At Express Writers, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re launching our own Twitter chat this January 2016, #ContentWritingChat. We’re excited to share this opportunity with all of you, and can’t wait to get to work building an awesome community of content writers, business owners, and marketers! Open to all, our first chat is happening Tuesday, January 19, at 10 AM CST / 9 AM EST. Join us and look for the questions to come from our Twitter profile, @ExpWriters, as well as our exclusive Twitter chat handle, @writingchat!
Those of you who have used them know that Twitter Chats are an amazing way to connect and interact with fans and Twitter followers. Available in every type of business niche from marketing to sales, Twitter chats allow people to develop a community, promote a brand, and meet like-minded individuals in their industries.
So, What’s All the Fuss About Twitter Chats? 4 Key Reasons to Regularly Join One (Besides ContentWritingChat)
When you join a Twitter chat, the conversation is focused around a specific hashtag (in our case, # ContentWritingChat). This hashtag allows a wide variety of people to follow and interact with the Twitter chat, which commonly lasts for an hour at a scheduled weekly time. These chats end up creating a lively and varied ongoing conversation around important industry topics.
On average, Express Writers joins 20 Twitter chats in a given week. Some of our top favorites are #CMWorld by Content Marketing Institute, #SEMrushchat by SEMrush (I love this one, strong community and great engagement: I’ve seen over 2,000 tweets fly around inside their scheduled Twitter chat hour!), and #bufferchat by Buffer.
I’d offer these four key benefits as great reasons you should join a Twitter chat:
1. Enhanced social media presence
Social media is everything right now, and Twitter chats are a great way to promote your company’s social media presence. Because Twitter chats are hashtag-centric yet still public, millions of people have access to the conversation. This means that, when you participate actively within the conversation, you have the potential to reach millions of new people all the time.
2. Real-time feedback
Want to start a conversation with your Twitter followers? No better way to do it than a Twitter chat. Twitter chats create a dynamic, real-time conversation that can be hugely beneficial for everyone involved.
3. Community
If there’s one thing a Twitter chat is great at, it’s fostering community. When people interact in a Twitter chat, they tune in one time each week to interact with everyone else in the group. This creates an environment that’s ripe for connection with like-minded individuals and marketers who can help you become more efficient and knowledgeable.
4. Support
Trying to learn new things? Want to become a better content writer or marketer? Joining a Twitter chat is a fantastic place to start. You’ll be in the presence of marketers who are in a similar place in their careers and will learn valuable new skills.
Stay Tuned For # ContentWritingChat!
Sold on the idea of Twitter chats? Great. Now, it’s time to talk about how to get involved in ours. The first step is to head to Twitter and to follow @writingchat. This will help you stay updated on our chat itself. You can also follow @ExpWriters, as questions will come from both of these accounts. The next step is actually joining the Twitter chat.
Even if you’ve never done it before, joining a Twitter chat is incredibly simple. You’ll simply need to head to Twitter and join the conversation by searching the hashtag #ContentWritingChat on Tuesday, January 19 at 10 AM CST. This will take you directly to the conversation room and, from there, you’ll simply need to participate by adding your own comments accompanied by the associated hashtag.
5 Key Reminders to Prep For Joining a Twitter Chat
You’ll also need to know how to be a great Twitter chat participant.
To do this, you’ll want to follow these tips:
1. Get ready
You want to be prepared for your first Twitter chat, right? Right. Before you join the conversation, jot down a few thoughts you’re interested in sharing and, if they’ve been made available (as they will be with our chat) you should review the descriptions or the questions that the host provides. This can help you participate actively and get the most from the Twitter chat. Be sure you know your time zone, so you can be there on time (simple tip but hey, I’ve messed up here before!), and the hashtag (#ContentWritingChat, in our case).
2. Send out a high-volume warning to followers
Your followers should know that they can expect to see more tweets than usual from you during the scheduled chat time, so send out a high-volume warning beforehand. This will explain your increased activity and may also draw some of your followers into the chat.
3. Mind Twitter chat etiquette
Just like everything else on the web, a Twitter chat comes with its own set of etiquette rules. We created a guide on this for your reference. In short: always use the Q and A format (answer the questions with A and the number the question is, example: A1 “your answer here” A2 “your answer here”, etc.), and the hashtag for the chat, for your answer to properly count.
4. Follow and engage
Don’t be shy! A Twitter chat is an awesome place to build your community. Like tweets that you learned from, and follow the people you liked. It will mean return followers and engagement for you! Always respond to retweets and likes, as well.
