Patsi Krakoff | Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Author Archive for Patsi Krakoff – Page 173

Get to the Point (with Style)!

By Patsi Krakoff

Saturday, November 27th, 2004

Everybody says to forget blogging over the US Thanksgiving Holidays, but I have a feeling this is a great time to catch people at their computer! Maybe not, but then some people I know like to catch up on researching how to write better, more effective ezines.

I am a BIG fan of Michael J. Katz of Blue Penguin Development; he always writes with so much personality. I feel like I know his little boy and his Aunt Esther. He brings his family into his ezines, yet there’s always a point to it- and it’s always good stuff about writing better ezines. So while he’s teaching, he is also sharing himself and creating a feeling of humor and familiarity with his readers.

If you’ve got time- (Come on, who doesn’t over the weekend?)- then click over to his piece called Break On Through To The Other Side, published Nov. 19. It’s got a few chuckles about his Aunt Esther.

But if you’re in a hurry, just read this excerpt. It’s about how important it is to get to the point, so here is the excerpt:

From Michael J. Katz:

I’m here to tell you that when it comes to effective communication with an audience, my Aunt Esther had it right — essence matters more than facts.

Many newsletters suffer from the same "good information; poor delivery" syndrome. The facts are there, but the reader is not able to — or not interested in — finding them. With that in mind, I offer some suggestions for being heard and appreciated:

Pick one idea. I always find it kind of funny that the biggest worry people have about producing a newsletter is "running out of content," and yet the biggest problem I see is "too much content in each issue." You don’t need to explain your entire field of expertise in each issue any more than you need to review everything you know each time you eat lunch with a client. Break it up into little pieces. You’ll have more content to choose from next time and your readers will find it easier to hear your message.
Boil it down. An E-Newsletter is really just a glorified email, and mixed in with all the jokes, appointment confirmations and pieces of information that fly into our respective in-boxes every day, this is not a medium that lends itself well to lots of detail. Be prepared to edit, simplify and throw out information on your way to getting to the heart of the matter.
Speak like a human being. I don’t know who started the rumor that business communication must be formal to be valuable, but it seems to have caught on nonetheless — that’s an opportunity for you and me. Your readers will find it a breath of fresh air to "hear" the people behind the newsletter. Nobody is interested in reading one more "critical communication" from a company that claims to be, "the leading provider of cross platform broadband solutions" (or whatever). If you can’t read your newsletter out loud to your spouse without bursting out laughing, you’ve got too much marketing-speak in there.

Bottom Line: You’ve got 800 words of opportunity each month to get your message across. Sure you’ve got to have something useful to give your audience, but remember that these people are busy, tired and often just plain bored. Make your publication the one they wait for and you’ll never again live in fear of the delete key.

All the best,

Michael J. Katz
Founder and Chief Penguin

Blue Penguin Development helps professional service firms and sole proprietors get clients, by showing them how to communicate effectively with the people they already know. We specialize in the development of electronic newsletters.

Click here for an overview of our services

Call us: 508-478-6258
Email us: ContactUs@BluePenguinDevelopment.com
Web us: www.BluePenguinDevelopment.com
Climb the tree house:

28 West Elm Street, Hopkinton MA 01748

USA

Categories : Writing Better Ezines

Leading With Values: Walking the Talk

By Patsi Krakoff

Friday, November 19th, 2004

Need an article for your coach ezine? Here is a synopsis of a Leadership article on Values, available at www.customizednewsletters.com.

Leading with Values:
Walking the Talk
(c) 2004 Patsi Krakoff

All organizations have a mission statement and a set of values or guiding principles. They include such items as Integrity, Customer Service, Quality, Respect, High Performance, Teamwork, Leadership, and Innovation. Often these words are prominently displayed on plaques, posters, laminated cards, and even screen savers.

But when values are ignored and people don’t live by them, the culture becomes hypocritical. Employees lose respect for the organization’s leaders. It is one more reason people disengage from their work.

When values are put into action, however, people feel energy, enthusiasm, and the drive to go beyond the mediocre. When people connect to company values that resonate with their own personal beliefs, they have even more commitment, higher productivity, and better engagement with customers. The end results show up on the bottom line.

Leaders have to take personal responsibility for their organization’s values and for making sure their people share a common set of principles. This is not easy. It is one thing to agree with lofty words and ideals; it is quite another to translate ideals into action. A leader is accountable for ensuring that people not only know the values, but also put them into practice.

