Marketing Writing Resources for Creative Copywriters

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The value of strong questionnaire design is all too often not fully appreciated in the market research community. But the fact is, you can never fully recover from a poorly written and designed questionnaire—no matter how great you are at data analysis, manipulation, interpretation, and presentation.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

Interactive media platforms are a global phenomenon, occurring in all markets regardless of their level of economic, social, and cultural development. Therefore, when translating content into other languages, it's critical to define terms clearly. But what is the best approach?

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Leading and misleading questions always yield questionable data, based on which you are highly likely to report findings that can misguide stakeholders. Moreover, decisions they make based on such data could cause an organization's failure rather than lead to its success. Here's how to diagnose and repair those faulty questions.

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The highly effective strategy of creating informational content that's valuable to prospects and customers has been with us for decades. Demonstrating expertise, becoming an authority, providing "how-to" information, and speaking about subjects of interest or relevance to your market are a superb way of promoting or driving market engagement for B2C or B2B brands.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

The rules of social media are just now being written, so they are more like guidelines than well-defined best-practices. In other words, it doesn't make sense to blindly follow rules someone else has set. There's only one sure way to know what works for you in social media: Test it. Here are five five lessons learned from one practitioner who tested the social media waters.

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Just because marketers are jumping on the interactive-marketing bandwagon doesn't mean things on the interactive side are all rosy. The decreasing numbers for print don't necessarily mean a particularly high ROI for all digital initiatives. Still, there is opportunity—but you need embrace a multichannel approach. Catalogs are a great example.

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Data from mixed-mode questions are hard, if not impossible, to interpret accurately. But such flawed survey questions abound, perhaps because at first blush they seem entirely workable. Here's why they're not—and how to avoid them in your survey instruments.

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Content is moving from being among the final considerations of a Web-development project to being front and center in a digital-marketing strategy. And, more and more, brands are recognizing that a strategic approach to content is becoming important. To help, here's a simple 10-step systematic process for formulating a content strategy.

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About 10%-20% of all emails you send—even to people who requested them—will get accidentally routed to the junk/spam folder. What about that other 80%-90%? Those emails may not be spam, but they will have definitely broken some of these six rules for avoiding a one-way trip to email oblivion.

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If you want to drive traffic to your website, which media should you use? Too many people suffer from an "oil and water" mentality when it comes to mixing online and offline media. But they work well together. And when you need to drive online traffic, an integrated approach can often work wonders.

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Historically, companies that monitor links to their websites haven't looked kindly upon inbound "deep links"—links to site pages other than the homepage or other top-level pages. But the truth is that deep links can actually be really good for a website. Here are five benefits they provide.

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E-commerce sites can be particularly challenging for search-engine optimization (SEO) because they tend to lack unique, relevant content. The challenge can be easily (though not necessarily quickly) overcome with these five content techniques that can help you search-optimize e-commerce websites.

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Poorly designed questions and scaling problems can derail your research efforts faster than you can say "the cat in the hat"! To help you avoid a few of the more common and onerous problems, this article explores two separate but related questionnaire-design issues: matrix questions and unbalanced scales.

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People tend to open an email based on the two things they can see in their inbox: the From name and the Subject line. If recipients receive an email from a sender they do not recognize or trust, they are less likely to open it. If an email with a "suspicious" Subject line lands an inbox, it's most likely to be deleted or marked as spam.

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Most marketers are eager to achieve a level of engagement with current and prospective customers, but the majority stop dead in their tracks when they consider this question: Where am I going to find the time to develop all the content necessary to do it? But here's a little secret: Engaging customers online with content does not have to be difficult.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

Those who write in corporatese love a paradigm, whether it's new, shifting, or otherwise. And they would never think of simply using something when they can leverage it. But there's a better way.

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Most companies do a fairly good job keeping pace with technologies. But the harder, yet more rewarding, work involves keeping up with how people use the Internet to learn, communicate, shop, and entertain themselves. By matching your Web presence to your customers' Web habits, you stand the best chance of winning their confidence and cash.

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To some, June means the official start of those lazy days of summer. To many retailers, though, June is a busy month, because it's when they pick up extra revenue from those shopping for "Dads and Grads"—Father's Day and graduation season. How do you get your share of that revenue?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

My first-ever two blog posts have received 159 comments and have been tweeted 272 times. I'm simply stunned. But my foray into blogging has shown me that it can be a Herculean task to keep up with responding to comments and tweets while balancing clients and life. The reality is that this first week as a blogger has kicked my butt.