In his 2002 book The Big Red Fez, marketing author Seth Godin critiqued selected websites and how they helped or hindered their visitors. He likened the website visitor to a monkey looking for a banana. If the banana is too hard to find, then the monkey will go elsewhere. Today, are websites making it easier to find the banana or is the furry guy starving?

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Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of the best-selling book The Long Tail, once stated that “your brand isn’t what you say it is, it is what Google says it is.” In a world where most website visitors find your company through search engines, this statement seems truer than ever. When search engines assign the same weight to bloggers as multi-national corporations, how much control can you exert over your brand?

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Curious about what websites some of the top professionals in your industry consult on a daily basis? Webcopyplus recently surveyed people we admire in web marketing and related professions to find out what they’re reading online, for both professional inspiration and general interest.  We hope their answers shed some light on what drives them, and perhaps inspire you to broaden your daily reading.

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As a fellow web marketing professional — whether you’re a web copywriter, web designer, web developer, or a business owner interested in learning about the best way to market your business online — I’m sure you follow a plethora of like-minded people on Twitter.

You’ve probably also noticed a pattern in the kind of headlines that enter your feed, some at a more irritating frequency than others.   These headlines purposely target high pressure points, and get incessantly regurgitated as a result.

Here’s how to recognize these repeat offenders and why you’d be better off to spend your clicks elsewhere.

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Most web copywriters argue that web copy should be more direct and conversational than most print materials; but how can you adopt this tone without compromising your brand identity? With a few rules and techniques you can set a tone that is appropriate for the web while respecting your brand.

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How long has language been around? For 50,000 years, language has aided human intellectual evolution and social advancements. Now the emergence of social media puts idea sharing, information exchange and our collective progress into hyper drive.

For generations, information and ideas have been shared through theater, schools and media. Books, newspapers, magazines, radio and TV sped the distribution and reach of language to the masses. The advent of the Internet hurled language onto an information super highway. With social media fully embedded in the mainstream, humans are now able to instantaneously tap into, and influence, the ideological pulse of the planet. So is this a good thing?

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For decades, the line between what we need and what we want has been blurring, leading to overconsumption and a range of environmental issues. Who’s to blame, and what can be done?

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Why do some ideas stick, while others silently slip away into oblivion? Made to Stick authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath pored over hundreds of winning ideas and saw, “over and over,” these same six principles at work.

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