The Lifespan of a Link in Social Media

Unless you’re a public company trying to bury bad financial news on a Friday afternoon, you want as many people as possible to see, click and forward the links to your blog post, press release, sales page or other online content you’re trying to drive traffic to.

So, you may be interested in a recent study about how long a link published via social media and other online marketing is clicked and shared.

Borrowing the concept of a “half-life” from science, bit.ly URL shortening service recently measured how long it takes a link to get half of the clicks it will ever receive after the clicks have peaked.

Lifespan of social media links

Tracking the Social Media Buzz

No surprise, links had the shortest half-lives on Twitter. Although the average of 2.8 hours was longer than I expected.

Links shared on Facebook fared a bit better, getting clicks for a half-life of 3.2 hours–which makes sense since your newstream on Facebook tends to update slower than your Twitter stream.

Links sent via email and Instant Messaging (IM) programs were next with 3.4 hours. Again, you hopefully get few emails than you do Facebook updates, so an email stays on the “front page” longer.

The difference between email and Facebook should have been even bigger. But for some odd reason, bit.ly decided to include links shared via instant message programs like Skype in this number.  Not sure what they were thinking there…

The Social Media King of Link Longevity

The surprising winner–links shared from YouTube got clicks for twice as long as links shared in other social media–at 7.4 hours.

The study also found that sharing and forwarding links followed the same time spans as clicks.

Bottom line, if you want your link distributed with maximum speed–for example, if you have breaking news–Twitter is your best bet. But YouTube takes the cake for longevity.

Of course, the smartest strategy is usually to use ALL of these online marketing methods to get your link out.  And if you stagger the posting times so your link stays in circulation longer, you’ll multiply the amount of time it’s driving traffic to your website.

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Even a Cave Man Could Customize This WordPress Theme

I searched a long time to find a new WordPress theme for my blog.  After a couple of bad experiences with free themes, I was more than happy to buy one this time to make sure it would keep up with WordPress’ many updates and offer good support on those rare occasions I needed it.

Bottom line, I wanted a theme that was…

  • Simple and uncluttered, so it’s easy to surf and read
  • Versatile enough to use for regular websites, blogs, and landing pages
  • Super easy to customize so each site looks very different

The last was particularly important after buying a theme that required you to edit image files just to change the background and other color elements on the site. (Ugh!)

The good news is I found everything I wanted and more with StudioPress’ Genesis Framework and Prose Child Theme.

Basically, Genesis is the main theme and you can use it alone or with “skins” (which they call child themes).  There are many cool things about this set-up…such as being able to get a totally new look in just a few minutes. Simply upload a new child theme–your content will automatically move into the new design!

While Studiopress offers a bunch of child themes, a friend had recommended Prose because it gives you a menu to customize almost anything–colors, fonts, navigation bars, number of columns, etc–without having to muck around in the code. So you have an infinite number of ways to make your site truly yours!

I love it and constantly recommend it (even when I don’t have an affiliate link handy–LOL). So if you’re looking to create a new website or revamp your current one, check it out:

http://bit.ly/mu3gUH

And if you decide to take the Genesis WordPress Theme for a spin, let me know how you like it!

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Website Navigation That Sells A Better Life

I stumbled across the Shaklee site while doing some research the other day and noticed something pretty cool in their website navigation…


Now, most people don’t give much thought to the wording used in the navigation of their website. But navigation copy plays a BIG role in getting visitors to clickthrough to your take-action pages.

Whether it’s buying, hiring, joining, partnering, interviewing you or whatnot–if they don’t find that page, they can’t do it.

So your navigation copy has to…

a) instantly tell them that you have what they’re looking for AND

b) clearly show them where to go to find it

Otherwise, they’re gone in a heartbeat because people just don’t have the patience these days to click all over or pick up a phone and call.

When I came across this site a few weeks ago, they had set up 3 landing-type pages to promote joining the Shaklee network.

That’s definitely smart–you should have different versions of landing pages set up, each one targeting a different audience or focusing on a different appeal–but many savvy companies do it.

