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How often do you pass on the details of a blog post or an online article to your network? I do it all the time. I’m particularly inclined to do it when I can click on a widget to do the work for me. Time is in short supply in my office and I don’t always stop to shorten a link and send it along. Give me a tool to construct a message and I’ll happily broadcast it.

What a great idea!
I was delighted last week to see someone use a sharing widget in a different way. A company based in Sydney called Ideas into Action have a Share This Site button on their home page. That’s right, they’re encouraging a Word of Mouth recommendation by making it easy to share the details of their website. When you select the Twitter option on the widget, you conveniently get the following tweet crafted for you:

Small Business Marketing Consultants, Services & Strategies, Sydney | Ideas into Action: http://bit.ly/d9bTQ8 via @addthis

The Take-Away
Put a sharing widget on your home page. With very little effort, customers and prospects give you a valuable Word of Mouth (WoM) recommendation. It has the potential to generate unique user traffic, improving your SEO. If you’re a small business, it’s a potent piece of content marketing. I’ve added it to my list of website upgrades.

What cool little marketing tricks do you use?

How often do you leave comments on blog posts or in discussion groups? In my very first BRIEF, Spin Your SEO Web, I recommended adopting a daily habit of adding comments onto blog posts because it helps improve the search engine rankings for your website. Recently, I discovered it can do a lot more.

Lead Generation
Two weeks ago I received an email from Gillian Rossouw of Jill of All Trades. She contacted me through my website after reading a comment I had made on a Paul Hassing (@PaulHassing) post to the Small Business Owner blog. This is what she said:

I saw your comment to Paul’s posting on MYBRC. I am in the process of having my website updated. I am looking for some “wow factor” content writing. I understand that no one knows one’s own business like the owner, but I seem to be having writer’s block. Can you give me an idea of your costs?

Closed Business
I wrote back to Gillian saying I was sure I could help her. Within the hour, she was on the phone to me. Cutting to the chase, I’m happy to say Jill of All Trades is a new client. This week I’m developing web content for Gillian’s new site, which will be launched soon.

The Take-Away
Commenting on blog posts and participating in online discussions improves your SEO. It can also lead to business opportunities you might not have anticipated. My experience with Jill of All Trades isn’t unusual. My first contact with one of my oldest clients, Clayko Group, started when I left a comment on their website.

What are some of your techniques for generating leads?

Is your blog doing the job you want it to do? Are you looking for ways to get more interaction with your readers? If you’re like me, you’ve read dozens of articles on how to make your blog more effective. Some of them are useful. Some of them are hardly worth reading. I don’t have the luxury of being a full-time blogger and struggle every week to find time to fit it into my workload. (Sound familiar?) I’ve learned a few things that have made a significant impact on my blog traffic and thought I’d share them with you.

1. Start with a Question
The first sentence is often the hardest to write. I’ve found if I start the blog with the question I’m trying to answer for my readers – and myself – the rest flows from there.

2. Be Conversational
My writing experience started with business documents and moved into freelance work for newspapers and magazines. It took me a while to figure out the detached voice needed for business writing and reporting wasn’t so great for my blog. Once I started injecting my own voice into the post, I started to get regular feedback from my readers.

3. Make the Title Work
Don’t ask me why, but people love lists. Any title stating a list of tips, hints, tricks or promises is going to be more popular than the same post with a different title. “How to” titles run a close second. If the title of this post had been “Musings on Blog Effectiveness” I can almost guarantee you wouldn’t have bothered to click on the title.

4. Use Images
I’m still not very good at doing this, but I’m trying to get better. I always get positive comments when I use an image. I nearly always get a suggestion to include images when I don’t. People like to look at pictures.

5. Take a Stand
While you can’t always predict what will set people off, writing a post that takes a definite stand is going to get noticed. When I wrote 6 Reasons for Refusing LinkedIn Invitations I had no idea it would create a controversy. It hit a nerve and went viral. No other post I’ve written has even come close on traffic.

6. Include Outbound Links
Search engines love links. When you link to another reputable site you’re helping your own search engine optimisation (SEO). You’re also demonstrating your research capabilities, which helps to establish your authority. Read what Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has to say about it in Do Outbound Links Matter for SEO (and more).

7. Use Internal Links
People like to click. Linking to another page on your own website satisfies the urge. It might be another post on a related topic, in this case How to avoid the Post and Hope Syndrome. It could be your Contact page. Either way, linking helps your readers find other things on your site they might be interested in and it improves your SEO.

8. Use Subheadings
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating. People don’t read much anymore. If you want them to get to the bottom of your post, you need to add hooks in your text to keep their eyes moving down the screen. Subheadings are a great device to accomplish this.

9. End with a Question
It’s a simple technique, but ending your post with a question is a great way to entice readers to leave a comment. I tried it and it works so well I use it on every post.

This list is by no means comprehensive or even scientific. I’ve developed it from lessons learned after a year of writing my own blog. I know if my post has all nine of these suggestions, my hit rate will be higher and I’ll get more comments than when I leave some of them off.

