Small Business Marketing & Business Acceleration | FrontlineMarketingSystems.com

How To Generate Article Topics When You’re Half Asleep

Posted on 30. Apr, 2012 by beren in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

If you keep writing every day, you’ll have a problem. You’ll have more article ideas than you can write. Every day will sprout thirty-fifty new ideas that you can never turn into articles. But when you’re starting out, this problem is quite the opposite.

You may wake up and can’t think of a thing

Or you may be so tired that your brain refuses to co-operate.

So here’s what you do next: You find a few books

You can do this offline, or online. But allocate a fixed amount of time. And here’s how you go about it. Let’s say I want to write about PHP. I know diddly squat about PHP. So that’s the same as waking up and not being able to think of a thing to write.

So since the library is closed at this hour, I go online and look for a Dummies book

And I look at the contents page and voilà—there are a ton of topics just waiting for me. Not just topics, but subtopics. Yipeee-yahooey! Now I have my topics and my sub-topics.

But waitasec, isn’t that cheating?

Isn’t that plagiarism? Yes it is, if you copy the answers. Not if you copy the questions. The questions are simply the titles on the contents page. So let’s say the titles were the following:

Understanding PHP Data Types
Building SQL Queries
Troubleshooting a PHP Script
Setting Up Your Computer for PHP and MySQL Web Site Development
Considering the Various Uses for the PHP Scripting Language
Keeping Up with PHP and MySQL Changes
Use PHP Statements to Create Programs
Communicate with a Database through PHP MySQL Functions
Access and Adapt a Database with MySQL Queries
Knowing the MySQL WHERE Clause Format
Make MySQL Database Changes with the ALTER Query
Special Characters to Use in PHP Expression Test Patterns

Now fifteen thousand writers can take the very same topics and no two articles may be the same. Why? Because you’re going to approach the same questions from your level, your experience, your stories, your objections, your style. It simply cannot be the same.

And I found these points in fifteen seconds

You could spend hours trying to dream up the perfect topics and sub-topics, but they’re all ready and formatted for you on the Internet—if you just look. So look. Set a timer, and then go for the topics. Cut and paste the topics and then it’s time for outlining.

And by this time the expert in you can still be asleep

Because you’re still not writing yet, and are in outlining mode, you’re just having a party, by coming up with questions. So let me give it a shot with PHP (not that I know anything about it).

Building SQL Queries
What are SQL Queries?
What are the steps to building an SQL Query?
Where do SQL Queries mostly go wrong?
What are the practical applications for SQL Queries?
But surely we can do without SQL Queries…
Summary
Next step

Now if you’re a PHP programmer, I’m betting that you’ll be at least slightly interested in my questions. Some may be slightly off base, but most of them, when answered form a pretty good article.

But some answers may be too big. For example: Where do SQL Queries go wrong? So no problem. Just list the places where it can go wrong—yes, just a list. Then start up a new article called: Where SQL Queries go wrong and outline it—and phew—you have another outline!

Your topics and sub-topics don’t need to be in your head

They can be on the Internet, in the library or in the contents page of every book on your topic (hey, there’s this site called Amazon.com). If you want to write topics on starting a business, it’s there. If you want to write on WordPress, it’s there too. If you fancy gardening, kite building, even getting a divorce—it’s all there on the book stores. And not just one book, but forty or fifty books.

Which is why you need a timer

Because you can get stuck there all night trying to decide which topics and subtopics to choose. One thing is for sure, though: You can be half asleep forever, and never have a problem when coming up with topics and sub-topics.

And that’s just for starters. Once you start writing you’ll have the opposite problem. Too many ideas and not enough time to write!

P.S. How do you generate ideas for your articles? Share your ideas here.

Top Selling Products Under $50

1) You already know that 80% of a sales letter depends on your headline.
So what’s the remaining 20% that causes customers to buy? Find out more

2) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’?
Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article.

3) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion?
Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals.

4) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

5) Chaos Planning
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s April, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

NEW PRODUCT! Learn How To make your Presentation stand out from every other presenter.

How To Start Your Story-Based Articles With Greater Impact

Posted on 26. Mar, 2012 by nardene in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, story telling

Yesterday I went to buy some walking shoes.
And I ended up spending $2000. And that’s not counting the shoes.