5. Branch out
Branch out to other Twitter chat conversations to build your community. Check out our list of the 25 best Twitter chats every marketer should join.
Sneak Peek: Question 1 From Our First Ever Chat Topic, What Is a Copywriter? # ContentWritingChat
Interested in a super-exclusive sneak-peak of our upcoming Twitter chat?
Check out the first question we’ll be asking our followers during our first ever Twitter chat this Tuesday:
You can expect many other great topics to come, but this is where we plan to get the conversation started, so be prepared to get excited about content writing.
Our Host & Moderator
In terms of hosting, our inaugural Twitter chat will be hosted by me. Since 2011, I’ve built my copywriting agency, Express Writers, from a small team to a leader in the copywriting agency industry with more than 60 advanced copywriters and editors. I’ve also been an online copywriter myself for five years, and write for Search Engine Journal, Content Marketing Institute, Problogger, to name a few places. I’m excited to share some of what I’ve learned about copywriting with you. Be sure to follow me on Twitter.
Our capable Social Media Specialist, Marko, will be moderating the chat. He has a degree in Psychology and is a college student going for his Master’s. He has worked in Internet marketing and social media for several years. Follow Marko on Twitter.
In the future, we will be featuring guest hosts in the realms of SEO, copywriting, and more. So, if you’re a content writing enthusiast with some valuable information to share, you could be one of them!
Open Invitation!
Are you interested in being on our Twitter chat as a guest host? Email [email protected] directly with your favorite topic(s) to talk about in the areas of marketing, writing, and entrepreneurship, for potential scheduling!
You can also drop us a comment below to let us know of topics you’d love to see addressed by our team.
Trying to find out how social media affects SEO is a little bit like staring through a really dirty window: it’s unclear and often frustrating.
While business owners know that social media is important for many things, including building and maintaining visibility on the web and driving customer engagement, it can be tough to tell just how much (if at all) social media affects SEO ranking. This is justified, of course, as in 2010 Google’s Matt Cutts released a video saying that social signals were a SEO ranking factor. In 2014, however, Cutts released another video saying that social signals weren’t actually a ranking factor.
(This was addressed late 2015 in a Stone Temple article: “Does Social Media Effect SEO? Matt Cutts answers”. I’d definitely recommend this read: it addresses this topic well from an SEO standpoint.)
In the new version of the video, Cutts clarifies some of the ambiguity that’s plagued SEO for years and gives us a final (if not drastically more clear) answer to the question: does social matter for SEO rankings?
I’m going to take a look. Keep reading.
How Social Factors Play into SEO: 3 Key Points
There’s been hot debate over whether or not social signals matter for SEO rankings. Here’s what we know:
1) Social signals on Facebook and Twitter are treated like web pages in SEO
When a search engine crawler looks through Facebook and Twitter feeds, it can pull out individual pieces of content and select the ones that are valuable. This does two things: first, it helps Google cut down on the unimportant social signals out there, of which there are many considering the fact that Twitter users generate more than 500 million tweets per day.
Secondly, this helps Google be more selective in what it indexes and where that content is indexed, which can be a good or a bad thing for marketers depending upon the strength of the social factors that do matter (more on this later).
2) Google’s crawlers can’t cover the entire social universe
While they may be studious, even Google’s crawler bots aren’t capable of evaluating every social page on the web. Part of this is because the bots sometimes get blocked from doing this work, as Barry Schwartz claims they were from Twitter.
While Google’s crawler bots can still see every Tweet that is posted on the platform, they are inherently limited in their ability to index every Tweet. According to a study released earlier this year, Google actually indexes less than 4% of all Tweets issued. That said, Google doesn’t appreciate social signals it can’t fully index and, because of this, it’s possible that signals like individual Tweets don’t influence SEO as much as one may think.
3) Drumroll please… Google says it does not use Facebook or Twitter followers to rank pages
This has been a long-debated topic and one that has been fraught with misunderstanding and confusion. According to Matt Cutts, though, Google doesn’t use signals like Facebook or Twitter fans or followers simply because they don’t have “a high confidence in the meaning” of those signals.
This is because Google’s bots are simply incapable of crawling all of Facebook and Twitter, which means that there is no way they can glean all of the connections and signals they would need to make a complete and well-rounded assumption about the content on those sites. Additionally, Facebook and Twitter followers are fluid and ever-changing and it’s possible that a bot that visits a page in the early stages of its existence, for example, may not visit it again for a very long time, which may inappropriately skew the page’s rankings.