What was unusual is that they had created a link to each of those landing pages in their website navigation, using the page’s headline…

  • Live the Dream. Share the Dream. Drive the Dream.
  • Live Your Best Life, Starting Today
  • Live Life on Your Terms

(It seems they decided, sometime between when I found the page and posted this, to link all of these to the Income Opportunity page, except you have to click on that page first for it to work–a convoluted and dumb thing to do. But let’s pretend they didn’t screw it all up… )

After all, they could just say “Join Shaklee” like a lot of similar sites probably do. It’s straightforward and to the point–you definitely know what you’re going to get when you click on that.

But instead, they use aspirational appeals–talking about how great their life will be if they join. And by using three different ones to boot, they’ve significantly upped the chances a visitor will find one that resonates.

Pretty clever. And definitely different.

But here’s my question:

Is the headline-like wording better than simpler benefit-driven navigation using like “Rewards” and “Freedom”?

On the one hand, you’ve got just milliseconds to catch the visitor’s attention. And since they have to infer what the benefit is from those headlines, usability-wise, maybe the straightforward route is better.

On the other, the headline-like wording better captures the emotion of the aspirational appeal–plus, it’s unexpected, which is usually a good thing for piquing curiosity. So people may click through just to see what it says.

I’d love to test the two approaches and see how they perform.

But what do you think? Which do you think you’d be more likely to click on? I’d love to hear your thoughts…

(And no, I’m not affiliated with the company in any way.)

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Get More Subscribers from Your Squeeze Pages — 5 Ideas from Eban Pagan

While there are many gurus who deserve the bashing they get, there ARE some good guys among the entrepreneurati–including Eban Pagan, the mastermind behind Double Your Dating as well as products under his own name such as Wake Up Productive and Guru Mastermind.

For the launch of his Self Made Wealth program, Eban sent prospects to a squeeze page that encouraged them to subscribe for several free lessons about money and mindset. (Unfortunately, the squeeze page itself was taken down after sales closed.)

Here are five ways Eban’s squeeze page stood out from the oodles of squeeze pages I see every week–ideas you can to test to boost your own list-building efforts…

Video Above the Headline–The video is at the very top of the page, with the headline underneath. However, the headline is still above the “fold” so you immediately see it when landing on the page.

Eban obviously wants you to notice and watch the video first. But this arrangement also places the headline much closer to the call to action. (I’d love to see his analytics on this.)

I’m not sure this format would work for everyone so test before you go full hog with it. Traffic to this particular squeeze page was driven by affiliate partners–so most visitors knew something about him before hitting the page.

A Signature Eban Video–Every video of his I’ve seen is done the same way–just a plain shot of him talking straight into the camera, wearing all black, standing in front of a solid, neutral background. it presents a consistent image of him and fits his “brand.”

Love it or hate it, his video does automatically play when you land on the page. But unlike many these days, the visitor still gets controls and a time bar showing the video is only 2 minutes and 15 seconds, which keeps viewers from getting antsy.

Reason-Why Opt-In–People are starting to treat their email like it’s Fort Knox–refusing to subscribe without a compelling reason or only giving the address they use for junk mail.

Eban probably gets high opt-in rates because he’s known for giving lots of good content during his product launches. Yet, he still  “asks for the business” at the end of the video–explaining that viewers should opt-in to make sure they get access to his series of free materials.

A “series” is a little more compelling than just a free report or video offer, huh?

The Tip Off–He also says you should opt-in to “get access so you can register for my Self-Made Wealth Program.” This is smart to add for four reasons:

  • No one’s dumb enough to think he’s giving all this content away out of the kindness of his heart–but they appreciate when you’re upfront about the pitch that’s coming.
  • No ifs, ands or buts–he says “so you can register” to plant the seed in your mind that you will register.
  • He creates a bit of an air of exclusivity around the program since only those who opt-in will be able to register.
  • He can more directly target those he knows are interested in the program–without annoying those on his general list who may not give a hoot about this topic.

Upping the Free Ante–His straightforward sub-head “Free Report, Video & Exercise” makes it clear he’s going beyond the norm of one free item with a free report AND 22-minute video AND exercise.

On top of the that, the content is valuable to both you AND him because it helps him persuade you to sign up. For example, the exercise for the first lesson is 3 questions. One asks what the most important thing you learned from the video was (to reinforce the value of the info you received).

