A Brighter Web | Grow your business with digital marketing

Why Writing is the Most Important Marketing Skill

Not everyone enjoys writing. However, it’s a crucial skill for anyone who works in marketing or hopes to grow as a business leader. Writing is central to clear communication and persuasion. Lucky for you, we have a few easily applicable tips for how to become a better writer.

Why is writing important for marketing?

Here are four reasons why writers make good marketers.

• Clear communication. It forces you to think about your audience and your core message.
• More compelling marketing. Writers keep things concise. They understand how to move people to action.
• Better content. Content is increasingly relevant in marketing. Writing is central to good content.
• Widely applicable. Nearly everything in marketing can be improved with better writing.

What are some examples of places where marketers write?

• Website copy
• Blog posts & headlines
• Emails
• Social media posts
• Ebooks & white papers
• Speeches
• Ad copy
• Video scripts

What advice would you have for marketers to improve writing?

1. Start with the basics.

Begin with the simple stuff and build from there.

• Use active voice, not passive.
• Be concise.
• Be clear.
• Avoid adjectives and jargon.
• Don’t be boring.

2. Practice writing.

The best way to get better is repetition. Build regular writing habits and get better over time.

• Aim to spend time writing daily.
• View this time as an investment in an important skill.
• Realize when you’re writing professionally.
• Be intentional about improving the quality.
• Contribute content to publications like industry blogs.
• Write personally—even if it’s about fun things to keep yourself interested.

3. Read effective writing.

Good writers read a lot. Immerse yourself in examples of writing.

Blogs to read:

• Seth Godin
• Punchline Copy
• Content Marketing Institute
• Jeff Goins
• Marketing Profs

Books to read:

• Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
• On Writing by Stephen King
• How To Write Copy That Sells by Ray Edwards
• Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott
• You Are A Writer by Jeff Goins
• The Copywriter’s Handbook by Robert Bly

4. Learn how to edit.

Writing and editing are separate skills. Treat them accordingly.

• Take a break and revisit the writing later.
• Read the words out loud.
• If you can remove a word without changing the meaning of a sentence, do it.
• Follow a style manual (like the Associated Press)
• Get someone else to proofread your writing.

5. Take a writing course.

Be a student of writing. Learn from the experience of others. These are some of the most popular courses on writing available online—but this list is far from comprehensive.

• Malcolm Gladwell Teaches Writing (Masterclass)
• Content Marketing Certification (HubSpot)
• Leading to Write Marketing Copy (Lynda)
• The Strategy of Content Marketing (Coursera)
• Copyblogger Certification
• How to Write Copy That Sells (Udemy)

6. Use online tools.

Automate some of the writing process with digital tools like these. There’s no shortcut to good writing, but there are certainly some tools that will make your job easier.

• Grammarly
• Hemingway
• Readable
• Headline Studio
• Email Subject Line Tester
• Word Counter
• Copy.ai

4 Reasons Your Business Shouldn’t Overlook Website Maintenance

The work on your beautiful company website doesn’t end once you launch it. There’s still a lot of work that comes with maintaining the technical and content elements. However, this effort is well worth it to ensure your website is secure and represents your business well.

Show Notes

What happens if you don’t keep your website secure?

• It can get hacked... and you might not even know it
• It can crash
• It will be slow: Use a tool like GT Metrix to test your website speed
• Less likely to be listed on Google

4 Steps to keeping your website updated

• Backup regularly
• Keep themes & plugins updated
• Malware scans: use tool like Google Search Console
• Uptime Monitoring

How to keep your website’s content updated

• Review your site periodically
• Use evergreen language: eg. “been in business since 1980” instead of “for 40 years”
• Get an outsider to look at your website
• Write a blog to keep content fresh

Using Email Automation to Scale Your Business

• What are email automations?
  • Automated workflows that communicate with your audience
  • They're triggered based on pre-set criteria
  • Used in most email marketing platforms like Mailchimp & Active Campaign
  • Sometimes called a customer journey, because that's what they follow
• Why use email automations?
  • Help you scale your work: setup one time and then optimize over time
  • They personalize the experience for your audience However, they can also get very complicated very quickly Forces you to think through what steps your audience takes
  • Create consistency so you're not having to constantly churn out content Nurtures your audience over time and warms them up to be a customer
• How do you make the most out of email automations?
  • Don't overdo it. 
  • All automation should lead to human interaction. 
  • The "from" and "reply-to" are very important. If you have a "noreply" sending an email, just don't do it. I changed banks because of this.
  • Actually respond when people reach out.
  • Here’s a humorous example of that from a car dealership with massive amounts of clunky email automation.

