Are Fluff Words Ruining Your Sales Copy?

In this quick copywriting tip, you’ll see how removing fluff words makes your copy stronger and more conversational. When dealing with fluff words, like my mom always said, “when in doubt, throw it out.” Get rid of the fluff and you’ll no longer sound pompous and insecure (by using fancy words to look smart).

THAT
In just about every instance, you can remove the word “that” from your sentences. Instead of “He said that his lawyer helped him create a will” say “He said his lawyer helped him…”

OF
This one sneaks in all the time in places it shouldn’t. Instead of “The contract of mine is on your desk” use a possessive statement like “My contract is on your desk.”

UTILIZE
The ultimate fluff word. It does nothing good old “use” doesn’t do, and certainly doesn’t make you seem smarter. So strike out “utilize” and replace with “use” and you’ll have cleaner, tighter statements immediately.

VEHICLE
Always replace “vehicle” with what it really is: a car, a truck, etc. Instead of “Lili took her vehicle to get washed” say “Lili washed her car.”

TOGETHER
This common word has legitimate uses, however, in a sentence like “the shareholders gathered together to meet” it’s cumbersome. See how much clearer “the shareholders met” sounds?

TO BE (and it’s variations: IS, AM, ARE, WERE and WAS)
Make every effort to banish as many of these words as you can, sentence by sentence. Dropping “to be” and it’s variations isn’t easy, and you can’t get rid of them entirely, but when you do, your sentences come alive. “Kevin is running to the store” is passive and awkward. “Kevin ran to the store” is active and alive. Another indicator is to look for sentences beginning with “There are” or “There is” since you can always rewrite them more powerfully. When you eliminate “to be” and it’s variations, you’re forced to think about the sentence and improve your verbs.

So make an effort to tighten your copy with these guidelines, and sell better with clean, clear and powerful sentences.

Photo credit by Cieleke.

How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

With more than 60 million members, LinkedIn has become the best resource for developing your professional network. It’s a great place to meet, post and find jobs, answer questions and join groups. Once you’ve created a basic profile, here are some tips to get the most out of LinkedIn.

First, and without question, your profile should be 100% complete. School, work, past work and other relevant information assists others searching for contacts, and helps build your own network. Next, add a profile photo. Your picture triggers recognition and makes networkers feel like they are connecting to a real person. Then optimize your summary section with relevant keywords. Use Google’s Keyword Tool or Wordtracker for your research. This particular section of your profile is often indexed fully by major search engines.

Potential SEO Benefits?
Take a look at this screenshot, which is a portion of my public LinkedIn profile. There is speculation (and some confirmation) the items in this section helps with organic search engine optimization.

• Add your website, link to your blog and link to your company. Make sure you further “edit” each by giving it a name other than the defaults provided by LinkedIn. As you can see from my list, I’m hyperlinking phrases such as “Marketing Blog” and “Consulting Services”.
• If you’re on Twitter, be sure to add your Twitter profile, and connect the accounts together. Under your profile, click on Edit and look for your Twitter settings. You could also try this link when logged in to LinkedIn.
• Always choose a real name or variation on your name over the default format LinkedIn provides for you. This certainly feeds your organic name optimization and enhances your online reputation. As you can see, my profile link is my full name “brianjfarrell”.

Connecting with Twitter
This image below shows my Twitter settings — my account name (@findtheclient), my privacy settings, and the most important section, whether or not all or select Tweets should show on my profile. When I first set this up, I sent all Tweets to LinkedIn. Since I’m on Twitter often, this amounted to sometimes a dozen or more updates in a single day. When friends said they couldn’t keep up with me, I changed this to show only Tweets with the “#in” hashtag. Much better results, and I can leave up new blog posts or polls for a longer period of time.

Build Your Connections
Once you’ve done the above, it’s time to build your network. Start with people you know, such as co-workers, clients and colleagues. Also look for connections by company name, under the “Companies” tab. Once you’ve built up this initial base of connections, ask for and make recommendations. But before you do this, read as many as you can. You’ll quickly see what makes up a good (or bad) recommendation. It also helps to personalize your request for a recommendation rather then sending out the canned form letter provided by LinkedIn.

Finally, updated your status often, since it appears on LinkedIn as well as in network updates to your connections. Updates should be considered a professional status, not what you’re eating for lunch. And if you haven’t done so, let’s connect on LinkedIn!

The Guiding Principle of Marketing

There is no secret formula for successful inbound (or outbound, if you dare) marketing, but there is one main, guiding principle – stay focused on your core competencies. Of course, expand as you see fit, but never forget the business reason why your clients came to you in the first place. Consider some law firms who will retain anyone, vs. those specializing in one specific area of practice, like bankruptcy. If the bankruptcy attorney started doing personal injury, and then wills and estates, they’d eventually lose clients because their overall service would decline.