Similarly, a page that has a huge number of followers when a crawler bot visits may then lose a huge number of followers (this is far from impossible and it actually happened to many high-profile Instagram users when the site destroyed millions of spammy profiles in what is now known as “The Instagram Rapture”), but since the crawler bot will not reflect that loss, it’s impossible for the bot to make these social signals an accurate representation of the site itself.
Cutts also put to bed the Moz and SearchMetrics studies that claimed Facebook likes were one of the most important factors for sites that rank well in Google’s SERPs. While many people believed that these studies proved that social signals in fact caused high-level search rankings, Cutts explained that this was simply due to the fact the the sites which produce high levels of fan engagement are also the sites that attract a high number of inbound links and other authority metrics that do have a direct effect on SEO ranking.
What this Means for Social and SEO: 3 Things Marketers Need to Know
So – what’s the answer? Does social matter for your SEO? The answer is complicated and two-fold: it does and it doesn’t. We’ve just addressed the reasons it doesn’t – some social signals are too instable to be reliable ranking metrics and others are simply impossible for Google to attain. But what about the ways in which social signals do affect your SEO?
Right now, one of the most important things in the world of great SEO rankings is content that meets search user needs. Despite the confusing back-and-forth of “SEO or no SEO?” some social signals are indeed important for SEO and, moreover, sites that pay attention to the following things are more likely to rank higher in SERPs.
1) Social links matter
While we’ve established that social signals don’t matter for SEO, social links might. Consider the following: when a post goes viral on Facebook or Twitter (As Mark Manson’s “7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose” blog post did, for example) and thousands of people are sharing and searching for it, does that affect search rankings?
Many marketers believe that it does. We know that Bing pays attention to viral posts and, according to the 2014 Cutts video, Google treats individual pages on social sites the way they would any other web page – which means that viral pages may well help search rankings. Clear as mud, right? While it turns out that the overall authority of a page probably doesn’t impact SEO, individual links and posts probably do.
2) Sites are doing more with content than ever before
To add fuel to the aforementioned fire, many social media platforms are offering more vessels for content creation and distribution than they ever have before. Take, for example, the impending death of Twitter’s 140-character limit or the introduction of Facebook articles, which allow content creators to whip out interactive articles for their followers. Think, also, about platforms like Periscope and Vine, which have been designed solely to function in concert with social media. This, of course, lends authority to the assumption that creating high-quality social media content certainly can’t harm your SEO ranking and may, in fact, help it.
To take advantage of this and to capitalize upon the high probability of going viral with fantastic social media content, it’s important to utilize social sharing and to treat social media content creation exactly as you would if you were creating content for a website or blog: treat it like it matters because it probably does.
3) Social media channels act like search engines
95% of millennials expect brands to have a Facebook page and will search them using the social media platform. That said, we’ve long since passed the days of heading to a search engine and a search engine alone to find information. Today, people treat social media platforms almost exactly like they do search engines, and this means that SEO has to by virtue extend into social media.
There are hundreds of ways for consumers to discover or engage with brands on social media and, once that engagement takes place, the likelihood that the consumer will then purchase from the company, share the company’s content, talk about the company on social media, or link back to the company’s information is incredibly high. All of these things contribute to positive SEO rankings and, as such, social media channels should be treated like the soil from which lots of good SEO springs.
That said, marketers can do well to produce lots of quality visual content, occupy space in several different social media spheres, optimize content for social sharing and keep updating content often. Considering the fact that Twitter gets more than 19 billion searches per month and Facebook gets more than 1 billion per day, it’s obvious that these simple steps have the potential to make a huge impact on SEO.
Conclusion
If you’re still confused – it’s okay. SEO and social signals are confusing to no end but here’s what we can tell you for sure: while it isn’t safe to dismiss social media’s effect on SEO entirely, it’s clear that certain things (like Facebook friends or Twitter followers, for example) don’t matter.
That’s great news for new marketers because it means that you don’t have to be a mega-star to snag top SERP rankings. What we do know about social and SEO, however, is that certain things like high-quality social content, social media presence, and the ability of your social media content to suit user needs is important and should be focused on heavily.
While it’s undeniable that social media and SEO will continue to shift beneath us, one thing is sure: creating great content and maintaining a consistent and varied web presence certainly cannot hurt you.
2016 is here – another year is upon us! And many people just like you are wondering what they’re going to do about their content marketing in the New Year.
For many creators, the task of content creation became stressful a long time ago and, now, many view it as more of a chore than a joy, especially given the importance and stress of it all. It’s one of the key marketing principles to include if you have a website and presence at all online.
Fortunately, there are ways to hack your content planning in order to ensure that you’re doing your best work in 2016 and that all the content you create is content that your readers are excited to interact with.