Now, did that opening get your attention?

Sure it did. It sucked you in. And the reason you hear that strange sucking sound is because I didn’t start off the article like most people do. Most people slide logically into an article. But you can use the power of the story. And not just the story, but the middle of the story. Because there, smack bang in the middle, lies the drama—the part that really captivates your reader.

So how do you know what to pick as you unfold your story?

The answer is actually quite mundane—even, counter intuitive. To get that drama, you don’t have to pick anything particularly exciting. You just have to make it exciting for me.

So let’s say we went back into my world of yesterday

Were the purchase of the shoes the most important point?
Or was it the purchase of a draughtsman’s table?
Perhaps it could be Italian food we had for dinner. Or just about anything.

In a story, you have at least three-four exciting points and any one of them can rise to the surface. Yes, any point is exciting. What really matters, is how you bring a factor of excitement to the story. As you explain the details, the simple fact becomes interesting.

And master story tellers know this to be true

They know that even a mundane story can be brought to life in the way you recount it. In a presentation at TED.com, speaker, Hans Rosling tells a seemingly mundane story of a washing machine. And Hans has many options when telling this story, but he chooses to talk about the ‘button-driven miracle’ of the machine. And he stays with that angle to get your attention.

And here’s how it unfolds…

“I was only four years old when I saw my mother load a washing machine for the very first time in her life. That was a great day for my mother. My mother and father had been saving money for years to be able to buy that machine.

And the first day it was going to be used, even Grandma was invited to see the machine. And Grandma was even more excited. Throughout her life she had been heating water with firewood, and she had hand washed laundry for seven children. And now she was going to watch electricity do that work.

My mother carefully opened the door, and she loaded the laundry into the machine, like this. And then, when she closed the door, Grandma said, “No, no, no, no. Let me, let me push the button.” And Grandma pushed the button, and she said, “Oh, fantastic. I want to see this. Give me a chair. Give me a chair. I want to see it.”

And she sat down in front of the machine, and she watched the entire washing program. She was mesmerised. To my grandmother, the washing machine was a miracle.”

So what’s the interesting part in this story?

It could have been that the clothes came out extremely clean. It could have been the sound and how they were captivated by the sound of the machine. It could have been the changeover from hard labour to just a button-driven miracle. Hans chose the button-driven miracle. But as you can see, he could have chosen anything as long as he used emotions to drive home the story.

You can feel the excitement, the awe, as Hans tells the story. And it’s these set of emotions that keeps the drama going and the heart pulsating.

Which brings us to this bizarre set of conclusions

1) That you can pick any story, or any subset of a story to get the drama going. And you often find this drama somewhere in the middle of your story.
2) The most important factor is one of enthusiasm. Bringing out the fear, the surprise—all of those emotions are what keeps the reader engaged.

One of the best ways to get the reader’s attention is to tell a story. But easily the best way to get that story raging ahead is to pick something—anything from the middle of the story and use it to start your article.

And as you work down your way through your story, you’ll find at least two-three spots where you can harvest great emotion or unusual drama. Now that you have that emotion/drama, it’s just a matter of putting that stuff at the top and drawing your reader in.

It’s a beginning no reader can resist.

Top Selling Products Under $50

1) NEW! You already know that 80% of a sales letter depends on your headline.
So what’s the remaining 20% that causes customers to buy? Find out more

2) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’?
Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article.

3) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion?
Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals.

4) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients?
Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer?

5) Chaos Planning
Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected.
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning.

NEW PRODUCT! Black Belt Presentations: How do you create presentations that enthrall, hold and move an audience to action?

Why Some Articles Are Better Than Others

Posted on 07. Oct, 2011 by Sean D'Souza in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

I was sitting at a cafe one day, when a client was raving about my articles. Of course, I was smiling from ear to ear–as you do when  someone is a big ‘fan.’

“So how come I’m mesmerised by your articles?” he asked.
“What’s your big ‘s-e-c-r-e-t?”

“One word”, I said.

Every article boils down to one word.
Most articles go up the hill, down the valley, into the mountains and into the woods. Our articles don’t.

They stick to one word.
One angle.
They drill down like crazy.

