David Ogilvy is known as one of the greatest all time copywriters and ‘ad men.’ He started an ad agency responsible for some of the world’s most iconic ad campaigns, and in 1963 he wrote a best selling book that is still considered essential reading for anyone in advertising.

So how did Ogilvy write sales copy? This letter written by Ogilvy to Mr. Ray Calt in 1955 provides key insight into his writing process.

April 19, 1955

Dear Mr. Calt:

On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see:

1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.

2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.

3. I am helpless without research material—and the more “motivational” the better.

4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.

5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every conceivable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.

6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.

7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)

8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.

9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.

10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.

11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)

12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.

Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility.

Yours sincerely,

D.O.

Source: The Unpublished David Ogilvy: A Selection of His Writings from the Files of His Partners; Presented to Him on His 75th Birthday, June 23, 1986, in London

What it takes to be successful online. But first, let me tell you a story…

Growing up, our neighbor had a bull who was just about the most stubborn thing you’ve ever encountered. If you wanted it to go out to the pasture, it would steadfastly refuse to go and instead would spend the day in the barn. If you wanted it to come in out of the rain, it would stand out there in the pasture until it was soaked through and through, and still it would not come indoors to dry off. And so it went. No matter what you wanted this bull to do, it always seemed resolutely transfixed on taking the opposite course of action.

In Internet marketing, we often wonder why success comes so hard. Perhaps if we learn just one more technique, it will all fall together for us. Perhaps if we buy one more course, one more ebook or attend one more webinar, it will all make sense and money will rain down from the sky. And a month later, and a year later, where do most marketers find themselves? In the exact same place they were before.

Now you might wonder what a stubborn bull and a struggling Internet marketer have in common, and it’s this: Both of them already hold success within themselves. The bull doesn’t need an ebook on how to come in out of the rain anymore than a struggling marketer needs a 20^th or 40^th ebook on how to make money online.

What the bull and the Internet Marketer both need to be successful is simply a change of mind, or more specifically adopting what we might call a success mindset.

Rather than cursing the journey out to the green pasture when we’re standing in the barn, or the rain when we don’t have sense enough to come inside, we need merely change our thinking, and by changing our thinking we can change our actions, and thereby our results.

Instead of cursing the gurus for having lists of fellow marketers ready to promote their products to thousands of people, ask yourself how you can get into a position where you have a long list of fellow marketers who love to promote your products. (I’ll give you a great technique for doing exactly that in this issue.)

Instead of getting frustrated that you can’t seem to monetize Twitter, find out what others are doing that’s working and copy and improve upon their methods (I give you several in this edition.)

And so it goes. Playing victim is telling yourself that it’s too late to get into the Internet marketing game, that all the great niches are gone, that you’ll never be able to do what others have already accomplished, and so forth. Playing victim is standing out in the rain and refusing to come inside, or standing inside and refusing to head for the green pastures.

Victims don’t make money, they make misery – whereas a success mindset constantly asks how a negative can be turned into a positive, and how a shortfall can be remade into a windfall.

Every time you find yourself reacting negatively to something, correct yourself by seeing it as a challenge rather than a problem or obstacle. Do this enough and you will program yourself for success – after all, you cannot help but be successful if you are constantly taking positive action – and you can only take positive action when you first think the positive thoughts that lead to that action.

Also, learn to think long term. Success isn’t leaping from one idea to the next, never settling on a course of action. Success is found when you choose your path and then stay on that path until you reach your destination. True, the trip may not unfold as you plan, but so long as you keep your eyes on the prize and continue to move forward, you cannot help but succeed.

And you don’t need to invent new markets – rather, you need only find a market that is already profitable and then find ways to improve on what is being offered to that market. Find out what it is that people want, and not only deliver it to them, but go above and beyond in ways that are so extraordinarily helpful and pleasing, your name becomes synonymous with incredible value in that niche.

Forget magic bullets or new fangled programs that proclaim they will change everything for you in the wink of an eye. Instead, choose your niche, create your squeeze page and/or website and/or blog and focus on building your list with quality subscribers and new customers. Forget the gimmick that places  thousands people on your list in a week who give you bogus email addresses or couldn’t care less about your niche – it’s a waste of your time and resources. Better to have 50 people on your list who are truly interested in your niche than 500 people who aren’t. And better to have 2 proven buyers in that niche than 50 freebie seekers.

