There you are at check-in, about to catch your flight.
And right beside you is your carefully packed carry-on luggage.

In that luggage you have your clothes.
Your shoes.
Your toiletries.
Your surf board.
Your guitar.
Your Christmas tree.

Ah, but you think no one would be so fruity as to put their surf board, and ahem…Christmas tree..and um…guitar in carry-on luggage.

Nope, that stuff would go right in the hold.

But that’s exactly what happens when most people try to increase their expert status. They fill their articles with stuff. They always chunk up.

So what’s chunking up?

Chunking up is a bit like watching a presenter make a Powerpoint presentation. And there’s one topic. And fifty thousand points under that topic. And your eyes start to glaze over, as the presenter starts to go over all of those points, one by one.

Most article writers do the same chunking up.

They fill the article space with so much ‘stuff’ that you as a reader can’t focus on one thing.

And while the article (like the Powerpoint presentation) looks nice and chunky, it’s completely counter productive to portraying yourself as an expert in your field.

To create a factor of expertise, you need to chunk down.

What’s chunking down?

Let’s say you’re talking about ‘travel restrictions’ on airlines.

What are the possible angles you could take?

-Know Before You Go Travel Card
-Bag And Zip For A Short Trip
-The Right Bag For Your Carry-on
-Screening Step-By-Step
-Female business traveler
-Male business traveler
-Traveling with a baby or small child
-Travelers with special needs

The novice writer would dump all of these steps in the ‘carry on’. The expert writer knows better. The expert writer would chunk down and cover each angle in the greatest detail.

So for instance, if I were to write about testimonials, what could I cover?

I’d chunk down and make a list of angles. Then just for good measure I’d chunk down even further.

So I’d go from ‘Testimonials’, which is a broad topic, to a narrow topic like ‘Reverse Testimonials’. And under ‘Reverse Testimonials’, I’d dig deep.

And here’s what I’d get

- The Power of Reverse Testimonials.
- How to Structure (and Get) Reverse Testimonials.
- Three Big Mistakes with Reverse Testimonials.
- How To Source Attention-Grabbing Headlines for Reverse Testimonials.
- How To Create ‘Mirrors’ With Reverse Testimonials.

Notice how the topic got chunked down?

It wasn’t just a factor of testimonials.
But Reverse Testimonials. And then chunkity, chunk, we chopped up the chunks into diverse chunks.

Each with their own curiosity and possibilities.

So why bother to chunk down?

Because chunking down enables you to focus.

As a writer, it’s far easier to focus on the material you’re going to write about. It’s much easier to do the research for the article.

And that’s not all.

The reader finds it easier to focus and consume your information

And because you’re chunking down to the tiniest chunk, suddenly that itty-bitty chunk gets relevance; importance, and becomes practical information.

But most of all, the article becomes memorable. And when you’re memorable, customers remember—and that makes your expertise level go even higher.

So how do you get on the heady road to ‘expertise?’

If you want customers to look forward to what you write–and buy into your products and services, dump the ‘Christmas tree, the surfboard and the guitar.’
Focus on what’s critical for the ‘carry on’.

And expertise will be yours!

Next Step: Don’t forget to look at The Secret Life of Testimonials.

Next Step: Have a look at the Psychotactics Course and Products

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Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.

With last week’s roller coaster stock market news, presidential race, and recession talk, I have made an out-loud personal commitment to go on a “News media fast.”

If I see Biden’s botox face or another BS campaign commercial – I’m gonna HURL!

Yes, this also means I’m skipping the presidential debate tomorrow night too…

At first I didn’t think I could do it… how could I possibly bail on a fellow republican? But Mac will do just fine without me cheering him on.

I am such a news junkie and I’m really interested in seeing how I feel after no news for a whole week. I must confess to being a little scared…disconnected… but I AM GOING to watch my favorite tv programs.  Dancing with the stars, and Greys anatomy.

Ok, and maybe an episode or two of CSI re-runs with my girls.  LOL!

Tune in next week… dp

Have you ever wished you were Bond? James Bond?  Here are 007+007 = fourteen ways to spy on your competitors’ web sites, without breaking any FISA laws.

1. Statbrain – Using several sources, Statbrain’s algorithm computes the number of visitors to a website based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc. Statbrain does not have access to log files or any hit-counter information. Use this as a rough relative benchmark of your traffic to theirs. First run your website and compare the results given by StatBrain to your actual results to get a sense of its accuracy in your category. Figure out what the multiplier is and then try it on a competitor.

2. AideRSS – Find out which of your competitors’ blog posts and topics are engaging people. This should provide you with a list of topics you should be covering. Engagement doesn’t necessarily mean your competitor’s opinion is right or even agreed with — but it does mean the engaged people are interested in the topic and therefore why not your opinion on the topic.

3. FeedCompare – If you use Feedburner to track your rss subscribers you can compare the size of your feed to others. Just like in #1 above, figure out your own multiplier and then compare it to the competition.

4. Xinu Returns – Xinu Runs a report from multiple sites to tell you how well a site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking sites and other technical details. How well are you stacking up against your 5 biggest competitors?

5. Google Trends For Websites – Enter up to five topics and see how often those topics been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most. You can learn more on how to use this from our friend, Avinash Kaushik.

6. Google Insights for Search – With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. Again, Avinash explains how to use this well.

7. Microsoft’s Keyword Forecast tool – This tool forecasts the impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords.

8. Microsoft’s Search Funnels – Customers often perform searches by typing related keywords in specific sequences. This tool helps in visualizing and analyzing the customers’ search sequences. Search Engine guru Mike Grehan explains the value of these query chains.

9. WayBackMachine – Go back in web history to see how your competitors’ site has changed through the years. Look for the things that have stayed consistent, because those might have been the most successful. In the same vein, what have you changed on your own site during that time? It’s easy to lose track, particularly of your own work, and to think of your current site as “how it’s always been”.

10. Web Page Speed Analyzer – Compare the download speed of your pages with those of your competitors to see which are loading quicker. Quicker loading pages tend to have an advantage at converting visitors. This analyzer provides a detail analysis of the page elements. For a rough comparison of two pages side by side try WebSlug. And, WebWait is great when you want to get accurate speed results from the visitors perspective because WebWait pulls down the entire website into your browser, so it takes into account Ajax/Javascript processing and image loading which other tools ignore.

11. Web Page Readability – By comparing the readability score of web pages you can optimize your writing and make sure that you aren’t creating overly complex sentences and paragraphs for your audience.

12. Attention Meter – Attentionmeter gives you a quick snapshot comparing any websites you want (traffic) using Alexa, Compete, and Quancast.

13. Websitegrader – Website Grader is a free tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. Also worth checking out Twittergrader to check on your competitors’ twitter accounts.

14. Google Alerts – set up searches for your competitors, key employees, and keywords to monitor their activity.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it: Try some (or all) of the above techniques and report back on your intriguing espionage! This tape will self-destruct in 10 clicks.

Shhhhh… care to share your spying secrets? What tools or techniques do you use?