So if you were talking about a topic like ‘pricing’, it’s almost too vast a topic. But what if you stripped it down to one angle?

Like how to increase prices by 10%.
Or how to increase prices by 10% on your website.
Or how to increase prices by 10% with a live presentation.
Or how to increase prices by 10% with specific terminology.

You see what I’m saying?

Most writers don’t follow this level of drill-down.
They write about massive topics.
They don’t have specific ideas.
And then the article feels soggy. And non-crunchy.

You see any dope can write articles.

And most articles are dopey anyway.
Because they don’t follow a structure. Or a grid.
They don’t understand drama. They don’t understand sandwiching.
They don’t understand the intensity or the difference between mystery.

And suspense. And when to use what.
So the article falls apart before it even gets off the ground.

And that’s not all.

There are also the myths.

The stupid myths of talent.
That some people are better writers than others.
That some people can think better than others.

But what if that were indeed a myth?

Because it is a myth. Writing good articles is within your control if you understand the structure and flow.

http://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-live-course
and get the newest bonus. (Note: There is a form to file in, before you get the bonus)

So what does the bonus cover?
When structuring, does length of the article matter? And why not?

Find out for yourself.

Warm regards,
Sean

P.S. About that client who was raving. We got $35,000 worth of business from them. Not only did the article impress the client,  but it was then easy for the client to show the articles to her  bosses, who in turn were sold.  So yeah, long story short: Well-written articles work to get you a chunky bit of business. But find that out for yourself at the link  above.

P.P.S. The goodies are free. However if you are considering the course you should look at the Home Study, as it has very precise instructions on how to get outstanding at article writing. If you’re a member of 5000bc.com we may also put together a  Home Study course group in the Cave.

P.P.P.S. The Home Study prices will be increased shortly. Get it while you can at the existing price (Note: We’ve raised prices consistently year after year).

The Secret to Becoming an Expert in Your Customer’s Eyes?

Posted on 30. Sep, 2011 by Sean D'Souza in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

How do you become an expert in your customer’s eyes?
How do you become the person the customer most wants to work with?
How do you then increase prices 500% and still have customers wanting to work with you?

To understand how this unusual situation occurs, let me tell you a story:

I was a cartoonist by profession.
Then one fine day, I decided to get into ‘marketing.’

Now tell me honestly:

Would you hire a cartoonist to show you how to attract customers?
Would you hire a cartoonist to show you how to improve your website?
Would you hire a cartoonist for anything–but–to draw cartoons?

Why would you?

I wouldn’t.

And that was the uphill battle I faced: No one knew me as an expert.
Now it didn’t matter how many times I looked in the mirror and called myself an expert.

I still wasn’t getting any respect, let alone pesos in the bank.
And it drove me crazy.

But there’s always a way out of crazy-land

So here’s what I did.
I started writing articles.
And it was painful writing those articles.
I’d write one article after slaving over it for two days.
And then sometimes after two days, I’d trash the article and start all over again.

Did I say there’s a way out of crazy-land?

Well, it sure didn’t seem so, because this article-writing-jazz was
driving me loco.

But here’s what I found too.
That there were systems. And techniques.
Techniques that enabled me to write faster.
That enabled me to make an article almost like a movie.
That enabled me to see a pattern as to which articles would go down the gurgler, and which articles would get lapped up by the readers.

That there were certain articles, when published, that got customers to my website in droves. I’d wake up, and suddenly there were fifty, or a hundred new subscribers.

Sometimes as many as two hundred or more.

And then as the weeks and months passed, I started getting calls

Calls to help customers with their website (um, after I wrote a website-based article).

And then emails. To help customers to help them attract clients (um, again, it was an article that did the job).

You’re guessing what crossed my mind, eh?

Not only were the articles pulling in customers to the Psychotactics website, but these customers were asking me to work with them.

Me, a cartoonist, work with them?

I have to say, I was scared out my wits. (For two whole years actually). But after two years of writing articles (and I just wrote about 20 articles in the first two years), even I began to see a trend.

I figured I could go nuts and cold-call…

Or I could sit at my computer and write an article. And have a customer call. (Ooh, I did like the sound of that phone ringing).

But you have to remember this was back in the year 2002-2004.