The other two questions “needle your pain” by asking you to think of ways you’ve lost money in the past by not knowing this information… which reminds you that trying to do this on your own hasn’t worked out so well before.

Finally, he could have included the exercise in the free report. But he added more perceived value and emphasized this is real training (as opposed to something you passively read or listen to) by breaking it out separately.

In short, these are five good ideas to consider testing to increase the subscribers you get from your squeeze pages!

==> Have you seen any novel sales or copy approaches? If so, let me know and I may discuss them in an upcoming post!

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Google Adwords Ads that Checkmate Your Competitors

Google Adwords guru Howie Jacobson and copywriter Tracy Needham

“Adwords is like a no-limits poker game. If your competitor has deeper pockets, they’re going to eventually win because they have more money to throw at it,” Howie Jacobson said at a Triangle Business Leaders meeting I recently attended.

Jacobson–the guy who literally wrote the Dummies book on Google Adwords–gave a mini-workshop on creating “game over” pay-per-click ads, which are designed to do three key things:

  • Attract your ideal customer
  • Repel everyone else (because useless clicks are expensive)
  • Prepare your ideal customer for what’s on your landing page (You do have a landing page don’t you? Don’t send them to a home page!)

No games or tricks required. Because once you intimately understand your ideal customer, your ads will speak directly to him…and he won’t be able to resist clicking on them. As a result, you create ads that get better results, can test them faster and checkmate your competitors without having a bottomless wallet.

I have long talked about the importance of really putting yourself in your their shoes and speaking your customer’s  language.  But as Howie said, the problem is “when you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label.”

In other words, it’s hard to make the time to really stop and put yourself in your customer’s shoes when you’re crazy busy. To help combat that, he gave us a few exercises to channel our inner thespian and create an avatar for him (or her) –a leading actor, so to speak, who represents our ideal customer.

Here are the highlights:

Exercise 1 — Defining the Avatar

Describe them, but go way beyond demographics. We’re talking about listing their likes and dislikes. Unfulfilled dreams. Favorite book. What they watch on TV. If they have a smart phone.

You don’t have to get all the details exactly “right.” Just jot down whatever comes to mind. The point is to make the avatar as detailed as possible because the more real he is to you, the easier it’ll be for you to write copy that appeals to him.

Exercise 2– Dear Diary

Next, he walked us through getting into character as the avatar.

  • What are we thinking as we get ready to search? If we don’t know the solution we need (which is often the case), what is it we’re trying to find?
  • What are we feeling? Anxious? Excited? Exhausted?
  • What concerns do we have? Worried we’ll be wasting our money? That our project won’t turn out right?

Then, we spent 5 minutes writing a diary entry as the avatar, answering these questions and talking about whatever else is would be on our minds as we (as the avatar) get ready to search.

Exercise 3– Stop the Presses

The final exercise was for us to actually BE the avatar as two other attendees interviewed us. Then all three of us wrote Adwords-style ads designed to appeal to the avatar.

One thing that really hit me in this exercise was that I originally thought “copywriting” would be a big Adwords keyword for me. But none of the ads any of us wrote for me included it.

If you haven’t noticed by now, what he says applies to far more than Adwords–it’s true of everything you write to market your business. Remember…

You are NOT Your Ideal Customer

Maybe you used to be. But now…
  • You know what the solution is
  • You know that it works and understand why it works
  • You trust yourself to deliver on your promises
  • And you’ve mastered the expert lingo and concepts that once confused you
Usually, your ideal customers have NONE of those advantages. And that’s huge when you’re trying to convince someone to buy from you–especially services or products sight unseen.
So, if you carve out time to really experience your customer’s thoughts and feelings before putting fingers to keyboard, your marketing copy–Adwords ads as well as all the other marketing materials you write–will get much better results.
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Boost Your Google Ranking — 13 Tips from an SEO Samurai

At last month’s Triangle Business Leader’s meeting for entrepreneurs who are fans of Dan Kennedy-style marketing, SEO samurai Mike Marshall talked about search engine rankings–what’s working, what’s not and what’s not working anymore.