“We judge ourselves by our intentions. The rest of the world judges us by our actions.” – Eric Harvey

Strategies for Leading with Values in Action

How does a leader put values into action? What questions does a leader need to ask himself or herself to clarify what is needed to lead by, with, and through values? Here are six common sense leadership strategies to consider, adapted from the book Leading with Values by Bud Bilanich (2004):

Know your values

Walk your talk

Teach values to your people

Remove obstacles to working with values

5. Reward and recognize those who live the values

Redirect those who aren’t working with values

Focus, Attention, and Persistence

As a leader, you must never lose focus on values. There is always a value present whatever the situation, even when it is buried under detail work, financial data, or other seemingly ordinary tasks. Look for the value. Point it out and remind people how their work is an important expression of values in action. It is your job as a leader to constantly teach, recognize, reward, and help course corrections where necessary.

Every member of your workforce is responsible for values-driven business practices, but they look to you, the leader, for living examples of how the values translate into action. You set the tone. When you take a cavalier approach to values or lose sight of them—even if temporarily—you give your team members permission to do the same. When you refuse to give in to pressures and obstacles and remind everyone of the important values at stake, your people will have an excellent model to follow.

The greatest challenges leaders in top positions face are ethical dilemmas—for example, questions of choosing between long-term and short-term gains. It is often a problem of choosing between right and right. There are no easy answers to some business problems. Using values will help you with clarity and decisiveness.

Are You Looking for Articles?

By Patsi Krakoff

Thursday, November 18th, 2004

Here is a synopses of a new article posted over at http://www.customizednewsletters.com/featured/index.html.

Here are some brief points covered in the full article:

The Global Empathy Deficit: Two Lessons
© 2004 Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.
Customized Newsletter Services

"…We’ve got a budget deficit that’s important, we’ve got a trade deficit that’s critical, but what I worry most is our empathy deficit.” – Interview in O Magazine with Barack Obama.

Perhaps this is not only a US national concern but a global crisis: people are dividing into camps and fighting one another with no mention of sitting down to dialogue.

We, as global human beings living on a shrinking planet, have to stop the insanity, start talking, and stop the fighting.

The fighting is not only among warring nations. It goes on in corporations, small businesses, between entrepreneurs, in schools, in neighborhoods, and in families. There is a lack of talking, listening, and empathizing between people. This is especially true when they are different from us in some way.

We lose patience with others not like us or not of the same viewpoint. We stop listening. And consequently, we lose our ability to understand and find solutions.

We are missing opportunities for talking and dialoguing about what really matters. Dialoguing of course means listening and hearing what the other person is saying. It is not a monologue. It requires more than listening—it requires empathy.

Lesson # 1 in Empathy

Empathy has several ingredients. Most people understand empathy to be “walking in someone else’s shoes.” It is more than that. Information when communicated to us by another human being is processed through the limbic system in the brain, the center for emotions and memory.

The trick here is not to get lost in our own memories and emotions. This requires self-management so quick that it is out of our awareness. We sense that the reason we feel sad that our neighbor is telling us that their dog died is that we have also experienced loss and know what it must be like for them.

Lesson #2 of Empathy

People usually have a tendency to jump in and want to do something to help too soon. They want to get out of their own discomfort by solving the problem. Often they don’t take the time to really understand what the real problem is before offering solutions. This is how many people come across as NOT being empathetic, when they actually are. They respond too quickly with the wrong solutions.

So, the next important step after lesson #1 (feel the feelings and just listen), is to communicate back to the person that you are hearing them on a deep and personal level.

Simply state back to the person some of what you’ve heard, without interpretation or distortion. This communication requires a deep and honest caring about how other people feel, avoiding judgments and any attempts to minimize the importance of feelings or offering advice.

Like so much, empathy begins with developing ourselves individually, permeates our families and is taught to our children, and then must be communicated with the leaders we entrust to deal with other countries. A continued lack of empathy will result in global degradation.

————————————

Please note: This article and a list of others are available for your use for a small fee, with full reprint rights. You can use the purchased full article as your own, either as is, or modify and blend it with your own materials. Let me know if you need editing or formatting help. You may not use the synopsis without giving credit to the author, myself, including web site url!

Categories : Article Ideas

Last Chance: Two Seats Available

By Patsi Krakoff

Tuesday, November 16th, 2004

Do you want to learn how to create a good coach ezine that gets results?

