If you’re like me, you are constantly searching for the secret of how to create interesting blogs that people will actually read.

I just listened to a Richard Dennis training on HOW TO Use Graphics to get eyeballs interested in reading your blog posts.

Richard Dennis is one of the most respected marketing writers in action today.  His trainings offer incredible free and low cost resources for learning how to write for marketing purposes and how to get your articles & posts noticed.

In his training on using Graphics in your blog, he says it is imperative to grab your reader’s attention immediately so they are drawn to continue reading.

The most effective way to peak interest is through humor or whimsy.

Richard recommends starting off your blog posts with a humorous or eye-catching graphic.

He then gives several examples of opening lines that either pose a question or make a statement about a challenge the reader may be experiencing in their business.

The whole idea is to grab your readers’ curiosity enough to get them to read further.

It is important to note that most people learn visually. 

We absorb more information more efficiently through pictures, drawings, graphs and stories.

We can also read more quickly and efficiently if information is chunked into smaller segments with a lot of spacing between sentences and ideas.

Using graphics not only helps readers learn, but it can also give a readers a positive, happy feeling when visiting your site, which will transfer over to their impression of YOU as a business associate.

To read Richard’s complete article, visit his blog at Net Traffic Machine and download the pdf.

To listen to the audio of Richard’s training, please contact me at mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com and I will be happy to send you the link.

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen

mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

Participating in this challenge is a valuable chance to increase your web presence while polishing your writing and keyword skills.

Why is it important to write?

When you are using the internet to market your home based business, you will need to have a web presence that shows your value as a leader.

These days, when most people want to know something, they turn to the internet search engines.

Writing blogs and articles is a great way to get search engines like Google to recognize you.

So, it is in our best interest to court the search engines when marketing our businesses.

The challenge begins today, May 1st, and ends at 11:59 PM CST on August 8, 2010.

Ezine Articles has made signing up for the challenge a breeze by logging into your member interface.  They’ve written a blog post to guide you through the process.

If you read my previous post about how I did not the make the challenge…how I even fell far short of the goal at 28 articles submitted…you may wonder why I am even trying it again.

Because it is a challenge.

It is challenging me to rise above my current marketing performance and strive to reach a new goal.

This is what growth is all about.

This is what leadership is about.

Step out and enter the race to better yourself.  You are guaranteed to learn something and gain new skills.

You will also be braving new territory that your business associates will want to follow you into.

Believe In your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.net

If you want to build a big income online, you
need to be able to do some writing.

Cruel fact #2:

Most people can’t write.

Cruel fact #3:

Those who can write … often still struggle at it.

On Saturday night, April 10th, at 8:55 pm Eastern time, Richard Dennis, author of the book, “Evil Medicine”, will demonstrate the two simple life-changing tricks.

As a bonus, there will be  several examples that will have you writing magnetic stories within minutes.

You’ll also get the URL for a very useful file you can download.

This training could be worth a lot of money to you.

To take advantage of this training and many more like it that are designed to explode your business success, download my free ebook

Success In 10 Steps

The ebook, and all of our training and personal mentoring are free. 

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

Wow!

This is exciting news from Ezine Articles!

They have created a plug-in for WordPress that will allow you to submit one of your blog posts as an article to Ezine Articles!

Talk about a time saver and spreading your valuable content around the web!

Fantastic!

Check it out on Ezine Article’s Blog.

Happy Writing!

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

All Network Marketers use headlines in their advertisements. The principles behind a good headline needs to be used in all subject lines, article titles, and even at the top of your profiles.

The headline is what catches your audience’s attention. It has to peak curiosity and arouse emotions enough to get your audience to read further.

The ultimate goal is to create enough interest to get them to “click through” to your website and sign up for your offer.

The secret formula to writing headlines is to create a character, usually yourself, and include the following components.

1. Personality

2. Odd Number

3. Benefit

4. Occupation

5. Location

Personality is going to be a descriptive adjective: energetic, busy, loyal, intuitive, ingenious.

Odd Number can be an age, years, items, etc.

Benefit is the good thing that awaits anyone who “clicks through” (success, endless leads).

Occupation is what the character (or you) does for a living (butcher, baker, candlestick maker).

Location is where the character lives: L.A., New York, the sticks, on a mountain top, Timbuktu.

Play around with this formula to suit whatever you are marketing.

• Start by writing down something for each component.
• Then rearrange the components to create your headline sentence.

Once you have your headline written, go to the Advanced Marketing Institute and enter your headline into the free headline analyzer.

It will give you an Emotional Marketing Value analysis and rate it for a predominant emotion classification (Intellectual, Empathetic, Spiritual).

Each classification tells how the category of words work and who is the best target audience.

