How to make more people read what you write

You can significantly increase the number of people who read and understand your content by answering the following questions:

Why you publish?
For whom you publish?
How can your content be accessed/found?

Recently I read somewhere that more than 90% people don’t read 80% of what you have written on your website. Why does this happen, and why in the first place you post your content — blog posts for instance — online?

You publish content to inform people — sometimes for the sake of being helpful in an altruistic manner (publishing informative content during natural or man made calamities), to showcase your talent and promote your skills (as a writer, for example), to earn revenue through advertising and affiliate programs, or to convince them to do business with you. You also publish content to improve search engine rankings but that content doesn’t matter much if it brings you redundant traffic.

Once you have figured out why you publish content on your blog or website, the next two important questions are, why people must read your content and how they can access/find your content. You can exceptionally increasing the number of people reading your content if you can sort out these three questions.

So why must people read your content?

They must need your content, whatever may that need be. They may need it to solve a problem (programming problem, technical problem, psychological problem…whatever). They may need it to make a buying decision; the sales pitch on your website or your blog post describing the benefits of your product or service. They may need it for entertainment. Unfortunately, they may also need it in the times of crisis and disaster.

For your content to be highly readable, it has to be needed, needed desperately if possible. If you can provide such content, it hardly matters how you present it (as long as it is readable). When your content satisfies a need, people read it hungrily and they wait for it in great anticipation. In fact they employ all the means available to them to make sure that they never miss what you publish. This is a great state to accomplish as a publisher.

For whom should you publish?

As it is famously said somewhere every writer has an audience. You just need to find your audience or figure out who your audience is. It is very easy to be read if you have got an eager audience. Being your audience means they already need your content and that is why they are part of the audience in the first place.

If you publish elementary computer tips on your website or blog then your audience constitutes of people who are not very well-versed with computers and they are looking for basic operational guidance. Similarly, if you are writing copy for a website that sells winter garments then your audience are people who are looking for winter clothes, have lots of choice at their hands, and need to be convinced that they must buy the clothes at this particular website. When you know your audience you can specifically write for them, and they are extremely receptive.

How can your content be accessed/found

It’s just not enough to publish great content for the right audience — your audience must be made aware of the existence of your content. Here are a few methods you can employ to make the right people find your content:

Search engines: Search engines are the best source of quality audience for your content because when people come from search engines they are already looking for something like what you can offer. To achieve this you should create your content according to the language used by your audience. Optimize your content for the right keywords and expressions that fundamentally define your content.
Blogs and websites: Quality content in itself attracts incoming links from other web sites and blogs and this in turn gets you the right audience. You can make other blogs and websites aware of your content by either directly writing to the owners or by interacting in the comment sections.
Social bookmarking and networking websites: Websites like Digg, Delicious, Twitter and Facebook can get thousands of interested readers to your website provided you have built a following on these websites.

Success content implementation involves continuously creating quality content and promoting it using all the avenues available to you. It may seem daunting to a person who is interested in performing just one task, writing content or promoting it. Nothing wrong in that. You can hire somebody for the job you don’t like doing. The basic point is, creation and promotion must happen at the same time for the most effective implementation of your content and copywriting strategy.

Be careful about changing the .htaccess if you manage your website with WordPress

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I had a customized .htaccess for my website so that all the old links could be 301-redirected to the new links once the website was fully ported to WordPress, and things worked great. I uploaded all the content, the .htaccess file, activated my theme, and changed the permalink structure to make the URLs SEO-friendly.

After a few days I was checking Google analytics, and noticed that some links that didn’t exist in the main navigation, but existed on the inner pages, were not being found, and needed to be redirected. I quickly added them to my .htaccess file and re-uploaded the file. After a few hours I noticed none of my pages worked. I remember this happening once, so I went to the permalinks section in the WordPress admin and again saved the permalinks setting. The links started working again.

