As Steve Rubel says, hopefully this will be the last blog meme of the year. I am not surprised to score as a Wonder Woman, but probably not for the reasons the test asks about…I will say no more. I’m just going to bask in merriment…
Your results:
You are Wonder Woman
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You are a beautiful princess with great strength of character.  |
Newsletter Nuggets – December 28, 2006
…tips and tricks for writing great ezines and blogs
Table of Contents
1. A Note from Patsi – Ideal Client Contest Voting Is Open
2. End of Year Article Sale
3. January 07 Featured Article: Open Source Innovation and Other Weird Ideas That Work
4. What’s New on the Blogs?
A note from Patsi –
The voting is open over at www.BloggingandBeyond.com, for our Ideal Client who will be showcased on our new Internet radio show. Finalists and others will be able to participate in a parallel mentorship group that runs simultaneously to the 13-week show.
We will coach our chosen Ideal Client live for 15-20 minutes, on the Blogging and Beyond Show, every Thursday morning starting January 11 at 11 a.m. ET, continuing through April 15. Our show “Blogging and Beyond” is produced on VoiceAmerica™ Channel.
Our goal is to show our listeners how someone can have a real marketing presence and start leveraging the Internet using simple online tools, in a relatively short time.
You can apply for the Blogging and Beyond Mentor Program (only $97 until December 31 at midnight ET). The information page isn’t quite finished yet, but it will be on Friday. Just email me for information on how you can be part of this program at the special price: Patsi@blogsquad.biz.
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End of Year Article Sale: Here’s how you can get article content you can rewrite and use as your own to suit your executive or business coaching ezine and blog purposes:
Until midnight December 31, all articles are on sale at 30% off, if you use this link to select and purchase:
http://snipurl.com/Article_Sale_30
All the best to you and your loved ones over this Holiday weekend. Have fun.
Finally, after a lot of discussion over The Blog Squad phones, Denise and I whittled our 100+ applicants down to five finalists for our Ideal Client contest. Boy was that hard to do! There were so many savvy professionals who applied, who would be great to mentor.
I was amazed at the niches and specialty products these people have established for themselves. And I know that with a little help with Internet marketing, most of the applicants will be successful in the months to come. We are priveleged to be able to work with a small group of them in our Blogging and Beyond mentoring group which will run simulataneously with our Internet radio show starting January 11. (More on that later!)
Want to know who they are and what they do? Please visit BloggingandBeyond.com and vote for your favorite!
Here’s what to do if you struggle to find and create content for your e-newsletters:
Always keep the reader in mind. It helps to clearly define and describe your ideal reader. He/she is probably similar to your ideal client, so that step should be easy.
Determine what your ideal reader wants to know. You can probably estimate this pretty well, and you should also explore this with them. Ask. Ask in your newsletter, on your blog, through surveys, even on your website by creating an “ask” page whereby they can submit questions. You might also provide incentives to readers for submitting questions.
Remember to use your content antennae, scanning for these two criteria:
1. What do readers want to know?
2. What can your business do for them?
Next, you can turn to these resources to become inspired for content:
• Where is the pain?
• What current event ties in with readers’ problems?
• What client situation can you use as a case study?
Do you warm up before writing? Well, you wouldn’t start off your work-out without it, would you? There’s an interesting post over on Michael Stelzner’s Writing White Papers Blog that’s got people commenting on how they start their writing tasks.
Michael asks readers, "Do you immediately start writing with great quality and consistently? Or (if you are like me), do you need a little warm-up before those fingers start producing exceptional content?"
I like to play a few rounds of Majong Master while the coffee is brewing; this gets the hand-eye-fingers going on the keyboard and fires up the pattern recognition parts of the brain.
Then I try to avoid opening up email so as not to use fresh energy and brain power on mundane tasks. Once I have a good start on whatever piece I’m writing that day, then I’ll go see what those pesky clients want…(If you are a client, I’m just kidding! I love hearing from you!)
What are your writing rituals? Do you just dive in, or warm up with exercises first?
I’m a bit early on the New Year’s goals thing, but I was thinking after writing a post over on Build a Better Blog about Gartner’s predictions that the numbers of blogs will peak and fizzle at 100 million in 2007.
Paul Chaney commented to the original post over at Business Blog Consulting that these numbers don’t have meaning for businesses who are just waking up to the effectiveness of blogs, and he predicts that 2007 will be the year that blogs "go deep."
Then I asked readers what that might mean: If you’ve started blogging, what does this mean for you and your business…how will you "go deep?"
To me, it means writing more, revealing more about myself and my business, and getting more interactions from and conversations with readers/clients/customers/peers.
I realize that this blog is specialized to the point of being very trendily entrenched in the Long Tail… it will never have large numbers of readers. I try to focus on writing issues as they pertain to newsletters and blogs, and we all know that people don’t wake up craving that.
But I will try to write more frequently about the issues of writing and publishing ezines and blogs, so that readers can learn more, and maybe even use this blog as a forum or place they can ask their burning questions about email marketing and ezines. If I don’t know the answer, I probably know where you can go to find what you need.
And the other thing I could do is to share more personally, about my own processes while working. This is still a business blog… although I can’t resist sharing humor like the elf yesterday, I’m not going to tell you stupid personal stuff. It’s all so very fascinating, I know, but you’ll just have to use your imaginations…
How will use your ezines and blogs to "go deep?" What does this mean to you?
Thanks to Debbie Weil, I wasted an hour creating this goofy dancing elf of myself. But it did give me a belly-ache full of chuckles, instead of doing my work…
Go here to see my version of Debbie’s Elfamorphitization…
[Well, folks, I spoke too soon, the Office Max Elf Yourself site seems to be experiencing server issues; the links here are apparently only good for 24 hours, and when I tried to create a new link, the system kept giving error messages. I’ll try again later – updated 12/20/06 at 9:30 a.m. PT]
Here’s Denise doing the Holiday Hip Hop!
Who said white elves can’t dance?
The point is, this clever little thing will get passed around millions of times over the Holidays, and all thanks to good spirit over at Office Max. I raise my elf cap to the bright minds over there.
This is important so, pay attention. Time Magazine has declared YOU to be the Person of the Year. Why? Because of all the citizen journalists, citizen marketers, and extraordinary people participating on the Internet.
Denise and I have been waving that flag for the last couple of years, but now it is official: the Internet just got a whole lot easier for the average business person to use. The Blog Squad wants you to be a part of what Silicon Valley calls "Web 2.0".
CNN.com reports that, yes, there is also the stupidity of crowds, but there is also a wave of collaboration never seen before.
The question is, how will you participate? Are you still chugging along thinking your website will pull in clients? Good luck with that. As my nephews would say, "that is soooo old school."
Here’s an idea: For 2007 start a blog for your business and see what happens. I dare you. Be my guest. Here are a few resources for you to consider:
You can even set up your newsletter on a blogging platform and send it out through an email service like Feedblitz.com… That way people can respond immediately to your ideas and participate on the Web. And guess what? Everything posted on the web gets indexed, making it easier for people to find you.