Marshall is the go-to-guy for companies like IBM, 1-800-Flowers, AOL, and Drs. Foster Smith (my fav). But even more important, because of the high-stakes nature of the search engine world, Google, Yahoo and the like patent their search system technology to keep the others from stealing it.

Guess who the U.S. Patent Office hires to teach its patent examiners about the latest advances in search technology?

Think Like a Search Engine
Marshall’s overarching theme is that dominating your competitors with SEO strategies isn’t about tricks–it’s about thinking like a search engine.

Google, Yahoo and Bing’s goal is to make sure they deliver good quality results to the people using their search service.  Because good results = happy searchers who are more likely to stick with them. (And this affects how they actually make their money.)

So their job is to give top rankings to legit websites where the searcher will easily find good content relevant to their keyword phrase. As a result, they look at numerous factors related to content, keyword relevance, site usability and site authority.

A few specific facts Marshall shared about the search engines are:

  • Don’t worry about the super long-tail keywords–phrases with one to four words represent 82.5% of all searches
  • Yahoo and Bing have about 25% of the search engine market
  • The more words a searcher uses, the further along they are in the buying cycle
  • Organic search results receive 72% of clicks, Adwords get about 28% (the Yahoo numbers are 69% to 31%)

Top Factors
Everyone wants to know what’s THE most important SEO strategy to focus to get a good Google ranking. But one insight he shared is that there are no absolutes–your competitors determine which factors are the most important.

After all, there are many industries that are still clueless about SEO. And Google can’t exactly return results that say “Oops, no one made it in the top 50, you have to go to page 6 to start seeing any results.”

So what one source says is most important may not be true for your keyword or industry. You really have to scope out your competitors on all of the ranking factors to find out for sure.

But in general, here are 13 of his tips and myth-busters to catapult your website up the search engine rankings…

On-Page SEO Strategies

  • Among meta tags, the title tag is most important…the keyword tag has become useless for SEO and just ends up revealing your keywords to your competitors
  • Outbound links on your website can still help your search engine ranking if you use keywords in the link text, especially is they’re to high quality, authoritative sites
  • Fast page load times are regaining importance–Google Webmaster Tools offers a free page speed tester if you want to check yours
  • Monitoring your Page Rank is virtually useless since Google began personalizing search results…it’s far more useful to monitor traffic to your site for your keywords
  • Keyword density is not  important to Google anymore, although Yahoo still counts it as a minor factor

Website Content

  • Site freshness is not just about how often you update your content…new links to your site count as fresh content as well
  • Despite the importance of links, content is still king because the content around the link and on the rest of the page is what makes the link valuable
  • Write your website copy for visitors first, then add keywords afterward…after all, search bots don’t buy, people do

Linkbuilding

  • Quality is more important than quantity…Google looks at who’s linking to the page that’s pointing to you and the pages pointing to them–going back 8 levels or more
  • The strength of a link to your site depends on the strength (Page Rank) of the page the link is on, which is usually lower than the home page of the site
  • Links on profile pages in online forums are essentially useless if the page is behind a password and/or if there are no other links pointing to that profile page
  • Don’t ignore no-follow links, they’re still important…if your ratio of follow links and no-follow links looks unnatural to Google, they’ll penalize you for trying to game the system
  • It doesn’t matter if anyone ever clicks on the links to your website–the link itself is what counts

Finally, as with nearly everything in Internet marketing, testing is the best way to know what works best for you!

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Boost Your Google Ranking with Insights from an SEO Samurai

Imagine you’re an archer and have 3 targets to shoot with your bow and arrow…

Except you’re standing on a platform and the targets are spinning…

Plus the platform is floating in the water, the wind is blowing and you’re blindfolded.

Oh, and all your competitors are out there with you too…

According to Mike Marshall–the man Adwords for Dummies author Howie Jacobson called “one of the top 5 SEO experts in the world”– that’s what it’s like to optimize for search engine traffic today.

Marshall may not be a household name, but he’s the search engine optimization ninja for hundreds of companies that are, as well as an SEO instructor for the U.S Patent Office and contributing author of Building Your Business with Google for Dummies.

