Good morning, you epic article writer, you. That's right, I'm talking to you . You wield your WordPress editor as a valuable tool. You use it to attract new prospects, to build trust with them " word-by-word " so you can get down to business. And you do it in your slippers. Because shoes are optional in our world, right? Your shoes might be fuzzy, but your words need to be consistently remarkable . Consistently good content creation is the backbone of online business.

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar ' You meet someone and they say all the right things. They're full of compliments and accolades. Except , something bugs you about them. Their words don't quite match their actions. They can be forgetful, and even mean . Eventually, the glow wears off, and you see them for who they really are. It's not what people say , it's what they do that makes a relationship work . And that's how it is with your WordPress website,

There are a lot of minimalist blogs cropping up these days. They're bare, spare, and airy. I'm all for zen. I love clean web design with plenty of white space . But one no-color, minimalist design can start to look pretty much like another. And I wonder ' are all those zen-inspired blogs really built by budding Buddhists? Or could it be that some of them " not all ,

Less than an hour from where I live in Pennsylvania " if you point your car in the right direction " you see road signs that warn you to beware of horse and buggy carriages using the road. The Amish people live a life very different from yours and mine. For the most part they don't use electricity. They avoid most machines, preferring a simple lifestyle that revolves around farming and handcrafting everyday items.

During his career he was loved, hated, admired, dissed, fought over ' but never ignored. His name? Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y ' Picasso . Anybody with a name like that was bound to lead a big, bold, messy life, and Picasso did exactly that. I have to confess that I've had a creative crush on him ever since I first encountered his work in my college art history class.

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. ~ Steve Jobs You're creating great content to attract an audience. A loyal audience that comes to know, like and trust you. But what if you never get the attention of that audience in the first place? What if your blog visitors take one look at your well-written words and move right along because your page looks bland, boring, and amateurish? You lose them at hello.

On the snowy, northeastern Christmas of my 11th year, our parents gathered all five kids around the kitchen table to deliver the news. We were moving to San Antonio, Texas. I was devastated. Texas? I imagined what our new home would look like. We'd be miles from any neighbors " who all walked straight off the "Hee Haw" set " with a dusty, rock-filled front yard punctuated by the occasional tumbleweed rolling by.

Out of the primordial soup " back in the early 1990s they came. They weren't pretty. They weren't compelling. They're repulsive to look at today. But we bought them " lots of them. They were the first ebooks . Remember Times Roman? There was page after page of it, like an 8th grade book report. Remember the yellow highlighter on the sales page? How it made our hearts beat a little faster?

You'd better sit down. I want to tell you something, and you're not going to like it. Your dreary blog is putting me to sleep . I just visited your site, gave it the requisite three seconds of my attention, and found myself in Dullsville. Nothing grabbed my eye. No headline inspired me to read. No images drew me in. And here's the thing: I'm not a captive audience. It was remarkably easy for me to rid myself of your insipid prose, your bland blog.

Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to 'get in touch with your feelings,' fine " talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts.

I have helped businesses craft effective marketing materials for almost 25 years now, and I've had every type of client. There are the clients who want their website to appeal to everyone " no matter if that means making the design and content so bland it might as well not be there at all. There are clients who don't really know why their service is good, or the ones who don't have a marketing strategy beyond "pitch this product." Sure,

You've tried to get their attention. You've read the right books, listened to all the gurus, and freshened up your appearance, but it's not working. You aren't being noticed by the one you love. Your ideal customer isn't giving you the time of day. They're ignoring your offers. All of your overtures are rebuffed. They're just not that into you. To wrap up Valentine's week here on Copyblogger, we're going to cover how to flirt with potential customers,

I grew up hearing the story of Cinderella, whose cruel stepmother forced her to work as a servant in her own home. She spent her days tending the fire, washing and cooking for her evil stepsisters. She dreamed of a better life. By the end of the story, Cinderella is queen. Her name is synonymous with radical transformation " going from the cinders to the palace. Think transformation only happens in children's stories?

A few weeks ago I saw this tweet from Johnny B. Truant : If I were Frida Kahlo, I would have painted myself without a unibrow. Or at least have become aware I needed a pair of tweezers. Johnny made me smile. Then he made me think. Would we remember Frida Kahlo today if she hadn't had the audacity to leave her eyebrows natural, and sport a wisp of a mustache across her upper lip? We might. Her artwork is memorable and intensely personal.

Your precious words. You know they've got to be right to attract the audience you want. You've slaved over them, carefully crafting each phrase. You finally hit "publish," and what happens? Nobody reads them. No comments, no tweets, no sharing on Facebook. It's enough to send a writer into deep depression, and wipe out motivation to keep producing great content. Think you need to spend another 10,000 hours perfecting your writing skills? Probably not. Actually,

Google likes to play a little game with those of us who do business online. The game is called "change all the rules and see who survives." It's often a fun and rewarding game for Google users, but it can be painful for business owners. In the latest version, Google has rolled out a feature called Instant Previews . When enabled, users see a cute little magnifying glass sitting next to their search results.