Claude C. Hopkins never wrote a blog post. He didn’t need to optimize for mobile devices or decide whether to use Flash. He never ran a PPC campaign or designed an infographic.

Yet, at the turn of the 20th Century, he created a blueprint for the industry that still guides the decisions we make in today’s marketing arenas.

His first book, Scientific Advertising, is regarded by many as the advertiser’s bible, and it’s chock-full of valuable insight on reaching your audience and converting them. Here are a few highlights:

1. “Forget yourself entirely. Have in your mind a typical prospect, interested enough to read about your product. Keep that prospect before you. Seek in every word to increase your good impression.”

In other words, write to your target audience, not yourself. What sounds good to you might not be enough to move potential buyers, or worse, it might turn them off.

You might be thinking “the fastest on the market” has a good ring to it while your prospects are looking for hard numbers. Or maybe you’re talking about all of the awards your service has won when they’re more interested in what it can do for them.

One of the best ways to keep the focus on your prospects is to visualize just one of them. Picture a face, give her a name, and write to that one person.

Even if you’re just writing a Google ad, don’t worry about what sounds good or if the words “pop.” Instead ask yourself, “what 130 characters does this one prospect need to read for them to click through?”

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It happens to all of us: you’re cruising along, powering through projects and assignments, and suddenly you hit a wall. Bam. That once roaring river of ideas has dried up, and there isn’t even a puddle left to get you going.

So, now you’re sitting there, staring at a blank canvas or a blinking cursor wondering what to do. Switch to a different task? Take a walk? Maybe you should call it a day and reengage after a good night’s sleep. But what if time isn’t on your side? What if a deadline is fast approaching and you need to get the wheels turning right now?

I can’t guarantee any of the following exercises will work for you, but give one a try next time you’re in a pinch. They don’t take long, and they’ve jumpstarted my right brain on more than a few occasions.

1. Dive into a picture.

Find a photo blog. Any one will suffice as long as the subject matter has nothing to do with the assignment you’re working on. My go-to is shorpy.com, a stockpile of high-res, vintage photography with a focus on early 1900s America.

Move quickly through each post until a picture makes you stop.

Look closely at that picture, and jot down short answers to the following questions:

• What is the most interesting thing about this picture? The more specific, the better.
• What is the story behind this picture? Make it up; unleash your imagination.
• What’s going to happen next? Again, nothing is off limits.

If you don’t hold back, you should come up with something interesting. Now quit stalling and sick that imagination on the pesky project you’re stuck on.

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Since its inception in 2005, reddit – the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet” – has become one of the web’s most popular social news sites.

How does it work? Users, known as redditors, submit content that other redditors vote on using “upvotes” and “downvotes” to determine its value to the community and its position on the site.

Content must be submitted to an appropriate subcategory (called a subreddit), and submissions with the most upvotes in the shortest amount of time across all subreddits land on reddit’s coveted front page. Earning a spot there can mean getting your content in front of hundreds of thousands of people in a single day.

The problem is there are only 25 spots on the front page – two of which are perpetually occupied by the day’s cutest animal pictures (from the popular subreddit: /r/aww).

So how do you make it to the front page, of the front page, of the internet?

With so much content vying for so little real estate, there’s no guaranteed method, and luck is a huge factor. But there is a strategy that will increase your chances – a strategy that I used to promote a friend’s video to the third highest spot on the front page yesterday.

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