So restrain yourself from trying every new marketing idea under the sun. Don’t jump from a website this month to dropping flyers the next. Take your time when considering the various approaches. Stick with one medium, preferably inbound marketing, and only change once it becomes a predictable, reliable source of business.

For those of you just starting out, particularly all the young lawyers, and newly unemployed, ex-large law attorneys, concentrate on one core practice area. For example, it’s far easier to make a name for yourself and build referrals if you’re known for being the “auto accident attorney”. You’ll also build up precious knowledge faster, which ultimately becomes more and more valuable down the road. If you’re having trouble figuring out what your core practice area is, ask yourself these three questions:

• What is it I’m really selling?
  Don’t define this as legal services, declare it in terms of a solution for your clients. For example, life insurance professionals don’t sell policies, they sell peace of mind. If you can’t figure out what you’re really selling, how are you going to focus and attract those who really want it?
• Who are you really selling to?
  Demographic targeting aside, the answer you’re looking for are the kinds of problems they have (that you solve). This is what your clients really want, and will pay to get.
• Why should they hire me?
  Do you have what it takes to solve their problem, and give them what it is they really want? Speak with conviction and authority when meeting with prospects. Don’t tell them what you can do – show proof (where allowed) with testimonials. The easiest way to win trust from your clients is to sell something you personally believe in.

Inbound marketing is a long-term project or investment, so treat it that way. Be patient, stay focused and you’ll get great results.

Photo credit by a_kartha.

On Mobile Marketing, an Innovator’s Club Event

Wednesday night, a group of more than two dozen innovator’s heard an engaging, lively presentation on mobile marketing.

Chuck Sacco, Sr. VP of Sales for Movitas, spoke for more than an hour on mobile marketing. First, he set the stage for mobile, as modern cell phones accommodate all major forms of media (think print, recordings, movies, radio, Internet and of course, voice). Chuck then focused on how important it is for business marketers to specifically target campaigns for mobile devices. Chuck also touched on the regulatory challenges and privacy concerns mobile marketing poses for business owners, since our cell phones are personal, always with us and always on.

Clearly, cell phones are not just for making voice calls anymore. And, as bandwidth improves and the promise of faster networks (4G anyone?) becomes reality, mobile devices could unseat the PC as our most important tool to communicate, interact and engage with friends, family, social colleagues and businesses.

Hosts Todd Cohen and Manny Rechani once again delivered a great speaker, a timely topic and a fun networking opportunity. The next Innovator’s Club event is in March, titled “The Eye of the CIO.” The roundtable format promises to give club members the opportunity to hear from a panel of locally based CIO’s, and their view on hiring and the IT market.

Photo credit by mihow.

To Blog, Or Not To Blog

The phrase “to be, or not to be” is one of the most famous quotations in literature, and comes from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c. 1600), act three, scene one. In today’s market, the question I hear most when giving inbound marketing seminars is “should I blog?”. In my opinion, professional services firms that fail to capitalize on modern social marketing, like blogging, may appear behind the times when compared to their competitors who do. So my answer is always emphatically yes.

But, before writing one word, think about the focus of your blog. Ultimately, you’d like your blog to build word of mouth marketing and your social following, so carefully tune your content toward the people, and work, you’d like to do. For example, I set up this blog to provide marketing information and advice to professional service providers (attorneys, lawyers, doctors, and the like).

So Who’s Reading This Stuff?
Although I’m targeting professionals, it’s likely their support staff, spouse or business advisors are the ones reading this blog. So my content is mostly professional, with a lighter tone. The material comes from my real life experiences and appointments, so often, I’m answering a question or addressing something that came up in a real client setting. The blog is my ongoing seminar to clients, prospective clients and potential referral partners.

Benefits of Blogging
Your blog is a very effective way to raise visibility, both online and offline. It also strengthens your online reputation, and positions you as an accessible, helpful resource on your specific topic or niche. If you write valuable posts, and share within your social network, you’ll likely attract new fans, new comments and new leads.

From a technical perspective, blogs beat websites because they have a built in feed. Every time you post a piece of content, your blog sends notice to search engines alerting them to the new material (unlike your traditional website, which often has to wait for the search engines to come back, and hopefully find your new page). The more you post, the more active and attractive your blog becomes to search engines. I should mention that quality matters more than quantity — a blog full of relevant information is much better than hundreds of random posts.

The best part about blogging is potential for engagement with your audience. Real success comes from creating conversations with your readers. Not only do I read every comment (and also thank publicly and privately for their contributions), I often send requests to connect on LinkedIn and when appropriate, meet in real life.

Social marketing, and blogging in general, isn’t about the technology you use (I prefer and use WordPress, but just about any solution will do). It’s about engaging people, clients and prospects – and building relationships with them.

Photo credit from the Chandos portrait, as found on Wikipedia.