As a busy group of expert content creators, we know just what you need to know in order to do your best content planning this 2016! Here are our best tips.
First: Defining Good Content Planning
The concept of content planning is pretty simple: content planning allows you to plan your content in advance in order to avoid frantic, last-minute crushes to create something as well as allowing you to ensure that your content is doing what it’s supposed to do: attract readers.
Content planning has many benefits, not the least of which are planning for seasonal content, ensuring proper keyword usage, taking action on reader requests, and promoting content variation.
The 5 Steps of Effective Content Planning
Great content planning is a little bit like planning a road trip: you need to know where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and what you’re going to do once you have.
In order to ace your content planning in 2016 and beyond, you’ll need to follow these 5 steps:
1) Define your Destination
In order to plan content effectively, you’ll need to know what purpose you want your content to fulfill. Maybe 2015 saw you with large traffic numbers but low conversions or maybe you want to make more sales. In any event, you need to define the goal of your content before you begin creating it. A fantastic way to do this is to compile a list of primary and secondary goals.
Once you’ve laid out your goals, you’ll want to set a time frame for achieving them. Building relationships with your audience is going to take time and it’s unfair for you to expect anything to happen overnight. So, for example, maybe you say you’d like to increase your sales through content 20% by June of 2016. This gives you 6 months to test new theories, plan your content, and make changes to your company.
2) Identify Your Target Audience
Once you’ve identified your goals, it’s time to identify the people who will help them become a reality. Enter your target audience. These people are hugely important to your company and it pays to ensure that you’re doing everything you can to nurture and create content for them. Even if you’ve defined your target audience in the past, the beginning of 2016 is a great time to reevaluate it. Target audiences do change over time and it’s important to keep your marketing personas up to date and current.
To begin this process, sit down and consider the following questions: What demographics (age, location, income, gender, education, occupation, marital status) comprise your target audience? What do they value (interests, morals, attitudes, values, lifestyles, hobbies)? What are they interested in? What content medium (text, videos, podcasts) are they most likely to interact with? To get a fuller feel for your target persona, take a look at your current site visitors to determine what the typical reader is and what they want.
For more information about creating a buyer’s persona that helps you get a handle on who your target audience is and what they want, consider this buyer persona card from Manobyte:
3) Define your distribution channels
Once you know what your goals are and who you’re speaking to, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to get your message out. Content planning extends far beyond blog posts and entails social media posts, video content, and a variety of other web-based platforms.
In order to determine which of these many channels will most benefit you, you’ll have to consider where your target audience likes to hang out. For example, if your audience loves Twitter and Facebook but isn’t so into Instagram, you’d be wise to begin your content distribution efforts on those platforms. If you’re new to content creation, a great benchmark to start with is Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, and Instagram. These four platforms combine to offer short- and long-form content, visual content, and interactive content, which is a fantastic foundation for new marketers to start from.
So, in conclusion, you’ll want to spend some time considering where your audience is, what content types they expect to see, which channels your audience is currently interacting with and where, if any, the content gaps are. Considering these things will help you put together an effective content strategy that truly caters to your unique readers.
4) Establish your team
According to Hootsuite, any content marketing strategy that’s up to snuff will follow the Rule of Thirds. The Rule of Thirds suggests that of all the content you post, 1/3 should be promotional, 1/3 should share ideas from industry thought leaders, and 1/3 should seek to build personal relationships with readers.
This is one of the reasons content planning is so important: creating good content takes time and no business can expect to adhere to the rule of thirds and create quality material without extensive planning ahead of time. For this reason, you’ll need to establish a team that’s dedicated to your content creation needs. Ideally, you’ll have a writer, designer, editor, and publisher to create content and help distribute it. In some cases, however, there aren’t enough people on-staff to handle these roles or a company simply doesn’t have the time to create content in-house. In these cases, outsourcing your content may be the wisest idea.
5) Create an Editorial Calendar
Once you’ve planned the what, where, and who of your content creation, it’s time to make it official. Developing an editorial calendar can help ensure that you stay on schedule and publish content at peak traffic times throughout the days and weeks. This can help produce higher traffic numbers and more engagement from your readers.
Two Huge Fundamentals of What Makes for Great Content
Now that you know how to plan your content, it’s time to consider how to make it great. 2016 is the perfect time to master content marketing and focusing on these helpful tips can make sure you do it in style.
1. Get Great at Storytelling
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s likely that you’ve heard something about the importance of storytelling in content marketing. Storytelling is virtually the only way to run a successful content campaign anymore, and it’s everywhere you look in the world of content. From our favorite blockbuster movies to the television ads that run during the Superbowl, storytelling is the #1 way to master content.
