The Open Source Marketer

Rich Schefren’s Business Acceleration Program is set to launch this Thursday and Rich is really working the product launch cycle. He’s building anticipation, generating buzz, creating excitement with free give aways, reporting exciting response numbers, and posting to his blog like crazy.

You and I could spend a month just breaking down all the pieces that have gone into the build up to this product launch, but for today we’ll break down a single post from Rich’s Strategic Profits blog to see how he is promoting the launch of his new product, and so that you and I can learn how he is using important psychological triggers to promote action on his blog.

Here are some of the blog elements we are about to examine:

• A Benefits Driven Blog Header
• Clear RSS Feed Subscription
• Large Newsletter Signup
• Pillar Article Highlights
• Traffic Sharing With Blogrush
• Product Self Promotion
• Affiliate Linking
• Friend Linking and Social Proof
• Visual content Breaks
• Graphics With Text Call To Action
• Creative Copy Writing Snippets
• Over sized Icons
• Blog Tagging
• Related Post Linking
• Social Proofing Comments
• Easy Blog Linking

Keep in mind that a lot of these blog elements are covered in more depth in Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program. Rich is Yaro’s blog business mentor. Considering both of them are doing very well at building their online businesses it is a good idea for you and me to pay attention to what they are doing.

A Benefits Driven Blog Header

The very first thing to notice about Rich’s Strategic Profits blog is that the header has benefits driven text in the title. Benefits driven marketing tells buyers why they should pay attention.

Rich’s blog header says, “More Money. More Business. More Time Off.” Clearly this is something that all business owners and entrepreneurs want and Rich knows that. Money is the leader, business is a given, and time off appeals to the emotional side of everbody’s life.

By having this right up front Rich is setting the tone for the rest of the blog.

The only missing element from the blog header is an image of Rich himself, but he already has his picture on almost all of his marketing materials so there really is no need to over work it on the top of the Strategic Profits blog.

Clear RSS Feed Subscription

A portion of the blog header is also an over sized RSS feed subscription chicklet. Over sized blog elements are a reoccurring theme throughout Rich’s blog and there is no mistaking what he wants people to do when they land on his blog.

The only missing element here compared to “everyday blogs” is a link to a “what is RSS” description. But in this situation the target blog visitor probably already knows how to use RSS. If they don’t there is a clearly marked second option displayed just down the page, the newsletter sign-up form.

Large Newsletter Sign-up

Again the newsletter sign-up form is over sized just like the RSS subscription chicklet. Without using a lot of words the intended action is obvious to most people.

Rich is obviously serious about list building. He is spending a lot of energy to get people to his blog so they can read about all the great things that are happening and it is important to capture opt-in subscribers during this attention frenzy.

Pillar Article Highlights

Further down the page Rich highlights his other pillar blog content. He has already posted quite a few articles on his blog and by highlighting these in his sidebar he is making it easy for blog visitors to find the rest of his content.

The longer a visitor stays on the blog reading content, the more likely it is that they will take some sort of action before they leave, like signing up for the rss feed, or newsletter, or even clicking an affiliate link.

Traffic Sharing With Blogrush

Just below his pillar content Rich is using the John Reese’s BlogRush widget to get blog traffic to his blog. Now, I don’t honestly think Rich needs to have BlogRush on his blog to get traffic.

So either he is promoting the widget as a favor to John, or he is banking on racking up display credits now to help promote continued blog traffic to his blog later on. Either way it’s interesting.

Product Self Promotion

Another thing to note are the links to Rich’s own products on the blog sidebar. I’m not totally surprised to see them there. Rich would be silly not to add a plug for his previous products. It just wasn’t something I was thinking to do myself.

Every opportunity you have to get extra mileage out of existing work is something you should be open to doing. Being able to reuse and re-purpose content over the long run is a clear advantage that knowledge management affords each of us.

When you create a blog post be sure to consider how you can use the content later. You should also be thinking about how you can re-purpose content that you’ve already created.

Affiliate Linking

Since Rich is promoting his previous products, it should come as no surprise that he is also promoting products for other marketers as well as an affiliate. In fact there are several tools listed on his blog.

It’s important to remember that Rich is a marketer and that not only makes him a content creator, but can also make money from other revenue streams as well.

Investing all your time and energy in one revenue stream may be leaving money on the table. Rich is not letting that happen here and neither should you.

I bet there is at least one way right now that your blog could be tweaked to help you bring in additional revenue if you are only willing to push on your comfort zone.