Then today again I uploaded the .htaccess file and noticed that the website stopped working. Again I went to the permalinks section, saved the permalinks setting and the pages came back. Then it came to my mind that whenever you make changes to the permalinks structure, WordPress changes your .htaccess file. So whenever I was uploading my version of .htaccess, the changes were being overwritten, and the pages refused to work. Dumb of me actually.

So now after saving the permalinks settings I have downloaded .htaccess. Whatever changes I have to make, I’ll make in this file, without overwriting the WordPress settings for handling permalinks. Small oversights can cost you big time sometimes!

Do Internet marketing programs actually make you rich?

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Do you often come across Internet marketing and business promotion programs that claim they can help you sell your product like hot cakes, that people will be crazy to do business with you? The promoters of these program often claim to have earned millions of dollars in a few hours or a few weeks or a few months. There is one thing I can never understand: after having earned around $20,000,000, why are you selling an Internet marketing program from a lousy-looking website. Anyway.

Some programs are cheap (costing you $20-100 for some ebooks and presentations) and some are quite expensive (around $2000-5000 for DVDs, ebooks and even one-to-one consultations with the “expert” who made a few million bucks in a few days). Are these programs for real, and do they really work?

I’ve never participated in one of these programs, and I’ve been doing business on the Internet for the past 8 years. Of course I’m not rich like crazy and my finances are not ideal, but I live a comfortable life and I manage to save every month, and I must confess, I haven’t been doing much in terms of marketing and promotion; heck, I don’t even blog regularly. I fully understand that in order to grow my business I must promote it.

So what does a marketing program normally teach you (logically, again, I’ve never participated in one)?

How to recognize what you can actually do and get paid for
Recognizing your marketing and creating a niche
Setting up a website
Defining a marketing plan and sticking to it
Website/blog SEO
Resources that can help you promote your business
Building a mailing list and growing a blog
Developing your brand presence
Growing your network
Establishing a social media and networking presence

Every course revolves around these broad topics. Now, if you have spent a few years doing business on the Internet then you can pretty well figure out by yourself what all it takes to be successful (actually, it can be applied to any kind of occupation). Does this mean all these programs and courses are a rip off?

Not exactly, some of them must really be good. But they mostly talk about common sense, and even the information you are paying for can be obtained free of cost if you try hard enough. Of course spending money on a program and getting this information saves you lots of time, and sometimes money too (by avoiding wrong tools). So I’m not saying you shouldn’t invest in such programs and courses. These programs can be excellent for those who work hard but only when they follow well-defined guidelines; it’s always better than randomly aiming at your targets and working in an environment of hits and misses.

My only suggestion is, just think before you take the leap, especially when you are going to spend lots of money. Be prepared to realize that most of the information that exists in these programs is common sense, and you may already have this information. Do you have some business promotion ideas and plans that you’ve been thinking of implementing but have been postponing or procrastinating? Implement those ideas and plans first. Do it with conviction and perseverance. For a couple of years, for instance, I have been thinking of writing articles and blog posts for other websites and blogs but so far haven’t been able to do so. I could have also developed a mailing list in all these years. My networking efforts are non-existent. I am half-heartedly in the process of optimizing my website for search engines. Although my website contains lots of content I can add a lot more. Similarly I haven’t been doing much in the field of social media and social networking. Considering all this I don’t think it is prudent of me to invest in a costly Internet marketing program. I should only opt for it if I have already, sincerely, exhausted all the options that are currently available to me. So if I haven’t done things that I already know what is the guarantee that I will follow the directions in the program? Of course you can say that the expense of a couple of thousand will keep me motivated. But then if I can do the same thing without spending the money then why go to all that trouble?

The best option would be first to exhaust all your ideas and plans and after that to give momentum to those ideas and plans you should invest in a marketing program. Otherwise you will be uselessly spending your money.

What’s all with elevator speech or pitch?

Why do you need an elevator speech?