Just tell me how bad you want it and I will give you free access to the four session teleclass on Effective Newsletters & Ezines! Why would I do this? Because I want to get more participants in order to make this a better class.

I have two spots left to fill this teleclass, and if you want to come for free, just email me. You can also nominate a worthy colleague. We start Wed. Nov. 17 at 8 pm. That’s tomorrow, so don’t wait.

This class is being audio recorded and transcribed. I will take you through these four classes and include important articles and work sheets so that you create or improve your ezine by the end of class Dec. 15.

Here is the class format:

Class one: Nov. 17: Overview, why you need an ezine
Work sheet for ezine decision points

Class two: Dec. 1: Content is king!
How to creat good content
Using OPC (Other People’s Content)

Class three: Dec. 8: Formatting, text, PDF & HTML
Distribution issues

Class four: Dec. 15: Calls to Action
                           Getting results
                           Building numbers, subscribers
                           Driving traffic
                           The wave of the future: Blogs

So, if you’ve ever wanted help with your ezine, this is the way to get it. These two last spots are scholarships open only to those who can’t afford or who don’t want to pay the fee, AND who are serious about creating a successful coach ezine.

If you can afford it and want to register, go here: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=109267

This will take you to the Teledevelop.com web site. Scroll down to the class Effective Newsletters and Ezines and register for $97. (These class dates are listed incorrectly, the class goes until Dec. 15, skipping the week of US Thanksgiving.) The e-book, Secrets of Successful Ezines is included when you pay and register for the class.

Act quickly, because these two spots won’t be left after today: email me now!

Here’s to your success!

Patsi

Categories : Ezine & Blog Classes

Secrets of Successful Coach Ezines Revealed!

By Patsi Krakoff

Sunday, November 14th, 2004

Almost last chance to sign up for the teleclasses on creating Effective Coach Ezines! You get a free copy of my new e-book, Secrets of Successful Ezines, with pages on creating great content, good formatting and distribution resources.

And four classes will cover the good, the bad, and the terrific for creating or improving an ezine that gets clients to contact YOU!

There are templates and samples ezines, plus over 50 interviews with coaches who have created successful ezines with over 10,000 subscribers!

Here is what two reviewers are saying about the book Secrets of Successful Ezines:

"Relationship marketing is about creating visibility and offering exceptional value to current and potential clients. A professional website and e-newsletter are two of the most important components of an effective coaching practice business development strategy. Patsi Krakoff’s e-book can show you how to create a state of the art coach Ezine that your clients will love and that will help your business thrive.She has done a terrific job of creating a complete Ezine resource that will be invaluable to coaches.

Patsi Krakoff’s ezine e-book for coaches is a gem! She has put her heart and soul and boundless energy into doing your homework on Ezines for you. It is jam packed with great ideas, practical tips, helpful resources, and just about everything you will need to know to create and distribute an Ezine.

Creating an Ezine can be fun and can help your business grow exponentially. Patsi, warmly and with humor coaches you through changing your mindset about the work it takes to create a high content and personable online publication. She takes you through all of the steps to make the whole process easy and enjoyable. Patsi describes the process with great examples that will help you improve your existing Ezine or inspire you to get started creating one today.

Patsi provided me with a number of practical ideas that I am going to implement immediately. My business has dramatically increased distributing my Working Resources Newsletter that Patsi helped me create. She can do the same for you. Clients love the valuable information that helps them improve their personal and professional lives. Patsi’s Ezine e-book is a priceless resource!"

Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist and Executive Coach
www.workingresources.com

"Secrets of Successful Ezines" is a resource you must have in your e-marketing toolbox. Patsi Krakoff and Elge Premeau have created an incredibly detailed workbook and resource for coaches, and really any solo professional, to use to create and publish an effective ezine. There are a lot of e-books out there about writing ezines, but this is the most comprehensive I’ve yet to come across in my 8 years marketing on the Internet. Not only do you get a detailed plan and workbook for creating your ezine, you also get interviews with successful ezine publishers and samples of "the good, the bad, and the terrific" ezines that are being published. To have this kind of access to successful coaches and samples of their work would cost you hundreds of hours of time to track down. The value of this information alone is worth far more than the cost of the ebook.

