Let Us Write You a Killer Tagline… Right Now and No Charge

When people arrive at your website, they're looking for instant guidance. They want to know what you're about, and if you can help with whatever they're looking for. That's the function of your tagline. It's an up-front statement that encapsulates and delivers your big-picture promise – and it's got to hit the mark with your target audience in seconds. First up, here are two articles on ways to formulate a killer tagline: How to Create a Rock-Solid Tagline That Truly Works Does Your Tagline Create Clarity or Mystery? Creating the perfect tagline is an expression of your positioning, so also check out these two articles about developing your winning difference: Differentiate Your Blog or Die Take 15 Minutes to Find Your Winning Difference Now, for the cool part: In the past, we've done interactive tagline clinics in the comment section. Basically, you tell us: what you have to offer the type of people you're trying to reach your current tagline if you've got one Then, people like Roberta, James, Sonia, Jon, and yours truly will provide guidance and suggestions. We'll even write your actual tagline for you should the proper inspiration hit. And of course there's no charge. So if you want help with your tagline, get started by telling us in the comments! About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of Scribe. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

The Three-Step Guide to Getting More Traffic by Writing Less

Ever wonder where you’re supposed to find the time to promote your blog?

If you’re blogging in your spare time, it can seem impossible. You’re already struggling just to publish a post every weekday, and sometimes you can’t even manage that. You want to work on your SEO, twitter following, and relationships with popular bloggers, but you also have a job, family, friends — responsibilities that are just more important.

And so you wonder: should you just keep going, doing the best you can?

Or is there a strategy you can use that doesn’t require so much time?

I started to research the answer to that question about a year ago, and after working with more than 50 bloggers, trying different things, I think I've found one.

As it turns out, the answer isn’t doing more. It’s doing less.

Let me explain.
Step One: Publish only one blog post per week

Whoever said you have to publish a blog post every weekday?

Nobody, as far as I can tell. It’s just what everyone does, and so most of us assume it’s the only way to do it.

But it’s not.

If you’re strapped for time, there’s nothing wrong with cutting back on the number of posts you publish each week. Your readers might even be grateful. Most people have so much to read that they don’t have time to keep up with all of your blog posts, and they feel bad about it. By cutting back, you make it easier for them to stay a subscriber.

So how many posts should you publish, exactly?

There’s no set number, but here’s a suggestion: start with one really good post per week, and if you have time, work your way up.

The key word is “good.” One well-written, well-thought-out blog post can get you more links and traffic than hundreds of hurried ones. Some writers are faster than others, but in general, if you’re spending less than two hours on most of your posts, you’re probably going too fast. Cut back the quantity, and focus on quality.

By itself, this will often double or triple your traffic. But it also does something else: it frees up time to focus on promotion.
Step Two: Publish one guest post per month on popular blogs

As you’ve probably seen, there are hundreds of strategies for promoting a blog. In an ideal world, you would use them all, digging dozens of channels for traffic to come flowing in.

There’s only one problem: you don't live in an ideal world. And neither do I.

Even if you were working on your blog full-time with a dozen employees to help you, you couldn’t do everything.

So don’t try. Instead, focus on one strategy, and get really good at it.

My advice: start with guest blogging.

Here’s why: pretty much every other traffic strategy depends on you having connections.

To make SEO work, you need links from trusted sites. To make twitter work, you need to get retweets from people who have a lot of followers. To make social bookmarking work, you need connections with social media power users who can bring you dozens or even hundreds of votes.

And that’s hard when you’re a beginner, because you don’t have any of those connections.

In my opinion, it’s far, far easier to establish relationships with influential people first, and then use those connections to fuel the other strategies.

If you can publish just one guest post per month for popular blogs, at the end of the year, you’ll have made connections with twelve very influential people who can help you grow your blog. That’s not going to give you 100,000 subscribers all by itself. But it will give you a nice foundation, and it’s one you can build on.
Step Three: Slowly start doing more posts and promotions

Once you start getting results, I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier to expand your efforts.

Everyone is more motivated to work on something that’s working. If you land a guest post on a big blog and pick up a few hundred subscribers, you won’t have to push yourself quite so hard to work on your next post. You’ll want to do it, and that makes blogging a lot more enjoyable.

You’ll also have the connections you need to slowly start trying some other traffic strategies. For instance, you could:

* Publish a special piece of content, such as a free report or video, and then use your connections to get links from popular blogs (Here's a free tutorial on how to do that).
* Build a following on twitter to help promote your posts, and then strategically make a post go viral (Here's a free tutorial on how to do that, too).
* Pick a search phrase that gets hundreds of thousands of searches per month, and then use your connections to get trusted links (That tutorial is coming this Friday).

By themselves, none of those strategies are new. Anyone who has been blogging for more than a few months probably dreams about attracting links, building a twitter following, and getting a first page ranking on Google.

The difference is you’ll actually be able to do it.

Cutting your posting schedule will free up the time you need to work on promotion, and guest blogging will give you the connections you need to pull them off.

It’s a very simple system, but it’s also one that gives you everything you need while investing a more reasonable amount of time.