Plus, since we currently live in a world that is literally saturated by content, storytelling is one of the only effective ways to ensure that your content rises to the top and is actually seen by your viewers. Right now, 27 million pieces of content are shared across the web on a daily basis and U.S. media consumption recently rose to 15.5 hours each day. For this reason, 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content today than they did just a year ago and 56% of business bloggers are planning to hire additional staff within the next 12 months.
Think about these numbers in relation to your own life for a moment: of all of the digital, television, radio, and web ads you’re exposed to on a daily basis, how many do you remember? Chances are you can count them on one hand. What’s more, chances are these ads are ones that exhibit great displays of storytelling and have the power to make you relate to them, sympathize with them, and feel connected to them.
Because of this, it’s important to master storytelling in your own content creation. There are many resources on using storytelling in your content marketing and many ways to do it effectively. One of the most important things to remember, though, is that effective storytelling can only come about when you know who you’re talking to, so the aforementioned target personal research needs to come first.
2. Consider the Millennials
The Millennials are coming! And they’re bringing with them specific web preferences and a whole lot of tech know-how. In addition to being very specific about what they like and what they don’t, millennials are a huge group (they’re currently the largest generation in the U.S. and individuals spend an average of 25 hours searching the web for authentic content on a weekly basis) which means that they wield some considerable market power. For this reason, content marketing needs to bend to millennials to avoid sinking altogether.
To keep millennials in mind as you plan your content for 2016, you’ll need to do the following things:
Listen. Nowadays, millennials want a real role in the creation of a company’s content. They’re happy to tell you what they’d like to see more of but if they don’t see results in a timely fashion, you can bet they’re going to hop right off of your page in favor of one that gives them what they want. That said, pay attention to your social channels and seek to incorporate the questions, desires, and interests of your millennial audience into your content planning efforts.
Personalize. Millennials will gladly divorce themselves from your site if it features content that isn’t authentic or is written only to make sales. That said, you’ll need to create content that feels personal for them. The use of personal pronouns can help with this, as can the use of your personal and brand stories.
Focus on your personal brand. Millennials could do without big corporations and are much quicker to bond with other people. For this reason, more and more companies have been working to amplify their personal brand. Consider Progressive’s character “Flo” or the Geico Gecko for a moment. Both of these personas are designed to give customers someone to bond with. For a real-person example, consider Tim Ferriss, who uses his personal voice, photos, and experiences to sell products and services.
Focus on visuals. Millennials love visual content. When you’re in the midst of content planning, you can’t afford to forget visuals. Millennials are quick to abandon sites with poor design and are much more likely to engage with sites that offer quick video updates, vertical displays, and beautiful images.
Make your presence multi-channel. Remember when you were determining which social channels your audience would love? With millennials, it’s likely that they’ll favor a few of them, so it’s important to meet your audience where they are. This ensures that the huge millennial audience can find your site wherever they love to interact and that all of your content is as shareable as possible.
When You Need Content Planning Assistance
There you have it – you now know how to plan your content like a pro in 2016 and beyond. But let’s face it, everything we just talked about takes work. And don’t forget, if you’ve found that you don’t have the time, know-how, or energy to tackle content planning on your own, it’s okay to hire pros to help you out.
Our content planning services are unique and not often seen in the world of content creation. Whether you need content for your blog or social media accounts, our team of SEO and content specialists will use tools like SEMRush and BuzzSumo to create a personalized content plan that’s sure to get you readers. Learn more about our content planning services here.
Imagine this: a tiny bottle of magical mist you can spray into the toilet to cover up unpleasant bathroom odors. People will love it, right?
If you’re like most people, you’re probably thinking, “That’s a crazy idea.”
You’re probably also thinking, “Aren’t there already 10,000 products identical to that on the market?”
You may even be thinking, “There’s no way that would ever sell.”
You’d be right on the first two and dead wrong on the last one.
Here’s why it would sell. Let your mind be BLOWN…
Be introduced to Poo~Pourri, a wacky “spray before you go” bathroom mist that’s gone viral and sold millions of products. “How,” you ask? Because of its incredibly creative use of brand storytelling.
I’m going to dissect just how this crap “made it” (so well, in fact); and five essential lessons you can learn from the way they’re winning. Let’s proceed!
Who (or What) is Poo Pourri?