Back then, the Internet was a bit of a novelty. People doled out their email addresses like peanuts. Today it’s not that easy to  have two hundred people stream through your website. Which means that it’s not enough to just write an article.

There are squillions of articles on the Internet today

And those articles are competing with audio.
And video.
And heck knows what else.

So the questions do cross your mind:

1) How do I write so that my clients actually read my articles above all that noise?
2) How do I write, if I struggle to put a paragraph together?
3) Is there a ticket out of crazy-land? Can I really become anexpert in my client’s eyes?

There indeed is a ticket

And if you’ve been putting off writing, because you think it’s hard, well, it’s time to get that ticket out of crazy-land.

Information (um, Article Writing) creates expertise

Ask every author on Amazon.com
Ask every top consultant.
Ask every top trainer.
And ask a cartoonist.

But don’t take my word for it. Judge for yourself.
Get some solid methods to write better articles at this link.

Don’t wait. This link won’t stay up forever.
http://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-live-course

Sean

P.S. The goodies are free. However if you are considering the course you should look at the Home Study, as it has very precise instructions on how to get outstanding at article writing. If you’re a member of 5000bc.com we may also put together a Home Study course group in the Cave.

P.P.S. The Home Study prices will be increased shortly. Get it while you can at the existing price (Note: We’ve raised prices consistently year after year).

How To Become An Expert In Your Industry

Posted on 24. Sep, 2011 by Sean D'Souza in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Imagine you had a fairy godmother.

And she gave you one wish: The wish of ‘perceived expertise’. This ‘perceived expertise’, means that your customers would look at you and say: “There goes the expert in the field. I only want to work with her/him.”

I had such a godmother. And I got a wish from that fairy godmother in the year 2002.

You see I’d just started up my consultancy in marketing

I’d moved from India to New Zealand. No one knew me in these parts. No one knew if I was good at what I did. Or just plain useless. And what was worse, was I wasn’t quite sure either.

Then one day, that fairy godmother whizzed into the room

“Write articles,” she said.
“Write articles?” I echoed.
“What good are articles going to do for me?” I thought condescendingly.

But as fairy godmothers go, they can read your thoughts

And so there I was, um, writing articles. And remember, I didn’t even know my subject well enough. To me, marketing was a whole new world. But then something magical happened. Something I just didn’t expect. When I sat down to write, I started to get ideas.

Ideas that I didn’t know existed in my head.

And as I read more books (both business and non-business books), I got even more ideas. When I put those ideas on my website, and put up a little ‘Subscribe’ link right at the very bottom–I started getting subscribers.

I wasn’t even selling anything online (or offline for that matter)

And there I was..ahem…building an audience.
An audience that wanted to listen what I had to say.
An audience that went from just friends and family, to a chunky hundred people.
Then a thousand. And it kept growing.

I wasn’t doing any advertising

No publicity. Heck, I barely knew how to do my own marketing.

Yet these articles were like a magnet. They pulled people from every part of the world to my…um…pretty crappy website (you should have seen it in the year 2002). And offline, I was starting to get inquiries too.

“Can you give us some advice on these marketing matters?” they said

“Can you train our staff?” they said.
Can you do this, and can you do that.

And on and on it went.

But articles were hard work for me

It would take me two days to write a single article. And I’d curse and struggle. And to write one article a month was a big achievement for me.

But hey, I did have a fairy godmother

And fairy godmothers grant wishes, so I took her up on the wish. “Make me write great articles that captivate. And show me how to write them at high speed (so I don’t have to spend two days over a single article)” I said to her.

“Article writing is about structure”, she said

“Structure and drama,” she continued.
“Structure and drama and the ‘next step’,” she crescendoed.
“Drama pulls you in. Structure keeps you there. And then the next action gets your client to move to the next step.”

And just like that I learned how to write articles. And now it’s your turn.

Will you let me be your fairy um…godmother?

Do you want to learn how to spot drama? Learn how to spot structure? And understand how to use the power of the next step? Well, ask and you shall receive. But hey, there are no magic wands here. You’ve actually got to go to the link below.

And there you’ll be taken to a page with instructions. Instructions on how to get some goodies. Goodies to drama, structure, and the next step.