Last month, he gave a behind-the-scenes peek for getting higher search engine rankings at the Triangle Business Leaders meeting for Kennedy-Glazer chapter members.

As he explained, getting your website to the first page of Google is more challenging than ever for three key reasons:

First, Google–still master of the search engine universe–updates its elusive SEO page ranking algorithm once a day. So, you really are shooting at a moving target.

Marshall also says most marketers don’t understand that Google grades on a curve–there are no absolutes when it comes to what affects your SEO ranking. What matters most depends on what everyone else competing on that keyword is doing.

Finally, search personalization means the order of results for a  keyword vary by person, even by computer. So, your site may show up on page 1 for you, but page 18 for your target audience.

The good news is you’re NOT doomed to the nether regions of Google results, it IS still possible to dominate the search engines for your keywords.

You just need to start thinking like a search engine and adjust your approach for today’s ever-shifting SEO landscape.

In short, you should focus your optimization efforts on…

The 4 Key Factors in SEO Page Ranking

  • Internal Link Structure – including navigation and links between pages on your website
  • Link Popularity & Relevance — the most important yet most difficult element based on the number, quality and relevance of links to your website
  • Crawlability & Optimized Code – Google rewards “clean” code that W3C has validated
  • Content Relevance — how relevant the content on your website is to your keywords

Tune in tomorrow to discover what other SEO ranking tips Mike Marshall gave in part two of Boost Your Google Ranking with Tips from an SEO Samurai…

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5 Ways to Kill Your Autoresponder Emails

An autoresponder series can be a great way to build a relationship and credibility with your prospects and to create a flurry of sales for your product or service. Of course, the copy you use is important.

But all too often, I see entrepreneurs and marketers shoot themselves in the foot with the same five non-copy mistakes…

1. Using just a first name or generic address on the “From” line. Studies show this is the first thing people look at before deciding whether to open an email now. If you’re a solopreneur, the best option is usually to use your name, first and last (it looks more personal) rather than a company name (obvious promotion).

2. Kicking off your email with a big graphic at the top. People are increasingly reading emails in the preview pane these days–and since images aren’t usually downloaded, all they see is an empty box or red x. So they end up seeing nothing in their preview pane…which isn’t exactly going to entice them to read more.

3. Trying to do too many things in one email…it’s best to stick with one main idea with one call to action and direct all the links toward that. The more extraneous things you add–especially when you add links with them–the more you slash your chances that they’ll go where you really want them to go.

4. Sending people to a home page instead of the exact sign-up, sales, or download page they need. You have to make it as easy as possible for them or they’ll wander off before they get there. So don’t make them wade through your site–link  directly to where they need to go.

It’s also good to use a mix  of hypertext links–such as www.compellingcomm.com–and text links–such as Copywriting & Marketing for Small Businesses.

5. Focusing too much on one tracking statistic. It goes without saying you should be tracking the performance of your emails. But total open rates alone aren’t going to tell you much, especially since the numbers aren’t very accurate due to the way opens are tracked.

Instead, you want to be sure to look at these three measures before deciding if an email is working or not:

  • Unique open rate–to weed out those who open the message several times
  • Click-through rates–since the email’s goal is usually to get the reader to click your links
  • Unsubscribe rates–a high open rate may be useless if the email prompted many people to unsubscribe

So if your autoresponder series isn’t getting the results you’d hoped, check to see if you’re making any of these five mistakes. A few tweaks may be all it takes to boost your results.

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Top 10 Takeaways from WordCamp Raleigh

Here are my top 10 takeaways from WordCamp Raleigh. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend Saturday and with three session tracks, I obviously couldn’t go to all the presentations…

So my highlights are from presentations by Gregory Ng of FreezerBurns.com, Grant Swaim of DigitalLiteracyProject.com, Jeff Cohen SocialMediaB2B.com and WordPress for Dummies author Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

