How do you create content that will engage and connect with readers? Byron's offers 30 tips that will help you find and manage the great writers you need to achieve top listings in the search engines.

1. Byron White Las Vegas
LifeTips.com 2006

3. Understand the Paradox of Choice
Understand the new age expansion of choice
Discover the rules for decision making
Develop decision making map and process
Create new methodology for buying decisions
Forge simplicity into the art of content creation
Resource: The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz

4. Get in Tune with the Vision
Get under the skin of the target audience
Inhabit the lives of the target audience
Touch the heart of the audience

5. Set the Right Course
Add new meaning and distinction
Create new confidence with your readers
Create new energy for your sales team
Create something that matters

6. Learn to Tell Stories
Great stories introduce great characters
Great stories are contagious
Great stories focus on “what happens next”
Great stories teach us to be smart
Great stories surprise and delight
Resource: Content Critical, Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton

7. Learn to Story-Tell and Sell
Connect with readers Information A Story
Fills You Up Moves You On
Turn browsers into believers
Facts Acts
Turn believers into buyers Citing Exciting
Reams Dreams
Motivate the sales process
Promotional Emotional
Static Dramatic
Check lists Casts of Characters
Compiling Compelling
Annotated Animated
Feeding the Brain Touching the Heart
Expires Inspires
Resource: Sisomo, Kevin Roberts, CEO Saatchi & Saatchi

8. Understand Web Readers
Readers want to be able to find specific things
Readers are in a hurry
Readers love personalization, “it’s all about me”
Readers want advice
Readers want up-to-date, relevant,
straightforward content
Resource: Content Critical, Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton

9. Map Out Your Readers Needs
Readers want credibility, belief and logic
Readers want exposure to new worlds
Readers want to laugh and cry
Readers want intimacy, mystery and bravery
Readers want surprise and delight
Resource: Content Critical, Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton

10. Develop a Content Haiku
Haiku: Japanese 3 line poem, 17 syllables
Create several different content Haiku
Split test the conversions of each style
Select the winners and apply rules

11. Keywords Without Compromise
Harvest the rich search keywords
The challenge is to pepper keywords without
compromising the story
Reader must come first, the search engine
spiders second

12. Find the Positive Story
Finish these sentences
– We are not____________________
– We are not____________________
– We are not____________________
– We are not____________________
Then cross out the negatives.
Build a story around the positives.

13. Keep it Simple
Speak the language of readers
Create deep info for deep readers
Create light info for impulsive buyers
Use super-simple navigation architecture

14. Understand the Power of Links
Not all links are created equally
Distinguish contextual validation vs. orphans
Build Internal links that support your SEO
Surround the link phrases with rich keywords
Find direct external links that support your SEO

15. Learn to Make Meaning
Find new value in products
Try and make the Web world better
Deepen the understanding of your products
Right a terrible wrong
Offer value, insight and wisdom

16. Act Like An Actor
Get under the skin of the target audience
Develop an engaging and passionate voice
Learn the lines (rich keywords)
Revise the script (split testing)
Perform flawlessly, day after day (conversion)

18. Respect the Art
“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a
blank piece of paper (screen) until the drops of
blood form on your forehead.”
—Gene Fowler
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit
down at a keyboard and open a vein.”
—Red Smith

19. Recognize the Talent
Well-furnished minds and well traversed
experience
Exceptional curiosity about every subject
Above average wit and sense of humor
Vivid imagination and powerful analytical thought
Resource: Story, Robert McKee

20. Fish Where the Fish Are
JournalismJobs.com
MediaBistro.com
AJR.com (American Journalism Review)
Online news sites (BostonWorks, Providence
Journal Online, etc.)
Craigslist.org
Resource: Melanie Nayer, Editor, LifeTips

21. Define the Priority
Improve organic listing positions
Increase organic traffic
VS
Improve conversions rates
Increase sales
Resource: 200 Clients at LifeTips

22. Create Company Mantra
“A sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer,
meditation, or incantation, such as an invocation
of a god, a magic spell or portion of a scripture
containing mystical potentials.”

23. Sample Mantras
Winning is Everything Greenbay Packers
Think IBM
Fun Family Entertainment Disney
Save Babies March of Dimes
Healthy Fast Food Wendy’s
Kick Butt in Air and Space Air Force
Resource: The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki

24. Encourage Working Smart
“It is no bad thing to learn the craft of advertising
by copying your elders and betters.”
—David Ogilvy

25. Be Open to Creative Risks
Make teeth chatter
Make people talk
Make people laugh
Touch the heart
Create something that matters
Create something that creates buzz
Resource: The Write-Brain Workbook, Bonnie Neubauer

26. Demand New Data Mining
Search box on the clients website and log files
FAQ emails submitted to customer services
Discussion with customer service reps
Discussion with customer
Keyword popularity research

27. Develop a Flawless Process
Brainstorm session that uncovers the story
Methodology to get under the target’s skin
Research the rich keywords and scent trail
Nail the value proposition
Clarify the call to action
Manage the feedback

28. Agree on a Sales Funnel
Preliminary: First impressions and headline
architecture
Investigating: Knowledge seeking and trust
building
Demonstrating Capability: Show how products
solve problems
Obtain Permission: Drive action, sign up,
download or buy
Resource: Spin Selling by Neil Rackham

29. Help Shape Perception
What’s worth living for?
What’s worth dying for?
What’s worth buying?
What’s worth upgrading?
Why should I take action?
Resource: Story, Robert McKee

30. Implement Smart SEO Rules
Clean and unique meta strategy
Create original content (no dup content issues)
Consistent site maps and architecture
Avoid “stuffing” keywords
Build less obnoxious internal link strategy

31. Bring Science to the Art
A/B split testing
Track conversions
Monitor traffic
Perpetually Revise
Track stickiness

32. Use Smart SEO Tools
LifeTips Page Strength Tool

33. Hire the Pros
“If each of us hires people who are smaller than
we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.
But if each of us hires people who are bigger than
we are, we shall become a company of giants.”
—David Ogilvy
Resource: Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy

34. Drop off your business card after the session for a
link to our proprietary Page Strength Tool