Writing copy is an art from. Wait, let me rephrase that. Writing powerful copy that sells is an art form.

I can write well enough, sure, but even as much as I write and have written over 10+ years online, I still have to rely on professional copywriters for my sales copy. Why? Because they’re just better at it than I am!

This article from Entrepreneur.com gives you a nice step in the right direction to becoming a better writer by showing you how to outline your messages into what they call a “copywriting outline”.

The purpose of the copywriting outline is to put all your thoughts about your product in one place. I created the copywriting outline to help small- and medium-size business owners and beginner copywriters complete the necessary background work before copy writing can begin in a methodical, linear way. The copywriting outline provides a single tool where you record all the details about your product or service that you will need to produce compelling copy again and again. It’s also an evolving instrument that you add to as your product or business changes and grows.

Oh yeah, if you’re not reading and subscribing to CopyBlogger.com, you’re missing out.

Writing blogs, or doing videos, or audio, or anything we do in marketing is storytelling. Today I read from one of my favorite children’s books ‘Frog and Toad’ to demonstrate that storytelling is what we should all aspire to be better at.

The copyblogger will tell you this over and over. He tells stories, and he tells them well. Look at other successful people online. Most of them are master storytellers. You should work on it.

You all know how much I love BUMPzee! Well, I love it even more now that I was chosen as one of the select few to manage my very own community while it’s still in beta. So what community did I make?

Introducing the ‘How To Be Successful Online’ BUMPzee Community

Bookmark this: http://www.bumpzee.com/onlinesuccess/

What is the community all about?

The How To Be Successful Online community is for anyone who is interested in learning how to be successful on the Internet. The blogs and members of this community will focus on and discuss the world of Internet marketing, professional blogging and making money online. Join today for free, or submit your related blog for free as well.

That description you just read is really what JimKukral.com is all about, and many, many others like it that I read every day. Like those blogs, I don’t write about one topic like affiliate marketing only, but rather, I focus on writing about all types of online marketing, with the specific goal of trying to help businesses, brands and individuals be successful online.

Do you fit that mold? Are you someone who’s looking for more information about how to be successful online? Join the community for free!

Do you have a blog that talks about ways to be successful online? Submit your blog to the community for free!

FYI. I’ve preloaded the community with about 14 blogs, listed below (in no particular order & if I missed your blog, I’m sorry, just go add it).

If your blog is on the list below, go sign up and claim your blog, and most importantly, add the bump widget to your entries and sidebar. If your blog isn’t in the list below, what are you waiting for, submit it!

Not sure about BUMPzee yet. Read this.

Super Affiliate Marketing Blog
Earners Blog
Revenews
WaynePorter.com
Shoe Money
CostPerNews
Graywolf’s SEO Blog
Copyblogger
Andy Wibbels
Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.com
The Blog Herald
Ask the Blogger!
901am
ProBlogger Blog Tips
Jim Kukral Online Marketing Ideas

Oh yeah, and make sure to check out the other new beta BUMPzee community managed by CostPerNews’s Sam Harrelson.

Called “Next Gen Marketing”. In a nutshell, this community on BUMPzee will serve as an aggregator of blogs and insights focusing on developing trends and emerging tactics to address the rising tide of social media, attention economies and “web2.0″ platforms. It should be fun to see the discussions which arise there.

There’s also some new interface changes at BUMPzee too, so check it out!

So for my first victim, I call out the Copyblogger himself, Brian Clark.

Question: Brian, you mentioned here that “you were an unknown a year or so ago”.

Now I look at your blog and see close to 15k rss subscribers and tons of traffic & comments, all in a short year.

How did you do that? It can’t just be about good writing. I know lots of good writers. How did you become so successful so quickly?

I just came across an article over at Lee Odden’s TopRankBlog.com by one of his contributors entitled ‘4 Ways to Successfully Re-Post Others Content’.

Re-Posting other peoples content is a great way to feel included in a conversation and get additional traffic. However, simply copying their post word for word won’t give any additional value to your visitors. So here are 4 ways to successfully re-post someone else’s content.

I do believe the author of this post isn’t saying “steal other people’s content for a quick, easy way to blog success”. However, I do think that some bloggers may take it that way. When I read the piece, that’s how it came off to me.

And looking at a few of the comments, I think it did to others.

Comment example 1: Thanks for this article. Re-posting is key to any successful blog.

Comment example 2: Very good tips. People think they have to come up with content from scratch and it kills their blog productivity. “Riffing” off of others is what the blogosphere uses to take a bit of a break and hand kudos out to the latest person in their ’sphere to do the hard part: from scratch!

The fear here is that new bloggers will read this and think that reposting blog content is a way to build a strong audience. It’s not. You build a strong readership through original content, with the occasional “hop-on” and attibute to someone else’s original content. (Just like I’m doing here).

I think the problem with his post is the headline and the word “reposting”. Reposting to me sounds like scraping and stealing. The copyblogger could help out here perhaps.

The moral of this story? Think carefully about the words you choose to express a meaning in your blogs.

You’re an expert at something, right? Or maybe you know a heckuva lot about the topic of your blog, right? At least I hope so.

Give your knowledge away.

Here’s a perfect example. The Copyblogger had a simple request for his readers yesterday. His headline is written: ‘Let’s Remix a Few More of Your Headlines’.

Last fall, I invited readers to submit posts they had written, and I chose several and rewrote the titles. Quite a few people seemed to get a lot out of that process, so rather than writing yet another article about headlines, I thought we should do it again.

Here’s how it works:

Simply drop the URL of the post or article you want considered in the comment section. I will pick several from the submissions, rewrite the headlines in an upcoming post, and provide explanations for the changes I make.

He’s up to 80 comments and requests for headline reviews so far.

So stop for a second and think. What can you offer to your readers that solves problems and helps them? Think about it, figure it out, then offer it up, and keep doing it.
That’s how you build an audience and a reputation for being an expert.

Note: You can see me doing this in action at AsktheBlogger.com.