• Examples of email automations
  • Welcome series: these generate better results for later emails
  • Client onboarding: preemptively answer your clients questions
  • Audience milestones: those birthday emails are really effective; celebrate something
  • Reengagement series: pull uninterested people back in, or auto unsubscribe them

Finding and Tracking New Client Leads

Finding Clients

• 1. Referrals
  • How can you encourage and appreciate your referral sources?
  • This could be from other clients or business partners.
  • Refer back: this makes you look better to the potential client, too.
  • Using a gift tool like Thnks to surprise and delight.
• 2. Networking
  • Business associations
  • Professional groups: eg. AMA, Chamber
  • Conferences: We've got a lot of work from these kinds of groups over the years, but mostly as referrals further out.
• 3. SEO
  • Let your website work for you
  • More passive than active
  • What if this isn't generating the right clients?
    • Tighten your messaging.
    • Ask more difficult questions on your contact form.
• 4. Content
  • Blogging, speaking, podcasting
  • Social & email is more promotional
  • All of it into a marketing funnel
  • Educating and thought leadership is one of our core values, and leads are a positive consequence of that content

Tracking Clients

• 1. Forecasting potential revenue
  • How do you weigh the value of a client?
  • Initial spend or monthly x12.
  • In our system, we also weigh the odds of a win and track that metric.
• 2. Tracking also ties heavily into follow-up into interested leads
  • What is an interested lead?
  • We don’t use cold marketing—only follow up with warm leads.
  • How do you follow up without being obnoxious?
    • Initial follow-up: Just connect on LinkedIn
    • For interested leads: Offer value and have a reason to follow up
• Tools: 
  • Pipedrive 
  • Notion
  • Hubspot

Keeping Up With Key Business Metrics

• 1. Website traffic
  • For us, it's mostly checking for red flags.
  • Basically, that’s any spikes in traffic, either good or bad.
• 2.  Engagement rates
  • This specifically refers to social media.
  • Engagement is when someone actually interacts with your posts.
  • Actions like sharing or commenting are always more valuable.
• 3. Sales Pipeline
  • We'll talk more about this in our next episode.
  • This is a leading indicator for GreenMellen.
  • This is similar to a marketing funnel to track a customer's progress.
• 4. Click-through rates
  • This specifically applies to email marketing.
  • Clicks are more valuable than opens, which aren’t as reliable.
  • Follow the users back to your website to watch what they do.
• 5. Cash balance
  • This is a trailing indicator, but obviously quite important.
  • Try to keep at least a quarter’s worth of expenses on hand.
• 6. Conversions
  • What are you trying to get your audience to do?
  • Eg. fill out a form, download a file, buy a product, call you
  • Find ways to measure these things—eg. Google Analytics events
  • Once you can measure, you can optimize by testing to see what increases conversions
• 7. Support tickets
  • This might not apply to your company, but we do a lot of support and maintenance for our clients.
  • We track both the number of tickets and our average response time.
  • GreenMellen uses Help Scout for that.
• 8. Return on investment
  • It’s difficult to measure but very valuable
  • This is a bit like the marketer's holy grail—elusive and we're not sure if it really exists
  • This is why marketing is often the first thing to get cut—it's hard to accurately measure
  • This becomes easier if you can measure conversions and the customer lifetime value

Maximizing Your Work Productivity

• What is the goal with productivity?
  • Make the most of time
  • Not just to stay busy
• Keeping your mind like water is a key to staying productive.
• Email productivity
  • Is Inbox zero a realistic goal?
  • Emails aren't messages, they're actions
• Task management
  • Task management systems: Asana, Clickup, Teamwork
  • Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t (Wired Magazine article)
  • Block off time on your calendar to get work done
• Taking notes
  • Disposable notes —> trusted systems.
  • What are the best ways to take notes?
• Deep work
  • Deep Work by Cal Newport
  • Mickey is better about "deep study" than deep work.
    Things like Kindle, reMarkable and Brain.fm help with that.
  • Task switching is tempting, but it's the enemy of productivity. 
  • Deep work takes intentionality, but it always yields the best results.
  • Find a space that's free from distractions. 
  • Shut the door. 
  • Clear off your desk. 
  • Turn off notifications.
  • Put on music or white noise in headphones.