Is the system perfect?

No.

In fact, it has one serious flaw:
Isn’t getting a guest post on a popular blog kind of hard?

Yeah, it can be.

With audiences numbering in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, popular bloggers are justifiably careful about the quality of content they publish. Frequently, they also have a lot of bloggers volunteering to do guest posts, so the competition can be stiff.

But it’s not impossible. New bloggers do it on a regular basis here at Copyblogger, as well as many other popular blogs.

There’s no reason you can’t do it too. You just need a few tricks of the trade to help you get started.
Check out the free GuestBlogging.com videos

If you haven’t seen the GuestBlogging.com videos yet, you should check them out.

They're free, and they contain some of the most powerful strategies I’ve learned while writing for Copyblogger and building popular blogs of my own. So far, thousands of people have signed up for them, and many are saying it’s some of the best blogging advice ever published.

The bad news is that I’m about to take it all down.

No, it's not because I'm the King of Mean. (Even though I am.)

It's because next week, I’m opening the doors to a new training program I’ve put together specifically for people who are serious about building a popular blog. I’ll leave the videos up for about another week, but once the training program starts, I’ll be taking them down to give members 100% of my attention.

I’ll probably be releasing them again at some point, but I’m not sure when, and I didn’t want the Copyblogger readers to miss out. So, if you’ve been looking for a strategy you can implement in your spare time without having a lot of connections, be sure to take a look.

It’s not the only strategy for building a popular blog. But if you’re strapped for time, I think it’ll work well for you.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of GuestBlogging.com. Get more from Jon on twitter.
Scribe for SEO Copywriting

The Cure for Analysis Paralysis

You try to kick someone under the table and your leg stays as inert as the table's leg. Your toes are unwiggleable. Your eyebrow won't arch wryly in disdain. You want to make something happen, but that desire isn't translating into movement. Your muscles don't obey the signals from your brain. That's paralysis. Analysis is pretty much the same thing. You analyze your business all the time. You decide that it would be smart to start an email campaign, or change the direction for your blog posts. You decide whether to run a promotion for your consulting business or launch an information product. You're thinking about something happening. But you're not making it happen. When analysis paralysis is beneficial It turns out that sometimes it's good to be paralyzed. Every night, when you go to sleep and drop deep into that REM state that lets you wake up all refreshed in the morning, you are, medically speaking, paralyzed. This is a good thing. When you get tired, your ability to act is impaired. You're more likely to get lost, to drive poorly, to call the ex you swore you'd never speak to again. Get paralyzed by sleep for a couple of hours, and suddenly everything improves. When your spouse throws the car keys at you a little too hard because they haven't forgiven you for calling your ex last night, you catch them effortlessly with catlike reflexes. Analysis can be like this. Sometimes we have too much going on in our businesses. It can help to take a moment to stop everything and hold completely still, moving nothing but our brains, just thinking about the problem. We don't have to take action yet. We don't have to move a muscle. We just have to think about what we'll do when we're ready to move. Analysis can be a refreshing pause for our brains. It can also be a serious problem. When analysis paralysis Is detrimental The kind of paralysis you experience in REM state every night is good for you. You probably didn't even know you were paralyzed. (If you weren't freaking out about it before, don't start now. Whatever you do, don’t think about the xkcd comic that points out that dreaming means going comatose, hallucinating vividly, and then suffering amnesia. Adding paralysis to that list doesn't sound so bad now, does it?) It's okay for your legs (and the rest of you) to be paralyzed for a couple hours a night. If it goes on for more than a day, though, you're going to start to be pretty concerned about some of the logistics. Analysis can be like this, too. When you've taken the time to hold still and analyze your business for a couple of hours — even a full working day — before you take action, that's perfectly healthy. It has probably improved your ability to move forward confidently and with good judgment. If you find yourself analyzing for weeks or months at a time without moving, it's time to be concerned. How to cure analysis paralysis To cure real paralysis, you generally need the sort of miracle doctor featured prominently in many a popular medical drama, but not so prominently in real-life hospitals. To cure analysis paralysis, though, you just need to check out the recent Third Tribe seminar featuring Sonia Simone and Chris Garrett, where they talk about how to take action on that product launch you've been meaning to do, thinking about, analyzing, and never doing. You'll learn: The product development technique that kills paralysis, moves you to a fast launch, and creates great value for your customers Why "thinking big" can stop you dead in your tracks, and how to get moving again How to use your own "weaknesses" as strengths that move you forward What to do if you don't have thick skin (and how it can work to your benefit) How to create products that move your customers farther and faster toward their goals. While you're listening, you'll find yourself analyzing how to use these techniques in your business. You may also find yourself lulled into a soporific state of bliss, because Sonia's voice is extremely soothing. And that's okay. To make sure you don't get stuck there, though, there's a Next Action worksheet to help you move forward. Use it. Make your business stronger through movement. Otherwise, I'd have to explain what "atrophy" means. And no one wants that. About the Author: Taylor Lindstrom is a freelance copywriter and the new Assistant Editor for Copyblogger. This is her first Copyblogger post.