Get shorty: basic internet copywriting

Turn this prose:“IntroNiche is a classifieds platform for niche marketing barter deals. In plain english that means that companies targetting specific niches will be able to find other companies targetting identical or other relevant groups. The companies can then contact each other to see if they can make co-operate in their marketing efforts, most likely through barter deals.IntroNiche’s service should specifically appeal to entrepreneurs & marketeers, especially those with all ready a strong internet presence or ambition.”Into something shorter:                                     “Let the world know who you want to reach.
Discover who wants to reach the same people.
Promote each other. Prosper together!
For marketing pro’s & netizens alike.
For more info, click here.” Into something even shorter: “Say who you want to reach.
Find out who targets the same people.
Promote each other. Get a good deal!
For marketing pro’s & netizens alike
Examples, get them here.“

Get shorty: write catchy site content

Groundrules for any internet content: 

• Make it snappy:
  • cut all words you don’t need 
• Make it real:
  • forget university & professional slang,
  • use straight words
  • use words people type in search engines
• Make it active:
  • One might suggest the use of indirect turns of phrases entices one not to be bothered to read
  • Cut all longer sentences containing “and”, “or” etc… in two short sentences
  • Always include a call for action like “click here”, “read more”, “find out”
• Be visual:
  • Use colours, italics, underlines and bold
  • Use wisely however. Less is more!
•  Be yourself:
  • Don’t use the clichés you’ll find everywhere

An example:

Today I rewrote this content:

“IntroNiche is a classifieds platform for niche marketing barter deals.

 In plain english that means that companies targetting specific niches will be able to find other companies targetting identical or other relevant groups. The companies can then contact each other to see if they can make co-operate in their marketing efforts, most likely through barter deals.

IntroNiche’s service should specifically appeal to entrepreneurs & marketeers, especially those with all ready a strong internet presence or ambition.”

Cut. Rewrite. Cut. Rewrite.
This is what you get:

“Let the world know who you want to reach.
Discover who wants to reach the same people.
Promote each other. Prosper together!
For marketing pro’s & netizens alike.
More info, click here.”

Quite shorter right? Nope. Can do better.

Third version:

“Say who you want to reach.
Find out who targets the same people.
Promote each other. Prosper together!
For marketing pro’s & netizens alike.
Examples, click here”

Excellent? I don’t think so. Tomorrow gets a rewrite.
Any suggestions, post them here!

and yes they did

I finally managed to get the Introniche emails to work on outlook.

 Thou mayeth now mail me on sam atatat introniche dot com

No,  techie I am not, but tenacious I can be.

Hosting company selected for the website

and the winner is: Fused Networks.

I was really impressed with the great pre-sales customer support. And the reviews they got on Hostjury.com. And it helps my web dev company uses them too!
That being said,  I’m even more impressed with the post-sales customer support.

Who knows, they might even be smart enough to explain me how to set up an email account in Outlook.

New field to add in the classfieds ads: reach

I had a discussion last night. And a classic d’OOOOOHHHH moment.

One of the questions was how people would find other people who are relevant to them for barter marketing on IntroNiche. I answered the classic things: they would be interested in the target groups they share and in the marketing channels they use.

Then it dawned on me. They’d also be interested in how big the reach is of the other persons. I can’t imagine that for example a blogger who gets 10.000 visits a month to his blog would be too hot to do a barter deal with someone who gets a 1.000 visits a month.

So that would be another field for people to fill in: how big is your “monthly reach” (taking monthly as that seems the easiest to determine)
Possible Answers :

– None/Just starting/Can’t disclose
– 1 to 1000
– 1.000 to 10.000
– 10.000 to 50.000
– 50.000 to 100.000
– 100.000 to 500.000
– 5000.000 to 1.000.000
– over 1.000.000
– over 10.000.000

An introduction to IntroNiche

IntroNiche is a classifieds platform for niche marketing barter deals.

 In plain english that means that companies targetting specific niches will be able to find other companies targetting identical or other relevant groups. The companies can then contact each other to see if they can make co-operate in their marketing efforts, most likely through barter deals.

IntroNiche’s service should specifically appeal to entrepreneurs & marketeers, especially those with all ready a strong internet presence or ambition.

We’re about to go live this february 2008. What you see here is to be the company blog.

 More info here.

New passtime for tuesday and thursday night: EMMA

No, not the name of my mistress, as EMMA stands for Executive Master in Marketing and Advertising.
At Solvay Business School, Brussels.

Slighty boring? I should hope not.
Anyway, all info is here so you at least know where I am.

On a serious note, I hope to acquire a better grasp of marketing and marketeers which should benefit the IntroNiche business.

Top things to do in january for a small emerging business

From the self proclaimed king of Chaos, some nice things to do:

• Plan the year ahead (if you haven’t done so already in december)
  • Set two major targets for the year
  • Choose four to five major moments in the year that should help you achieve the targets
    (campaigns to be launched, milestones to be reached…)
  • For every milestone, define the preparations you need to do
  • Put all on a nice calendar – break everything down by weeks and months
  • Don’t forget to include time for breaks, holidays, repetitive chores and unforeseen emergencies
• Stop procrastinating. Execute the first things on your list 
• Reply to all new year’s wishes you got – it’s a consistent way of keeping your network up to date

Anything I forgot?

Happy new year for everyone

Happy new year 2008 for everybody.

Hopefully, we’ll see the IntroNiche marketplace kicking off and being of good use for marketeers worldwide.

Best regards,

Sam

Blognation down – sad as the idea was pretty valid

It looks like the Blognation group blog has joined the dead parrot club.

For all it’s shortcomings (in the funding & the founder’s transparancy apparantly), it did have the merit of broadcasting pretty interesting news from internet companies all over the world in a nice and orderly way.

Too bad for all the editors who put a lot of time and energy in it and too bad for me as I liked to read that blog quite a lot really.

For the USA news, there’s still the blogs in my favourites.
For the belgian fix, I’ll just revert to web2point0
Any tips on good similar blogs for Europe/worldwide?