Head to the Poo~Pourri website and you’ll find a page that immediately resembles something from Alice in Wonderland, complete with an embedded video of a pretty princess who is, presumably, squatting on her porcelain throne. The entire page, from the font to the color scheme is decidedly elegant and playful. And, at first glance, the only thing that really clues you into what the product is all about (besides the name, of course) is the slogan beneath the brand’s logo: “Spritz the bowl before you go and no one else will ever know.”
Before we hop down the rabbit hole of what makes Poo Pourri such a genius brand, it’s important to understand where the brand came from in the first place. At the top of the page, beneath a header titled “The Magic of Poo,” there’s an “About us” section (it’s called “The Story of Poo”). We must warn you, though, this “About us” is likely different than any you’ve ever seen.
It starts out innocent enough: the founder’s name is Suzy and she started the brand as the “first natural, truly effective solution to a universal problem.” In her words, “Poop happens, and it stinks!” She goes on to encourage you to “Take a shift!” and allow Poo Pourri to liberate you from “toxic thoughts and ingredients” because, hey, you’ve “got more important crap to worry about!”
Does this introduction have the six-year old inside of you giggling and blushing? Good, because we get the distinct feeling that that’s exactly what Suzy is going for. We’re willing to bet, however, that you’re also silently acknowledging that Suzy is indeed right. This is a universal problem.
And therein lies the first stroke of genius.
Since its inception, Poo-Pourri has sold more than 4 million products and that number only continues to climb. These products are neat little 2 – 4 oz spritz sprays, all natural with essential oils and no parabens or chemicals (which I personally love!), and start around $9.95 without shipping per bottle. The products even have cute little names, and the product descriptions themselves maintain the storytelling vibe.
Even if you agree that nicely-packaged bathroom spray is a sensible idea, it still seems almost unbelievable that such a company should experience such runaway success.
It’s happening though, and the brand owes it all to storytelling. Something we talk a lot about (here, and here, for instance.)
How Poo Pourri Rocks Storytelling
Remember that embedded video on the main page of Poo~Pourri’s website? Well, they made a few original stories with the same lovely British redhead – 12, to be exact. Delight yourself in the crappiness of their entire channel, here.
Hilarious, right? Hilarious and slightly cringe-worthy, as well. The latter part owes largely to the fact that that video may be the single most daring and honest marketing video you’ve ever seen. Honesty is a theme that runs throughout the website.
From the unique section titled “Let’s Talk Crap” at the bottom of the home page (where you’ll also find the below “Hey Girl” gem) to the attractive product photos throughout the site, the brand’s home page manages to be hilarious, bawdy, and just sophisticated enough to pull it all off.
How does Poo~Pourri pull it off, though? And how do they take all of that storytelling and transform it into something that genuinely helps the brand make sales? The answer is that they use a series of tried and true marketing tactics that they infuse with their own individual flavor.
5 Marketing Lessons to Learn from the Storytelling Genius of Poo~Pourri
Here are the top 5 things we could all learn from Poo Pourri.
1. Know your audience
You’ve heard this before and you’ll hear it again but, come on, is there a brand out there that knows its audience better than Poo-Pourri? Doubtful. It’s clear from the get-go that Poo-Pourri is aimed at young, eco-conscious females everywhere that are having a hard time bucking the social norms associated with bathroom business.
If you need extra evidence of this, consider the video titled “Girls Don’t Poop.”
The video underlines the product’s quality by boasting that Poo-Pourri has more 5-star ratings on Amazon than the iPhone 5. It also offers a good-natured nudge at self-consciousness that generally surrounds bathroom visits. As Entrepreneur points out in their article on the company, “Everyone has a use for a spray that makes bathrooms smell fresh, but Poopourri did not target every Tom, Dick, and Harry.” Because of this, the brand is dominating while other bathroom spray brands are…stinking.
2. Be bold
If there’s one thing Poo-Pourri doesn’t do, it’s tread lightly. Phrases like “dirty little secret,” “tiny astronauts,” “chocolate éclair,” “intestinal cigar,” and “heaping dump” are prevalent throughout the brand’s advertisements.
And, yes, while we know that the majority of those phrases are enough to make you blush, they’re also bold. One of the best things this brand does is remove the timid language that often surrounds the topic of bathroom use. In doing so, they make the topic relatable and create an environment in which people can say, “Hey, yeah, I can totally relate. I’ll try this stuff out!” Unconventional? Yes. Brilliant? Absolutely.
3. Provide some comic relief
Let’s be honest, nobody really wants to talk about poop. But since Poo-Pourri does it in a funny, lighthearted way, it’s easier for customers to approach. Also, it’s infinitely obvious that whoever wrote the web copy for the company’s site had a great time doing it. This translates through to the reader and makes it easier for the customers to enjoy themselves on the page, translating into more sales and more brand engagement.