Denise Wakeman, Chief Implementer
Next Level Partnership
http://www.biztipsblog.com

To sign up for the class starting Nov. 17, Wed. 8 p.m. ET, go here:

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=109142

Class meets Nov. 17, skips week of US Thanksgiving, and continues on Wednesdays until Dec. 15. We guarantee you will have your ezine up and running and out the door by then! The class is $97 and includes the e-book for free.

Hope to "see" you on the class,

Patsi

P.S.

If you can’t attend, register and we will send you the e-book and audio recordings.

Categories : Ezine & Blog Classes

Get More Results from Your Ezine!

By Patsi Krakoff

Thursday, November 11th, 2004

Greetings!

Just got back from cold Quebec City where I was thawed by the warm welcome of old friends and subscribers at the ICF conference and the Executive Summit Pre-conference. But wow, it’s great to be back in sunny Ajijic, Mexico!

I had some blogging withdrawals; funny how this blog thing grows on you and you feel like sharing every little thing…okay, okay I’ll get to the point!

Do you still struggle with your ezine? Is it the content, the formatting, or the distribution? Do you know how some coaches have grown their subscriber lists from 50 to over 10,000 in just 3-4 years? Many have, you know. I am going to share everything I’ve learned with you about ezines in a new e-book and telecourse.

Clue: A great coach ezine gets clients to call you, to email you, and to buy your products and services…without being promotional!

Let me take the struggle out of the ezine tasks and put the joy back into your coaching practice! I’ll show you how… if you’ll give me a little money and some of your time. I’ll give you solid value and SAVE you time, money AND energy!

Next Wednesday, Nov. 17 is the first teleclass on creating Effective Coach Ezines. We guarantee you will learn the Secrets of Successful Ezines and during our five week workshop you will have an ezine either greatly improved or ready for publishing. That’s right, the classes, the work book and the fr*e*e* e-book, will get your ezine up and out the door.

Here’s what one person says about this program (and he is a thought leader in coaching and a great teacher):

I recommend Patsi‘s Customized Newsletters and Keys to Effective Ezines course.

Patsi can help anyone, whether you are new to Ezines or someone who is more

experienced and needs to tune up your newsletters. Without exception, you’ll NEVER spend money on something as leveraging as Ezines. I’ve built a Ezine database of more than 9,000 subscribers using Ezines and YOU can too.— Mike Jay, Master Business Coach, founder www.b-coach.com

So, here’s what ya gotta do: this will cost ya, but it will be worth it. For $97, I want you to go register here and get the e-book, for free ($47 intro price until Nov. 20), coaching on your ezine, a $47 discount coupon for any services or article at Customized Newsletter Services. You will be glad you did, because you will have a great ezine to be proud of and you will start growing your database and get results! And we’ll even hold your hand cyber-connectively.

Go here: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=108621 and you will see the telecourse on Effective Ezines listed half way down when you scroll.

(You missed our free intro class Nov. 9, sorry!) But further down on the list at www.teledevelop.com, you will find the description of the class which meets four Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET until Dec. 15…(we skip the week of Thanksgiving because of vacations- I will be in Acapulco and I’m sure you will be somewhere having fun too!)

This class will be audio recorded so if you can’t make it, register anyway, and you will get the audio recordings and the e-book including the discount coupons and over $500 in valuable bonus services and downloads. We will coach you personally to create your ezine.

Seems like a lot of dough? Well, if you can solve your ezine problems and save time and get more results from your ezine, would it be worth it? Is it worth it to avoid the 10 most common mistakes coaches make with their ezines? Is it worth it to be able to handle your ezine in less than 1/2 day per month instead of a whole day or more?

I say, get back to coaching and earning the money you deserve!

Let’s face it, in today’s interconnected Internet market you can’t afford to skip an ezine. You must publish quality content AND regularly. Don’t be seen as an inconsistent writer, or your readers will lose the trust and connection that an ezine can provide.

I gotta get off my soap box. Somebody stop me. I am worse than a preacher when it comes to ezines.

I have been called the ezine evangelist. But that sounds so righteous…not sure I like that. Need a nickname that’s a little bit more rebellious or renegade. Any suggestions?

Seriously, this class and the e-book Secrets to Successful Ezines fills a gap because it is specialized for coaches, consultants and professional services providers, even therapists and psychologists can use this course. Other classes and e-books have been published but most are for promoting small businesses. Coaching and professional services are different, and your ezines must have other elements in order to be effective and get results. You want to write it, publish it, get read and get clients!

End of promotional rant, just do it, come sign up and you won’t regret it. Money back guaranteed. We’ll even have some fun, too!