Friend Linking and Social Proof

One way to push your comfort zone is to get active in your market’s community. If you haven’t already, you need to get out and make some contacts so you will have opportunities to build leverage through future joint venture deals.

Rich has an interesting mix of friends in his blogroll. Some are marketers he has mentored and some are people that have mentored him.

Regardless of his relationship with his friends, you can bet the people on the list are there for a specific reason. I say this because any number of people could have been listed on his blogroll, but only a few names are showing there.

One possible reason for this list of names is that they are all very popular names that Rich’s blog visitors will easily recognize. There is almost an element of social proof in the list. Who you link to on your blogroll is a reflection of your interests and your taste in friends.

But, don’t be confused and think that you can just put a who’s who list on your blog to gain some value.

It’s important that you hand pick your links and know why they are on your list. It will speak to your blog visitors and they will make unspoken connections.

Visual content Breaks

One of the many things I like about Rich’s blog is that he uses bold sub headers in his blog post to visually break up content while still communicating clearly with visitors who only scan the page.

The two headers above tell a story even if you didn’t read the actual content and their job is to try and draw the blog visitor in so they will read the entire entry.

Graphics With Text Call To Action

I mentioned earlier that Rich uses his own image in most of his marketing materials and here is a great example how he blends his own personality into his marketing message.

Take notice of the fact that his face draws your eye on the page and that he has promotional text and a clear call to action mixed in with the graphic.

Creative Copy Writing Snippets

If you don’t have a swipe file, you need to start one. You should store all the creative marketing copy and ideas that you find as you are reading sales letters, testimonials, email, and other marketing materials. You can use the file later to come up with creative ideas when you are trying to write your own ad copy.

I found this piece of text particularly interesting on the Strategic Profits blog.

Rich is voicing the concerns of the reader so that he can provide an answer and remove any barriers to them taking the desired action.

This is a genius way to draw the reader in and address any concerns they might have. Notice that he keeps the tone conversational and light. It is disarming and makes the desired action a “no-brainer.”

Oversized Icons

Again Rich uses over sized icons to encourage specific action on his blog.

There is no doubt about what he wants you to do here. In fact, there is almost a pull to do something even though you may not have even read the action text.

Blog Tagging

Rich is also using internal tagging to help link his previous content together. This is just another way for blog visitors to find more of his blog content. Whether this helps him with search engine rankings or not is a non-issue really since he is generating plenty of backlinks from other sources.

If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform there are plugins to help you with tagging. I recommend Ultimate Tag Warrior. The most recent version of WordPress supports internal tagging natively, but Ultimate Tag Warrior is still superior in my opinion.

Related Post Linking

Linking to related post is also another great way to draw blog readers through to more of your content. If they have read down to this part of your blog post then they are probably interested in the other things you have written so this is a great opportunity to pull them through to more content and keep them on your blog.

If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform there are plugins to help you with managing your related posts. I use the WordPress 2.3 Related Posts Plugin and it works great.

Social Proofing Comments

No matter how great your content and how well your blog is laid out, nothing adds more interaction and energy to your blog than reader comments. A great way to encourage comments is to show blog visitors that other readers have already commented.

Whenever you can, encourage your readers to join the discussion. Let them know you want their opinion and give them an opportunity to see that others are already leaving theirs.

Reader comments are like free content that you don’t have to generate. However, to keep the ball rolling you should be sure to respond to comments personally so that everyone can read what you said and respond accordingly.

Easy Blog Linking

The last thing I want to highlight is the easy linking box at the bottom of each blog post. Rich has provided all the code necessary to link to his blog posts.

This is really a fantastic idea. In fact he has made it so easy to copy and paste the link that all you have to do is hover your cursor over the link text and the linking code is automatically highlighted. All you have to do is copy and paste it into your own blog post.

Reducing barriers to action is absolutely necessary to achieve a desired result and this one idea is worth exploring on your own blog.

In fact, each of these elements can be used in your blog to some degree. The important take away is that nothing on your blog should be there by accident.

Every element of your blog should serve a purpose and be designed to help you achieve some sort of goal. You spend a lot time on your blog and every part of it should help you do business better.

Studying Success,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Ps. Be sure to watch for the launch of Rich Schefren’s Business Acceleration Program. 2008 is going to be your year to shine. Why not let Rich help you accelerate your business growth?

Click Here To Accelerate Your Business