By focusing on finding a system that puts 5 or 10 great leads on your list each day, in short order you will find the method that works for you, day in and day out. And once you’ve got it, it’s a simple matter to ramp it up so that the 5 or 10 become 50 or 100 or more. But it all starts at the beginning, at finding what works to bring in that first truly interested subscriber, and then the second and so forth. There are no shortcuts. True, there are many who will sell you on the idea that you can make your fortune or build your list overnight, but ask yourself this – who prospers when you purchase their product? Always it is them, while you are left with a little less cash and a little less hope.

Let others search for the holy magic grail of traffic that instantly floods their site with traffic. The thing about floods is while they are fast and deep, they’re also messy and short lived. Instead, gradually grow your business on a rock solid foundation that can withstand any storm. Think of grabbing a few hundred or thousand dollars overnight, only to be left with no more income, versus doubling a penny each day for 30 days. Which would you choose? The doubling penny, of course. Yes, it leaves the cupboards bare for the first days and weeks – but then what an embarrassment of riches you receive as it builds and builds into a solid income that arrives day and night, regardless of the economy, trends, quirks in the market, competition and so forth.

And success is not just a matter of mindset, and not just a matter of choosing a path and sticking to it, finding what works and doing more of it – it’s also about developing your skills as a marketer. What if this week you master how to write and submit articles that send traffic and links to your site? Perhaps next week you master setting up a blog and writing a post each day. And perhaps the week after you learn how to make short videos that inform and drive traffic. If each week you pick one new task to master, in less than 3 months you will know more than 95% of marketers out there. You don’t need to master everything, but you do need to master some things – and those things are again determined by the path that you choose to build your online business.

And here’s the kicker – when you’ve chosen your path to success and know what it is that you want to accomplish, you can go back to all those many programs you’ve purchased in the past and extract the jewels of information that do fit in with your business. Because now that you know your destination and you have  good idea of how to get there, you’ve also gained the discernment necessary to find just the right information you need to get you there faster.

Here is one hour training about 5 critical skills you need to know to success online

See this video to get more understanding what do you need to success online

 

Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool once you discover how to optimize it for your business needs…

1. Don’t focus on number, focus on quality. Rather than seeing how many thousands of people you can follow in the hopes they will follow you back, focus on finding the highly targeted members who are a good match for what you’re promoting. Read their profiles and follow people who are interested in your niche; whether it’s gardening or race car driving or Internet marketing

Think of your Twitter followers as you would a mailing list – a thousand highly target people who are truly receptive to your products are worth far more to your business than a 100,000 randomly selected people. That’s why Twitter isn’t about who has the biggest follower count – it’s about making real connections with real people.

2. Don’t blast links to the exclusion of great content and making real connections. Certainly you want to promote your brand with your latest blog post or product, but you won’t get the results you seek unless you’re also forging connections, developing networks and growing relationships as well.

If you spend too much of your time pushing your products and boosting your own ego, your followers will run for the hills faster than you can say, “Whoops!” Plus, if you’re not interacting with your followers, your followers are forgetting you altogether.

3. Don’t slave over content. If you’re already producing content elsewhere on the Internet, then Twitter is a breeze. For example, craft 3 or 4 tweets for each blog post that highlight something interesting you covered in your post, and do the same for articles. New product? Pull out some nuggets of information and share it freely with your followers.
4. Don’t tell your followers what you had for breakfast unless there was something truly interesting about it. Cornflakes or eggs are NOT tweet worthy, fresh alligator is. Some folks on Twitter feel it’s their duty to report every little thing in their lives. Yawn! If you’re on Twitter to market, then leave this mundane stuff out of your tweets.
5. Do share the latest news in your niche. This is easy – sign up for Google Alerts using terms relevant to your niche to receive the latest news each day, and then write a few tweets from this content. Presto! That took maybe 5 minutes, and you become the informed person people want to follow.
6. Do offer your Twitter followers sales and coupons. Since the very nature of Twitter is fast response, you can give followers an incentive to follow you by offering them special deals, such as a 50% discount for the next 20 minutes.
7. Do provide immediate support. Dell Computers has been combining product discounts with customer support and a request for feedback from Twitter users for sometime now – and their efforts have added millions to their bottom line. To easily keep track of every tweet mentioning your name, your product or your company, use http://tweetbeep.com/. It sends you notifications to let you know who’s tweeting about you, allowing you to immediately respond. And remember, every time you respond to a tweet, there are hundreds of other people watching your conversation. That’s why one stellar show of customer service can result in several more sales.
8. Do elicit customer feedback. Ask questions such as, “What’s missing from our latest product?” What’s your toughest challenge?” “What would you like to know concerning how to ____ ?” And so forth. This is a great way to get information on how to improve your current products and what products you should roll out next. Be sure to acknowledge the responses you receive.
9. Do run contests. People love contests and you can really capture their interest with this. First, make the contests short – no more than an hour in duration. Second, make them fun. You might ask followers to send their best example of a web page with a funny header, or to guess what you did to earn money in junior high, or to write the best headline for toothpaste for elephants. Encourage your followers to retweet your contest and be sure to award prizes to the winners – free copies of an e-product or Amazon coupons work great.
10. Do retweet. By reposting useful content to your followers, you can build goodwill, increase your followers and get your own content retweeted as well.
11. Do run polls. You’ll find new people to follow and you’ll collect dynamite tips and insights from your followers. Plus it’s a great opportunity to engage your network and further build your relationships. Not sure how to run a poll? No problem – see the “How to Run a Twitter Poll” in this edition of Delaveri.