Sure, ezines can be fun! That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Having a great job, great clients, and a great life.

Comments, feedback? Who’s game?

Patsi, the ezine evangelist looking for a new nick-name!

Categories : E-Books

The Highest Goal for Your Ezine?

By Patsi Krakoff

Monday, October 25th, 2004

Does Your Ezine Connect with Your Highest Purpose?

If you are just starting an ezine, or if you’re not
satisfied with the results you’ve been getting, you may need
to go back to the basics.

Examine why you are publishing

If you are writing and publishing an ezine to get more
clients, you may wish to reconsider your true reasons. It
may be true: you are in business and to get more clients,
you must reach more people and let them know who you are and
what you have to offer. Getting your ezine published and
growing your readership base is the means to do this.

(If your reasons for publishing an ezine go not much further
than, “Well, everyone else is doing it and I was told that
to be a successful coach I must write and publish a regular
ezine,” you are in trouble. But you know that.)

For coaches, there are really two purposes to writing and
publishing an ezine: a higher purpose reason, and a business
objective reason. A lot has been written already about how
important ezines are to growing your business and getting
more clients.

But that’s not enough.

What are the real reasons, those deep ones—the driving
motivations that put you here today, into the position of
being a coach, of wanting to coach people, of wanting to
tell people things that can make their lives better?

If you have been through coach training (please, if you
haven’t, do so NOW, or stop calling yourself a coach!), you
have already done a lot of course work on finding true
purpose, both for yourself and for your coaching clients.

Make no mistake, finding true purpose is one of the hardest
tasks humans can undertake. We are complex individuals
living with contradictions and competing commitments (see
Kegan for more discussion on this subject). We are at
different developmental stages (see Graves, Beck, Vaillant,
Hudson and others on adult life stages). Human beings have
differing behavior styles and thought processing preferences
(see Jung, Spranger, Marsten for example). We are a mix of
motivations and drives (see Maslow, McClelland, Reise, Herzberg,
Lawrence & Nohria and others).

What Drives YOU?

What driving force wakes you up with an idea for your ezine,
and causes you to get up with enthusiasm and energy that
cannot be satisfied until your article is written? What
contribution are you striving to make?

What do you feel you MUST do in your lifetime? How can you
further those desires through writing your ezine?

This is work you should be involved in now, everyday and
for the rest of your life. After some clarification on what
your true purpose and higher goal in life is, there is
continual checking back with alignment to your work.

Gotta Read This

One of the best books on this
essential process is Michael Ray’s The Highest Goal: the
Secret that Sustains You in Every Moment (2004) published by
Berrett-Koehler (ISBN 1-57675-286-0).

Michael Ray has been called “the most creative man in Silicon
Valley,” by Fast Company magazine. His Personal Creativity
in Business course has been one of the most popular at
Stanford University for 25 years.

To read this HIGHLY RECOMMENDED book, click on the graphic
link under my “Good Books” column on the right.

In summary

I believe that your writing and all that concerns your work
will take giant leaps whenever you connect to your higher
purpose, your highest goal. Until that time, you may be
good, but just going along.

Sailing to the heights involves digging deep into your real
reasons for doing this in the first place and continually
checking back for alignment.

Sure you can do this on your own. And, yes, this is work
best done with a trusted coach.

Here’s to your continued success with your ezines, with your
coaching, with your life.

Patsi

Categories : Coaching/Personal Development

Top Ten Mistakes in Coach Ezines

By Patsi Krakoff

Thursday, October 21st, 2004

…And Some Solutions!

Top 10 Mistakes Coaches Make with Ezines

1. The ezine is full of fluffy, chatty stuff about
themselves, not enough meat.

2. The ezine is too promotional, asking for sales.

3. The ezine is too long to read.

4. The ezine is too short, gives top ten or five lists
without any serious discussion or backing up with studies or
authority.

5. The ezine is boring. Or too personal. (Thanks for
sharing, but save it for your best friend or therapist.)

6. Ezine takes up too much time and energy to put together,
so coach starts skipping issues and becomes inconsistent.

7. Coach doesn’t commit to sending out ezine for a long
enough time to build results.

8. Coach doesn’t connect ezine to links to products, and
services. And, or ezine doesn’t clearly reflect coach’s contact
information, requests for feedback, encouragement to forward
to friends an associates.