Most professional copywriters get a score between 30% – 40% EMV words with the best coming in at 50% – 70%.

Using the Headline Formula, I wrote the headline for this post. When I entered it into the AMI headline analyzer, I got a score of 50% EMV and the predominant emotion of empathetic.

I do not have any professional marketing education. I learned this skill from a Mentoring For Free training.

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen

What a fabulous way to start the New Year off!

Have you started thinking about your Goals for 2010 and thought about including writing some ezine articles?

If so, this is your opportunity to jump right in and get as much practice and exposure as you can.

Ezine articles is kicking off their 3rd 100 Articles in 100 Days Marathon. 

Each article must be at least 400 words, written under the same author name, and accepted for publication.

Remember, Ezine articles must be ORIGINAL  works!

It starts at 12:01 AM CST-USA Friday, January 1st and ends at 11:59 PM CST-USA Saturday, April 10th.

Are you up for the challenge?

I sure am!  Join me in the greatest marketing race of the year!  Put your pledge in writing at the Ezine Articles Blog.

See You There!

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

The articles on Ezine Articles are often picked up by Google, provided the keywords and content are up to snuff, and appear on page one of searches.

You must be offering quality content to your MLM business colleagues.  Your article must not be one big pitch and you are not allowed to include links to your site in the body of the article.

Every article has an “author’s resource box” where you write a short blurb about yourself.  You should focus on how you can solve your reader’s problems AND you are allowed to put a link to your site there.

Once you submit your article, the editors will review it and send you a list of “problems” you will need to correct before your article can be published.

Once published, you can shout to the world about your accomplishment.

Digg, Tweet, & Stumble it, and by all means, announce it in your blog.

So here is my chance to Toot my own horn!

I recently had my first article published in Ezine Articles titled, “Beware!  The Dangers of Facebook!”

I invite you to visit my article and leave a comment there.

Don’t let time get away from you.  If you are writing for your blog, you most certainly have the skills for writing an ezine article.

At Mentoring For Free, we have an entire series on writing for ezinearticles by our resident expert, Richard Dennis.  It’s worth checking out…just ask and it’s yours.

Happy Writing!

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

I remember when I first got married, I burned a pot of peas…then broke into tears!

If you are brand new to internet marketing and are venturing out with your first Squidoo Lens, I know how frustrating it can be not being sure if you’re doing it right.

One of the nice things about Squidoo lenses is that they are very forgiving.  You can go back and change anything about your lens (except for the url…bummer).

I wanted to give you some tips to get you off to a good start with your first Squidoo lens, so you don’t have to re-do too much later.

You should have a good understanding of Squidoo Basics and the 4 Essential Steps to Squidoo Lens Success before building your lens.

1.  Introductory Module.

Think of constructing your lens like you would an essay.  There is a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Your Introductory module is your beginning.  It is what it says…your introduction to what you are going to write about.

This is where you have to grab your reader’s attention.  You only have about 3 seconds, so you have to make it good.

The Introductory module is NOT the place to write your story or the meat of it.

Briefly tell your readers what you’re going to tell them and how you can solve their problem.

2.  Modules

Be creative with your modules.  Don’t restrict yourself to using just Text modules and a Guestbook.

Use your text modules as if they were paragraphs in the body of your essay.  One main point to each module.

Break up your text modules with some visual interest.  Use the “Black Box”, “Talk Bubble”, or “Sticky Note” to punctuate an important quote or main idea.

Consider using the Amazon module to recommend books on your topic.  There are several other modules like CafePress and Orbitz, but avoid using too many modules that will direct your reader away from your lens.

End with a guest book to invite comments and interaction with your readers.  Use the Title and description to tie it all up…think of it as your conclusion.

Remember to ALWAYS create your own title for every module.  Never leave the default headings!  Make sure your module titles contain your keywords and are relevant to your topic and module contents.

3.  Visual Appeal

We are by nature visual beings.  With the high volume of information we get on the internet…email, pop ups, ads, blogs, social media, tweets, etc…we are relying more heavily on grabbing reader interest and attention with a visually appealing article.

Use pictures or graphics in all of your modules.  {Remember to site your sources.}  Avoid the overuse of logos.  They tend to send the message of a pitch rather than information.

Do a search using Google Images to find a variety of photos and clip art that are free-use or public domain.

Use a lot of white space.  One or two sentences broken up with space is far easier to scan for main points than a complete paragraph.

Bold and italicize key words and ideas.  This makes it easy for readers to scan the text to see if they should read further.

As a last bit of advice, don’t get too worried about making your lens perfect for the first time you publish it.

You can always go back and edit your content.  You can change or add images, modules, titles, tags….just about anything…except for the URL.

