Copyblogger Weekly Wrap: Week of September 12, 2010

Nope, I didn’t get fired. I’m back in the saddle around here, ready to summarize things for you and put them into an easily digestible, bullet point form.

So why the layoff on the weekly wraps (now twice as delish with half the calories)? Well, it was summer. Brian and Sonia wanted a break from removing libelous statements from my scribblings, and I wanted time to pursue my hobby of reworking large companies’ marketing slogans.

For example: BP: Well, at least you know who we are now.

No? Okay, fine… here’s what happened this week on Copyblogger and around the web:

Monday:

How Eminem Stayed Relevant (And Why it Can Save Your Blog)

In this post that finally proves that Sean Platt actually is Eminem, you’ll learn about how Marshall Mathers phoned it in for a few albums, then apologized, and then BROUGHT IT yet again… and how you can do the same to rebound from mediocrity back up to your A game.

Read the full post here.

Tuesday:

How to Build Credibility with Your Sales Copy

This post is the definitive guide to writing cred-building copy that will get past your customer’s defenses and get them to buy. (Dave called those defenses “shields,” so really, converting customers is like attacking the Death Star.) There’s three shield-busting approaches in this post, but he totally forgot “bomb the ventilation shaft.”

Read the full post here.

Wednesday:

The Freakonomics Guide to Making Boring Content Sexy

The book Freakonomics proves that even boring subjects can be interesting if you add wrestlers, and so offers a great model for making your blog more readable. (But if you want real inspiration, watch for my memoir: Exciting Tales of the Pennsylvania Municipal Tax Code.)

Read the full post here.

Thursday:

How to Blog Like Bond. James Bond.

Today we learned that the best way to build a popular blog is to drink, be smooth, battle supervillains, have indiscriminate relations with many women, and kill people. Or possibly there was some other lesson here, I don’t remember. You might want to read this post and see, come to think of it.

Read the full post here.

Friday:

3 Reasons to Tell Readers Why

You can’t trust that people will listen to you just because you think you’re talented or awesome. You have to give them a reason to care and to read. One Brian missed: “Read this post or the bunny gets it.”

Read the full post here.

This week’s cool links:

• If you want to learn to do marketing…: … then do marketing. I could go on and on, but that’s pretty much the important thing to note here.
• Storyselling 101: The fine art of selling more stuff through stories, in four easy steps (my own secret sauce)
• Six Critical Steps to Take Before Starting Your Social Media Monitoring Initiative: Hey companies looking to monitor social media! Do you even know what you’re looking for? Maybe pay attention to these six things first.
• 5 Tips For Aspiring Digital Copywriters From A Marketing Practitioner: If you want to write online copy, this is a great 2-for-1 list. You get five tips that suck, plus five pieces of advice that are awesome.
• How to increase Facebook fan engagement: an interview with Andrea Vahl: Want to learn how to better use Facebook from Grandma Mary? I suck at Facebook AND don’t have my own Grandma Mary, so I’m sold.
• Do I really need a list?: Naomi Dunford answers the age old question, “Do I need an email marketing list?” (Spoiler: Naomi’s answer is “S#@&!”)

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is in the middle of a free, 4-session call and webinar series about selling via storytelling (which is how he sells pretty much everything).