What things have you done to improve the effectiveness of your blog?

Last week I wrote about ways clients increase the cost of their copywriting services, 7 Surefire Ways to Increase your Copywriting Fees. The post was pretty much a flop. It didn’t get a lot of traffic and only garnered one comment. I was surprised. It provided inside information on pricing along with insight to how client behaviour influences a costing exercise. This week I’m taking a different approach.

How can you get a bargain on professional services?

I know I’m not alone in the pursuit of a good deal. As the owner of a SMB, it’s important for me to get value for money. I want to ensure I’m getting a quality product, but I also can’t afford to pay a premium price to every vendor or service provider. To balance last week’s post with a positive spin, I’m sharing things that influence me to discount my normal rates.

1) Repeat business: If I have a client continually sending work my way, my appreciation is reflected in the project pricing. Clayko Group was one of my first clients and continues to enlist my services in their strategic projects. Because I’m so familiar with their company, I can complete their projects much more efficiently, which saves them money.

2) Not for Profits: In a nod to a loosely defined CSR policy for my business, I automatically knock 20% off the rates for Not for Profit (NFP) and charity organisations.

3) Start-up SMBs: When you’re trying to get a business off the ground, the expenses mount fast. An owner with the foresight to invest in quality copywriting gets a discount from me.

4) New clients: If a new client pushes me on price, I consider giving them a “new client incentive” on the first project.

5) Something new: It’s always good to expand my reach either by geography or by industry. If the project is going to open a new market for me, I’ll lower my rates to stretch my wings. Fitzgerald Photo Imaging got a great rate on a magazine article because of my personal goal to be published in an Australian periodical.

6) Balances the portfolio: I specialise in a few different areas – white papers, case studies, blogs and website copy. If I find one part of my mix has hit a slow patch, I’ll put a sale on a specific product to attract more work in that area.

7) New territory: Occasionally an existing client will ask me to write something I’ve never done before. If it’s outside of my comfort zone or I’m inexperienced in the genre, I’ll often suggest a barter deal instead of charging a fee.

8) Fun projects: If I feel passionately about a project or the company that’s hiring me, I often find myself knocking the quoted price down a bit. If work doesn’t seem so much like, well, work then it doesn’t always get priced that way, either.

9) Easy money: I collaborate with different companies on different projects. If I haven’t had to make any effort in securing the work, I’ll give a good rate to the person who delivered the package. Ryan Briggs is particularly good at generating business for me. He often wraps it up in a pretty copy brief, which also improves the pricing.

I can think of plenty more circumstances where I would be willing to give a discount on my services, but I’d better leave it at nine. Regardless of the project and the influences on pricing, I always quote on a fixed price project basis and never change the terms once the project has started. While it’s always a bonus to get a deal on a project, I believe the most important thing when it comes to pricing is transparency. When everyone knows the budget for a project from the onset, the whole thing runs smoother.

When do you give discounts? When do you expect to get them?

Have you ever thought, “I’m not getting paid enough to do this work?” I recently read an article by Perth copywriter Aaron Bloxsome of Clear Copywriting titled, “Beware of the Monster Clients of the Deep”. Aaron detailed several indicators for recognising a potentially troublesome client. The striking thing about his story was that nearly every one of his warning signs would cause me to increase my fees. That got me thinking.

What things do prospective clients do to ensure they’re going to pay top dollar for copywriting services?

As fair warning to all my readers who may consider hiring me in the future, I developed a list. It’s not a matter of me being grumpy. It’s a matter of economics. I doubt you’ll find an experienced writer who won’t agree with me and follow suit.

1) No brief: If you can’t tell me what you want or if you’re vague about the project, it’s going to cost you. You need to provide enough detail, even if it’s in bullet-point format, to give me some guidance on what you want.

2) Rush job: It’s been my experience when people are in a hurry for written content that it’s usually because they haven’t planned well. If you expect me to drop everything and make you a priority over all my other clients and my own work, expect to pay extra.

3) Difficult people: I had a prospective client tell me, “My web designer is a Nazi.” Her quote for website copy carried a premium.

4) You don’t know your business: As strange as it sounds, I’ve had clients who can’t articulate what makes them different or what their competitive advantage is. I once had a client who got no further than “We’re all about fun.” If your copywriting services require a strategic consultation, you’ll be charged consultants’ fees in addition to the writing.

5) Work I don’t enjoy: Let’s face it; we all have projects we’d rather not do. If it’s work I don’t like, I increase the rate.

6) Full workload: If my schedule is tight and you can’t wait for it to free up, I increase my fees for work done on weekends and evenings.

7) Rewrites of rewrites: Occasionally a client is inspired by something I’ve written and decides to “improve” it. I have no problem with that until they come back and ask me to “fix” what they’ve done. If I have to rewrite content that someone else improved upon, don’t expect to get a bargain from me.

What situations cause you to raise your fees?