10 Books Every Marketer Should Read

Mickey's List

1. Think Again by Adam Grant
2. Getting Things Done by David Allen
3. The Go-Giver by Bob Burg
4. How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens
5. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Robert's List

1. Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
2. Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller
3. Everybody Writes by Ann Hadley
4. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
5. Deep Work by Cal Newport

Other Book Suggestions

• This is Marketing by Seth Godin
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Essentialism by Greg McKeon
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Outrageous Marketing by Scott Dikkers
• Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
• Finish by Jon Acuff
• Give & Take by Adam Grant
• Covert Cows & Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson

Is Blogging Even Relevant Anymore?

We're taking a look at the state of blogging as we head into 2022. Mickey Mellen has been blogging every day for more than a year.

He’s following Seth Godin's advice that everyone should blog, every day. It seems crazy, but it's largely not for the reasons you think. Here’s why to blog daily: 

• Writing daily helps you grow yourself and your thoughts.
• There are some SEO benefits, but that's secondary.
• Really, it helps open your eyes to the world, and then really unpack what you see.

So businesses should blog daily too?

• Almost certainly not, as there are different goals.
• For most of our clients, SEO is a big part of this, which is a different kind of post.
• Research keywords and write more robust (yet focused) content.

About how long should posts be? There’s no hard and fast rules but here are some thoughts:

• As long as they need to be, but that's not very specific.
• Personally, Mickey just writes what's needed.
• For business, we generally recommend a bit longer, perhaps 500-1000 words. 
• Longer form content gives more detail and content for Google to consume.

What are other advantages to blogging for your business in general?

• It's good fodder for your social media and email marketing. Much of what we produce in those channels links to our blog posts.
• It can be good for clients. We frequently send links to clients and leads with blog posts that help them understand a particular problem.

What should people do if they're interested in learning how to blog daily? Just do it. Start a WordPress or Medium blog and just start writing. Learn by doing.

Keeping Your Email Marketing Legit

There are three main reasons why you should care about email legitimacy.

1. Legality: don't get sued
2. Deliverability: Email inboxes are more limiting. 
3. User experience: build customer loyalty

CAN-SPAM is the main legislation for email marketing in the United States. It stands for The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act in 2003. Fair warning, there are a bunch of acronyms in this episode. 

Here are 7 things to know about CAN-SPAM.

1. No misleading info in the header. (From, to, reply to)
2. No deceptive subject lines.
3. Tell recipients where you're located. Usually in the footer.
4. Let people opt-out. Honor the opt-out promptly (within 10 days).
5. Identify unsolicited emails as an ad. (Lots of loopholes)
6. Don't scrape emails. Can still buy lists.
7. Monitor what others (eg. marketing agencies) are doing for you. Still liable.

Where does CAN-SPAM fall short?

 

CAN-SPAM is a joke because it means businesses can spam people.

1. Too many loopholes. Doesn't actually ban spam.
2. You don't have to get permission to email someone.
3. People can't sue you for getting spammed.
4. Too hard to enforce. 
5. Overrules state legislation, which could do more to limit spam.

There are two other pieces of legislation you should be aware of: GDPR and CCPA.

• GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation.
• This went into effect in 2018 for the European Union.
• CCPA is California Consumer Privacy Act effective in 2020.
• It’s similar to GDPR, but limited due to CAN-SPAM.
• This gives consumers more control over their data, but only in certain instances.

There are plenty of reasons why you should see to be ethical, not just legal.

• Don't send email 'blasts' people. Use different termoniology: campaign, send, etc.
• Use a legit email platform like Mailchimp or Active Campagin.
• Test for email spamminess, like Mail Tester.
• Don't buy lists. Get permission before emailing.
• Send relevant content that people care about. Test out what gets responses.
• Watch your churn rate (% of sends who: unsubscribes + bounces + marked as spam)

Why You Should Bother With Website Accessibility

Website accessibility is an often overlooked, but vitally important part of effective website development. 

Accessibility is essentially making sure that ALL users can consume the content on your website, even if they have disabilities (such as vision impairment) that could make it difficult.

There are more people who 

There are at least three reasons why you should address accessibility on your website.

1. Naturally improve your SEO
2. Avoid unnecessary Lawsuits
3. It’s the right thing to do.

What are some practical ways to improve your website’s accessibility?

1. Don’t use an accessibility overlay: shouldiuseanaccessibilityoverlay.com
2. WordPress Themes
3. Include alt text: Also, pictures of pictures and text of text
4. Don’t open links in new tabs
5. Website Form fields
6. Add an accessibility statement
7. Use #CamelCaseHashtags

Those might seem daunting so here is one small step to get started. Use the WAVE tool at wave.webaim.org to do an accessibility check of your website.