Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

This Time, It’s Personal

by Leave a Comment

Is your writing drab and boring, or does your personality shine through? When you create a product, you’re putting a bit of yourself into it (if it’s any good). The personalization that goes into your product line will help endear you to your customers – it makes them want to come back for more.

People don’t just want sterile step-by-step information when they’re reading how-to books and informational products. They want to enjoy the read. You need to have your own style and voice.

If you hire a ghostwriter to create your product, make sure you go back through and use your voice within the text. Let me show you an example from the anti aging niche and you tell me which short paragraph is more interesting:
[Read more…]

Create Great Content (Even If You Think You Can’t Write)

by 5 Comments

create-contentYou know you need to create content for your website or blog in order to build your audience and promote your business, but you’re stuck because you think you can’t write. Well, don’t give up yet, because you don’t need to be a great writer to create compelling and effective content. Try a few of these ideas.
[Read more…]

How to Write Every Day

by 3 Comments

write-everydayWrite more and you will become a better writer, more proficient and more productive. But the benefits of writing every day go beyond honing your writing skills.

I know that I think better, and I function better, when I write regularly.

Writing clarifies my thinking. Taking the random bits that are floating around my head and putting them on the page is incredibly helpful.

When you write a lot, you have to come up with ideas to write about. That causes you to pay more attention to what is happening around you. Suddenly, everything you see, hear and experience becomes something you can write about.

Writing every day creates discipline. Doing anything every day will cause you to become more disciplined, but writing is especially powerful.

There are lots of ways to get in the writing habit. Here are some things that work for me, and that might work for you, too.
[Read more…]

Creating Outstanding Online Content

by Leave a Comment

online contentOnline writing is a specific skill. Getting it right takes knowledge and practice. Of course, anything that makes your writing more engaging and entertaining offline generally should work well online. It’s just that there are some additional factors to bear in mind and some unique pointers that can help your web content be even better.

Don’t Waste My Time!

Long introductions are great for setting the scene and they can give depth to your writing. That said though, you don’t want to meander around the point of your post – especially online where attention spans are famously short. The sooner you start delivering on the promise of the title, the fewer people you’ll lose and the less ‘boring’ your writing will seem.

Break it Up

Remember those short attention spans? (If not, you may be a victim of a short attention span. I just mentioned this three sentences back!) Keep readers interested by breaking up your articles with headings, sub headings and bullet points. Don’t be afraid of white space. The right typeface also goes a long way in making content readable and understandable. This way people can quickly skim the text on your site and get an overview. They’ll then be able to quickly decide whether it’s for them or not.

Share Your Sources

One of my favorite statistics is that 68.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. (Think about that for a second. Yeah, that’s right…I made up that statistic.) Be credible by showing your work. Where did you get that statistic, fact or anecdote? If your aim is to develop trust and authority through your writing, then telling them where you got your information is a great way to get people on board – especially if you can link to studies, surveys or authority sites to back up your points. Google also likes it when you do this, so it’s very good for SEO. And it is good netiquette to link to sources.

Be Conversational

You want to sound professional and authoritative, but you also want to make sure that your writing is easy to read has good flow. Don’t fill your writing with jargon that the average reader won’t understand.

While you are writing, imagine that you’re talking to a friend and write the way you would normally speak. You might need to be more or less colloquial (e.g., removing contractions or slang) than you would in conversation, but this is a good start. The best way to ensure that your content flows well and is easy to read is to read it out loud before hitting “publish.”

Make your writing inviting and readable, and you will naturally attract more readers and fans.

Writing Videos Your Audiences Want to Watch

by Leave a Comment

cut-video-scriptsNote from Cathy: Although I always enjoy reading Dan’s articles, this one is especially timely. I am in the midst of making a bunch of videos, some based on material I have created in the past, such as speeches and other presentations, and this is good advice.

Whether you are starting with existing material or writing everything from word one, brevity is important. Keep your videos short and sweet. Dan suggests a maximum of 240 words for a video of two minutes. That is a good general rule, but some of us talk faster. To calculate your speed, open a document in Word, set a timer to one minute and start reading out loud at a natural speed. When the timer goes off, select all of the words you read, then check the word count.

Include your introduction and call to action in your word count. Many people use a pre-recorded intro or outro with their videos, usually about 10 seconds long. If you do, you may want to reduce your word count a bit to stay under two minutes for the total video.

The script I wrote for the public speaking video by Professor Puppet is a bit over 300 words for a video that is 1:40. But he talks pretty fast! (The total time for the video is 2:24 because of a long call to action outro, something that will not be used on every video I do but I wanted on this one.)

If you are not sure how many words to put in your script, follow Dan’s guideline of about 240 words or less for two minutes or less.

When in doubt, cut it out!

Now on to Dan’s article: [Read more…]