As a side note, let’s remember that, while Poo~Pourri is bawdy, a touch lewd, and very bold, it manages to balance those things with levels of professionalism, sophistication, and attention to detail that prevent it from ever coming close to unsaleable.
4. Be unique
What Poo Pourri is doing right now brings to mind what Dollar Shave Club has done in the last few years. While neither bathroom odor-maskers or razors are revolutionary products, both brands have managed to package and market their products in such a way that makes them seem so.
In the case of Dollar Shave Club, it’s ad copy that portrays the woes of people who don’t change their blade often enough. In the case of Poo~Pourri, it’s an all-natural product that comes packaged in a beautiful bottle that features a distinctly vintage appearance.
Reminiscent of high-class French toiletries, these little bottles instantly make customers feel like they’re holding an expensive and exclusive product. When a product looks great and performs even better, you can guarantee it’s going to be a hit with customers.
5. Own it
Throughout their website, Poo~Pourri continually says “Own your throne!” and they mean it. It’s evident, however, that the company takes that to heart. In addition to owning their thrones (as we assume they are) they’re also owning everything with the same flavorful style, from their brand message to their web copy. There’s not a piece of their website that feels boring, predictable, or pasteurized.
I think this is a huge key to their success across the board: they really, really commit to the level of storytelling they’ve exhibited. Which only means that someone over at Poo~Pourri is really, really, really, really… you get it… creative.
Everything is thoroughly, vibrantly on-brand, and it’s refreshing.
Take, for example, the social sharing buttons at the bottom of their home screen:
“Let me take a #shelfie,” “Ladies and gentleman, start your hot glue guns,” and “giveaways on giveaways on giveaways”? Of course I’m going to share that. Sharing that seems fun. How could I not share that?
Of course, that’s exactly the reaction those buttons are meant to produce and they do a fantastic job of it. Now, if those buttons had just featured the names of their respective social networks, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun and I wouldn’t be nearly as compelled to share.
Poo~Pourri knows that in order to stand out in the minds of your customers, you need to craft a unique and original brand message that pervades through every aspect of your marketing. They’ve done this and, frankly, we could all stand to learn a thing or two from them.
Conclusion
If you’d never heard of Poo~Pourri before this post, I trust your life has been changed. What’s more, I virtually guarantee that you’ll think of this brand the next time you use the bathroom. While this little company is still small compared to some of the scent-eliminating giants out there, it’s obvious that their brand message is set to take them far.
This is due in large part to the fact that the brand is just so dang good at storytelling. From their commercials to their web copy and everything in between, Poo~Pourri is a brand that you can’t forget and can’t help but identify with.
Of all the people that visit your blog, 80% of them will read your headline: and only 20% of them will go on to read your body copy.
While that may seem like a dismal statistic, it holds some serious power for the people who get headlines right. The reason for this is that when you craft great headlines, you boost your chances that people will go on to read the rest of your content.
If you want great results for your content, you can’t expect to just whip out headlines left and right. In fact, QuickSprout recommends spending half the time you spent creating your content creating a headline. While this may seem overkill, there’s no underestimating the importance of headlines. Part of this is due to the fact that there are upwards of 2 million blog posts, 864 thousand hours of vide, 294 billion emails, and 400 million tweets being created on a daily basis.
With that much content on the web, it’s clear that a headline is one of your only chances to grab a reader who’s distracted by a million other things and say, “Hey! Click here.”
When you get it right, you have the potential to boost your traffic, earn more readers, and rise to web fame. But how do you do it well?
Here are 10 tips to help you get started.
10 Tips for Headlines So Good They’ll Break the Internet
Writing great headlines is an art form. There are several tried-and-true formulas that work well every time and, as a content creator, it’s important to get familiar enough with these that you can include them in your arsenal. Here are some of our favorites:
1) Use numbers
“9 Facts about Elon Musk, according to Elon Musk,” “20 Ways to Have the Best Day Ever,” “5 Fitness Tips to Help You Rock the New Year” …. what do these headlines have in common? They all use numbers to draw readers in. According to a study conducted by Moz, 36% of readers prefer numbered list headlines. And according to the BBC, this is because list posts tell us exactly what we’re getting. Plus, list posts are easy to read, easy to skim, and easy to draw value from. This helps readers feel like they’re getting a great deal and creates content that is highly shareable.
