Nicholas Cole is interviewed on the Copyblogger Academy.
Big Ideas:
The headline needs to tell what it is, who is it for, how they should feel, and what’s the outcome.
Breakdown of a good heading:
► How Many? If no number is mentioned, it is one.
► What is it? Reasons? Mistakes? Habits?
► Who? Name the audience.
► How do I feel about this?
► The outcome. What are you giving the reader?
Clarity makes good titles work. You want polarity. It’s for me or it’s not for me. Don’t be vague or in the middle.
Proven Headline Formats
► Big Numbers
► Dollar signs
► Credible names – influencers and celebrities
► This just happened – breaking news
► Question/Answer – ask the question and hint at the answer
► Success story – hero’s journey
► Things that shouldn’t go together
Readers don’t read first, they skim.
► Write for skimming first
► Make visually pleasing subheadings
► Alternate single sentences with paragraphs
Rhythm and cadence
Alternate 1 3 1 all the way through.
► Open with one sentence.
► Have 3 thoughts
► Finish with 1 sentence
I’m trying Cole’s writing format in the next link. What do you think?
“There has never been a better time to become a creator. If you want to be a writer, musician, podcaster, YouTuber, startup, designer, artist, gamer, or invent your own creator category, there will never be a better time for you to start than today.”
Great interview with ConvertKit founder, Nathan Barry.
Big Ideas:
Having a group of friends to quickly reply to tweets helps the Twitter algorithm share your content.
Twitter threads are the highest ROI tool to grow your audience.
Creators that rise the fastest work much harder and more consistently. They also have the most collaborators. Partnerships are very important.
Why it’s becoming easier to be a creator.
► Creator products are much higher priced than the past.
► Tools are better. There are many more ways to collect payments.
► Audience sizes are much bigger than the past.
Great breakdown of how Carie Rose of Rise at Seven creative SEO agency leverages trending topics to get backlinks and exposure for her clients.
Big Idea: SEO doesn’t have to be a long-term effort if you effectively leverage rising trends.
Takeaways:
► Discover what’s trending on places like TikTok, Twitter, Netflix, etc
► Research how it’s affecting Google Search and Trends
► Understand how this affects your site search
► Relate how this intersects with your brand
► Create content around the trend within 45 mins to 6 hours max
► Write the story for the journalists
► Send it out in the AM right when they’re opening their laptops
Creativity x Speed x Relevancy always wins
Related Link: Harry Dry has a great thread of some of Carrie Rose’s campaigns.
“Today, LinkedIn remains a content deficient platform: there is more content demand than supply. Of all the major social channels, it remains easiest to become a top influencer on LinkedIn.”
Randall Kanna shares why she was able to recently sell $53k worth of her recent course, when a previous one failed.
“I spent time actually building an engaged audience and asking what they wanted me to create. I created quality content on the subject. I grew rapidly on social media, I created tons of free resources and guides, and I helped people 1-1.”
“I’ve been building an audience of over 50.000 on Twitter over the last two years. I will share the strategies and tactics I use to come up with relevant and helpful daily content to share with my followers.”
Related Links:
Max Berstein has created a free resource, The Big Book of Tweets, with over 75 of the best Twitter accounts with 5 of their best tweets so you can see exactly how to get people to engage with your content.
“Ten years ago, leaving a high-powered job to sell baked goods, build a niche app, or help indie artists make music would’ve seemed like career suicide. Today? Not so much. There are 50 million independent “content creators” around the world, of which around two million earn a six-figure income.”
Joe Pulizzi of The Tilt has a short podcast on some of the opportunities for creators with social tokens.
“So many creators aren’t sure what the real benefits are to integrating Web3. The token provides us the answer…and can turn your fans into super fans.”
Jens Lennartsson publishes the Make & Market newsletter. The tagline is “Simple, non-hacky and efficient ways to market your SaaS business.” However, it’s not just for SaaS startups. All creators can benefit from the marketing ideas that Jens writes about.
