Writing On The Web

7 Content Marketing Questions to Ask
BEFORE You Write a Word

Written by Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Article Ideas, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy

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Here are some key marketing questions to ask and answer before you write a single word of content, if you want to get good content marketing results.

When you outsource writing for your blog, newsletter, video or any type of content marketing, be very clear about your content marketing goals. In fact, it doesn’t matter if you’re outsourcing to another writer or doing it all yourself.

1. What do you want your visitor to do after reading or viewing your article, blog or video?

For example, do you want them to buy a product? Call a phone number? Register on a form with their email address? You should have a specific action you want your visitor to take after reading your article or watching the video.

2. Who’s your target market or audience?

Be very specific here, for example you could say, “My target market is new real estate agents who want to generate more leads.”

3. What makes you better than your competitors?

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Tags: Attracting Clients, blog content, blog writing, content marketing with blogs

Content Marketing Focus: Lessons from Steve Allen

Written by Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

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Having a hard time staying focused on your business content marketing? Focus-schmocus. Sometimes you start off doing one thing and end up an expert at something else. Life is like that.

I look at content marketing as an experiment or adventure. Some things work well and you do more of them. Others, well, let’s hope you haven’t wasted money as well as time.

Steve Allen was a famous comedian who started The Tonight Show, in 1954, long before Johnny Carson became the host (and later Jay Leno). Allen started off in radio but got his first TV job as an announcer for wrestling matches. Here’s what Wikipedia reports:

Allen’s first television experience had come in 1949 when he answered an ad for a TV announcer for professional wrestling. He knew nothing about wrestling, so he watched some shows and discovered that the announcers did not have well-defined names for the holds. When he got the job, he created names for many of the holds, some of which are still used today.

The point I’d like to make is that if Allen hadn’t taken that first job offer, he might not have had the same career path and ended up one of the most respected and admired comedians of all time. He could have just as easily become a jazz pianist in an orchestra.

Instead, he eventually created a new genre of entertainment, the late night comedy-talk show. And he was a pioneer in TV wrestling entertainment. And he still had time to publish over 10,000 songs and win a Grammy for The Gravy Waltz (1963).

Allen wasn’t following any guidelines for his career. He went with what interested him. When people try to follow too many rules and guidelines, for example, for content marketing and social media, they end up with mediocre results. Why end up where everyone else is?

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Tags: Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, Online Marketing

Scribd: Just Another Document Sharing Site?

Written by Christine in Content Marketing

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I may be a late bloomer, but I just discovered Scribd. I found it when I was doing research for my webinar series, Social Media KISS (Keep it Simple and Serene) for Authors.

It is the most popular document sharing site available, with over 50,000 uploads each day. Yes, that number is correct. This is key for those of us that use content marketing online to get found, get known and get clients. Pay attention to what I’m going to tell you…

Scribd clearly has established its authority and web presence. The high online activity makes Scribd ideal for content marketing purposes.

OK, here’s the question: why would you want to market through a site that is based on sharing documents? Document sharing is a great way to promote brand awareness, bring eyeballs to your content & marketing collateral and increase link building (and we love link building.)

Most of my clients have flyers, press releases, articles, etc. and why not share this content as I did with this Mother’s Day brunch menu and and for another client’s article on hospital safety for Alzheimer patients.

If you have all of your marketing materials just sitting on your computer and not getting out into internet land, then you are just wasting space. Today, most of us operate our business and personal life online. Using Scribd makes uploading all of your documents a simple task.

Reasons to love Scribd:

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Tags: Content Marketing, SEO, social media marketing

When Should You Start a New Business Blog?

Written by Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing

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When should you start a new business blog?

Let’s face it, publishing frequently on a business blog is time consuming. Depending on how swift your writing and blogging skills are, it can take you 1-2 hours to publish a post of 350-500 words, including the writing, editing, linking, adding an image, and updating social sites. And you’ll need to do that two times a week, or more.

I usually advise my clients that a blog for your business should focus on communicating the solutions to the problems you solve. That’s pretty clear and direct. While a business may have many products and service offerings, and maybe several different buyer personas, it generally provides unique solutions to customers’ problems.

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Tags: Attracting Clients, blog content, blog marketing, business blogging, content marketing with blogs

Is Your Business Blog Sexy?
4 Simple Ways to Get More Blog Readers

Written by Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing

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When it comes to business blogging, many professionals forget that there is more to it than getting information out on the page. The appeal of business blogs and sites has a lot to do with readers’ impressions.

How can you make your business blog visually appealing, even sexy? Blog formatting is key; in fact, it makes the difference between readers scanning and leaving, and staying to read. Here are four simple ways you can jazz up your site and get more blog readers:

Add images –I have run across many business blogs that are nothing but pages and pages of text. While the information they provide may be valuable, it’s not very visually appealing. Try to add images to your blog posts to increase the appeal of your posts. Smaller images can easily be found for free on sites like Freedigitalphotos.com or you can pay a small amount for access to larger sized stock photos. By providing your blog post with a relevant image you can increase the number of readers and also grab the image search queries for your blog post topic.

