I was talking to my friend Carter (Who I forced to join Twitter) today and in the middle of the discussion he said something that I had to copy.

Carter: How is that easier for me
me: I didn’t say for you
I said it’s easier
Carter: Well “for me” is what I’m concerned about

Although he said it in jest, it’s the way your customer actually thinks. Next time you start writing about your product, keep this in mind.

This is a reminder for most; however I like when inbound marketing comes up in real life so I felt compelled to post this.

P.S. you can’t plan this shit.

P.P.S. Okay, you can plan it, but I didn’t.

Photo Credit: dhammza

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I get an e-mail every week from Threadless.com. If you’ve never been to Threadless before, you should leave my page right now and check them out.

Welcome back. As you now know, they make crowd-sourced t-shirts that are fun, affordable and sometimes cryptic until you read the title. I bring them up because they do permission marketing in way that you never see.

On Monday I received my weekly e-mail from Threadless and shortly after a second one. The first e-mail was their weekly e-mail and the second was an apology

They sent out an e-mail explaining that the opt-out link was not working in the original e-mail and then explained how to opt-out if you want to.

There are still a lot of CMO’s who would have a heart attack if someone at their company sent out an e-mail like this. The nerve of them, actually letting people know how to opt out!!

I hate that I need to write a blog about this being the right thing to do, but it’s still so rare.

Permission is all you have as a marketer, don’t squander it. In this case, don’t squander it and look good doing it. (That was way too cheesy even for me)

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Like everyone who works in social media, I love Mashable Copyblogger (And strikethroughs).

I came across this post last week called 17 Easy Steps to Brilliant Blog Posts. It was a guest post by Jill Chivers, who I had never heard of. The post didn’t move me, but what she did on her website I thought was brilliant and is overlooked too often by guest writers.

I normally skip right over peoples bios. They are a good idea to write, but they’re boring. Weirdly, I read hers and I even clicked on the link back to her page. I guess I read it because right above it was a tip to always write a bio. (Subliminal message? I like it!)

Welcome Copybloggers.

That was the header I saw when I landed on her page. She made a post knowing she would get traffic from copyblogger and as the icing on the cake, she made the copyblogger header her post image.

Brilliant. Now I’m interested.

This is a great idea and one that I haven’t seen enough. Everyone promotes their guest post, but they aren’t optimizing the new traffic they’re getting from making the post in the first place.

Kudos Jill.

As much as I loved this idea and that she did it, there are some things I hated about how she did it.

• Please Proofread. The first thing I notice is you link to the post calling it “16 Easy Steps” and the actual post on Copyblogger is “17 Easy Steps”.

Shit changes so fast online and maybe the name of the post changed, but no matter what happened I’ve lost a little confidence in you in the first 5 seconds on the site. (The make or break time)

• Follow your own ideas. The second tip on her Copyblogger post was, “Make sure you have one idea per post”.

I didn’t understand the one idea from the post on her website. The post was ramblings about the different things she does. I got an overview of her, but I don’t know what her website is about or what she’s selling.

• Don’t ask me to sign up for anything. I’ve read through your page a few times and I have no clue what you do.

You are bringing in a whole new audience, you need to make sure they know exactly what it is you do and what you can help them with.

She says, “You might even want to sign up for our weekly ezine (and fabulous freebies).  At the very least, it will spike my analytics graph and give me something else to look at during my weekly site statistics seminar.”

I love humor online, but I still don’t know what your ezine is or more importantly why I should sign up for it

What am I getting at? Nobody is perfect and I still love what she did. I wish instead of a long post she told me why I should care about her product or her.

There is a lot of ways to do this, but I like the soft sale.

I would have made a short post about what the site is about and what’s in it for the reader. After that, post a list of the best posts she’s written, so the reader can get a better idea if it’s a site they care about and want to opt into. The ironic thing is in her copyblogger post she littered the post with links to other copyblogger articles, but on her site she only linked offsite.

(P.S. I tried my best to use Jill’s 17 tips in this post, they are good)

Photo Credit: antmoose

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