By using these steps you’ll find that Twitter is a great place to build relationships with your customers, find new customers and even enjoy the process.

How to Run a Twitter Poll

Twitter polls are an excellent method for asking for help, getting feedback and further building relationships. And they’re super easy to run, as well. Here’s how:

1. Announce that you’ll be taking a poll or asking a series of poll questions.
2. Use a descriptive #hashtag after each of your poll questions to thread them together.
3. Ask questions that are relevant to your tweeting history. For example, if your Twitter profile is all about online marketing, then stick to that rather than asking what they think of politics or global climate change.
4. Do make it fun. Polls don’t always need to be serious. For example, if your niche is marketing, you might ask how they would market square chicken eggs or what is the worst example of marketing they’ve witnessed in the past week.
5. Thank your participants, ask for clarification if necessary, and let them know what you’ll be doing with their feedback (Creating a new product? Changing your marketing strategy? Writing a new blog post? Etc.)
6. If you’re writing a blog post based on the results you receive, consider thanking the participants by name in your post. If there are too many to thank, at least create a Twitter list just for this particular poll and then link to the poll from your blogpost.

If you’re finding it difficult to interact with your fellow Twitterites, you’ll definitely want to use a few polls to get things jump started. I’ve seen a poll on whether or not people prefer creamy to chunky peanut butter generate huge interest in just minutes. It’s all about engaging people and valuing their opinion – even on something as silly as smooth or lumpy.

Tricks to Getting Retweeted

When your tweets get retweeted, a whole new group of followers is exposed to your tweet, and thereby you. The more your tweets are retweeted, the greater number of followers who get to see them. Why is this important? Because the added exposure can mean you get new followers as well as more clicks to your website.

So are there any tricks to getting retweeted? Absolutely, and I’ve picked out some of the best…

1. Write good stuff. Seriously – write tweets that people enjoy, that are interesting or useful or entertaining or helpful. Recall the kinds of things you’ve retweeted – you don’t forward boring stuff, you retweet only the best tweets, and that’s what your followers do as well.
2. Anything about Twitter is retweetable. Think about it – what is the ONE thing every single person on Twitter has in common? Twitter! So when you find an article with Twitter tips, or the latest editorial rant on why Twitter is bad, or great, or the marketing bonanza of all time – go ahead and tweet about it.
3. Break news – whether it’s a tornado moving through your backyard or the latest development in your niche – tweet about breaking news as soon as you hear about it.
4. Tweet “How-to’s.” People love tweets that begin with, “How to…” regardless of whether it’s how to make sauerkraut chocolate cake, get more done in less time or hot wire a car. Another phrase that also gets retweeted a lot is “The art of…”
5. Use links in your tweets. Providing a link adds credibility and gives your followers a place to go for more information. Always add a link if it’s pertinent.
6. Tweet about the weird, strange and bizarre. Glow in the dark goldfish and naked graffiti artists will get retweeted non-stop for DAYS, so go ahead and tweet about the weird stuff, because you are NOT the only person who loves being surprised and shocked.
7. Which brings us to the last one – be surprising, be different, be FUN. More than almost anything else, people love to be entertained – so go ahead and get a little crazy, let the kid in you shine through, and transmit that innate sense of pleasure in living life to your followers.

Bottom line: The more you get retweeted, the better. And what’s the number one trick to getting retweeted? Believe it or not, it’s simply ASKING your followers to retweet you.

How To Survive Your Fist Hashtag Hijacking

During a presidential debate, the sitting U.S. President gave a shout out to a group called, “Proud Boys”.

When I think of ‘proud boys’, I imagine two year old boys in diapers who just used the potty for the very first time.

