How To Grab Your Reader’s Attention From the Get Go
The trick to writing anything whether it is a sales page or a how to article is to hook your reader’s attention immediately. Of course you have to hold on to that attention too but that’s significantly easier once you already have it. Here are three must do’s if you want to grab your reader’s attention right away:
1. Headlines are the end all be all of copywriting. Newspapers know this, advertisers know this and you must too. What makes a compelling headline? Several things actually:
* A promise. A good headline can make a promise – Lose 30 pounds in 30 days-guaranteed.
* Make it newsworthy. New diet guarantees fast, healthy weight loss.
* Ask a question. Is the food you eat making you sick?
* Offer a benefit full of emotion. You’re going to absolutely love your new body-guaranteed.
* Appeal to their self interest. Know the secret to losing weight permanently?
* Offer value. 3 easy steps to losing weight naturally.
* Headlines must use strong verbs and powerful words. Compare these two headlines:
- Lose weight with our enzyme based diet
- Weight literally falls off with enzyme based diet.
2. Make sure your most compelling copy is above the fold. First, let’s clarify what the ‘fold’ is. When you look at a website, the fold is the point at which you need to start scrolling down. This means that anything above the fold is what you see immediately on your screen. If your good stuff is below the fold, most people won’t stick around to read it. You must make sure that your most compelling copy, your headline and your first paragraph, are immediately viewable.
Of course everyone has a different screen size so you want to work for the least common denominator – the smaller screen sizes.
3. Make sure your copy is scannable. There’s an old joke about what people read on the web. The joke is – they don’t. What people do is scan. They spend about 20 seconds evaluating your web page, if it isn’t easy to read they’re gone. If you want to grab your reader’s attention immediately – make your copy easy to read. Use bold lettering for words that you want to stand out. Space the copy well so that it is easy to read. Use bullets and numbers to list benefits or steps.
There are many expert tricks of the trade and these three will take you far. Make your headline strong and compelling, keep your strongest copy above the fold and make sure your copy is easy to scan. You’ll have visitors that are more than happy to spend time reading your web content.
How To Get Your CamStudio Video On Your Website
Once you have your tutorial or video recorded on CamStudio and saved your next step is to get it onto your website. Here’s how:Step One: Open CamStudio.
Step Two: From the tools file open the SWF producer. This tool converts AVI files to flash files.
Step Three: Once inside you want to go to the file menu and open the file that you want to convert to a flash file. Click on the blue C to convert. A menu will pop up which gives you a few options, make your choices, name your file and click okay.
Step Four: Add it to your website as a link. This is the easiest way to add a video to your website. Links are easy to follow and they won’t slow down the load time of your website.
Step Five: Rather have the file embedded onto your web page? Take care that it won’t work for all visitors, because they’ll have to be able to view flash videos and because videos take up a large amount of space and download time. Here’s how to do it:
Open your web building software like FrontPage or DreamWeaver. Open the page that you want your video to appear on. From your toolbar click on insert and choose video option. You’ll have several choices to make in the menu box that pops up, choices like how many times do you want the video to loop and if you want the file to play as soon as the page is opened.
Note: Your file can be an AVI or a Flash file here. Using a non-AVI file means that you’ll have to set the window size of your movie, this can be done in the general tab on the menu.
If however, you want to embed your movie as a plug in then you’ll again visit your insert button on your toolbar. Go to insert web component and advanced controls and choose Plug In. A menu will pop up asking for some information.
Go ahead and add your video and then click on the extended button at the bottom of the menu to determine how often you want the video to loop and when you want it to start. You can even add a message to visitors without plug in capabilities.
Adding a video to your website is a great way to interact with your visitors and to add some interest to your site. It can take a little trial and error time to get your video to work but is well worth the patience and effort – your visitors will appreciate it too.
