Posts Tagged ‘motivation’

The Benefits Of Using Digg As A Marketing Tool

Monday, September 6th, 2010

Digg is an excellent website that holds a wealth of information, stories, practice tips, hard to find tutorials and in general, you name it, you’ll probably find it on Digg. For the casual users, there are a ton of categories to choose from and the content on Digg is virtually real-time. For specialized users like website owners and bloggers, Dig has the potential of becoming your new best friend. When stories are submitted to Digg and if they make the front page, it can cause what’s known as the “Digg Effect”. This is when a massive influx of traffic is sent from Digg to your website or blog. Digg can transform an unknown website or blog into a well-established heavily trafficked web location. Carve out your niche marketing efforts and join Digg to expand your market reach.

Digg Is An Information & Gathering Place

  • Digg is a user-friendly and user-driven website.
  • All the content that’s found on Digg is submitted by Digg users
  • Digg users moderated the content that is posted on Digg.
  • Because Dig is a community website, it relies on its members to send submission. Many of those submissions are in the form of short articles that are centered around a specific subject. Once a Digg member submits their content, other Digg users read that submitted content.  If the information is interesting and worthy, members will, Digg the stories and content they like the most.  If a submission or story receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page of Digg where millions of Digg visitors will see it.
  • The key to getting Digged, is to have interesting, informative and relevant content.

How To Submit Content To Dig:

  1. Register with Digg – it’s free and fast.
  2. Start Digging yourself to get a feel for what it’s like to review other people’s content.

Tip: To start Digging, click on your profile link and scroll to check out submitted content. You can also go to the general Digg index and use the Digg search box. The search box appears at the top of every page for ease in searching. There are also advance searches available too. Make sure to use good key search words to target the most specific related topic your interested in.

How To Find Stories & Content For Digg:

  1. Find information you want to share with the Digg community.
  2.  Navigate to the Submit A Story URL and follow the process.

Tip: If you want your content to be “Dugg” by others then make sure to write an attention grabbing title and informational description. This will encourage community members to click through.

How To Use Bookmarklets:

Another way to add content to Digg is to use a Bookmarklet.

Tip: Drag one of the Bookmarklet links to your browser toolbar. This is a handy way to add content to Digg while browsing the internet. The Bookmarklets work with both Firefox and Explorer.

Digg Is Popular – Check Out These Statistics:

We checked the Digg statistics at the time of this post and found:

The data for the United States showed estimates of:

  • 3.5 million unique visitors for the country.
  • 11 million unique visitors worldwide.
  • 98 million page views in the country.
  • 190 million page views worldwide.
  • 25 million total visits recorded in the country.
  • 45 million worldwide.

Digg is not gender specific and both male and females were found to be taking advantage of Digging:

  • 68% were recorded as male
  • 325 were found to be females

The educational background of the average Digg user was reported to be:

  • 42% had some college level education
  • 34% had a bachelor degree
  • 9% had less than a high school diploma
  • 8% had a graduate degree
  • 7% had less than a high school diploma

The age of members showed to be an estimated:

  • 31% were between the ages of 25-34
  • 30% were 35-44 years old
  • 45-54 year olds made up 16%
  • 11% wer 18-24 year olds
  • The senior generation of 55-64 year olds came in at 6%
  • 2% accounted for 65 year old and over
  • 5% of users were between the ages of 0-17

General data for the household income of Digg users were shown to be:

  • 30% at $25,000-$49,000
  • 23% at $50,000-$74 999
  • 20% were between $75,000-$99,999
  • 15% made $0-$24,999
  • 7% were $100,000-149,999
  • 4% earned 150,000 or more.

These impressive statistics show just how powerful Digg can be to reaching a specific target market. It’s easy to see why so many individuals, businesses and hobbyist have added Digg to their social media network. By joining an online community as large as this one, it’s easy to see the marketing benefits. Whether you’re sharing content to raise awareness of a product line or just want to introduce thoughtful ideas, Digg can unlock an incredible audience and another way for you to reach a mass market.

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler

How To Write Great Advertising Copy

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Writing ad copy can be easy if you use the right tools of the trade. Here are a few quick tips on how you can strive to write better copy that sells a product and produces results for your client.

Learn your client’s business

By learning about your client’s business and how they operate, you will be able to get a handle on who is buying their product. Ad copy for a restaurant will be much different than ad copy for an accounting firm. Do your research first, and then approach your client with a few questions to learn more:

  • Ask questions about what other types of businesses are related to their work or product.
  • Find out who their target market is and the median age, gender and other basic demographics about their customers. What you choose to write for 25 year olds will be much different than what you would write for a consumer that is 45+.
  • Examine previous advertising copy that your client has had success with and ask to be shown what ad copy has failed to provide sell-through of product. Examine both then improve on the successful ad copy and apply those improvements to your ad copy.

 

Observe how your client has positioned their business in the marketplace

Once you can figure out the personality of your client’s business it will become easier to develop an ad campaign that works to fit their current profile. How a company wants to brand themselves and the products they sell is key to how they present themselves in words. You can work closely with company executives to learn about their wants and desires. Some businesses want to sell their product with ad copy that doesn’t match their company’s public profile. This can lead a company to a failed ad campaign.

  • Question how your client wants to be seen by the public.
  • Ask about the type of reputation they want to achieve.
  • Find out how their competitors are viewed, expand on the competitions weak points to make your client stronger in the marketplace.

 

Adhere to your clients desires

As a copywriter you might not have enough time to learn about how every business operates.  It is up to you as a professional in the field to learn enough about each of your individual clients needs and how it pertains to the specific work you do for them. By listening to your client’s needs, learning what their desires are and working towards a common goal, you can look forward to creating successful ad copy that benefits the business you are working for.

  • Working off ideas that you might think are inventive or ideal, may not benefit your client’s long term goals.
  • As a copywriter it’s important to remember that most businesses work on a plan over the course of months or years. Your goal is to become a building block.
  • Taking one step at a time is one of the most beneficial ways to incorporate your creativity and genius into  your client’s goals.

Working as a copywriter may seem like a no-brainer job for most. But for those who do the work, it’s an intense job that requires thought, sensitivity and a professional ethic that goes beyond your own thoughts of greatness. The best copywriters are the ones that match their style, their work and their creativity to their client. Once someone is able to generate good copy that matches their client’s goals and needs, that writer can count on being called back again and again as a team member that is known for their beneficial contributions.

In the ever changing world of advertising, copywriters can easily become an invaluable piece of a company’s  marketing plan. Match your skills to your client’s needs. Once you do this, you will be able to count on a long and productive relationship with your clients for years to come!

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.

Monday, January 18th, 2010

While Oozil is busy gathering the greatest creative minds in the country, we’re taking the time today to remember one of the greatest minds –and greatest men– in our country’s history. It’s been more than four decades since Martin Luther King Jr. shared his wisdom with us, but his words are still relevant today in an America that has made huge strides, but still struggles with its identity.

His words also tell us not to give up hope, whatever our personal obstacles, and to persevere with hope, kindness and intelligence.

Martin Luther King Jr. in his own words:

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

“Intelligence plus character is the true meaning of education.”

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”

“When you are … living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’ — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

And, the words that could almost be the Oozil motto:Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

Thanks, Dr. King, for making the world a better place.

By Elizabeth Kelly, with generous assistance from Dr. King