So, tah-dah, here’s the link:

http://www.psychotactics.com/article-writing-live-course

See you on the other side!

The Importance of Inserting the ‘Mistake’ In Your Article

Posted on 15. Aug, 2011 by nardene in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

I remember the time I was watching a video on the ‘water test’. The ‘water test’ is a method to accurately gauge if a pan is exactly at the right temperature, as the accurate temperature prevents the ingredients from sticking.

As you might have realised, I had my nose to the video to make sure I wasn’t getting the steps wrong. Yet when I tried it on my pan at home, I couldn’t replicate the water test. No matter how many times I watched the video and tried the exact steps, I still couldn’t get the ‘water test’ to work.

The reason? I was using a non-stick pan

Yeah, mine was non-stick and the pan in the video was a stainless steel pan. Heck! You think I would have seen the difference. But I never did, and your readers have the same problem when they’re reading your articles.

And that’s because they’re not just reading. They’re trying to read, assimilate and execute the learning at one go.

And in doing so, they miss out some valuable points

In effect, they make ‘mistakes’. And those in-attentional mistakes can be avoided if you take the trouble to educate your reader. Of course the easiest formula to achieve this goal is to do the following:

Step 1: Give the reader the steps to follow.
Step 2: Point out the hurdles along the way.

Step 1: Give the reader the steps to follow

Let’s say you’re teaching the reader how to cook a delicious chicken tikka masala. Obviously, you’d give them steps, because the reader is now following a recipe. And that’s what most recipes do. They tell you what to do. But they don’t tell you what possible problems or mistakes you could make while executing the dish. Which is where Step 2 comes into play.

Step 2: Point out the hurdles along the way

So ha jee, we have shown the reader how to make the chicken dish, but now we need to point out where they can go wrong. They may fry the spices too long, causing a bitter after taste. Or the gravy may turn a bit sour. And when we point out these mistakes, we help the reader avoid the obstacles in advance.

This gives your article two solid advantages

Any article that covers both the how-to as well as the mistakes immediately marks itself out as a solid, enduring piece of information. The second advantage however, is that if your article instantly gets beefed up to a nice, solid consistency every single time.

But what are the mistakes you can make when adding ‘mistakes?’

The problem with article-writing isn’t that you have less information. In fact the reverse is often true. You have the curse of knowledge. So you try to stuff your article with a whole lot of how-to information. And then while the reader rolls around with indigestion, you proceed to add even more on his plate.

And there’s a way around this problem

You want to balance out the how-to with the mistakes. If you have two or three steps involved in the how-to, then a mistake or two is fine to slip in, just to balance things a bit. But should you find yourself generating half a dozen mistakes or more, it’s probably a better idea to write an article (or two) that covers the mistakes alone.

Pointing out the mistakes a reader can make are crucial

I sure as heck should have known that I should have been using a stainless steel pan. The pan was right in front of my eyes in the video I was watching. And yet I missed it. And so will your reader.

So point out the mistakes and both you and your reader will go on to make many more perfect chicken tikka masalas for a long, long time.

So do you have a story you would like to share? Share your experience here

Two Brain Audit Audio Files: FREE Before 21 August 2011 Last week you got a chunky 30-page excerpt of The Brain Audit. This week you can get two short five-minute audio files. These short audios will teach you two very important lessons which you can implement straight away. Two Free Brain Audit Audio Files Download here Products: Under $50 1) Do You Often Hit A Wall Called ‘Writers Block’? Learn how the core elements of outlining can save you from the misery of writing your next article. 2) Do you know that visuals immediately improve your sales conversion? Learn how to create drama and curiosity and help improve your web page conversion with visuals. 3) Do your websites, brochures, presentations, etc… confuse your clients? Put some sanity into your design, even though you are not a designer? 4) Chaos Planning Year after year you sit down and create a list of things you want to achieve. Then suddenly it’s March, and you’ve not really moved ahead as you’d expected. Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning. 5) Nothing bugs you more than a painful client. A client who hassles you at every step of the way. Learn how to use the power of the ‘six critical questions’ to get incredible testimonials—and attract clients that make every day an absolute joy. NEW PRODUCT! Black Belt Presentations: How do you create presentations that enthrall, hold and move an audience to action?

[next_step]