2) Address the reader
“Have you Ever Wanted Anything as Much as This Cat Wants This Laser?” “Don’t Know What to get your Father for Father’s day? We can Help.” “Your Complete Survival Guide to the Holiday Madness.” According to the aforementioned Moz study, 21% of readers prefer headlines like these. The reason is simple: when a headline addresses the reader directly, it breaks the previously-held barriers between a writer and a reader, creating a more personalized experience that’s easier for the reader to relate to.
3) Offer valuable information
Imagine this: you’re having trouble setting up your new Bluetooth speaker. You head to the internet to search for answers and several results pop up. There are Q&A boards, a lengthy description of your Bluetooth speaker, and an article titled “How to Configure Your Bluetooth Speaker Without Ripping Your Hair Out.” Which one are you going to click? Chances are, you’ll choose the how-to article. The reason for this is because the how-to article offers immediately actionable information in a simple-to-read package, which saves you from combing through Q&A boards or scrolling endlessly, in search of answers to your pressing questions.
4) Steer clear of superlatives
“The 13 Best Ways to Create the Most Perfect, Smartest Kid Ever.” Is that headline a little too superlative-dense for you? We thought so. Moz recently surveyed respondents for their tolerance to superlatives. What they found was that about 51% of them were more inclined to click on a headline that featured only 0-1 superlatives. In other words, most readers prefer a headline that is descriptive, yet understated. The reason for this may be that, most of the time, superlative-dense headlines feel a little too unbelievable. For best results, and to attract the most readers, keep it toned-down, believable, and clear.
5) …. Or go all out
In that same Moz survey, a full ¼ of respondents went the other way entirely. Instead of clicking on the understated headline, they leaned toward headlines that were packed with up to 4 superlatives. The takeaway? When crafting your headlines, readers either want you to keep it simple or to go big. Just remember that when using superlatives, you’ll want to keep them positive (think “perfect, largest, funniest, strongest, best, fastest, easiest”, etc.) in order to craft strong, emotionally appealing headlines.
6) Offer the best information
Today’s readers area all about efficiency. They want to know the best way to do something in the shortest amount of time. This is part of the reason sites like Lifehacker have become so incredibly popular. Because of this, headlines that offer “the best” path to anything are much more clickable than those that beat around the bush. Take, for example, the recent New York Magazine article titled “The Best Ways to Fake Clean a House.” Who wouldn’t click that headline?
7) Back it up
While being the best and piling on the superlatives is all well and good, it’s not worth much if you’re just making it up. For this reason, it’s important to back your outlandish claims up. Take the recent Lifehack article titled “10 Scientifically Proven Ways to Stay Happy All the Time.” It has over 5,000 shares and we’re willing to bet a good deal of that is because the words “scientifically proven” back the claim up enough that people find it immediately trustworthy.
8) Get real
Just like people love authoritative information, they also love authentic information, which means that posts that tell shocking, true stories are very popular. To draw people into these posts, headlines should be raw, honest, and willing to share an experience. Take, for example, the Huffington Post article titled “10 Things I Learned from Getting Divorced in my 20s.” This headline is specific, open, and immediately relatable to many people. Plus, the fact that it offers an inherent undertone of “helpful information” means that it’s more likely to be clicked than an article titled “Divorce 101.”
9) Keep it short
According to a KISSmetrics study, readers only register the first three and last three words of a headline. In light of this, many marketing experts recommend keeping a headline limited to 6 words or less. This will help readers process meaning easily and decide instantly whether or not to click. In some cases, though, it’s virtually impossible to keep a headline to 6 words. In these cases, just remember that it’s the first three and last three words that count the most. Use this knowledge to pack all of your appeal, emotional connection, and shock value into those portions of the headline. This approach helps keep your headline interesting and ensures that you’ll draw plenty of readers.
10) Use keywords and keep it concise
Nobody wants to click a rambling headline that makes no sense. Likewise, nobody wants to click a headline that doesn’t offer an immediate overview of what the article is about. Because of this, it’s important to focus on using keywords at the beginning of your headlines. This provides immediate information for the reader and helps save time. Once you’ve done that, focus on getting to the point of your headline as quickly as possible. This saves you from losing your reader’s attention and ensures that you’re never “That wordy writer” you so desperately fear being.
Conclusion
According to CoSchedule, website traffic can vary by 500% all on account of headlines. Sites like Upworthy (who is reported to write at least 25 headlines for every single piece of content they publish) have got the headline game down, but for the rest of us, it takes some work.
Fortunately, crafting killer headlines isn’t nearly as difficult as it may seem. By focusing on delivering value, interest, and actionable information in a headline, you can draw readers into your content and ensure that of those 80% of readers who read your headline, all of them go on to read your body copy, as well.