Besides, Squidoo likes it when lensmasters go back and freshen up their lenses.  It boosts your lens rank within the Squidoo site.

Always have the goal in mind to add value to solve your reader’s problem without being one big sales pitch.

So, get started and happy writing!

Karen
I Believe In You
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

Writing a Squidoo lens is pretty simple.  Of course, if you’ve never done it before, it could seem like a very difficult task.

I’ve put together 4 essential steps you should follow to ensure your Squidoo lens success.

Remember, a lens is simply an online article.  You have the added benefit of using a variety of visually appealing and interest grabbing modules to keep your readers on your page longer.  This translates to better Google rankings.

1.  Choose your topic wisely.

When starting out, it is tempting to grab a hot topic your company training program talks about on every call.

However, a lot of other people in your company have had the same idea.

Rather than write on the broad, general topic of the greatest MLM training video series known to mankind, perhaps choose a more unique aspect of the videos.  Write on one smaller sub-topic that really impacted your business. 

There will be fewer competing articles and you will be more likely to develop a better reader interest with your personalized touch.

2.  Choose your keywords/tag words carefully.

The trick in choosing keywords, is in figuring out what your readers are going to enter into the Google search box.

Then you need to play around with those ideas until you find some combination that gives high enough search results with low enough competition.

A lot of people might enter “MLM training” in the Google search box.  That term returns 5,830,000 results!  Page 1 lists sites written by such MLM superstars ad Randy Gage, Doug Firebaugh, and John Milton Fogg.

See how key word selection becomes important?

You might try longer key word strings like “best MLM video training” that returns about 256,000 results for your competition.  A more specific long tailed keyword gets you closer to your goal of ranking on page 1 of Google.

3.  Choose to use your long tailed keyword strategically.

In order for Google to see your Squidoo lens as relevant, your keyword phrase needs to be used strategically.

Your long-tailed keyword needs to appear in

• your lens URL,
• your lens title, and
• within the first few sentences of your introductory module.

Additionally, a few of the main words in that long-tailed keyword need to appear in the titles of everyone of your modules.  Your titles have to be relevant and make sense, though!

4.  Choose relevant supporting keywords. 

On a last note, choose your supporting keywords so they have relevance to your topic.

For any given topic, there is certain language that is commonly used when discussing that topic.  Google looks for the relevant supporting keywords for a given topic to help determine page ranking.

Using the “best MLM video training” topic, supporting keywords may include ‘network marketing’, ‘tutorial’, ‘online marketing system’, or ‘MLM business skills’.

Use these keywords as your “tags”.  Also, make certain you are using these keywords/tags within the text of your lens.  Do Not try to take an easy way out and just throw keywords into your text.  Make sensible content.  Otherwise, readers won’t stay at your lens and won’t contact you for further information anyway.

Happy Writing!

Karen
”Teamwork Makes the Dreams Work!”

Worse is when I’ve lost some project I had been intently working on and was almost finished with.

Arghhh!!

We’ve all been there at one time or another.

A fellow Mentor, Jennifer Fisher, introduced me to a Wondrous FREE program—you all know how much I like FREE business building tools—you can use for your blog writing.

Windows Live Writer.

I was telling Jennifer how I had found a beautiful theme for my WordPress blog, but I didn’t like the difficult to read, grey font color.

I have Windows Vista and Microsoft Office Word 2007.  This version of Word allows you to write a “blog post” rather than a “blank document”.  It converts the characters to the correct format, and then publishes the post to your blog.

The drawback is that I could never figure out how to change the font color and size so it showed up on my blog.

OK, so I’ve never made a secret out of the fact that I am technologically challenged!

But that is one of the goals of this blog…helping anyone—even those who are technologically challenged like me—learn how to market online the easy way.

Back to my story…

So, Jennifer gave me the link to download Windows Live Writer.  I love it!

Some of the features I enjoy are

• ability to change the font color and size (black against white is easier to read)
• work on and save drafts on my own computer (avoids internet problems)
• publish to your blog or your dashboard (I like to add my tags and categories from my dashboard)
• add images and links
• see the draft as it will appear once posted in my theme
• manage drafts for all of my blogs

I’ve been without internet service this week, so this program has been a life saver.

I’ve been able to write drafts and save them to the program on my computer.  I can set a publish date for each post over several days or weeks.  Then, when I can access an internet connection, I publish the whole lot to my WordPress dashboard.

This allows me to keep current with my readers and the search engines.

There are many other features to list, but you can check those out yourself by going to the Windows Live Writer site.

Enjoy this new free tool!  If you need any help with it, give me a holler.

Your Friend and Mentor,
Karen
”Teamwork Makes the Dreams Work”