But apparently these “Proud Boys” are actually a white supremacist group classified by the FBI as an extremist group and a hate group. Before the debate even ended, the hashtag #ProudBoys began trending.

That’s when LGBTQ Twitter users jumped in and hijacked the hashtag, posting photos and messages of love and pride including wedding photos of gay couples.

Within hours there were thousands of people – politicians, TV stars, the Canadian armed forces and so forth – posting gay love pictures and quotes under the hashtag.

For most this is a heartwarming result, but what about hashtag hijacking of legitimate businesses and groups?

When McDonald’s kicked off their #McDstories campaign, little did they realize they would be hit with plenty of negative stories on that hashtag, such as…

• “Fingernail in my BigMac Once” #McDstories
• “Ordered McDouble, chipped my molar” #McDstories
• “Hospitalized for food poisoning after eating at McDonalds 1989” #McDstories
• “I lost 50 lbs. in 6 months after I quit working and eating at McDonalds” #McDstories
• “Learn about McDonalds using pigs from gestation crates” #McCruelty #McDstories

Let’s say you launch your first hashtag campaign. It’s going well, your hashtag is starting to trend, your message is spreading and you’re getting plenty of user generated content. Then it happens: Your hashtag gets hijacked. It could be people who have a problem with your product, your marketing, your name or the cut of your hair. Or it could even be a total misunderstanding.

But hashtag hijacking usually falls into one of two categories: Either these hijackers are attention seeking trolls or you’ve got a complete PR disaster.

That’s why you want to choose a specific hashtag that isn’t easy to hijack. You don’t want to make the same mistake McDonald’s made of choosing a hashtag that is too broad and vague, inviting trouble.

Before you start using your hashtag, have a few people take a look at it and see if you’re missing something obvious that could lead to trouble. For example, “Susan Album Party” looks harmless, but when you turn it into a hashtag (#susanalbumparty) then you’ve got something entirely different.

Once your hashtag is launched, monitor what’s happening closely, looking for any signs of trouble. If you start seeing negative posts on your social media wall, be proactive.

Here is a list of things you can do to keep damage to a minimum:

1: Keep inappropriate posts off your social wall.

This isn’t about paranoia; it’s about protecting your brand image. You should already be blocking anything racist, pornographic or derogatory by using a blacklist. While I can’t give you a list of words here to blacklist (nsfw) a quick search on Google will provide you with astonishingly long lists of terms.

2: Find your hijacker(s) and delete their comments.

Remove hurtful content, find the creator of that content and let them know their post was removed and you’ve blocked their account.

3: For legitimate complaints, apologize and make it right.

You can do this publicly or behind the scenes.

4: Wait it out.

Eventually all PR scandals are forgotten and people move on to other things.

In the future, follow these hashtag rules:

1: Do be creative and unique, and don’t be vague or self-serving. If your hashtag is too vague then you’re just inviting trouble. If it sounds self-serving, people will mock you.

2: Avoid open-ended hashtags. The #McDstories is a great example of what NOT to do because it’s simply too broad, inviting sarcasm and negative posts.

When Delta Air Lines wanted to try a hashtag, they chose #Flydeltafree because of its specificity. Conversely, #whyIlove delta would have invited sarcasm and a host of negative posts.

3: Start new hashtags only in good times. If your business or product is generating any kind of negative press right now, then it’s smart to forgo a hashtag campaign because it can burn you.

4: Use contest hashtags. To encourage customers to generate content for you, consider using a hashtag campaign. For example, let’s say you’re a coffee house during the holidays – how would you get customers to post photos of their drinks? Starbucks did it with their #redcupcontest, inviting people to post shots of their holiday-themed beverages for the chance of winning a large gift card and it worked beautifully.

Before I close, I want to share my favorite Hashtag campaign:

IHOP (International House of Pancakes) is known for being in the breakfast business, which is why fans went crazy when they announced a name change to IHOB. What did the “B” stand for? Would they still serve breakfast? What the heck was happening?

The company invited speculation on what the “B” stood for, resulting in 1.8 million mentions of #IHOB on Twitter, 86,000 tweets per hour at the peak, and holding the No 1 spot (IHOP) No 2 (IHOB) and No 4 (International House) according to AdAge.

Eventually IHOP let customers in on the joke, announcing the supposed name change was simply a marketing ploy to draw attention to their burgers and other menu offerings.

Done right, hashtag campaigns can generate a frenzy of buzz, visibility and even content.

If you want more Here is the link for Paid Social Media Jobs. I am the member here from 2017. You can find useful lessons on how to promote on socials