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Tags: Attracting Clients, blog formatting, blog marketing, business blogs, content marketing with blogs

Bloggers: Brush Up on Your Writing Skills

Written by Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web

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Business bloggers: just how good are your writing skills?

Most bloggers and those who run small businesses that publish blogs are not natural-born writers, or even trained writers. Most businesspeople studied things such as marketing, communication, or business.

It’s not often they’ve studied English or creative writing. Yet it’s becoming expected that businesses have a well-written blog, as well as expertly-written content on their website.

Some businesses can afford to hire professional writers to author their blog and/or website. This is great, if you can handle the expense. Many small businesses are not willing or able to pay a writer when first starting out. So how can you brush up on your writing skills in order to maintain a professional blog and website for your company?

There are lots of resources for business bloggers available in many different mediums. Here are some ideas:

Books: Good old fashioned reading can definitely help you to review grammar and sentence structure rules. There are many good books out there on writing. A search on Amazon for “writing skill reference books” turns up many titles that are well-reviewed by customers. Most can also be purchased in an eBook format for reading on the go. You could certainly purchase one of these books and read it when you have a few free moments. Any effort you put into learning more about writing well will show in your material.

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Tags: Attracting Clients, blog content, blog writing, business blogging, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs

Oscar Wilde: Advice on Better Blogging

Written by Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, How to...Tips, On Writing Better

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You know that your blog is a key part of your search strategy, but do you know how to get the most out of it? What would Oscar Wilde advise for better blogging?

Thousands of blog guides exist, but do they really help or just cloud the issue further?

This is what you need to know when it comes writing to a better blog, one that’s really readable.

There’s no such thing as ‘blog style.’ However, the easier it is to read the better. Break it up, make it easy for the reader. That means short, sharp paragraphs and the same with sentences. If a paragraph is more than five lines, you’ve gone too far.
People don’t want to read blogs. At least, not ones that have no value. Put your point across early on, and they’ll read the rest of it.
The key to achieving a better blog, whether you measure that by how many people read it, share it on social media, or comment on it, is to make everything as clear and as simple as possible.

Cut It Out

Oscar Wilde once said that you should never use a long word if there is a short one available that means the same thing.

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Tags: Attracting Clients, blog content, blog marketing, blog writing, business blogs, content marketing with blogs, SEO

Online Content Marketing: Let’s Put the “We” Back Into Weblog

Written by Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media Stuff, Writing Great Blog Content

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I get calls from small business professionals who want to start a blog or an e-newsletter. They’ve usually invested money in a nice website, and then suddenly realize that something’s missing… like customers and leads!

They’re genuinely surprised that with the money they spent on their website, no one is coming to see it, indicate they like it, let alone pick up the phone and call.

As for LinkedIn and Facebook, they’re baffled why people don’t interact with them. It doesn’t take a genius (and I’m no genius), but my guess is they have a “me-site,” a “me-blog,” and “me pages” on social media sites.

Instead of generously sharing information about their field of expertise, they share “me-formation.” There’s an “I” in information, but that doesn’t mean you should always talk about yourself. Content should be focused on readers, not you and your business. Sure, people want to know about you, but actually they want to know what you can do for them.

Start everything you write online with a focus on customers and the problems that you can solve for them. Then follow up with building trusting relationships with your readers that lead to sales.

Here’s how online content marketing works for small businesses:

Relationships: Whenever you write content (blog posts, e-newsletter articles, emails), keep the focus on what problems you can solve for your customers. What are their struggles? What do they most desire? Connect with them by writing for them and about them.

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Tags: Attracting Clients, blog content, content marketing with blogs, converting readers to clients, Online Marketing, social media marketing

Small Business Content Marketing: When to Hire A Freelance Writer?

Written by Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Writing for Others, Freelancing

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When should you hire a freelance writer for your blog or website? Most small businesses don’t realize how much writing goes into publishing (and updating) a website or blog. Yet the content on your website or blog is the key component of your content marketing strategy.

In order to get the online results you deserve (leads: phones calls, emails, sales!) your web content should be well-written and SEO optimized — as well-thought out as anything else you do to market yourself and your small business.

So who writes the web content? That’s a good question. For small businesses, it’s often the owner or an employee who takes charge of producing and updating the website and blog content. And that can often be a poor decision. If your content is written by someone who’s not a professional freelance writer and isn’t trained to effectively write for the web, it’s usually fairly obvious.

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Tags: Attracting Clients, business blogging, content marketing with blogs, freelance writing, Writing for the Web

Content Marketing Writers: How’s Your Cognitive Fitness?

Written by Patsi Krakoff in Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing for Others, Freelancing

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What’s the most important thing you can do to improve your skills as a writer, blogger, or content marketer? I’m not sure there’s any one right answer, but my vote goes to working on your cognitive fitness.

That’s a term we’re going to be hearing a lot about. I first read about it in Harvard Business Review in a 2007 article called Cognitive Fitness by Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts.

Originally coined by Michael Merzenich, cognitive fitness refers to the capacity of a person to meet the intellectual demands of life. It is evident in an ability to: