Copyblogger

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Introducing the New StudioPress Blog

Where in the world has Brian Gardner been?

Well, it’s been a while since you’ve seen my byline around here at Copyblogger, but that’s for a few good reasons — I’ve had my head down and been working hard over at StudioPress (specifically, the all-new StudioPress Sites you’ve been hearing about).

If you’re interested in checking it out, you’ll see that the StudioPress site looks quite different from how it has in the recent past, and that’s because we’ve been making the experience over there the best we possibly can for our customers.

That, and we’ve been building the next generation of StudioPress. :-)

Here’s what we’ve been up to …
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A Guide to Meaningful Content that Resonates

A Guide to Meaningful Content that Resonates

Oh the drama!

No, I’m not talking about the latest political fight you got into on Facebook — I mean this week on Copyblogger has been all about creating dramatic, meaningful content that pulls your audience toward you.

On Monday, Brian shared five proven techniques that stir emotions and inspire people to act on your content. And on the Copyblogger FM podcast, I talked about how some of the Super Bowl ads sparked more drama than they intended — with thoughts on what to do when your once-neutral message takes on a political charge.
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Transform Your Content from Predictable to Provocative with This Bold Method

"Instead of pushing a single idea forward, there’s a sudden disturbance." – Sean D'Souza

Stop for a moment to think about a super-athlete.

A person who won 122 consecutive races and broke the world record four times.

That super-athlete is Edwin C. Moses, a man who completely dominated the 400-meter hurdle event and won every race in sight between 1977 and 1987. And then it happened. On June 4, 1987, in Madrid, Spain, Danny Harris beat Moses.

Objections in articles are like Danny Harris.

They bring in an unexpected element to one-sided content. Instead of the article pushing a single idea forward, there’s a sudden disturbance. Let’s find out exactly why objections are so powerful and how to use them in your writing.
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The Power of a Fresh Start

The Power of a Fresh Start - copyblogger weekly

You never know what a fresh calendar year can inspire someone to do. They might start a new business, lose a zillion pounds, organize the sock drawer.

Or, if it’s Copyblogger’s founder Brian Clark, they just might come back to the blog with a vengeance … and a commitment to write a bunch of new content for us.

In case you missed it, Brian did that last one this week. He hit the blog on Monday morning with a post about why so much content out there is so … uninspiring. And he talks about what we can do to break through and start creating something worth reading again.

This month, we’re getting back to basics on Copyblogger — but “basic” doesn’t mean we’ll get less sophisticated. It means we’ll talk about how you can execute on the most important things in a deeper way.

Because shiny objects are fun … but creating real success is even more fun.
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10 Modern Editing Tips for Meticulous Bloggers

protractor, ruler, and gray pencil - copyblogger

I watch a lot of YouTube videos about the best ways to clean your bathroom.

In fact, I realized that I spend way more time watching “hacks, tricks, and tips” about how to efficiently clean a bathroom than I do actually cleaning my bathroom.

Given the hundreds of thousands of views on these types of videos, perhaps it’s not just me. And I started thinking … this might be similar to bloggers who read about editing tips.

Editing, like cleaning a bathroom, isn’t always the most fun, so bloggers might spend more time reading about editing tips than actually implementing them.

We’d like to have a polished bathroom or a polished blog post — we just don’t always want to perform the work required to produce that shiny end result.

The 10 modern editing tips I’ll share today should invigorate you to put in the elbow grease … at least when it comes to your writing.
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Get Back to Basics to Crush It in 2017

person stepping onto train - copyblogger

One week from today, Copyblogger turns 11 years old.

In some ways, it feels like only yesterday that I came up with the concept for this blog in December of 2005 and launched it the next month. Except that I was 38 at the time, and now … I’m not (ahem).

There was plenty of emerging talk about commercial blogging going on back then, and Copyblogger was specifically designed to add to the conversation in a way that wasn’t being addressed. Fortunately, I had spent the previous 7 years figuring out how to build online audiences that built businesses.

Today we call that content marketing, and in this sense, a lot has changed in the last decade or so. We now have a multi-billion-dollar industry churning out massive volumes of content — content that’s too often massively undifferentiated and uninspired.

In other words, much of it is missing the mark.
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