  • When using a videocamera, lean against a wall and hold it close to your chest to help keep it steady
  • Sign up for Qwitter for other Twitter handles to see what tweets made people stop following your competition
  • Test for yourself, but presenter Greg Ng found that video traffic spikes after work and lunchtime on Friday
  • Don’t use autofeeds to import your blog posts into Facebook Notes–because people who click the link to read more won’t be directed back to your blog.  Use the Networked Blogs Facebook app instead
  • The Static FBML application will allow you to add javascript or HTML boxes to a Facebook Like (formerly Fan) page to further customize page and include ezine sign-up
  • 3 suggested ways to add membership functionality to a WordPress site include Wishlist Member plug-in (easiest and least expensive), Digital Access Pass plug-in (allows coupons and has affiliate tracking system) and integration with aMember script (most robust system)
  • To host audio and video streams in a members-only (or buyers-only) area, Amazon S3 with S3Flowshield is a better solution than VideoPress,which only offers 3 video sizes and heavily brands the videos
  • BuddyPress is an easy way to integrate social networking functionality (ala Ning or Facebook) into your WordPress site
  • A couple of popular BuddyPress features are allowing members to filter the type of activity updates they get and to decide what they want to share publicly (the latter with a free plug-in).  And of course, unlike Facebook, you own the content on BuddyPress.
  • Make sure to put your Twitter handle on your cover slide to make it easier for  attendees to tweet about your presentation!
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Give Website Visitors a Break

I went to see how the new sales copy looked on a client’s website the other day…and sighed when I found long blocks of text staring back at me on the web page.

I’ll admit, it drives me batty when a client or designer changes my formatting. I know their intentions are good, but there are reasons why its formatted that way…such as the fact that long blocks of dense text sends most people fleeing for the nearest exit.

I know–your English teacher said every paragraph has to have at least three sentences. But she was teaching you to write for the college world, not marketing. And the Internet wasn’t even around when most of us were in high school!

Studies show most people don’t read online, they scan–looking for what’s most important to them. And then they read that. Have you tried scanning a page full of mile-long paragraphs? Good luck…

And if they can’t scan, they don’t get your message at all because just the sight of all that text makes them think, “Wow, I don’t have time for all this right now. I’ll have to look at it later…” And later comes just about as often as a handwritten thank you note these days.

Instead, you want to keep your paragraphs to 3-4 lines max. This helps create what’s called “eye relief” for the reader–making your content seem shorter and “read” much faster so they’re more likely to actually read it.

Like anything, too much of the same is dull.  So mix it up–and yes, one sentence or even just a phrase can be a paragraph. In fact, this is a great way to emphasize a point or introduce something important. For example…

“Best of all, your purchase is completely guaranteed.”

“But even more important…”

Make Your Content Even More Readable

You can also make your content less daunting and easier to read if you…

  • Break up long sentences–if you find yourself typing “and” stop and ask yourself if it can just be a new sentence. Or phrase masquerading as a sentence. (Yes, that’s OK and usually sounds more conversational too.)
  • Use headings and sub-headings to highlight new sections or topicsand make them meaningful. Since most folks scan a web page or email, you want them to get the gist of your message and where they can find the info they’re most interested in in a snap.
  • Dashes and ellipses are great for giving your copy room to breathe and highlighting important points. Use the “em dash” (which is two hyphens in a row) and no more than three periods in each ellipsis.
  • Bullets, bold, colored fonts and other formatting can help as well with these caveats…

–Like Peter who cried wolf too many times, if you try to emphasize too much, you end up emphasizing nothing at all

–Avoid that bright blue color that usually indicates a hypertext link unless it is, in fact, a link… or you just like annoying readers

–ALL CAPS are good in small doses (while they’re attention-getting they’re also harder to read on a web screen)

–Italics are also harder to read and don’t always show up well with some fonts–so if you use it for a sentence or more, make sure it’s nothing critically important

Underlining used to be a no-no if it wasn’t a hyperlink because people would try to click on it anyway, but that may be changing now since blue non-underlined text has become the predominant link format

–Highlighting on a screen is just flat-out annoying and hurts my eyes–so I avoid reading anything in it and I find a lot of women feel the same. I think it’s also become an automatic sign someone is being “sold to.” But historically, it has tested well. My advice–proceed with caution and test for yourself

In fact, every audience is different so you should always test ANY recommendation for yourself. But even a small improvement in making your website and email copy easier to for visitors and subscribers to read is sure to be a winner.

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