To impress people in the elevator, for starters. But more importantly, you need an elevator speech if you need to sell your service or idea immediately and you don’t want people to wander in the alleys of their pre-conceived notions. Pre-conceived notions put you at a disadvantage and afterwards whatever they view, it is viewed with colored glasses. So better start with a bang, with a clarity that kills obscurity.

Your elevator speech must also help you make your listener interested in what you have to offer. There should be a sense of curiosity, but your speech should be clear enough, compelling enough, to make that person want to meet you again to explore business opportunities.

You elevator speech defines your current standing, and it defines your future goals.

How do you prepare your elevator speech

For instance, if someone asks you, what do you do for a living? In my case I would say, through my writing services I help businesses and individuals convey their written messages effectively in order to improve their conversion rate and search engine rankings, and I mostly write for websites, blogs and online marketing collateral. Or something to this tune.

What if I simply say that I’m a writer?

Mostly everybody thinks that a writer is someone who writes stories and novels, and if you are not a known writer, then you must be a struggling writer, and if you are a struggling writer, you don’t do much for a living. By saying something vague and generic you initiate a stereotype that you don’t have much time to dispel. With a single sentence, albeit a bit longer sentence, I am able to tell that I am a writer, what benefits my writing service provides and for what medium I primarily write.

What sort of elevator speech do you have?

This reminds me, I must properly prepare one for myself.

The effect of blogging — Salman Rushdie cost me a project

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Yesterday, a client was on the verge of giving me a big assignment when he asked, "are you a fan of Salman Rushdie?", and I enthusiastically said, "yes!"

"Then we cannot work together," he replied.

"But shouldn’t ideologies and business be kept apart unless something really sinister is happening?" I asked.

"No, I cannot work with you if you endorse his views and protest against the fatwa against him," he said.

After that we exchanged a few messages and then stopped talking (we were using Skype). He was interested in knowing how I was building backlinks and somehow discovered my posts where I had lamented the ban on "Satanic Verses", the fatwa and praised Salman Rushdie.

It happens many times that I don’t get a project due to various incompatibilities but it is the first time that it has happened due to something that I had written on my blog. I know there have been many people who lost their jobs or even got subjected to persecution (mainly in Arab/Muslim and communist countries) due to their blogs so I wasn’t really taken aback, but it was quite fascinating actually talking to a person who supports the beheading of a writer simply because that writer holds a different view on a religious book.

I wanted to talk to that client more about religion and religious beliefs but I thought maybe he won’t understand so I refrained myself. Somewhere he said that religions that don’t protect themselves and don’t eliminate their enemies vanish easily. I wanted to tell him that only scared and unsure religions react in such a manner. Take for instance Hinduism. It is not an extremist religion and there is lots of scope for analysis, argumentation and counter argumentation. Nobody comes for your head if you question fundamental Hindu beliefs. It is one of the major religions of the world and there are still thousands of people converting to this religion every year. Okay, this is an ancient religion, so let us talk about Sikhism. Sikhism is just 300 years old and it is getting stronger every passing day without fanaticism and extremism. Sikhs don’t raise a hue and cry at the drop of a hat. They never feel targeted, marginalized and victimized and their religion is never endangered, and they are practically all over the world. There is a funny saying that crows and Sikhs are everywhere. There are some random acts of extremism here and there but then they are present in every religion, even among the Buddhists, perhaps the most peaceful and embracing religion in the world.

Anyway, I also remember telling him that I am not going to be apologetic about what I had written on my blog because I firmly believed in that. Is it the right way to do? Should I have downplayed my blog post and tried to convince him that I didn’t mean what I had written on my blog? I don’t think so. Just as his belief stopped him from working with me my belief stopped me from working with him; again, why would I work with a person who supports the call for the beheading of another person simply because he has different views? Wouldn’t I be then working for a psychopath? Fine, even someone among my past and existing clients could turn out to be a psychopath (clients, please accept my apology, I’m just saying this to put a point across) but there is a saying in Hindi — I’m not sure whether it exists in English or not — that you cannot swallow a fly knowingly.