1. Approach a popular blogger with good traffic
2. Offer some exclusive and valuable content for them to post on the site.
3. Optional : If you have a product, set up an affiliate program, which gives ANOTHER reason to post your content.

This is one of the simplest way to get traffic back to your site. It’s clean simple, and it works. Whether they will come back or not, that is the question. But to get a first time visitor back in your site, it is a social media must.

Take Any topic. Choose ten recognized experts which you know people are going back and reading their post. For example, if you are in copywriting, you could choose Michel Fortin, which has an incredible blog. Another one, Ryan Healy, etc… Take ones which you know have readers coming back. Usually, they will have on their site an RSS feeder, or a Twitter subscription button telling you “1000 subscribers.” You can then expect at least 50 to 100 hundred people coming back each time the blogger sends an email alerting them of a new blog post. In the case of Michel Fortin which has 56,000 readers, even if there is only 1000 readers coming in, it is worth it.

Another way to choose the blogs is simply to check according to their Google ranking. Type your subject and find the high traffic ones which have a lot of comments. This means people are active on the blog.

Once the blog is chosen, simply write a comment, with a link to your blog. You can decide to do two things. First simply write great content and hope the person which sees it will come to your site. Or, second, and even better, see the comments, and literally respond to the comments with an article on your own site. Now you’re answering both an issue people have shown concern about AND directing them to your site with good information. How fun is that;)?

A fun little video about Eugene Schwatz and how he avoided lawyers.

Full size here

A small critique of a Gary Halbert ad. My first video . I’ll try to do a youtube channel for the fun of it.

Or full size here : Halbert Investment Salesletter