9. Coach doesn’t tie ezine in with an overall marketing
strategy or even a consistent branding look.

10. Coach doesn’t post articles on web, or drive traffic to
website through ezine.

Top 8 solutions to these problems:

1. Your ezine needs to be full of relevant useful
information.

2. Your ezine needs to be written in a clear genuine voice
that reflects what it is like to do business with you. It needs
to be fun to read!

3. Your ezine should bring results: it should grow your
business by focusing on and solidifying relationships over
the long term, yet letting people know you have something
(products or services) that could help them achieve or
obtain what they want.

4. Your ezine should be crafted regularly with a minimal
amount of time and energy. If you don’t enjoy doing it, you
probably won’t commit to doing it over time. Do the parts
you love, outsource the rest.

5. You need to commit to at least 12 months of ezine
publication before you can evaluate its effectiveness. It is
like exercise, the longer you engage in it, the easier it is
to do, the less time and energy it takes, and the more
results you see.

6. Your ezine should tie in with your website and overall
marketing strategies. There should be a branding consistency
in the look of your ezine, your printed materials such as
business cards, and your web design. Your products and
services should carry similar logos. Your ezine should
reflect not only the graphic look, but the professional
voice you create in all your marketing pieces.

7. You can get help, you don’t have to go it alone. We all
started from zero. Ask for help you will receive. Take
courses, sign up for ezines, get a coach!

8. Use a newsletter service. Outsource to professional
service providers those tasks you least enjoy and struggle
with. That’s what they are there for.

Here’s my Shameless Plug:

Customized Newsletter Services is in the business of
providing services for coaches to make their ezine tasks
easier and more efficient. We are here to help.

We have a
number of standardized options available as well as truly
customized services. If we don’t have an option that is
suitable for you, we may be able to create it. Just ask!

Patsi

patsi@customizednewsletters.com
011-52-376-766-4803
U.S.: 956-242-4254

Categories : Coaching/Personal Development

Internet Marketing for Coaches

By Patsi Krakoff

Tuesday, October 19th, 2004

The Challenge of Making it as a Coach or Consultant

If you are like many coaches or consultants, you love your
work and love helping others to grow and develop. No matter
what your niche, or your experiences, you are special and
unique in your strengths for helping others.

But like many professionals, you probably feel the challenge
of keeping your practice full of clients who pay you well
for your services. The statistics on the numbers of coaches
or consultants who are thriving are not encouraging.

There are now many products and services available to help
you market your practice. Some marketing gurus make big
promises. Some cost a lot of money. Worse, some require huge
investments of your time and energy.

But wait a minute…you want to be coaching and working with
people! You didn’t go into business to spend your time on
learning to implement marketing strategies.

The Challenge of the Internet…

And now there’s the Internet, and you have to learn a new
system of marketing all over again: the Internet and email
newsletters or ezines.

Where will you find the time? Can you afford not to take
advantage of Internet marketing? Of course NOT! You are
probably already behind others in your field.

You Must Publish an Ezine

Everyone will tell you how important it is to publish an
ezine. Some will tell you how to do this, again for a large
fee. None of the Internet gurus or experts give you
everything you need in a clear concise manner and include
resources you can use to accomplish these important ezine
tasks…until now.

We believe that you have what it takes to publish your own
ezine but may not know all the tips, tricks and tools that
will actually make your tasks effortless. You have the keys,
you need to learn where to find the boxes and the locks!

Make no mistake, there is some hard work involved in
publishing an ezine. You probably can’t code HTML, or handle
distributing your ezine yourself.

You probably can write your own articles, but do you have
the time to read, research, and format them?

There are services available for every step of the ezine
publishing tasks.

Get Help

Did you know that there are systems and software out that
are now actually user-friendly even for non-techies?

There are article content services and formatting and
distribution systems.

There is even my own little service company: Customized
Newsletters where we will do most of the work for you!

None of us knew anything about email, ezines and Internet
marketing a few years ago, or very few of us did.

Start learning about ezines. Don’t wait until you have a
better web site, better photo, more subscribers. Start it
now so you can learn as you go and get better as you grow.

You don’t have to do it alone. There are many e-books you
can buy to teach you the basics, some are even free.

If you must wait, wait until my own e-book is released in
November:

Secrets of Successful Ezines, by Patsi Krakoff and Elge
Premeau.

We should have this finished by mid November an you
won’t want to miss the valuable resources, writing tips,
formatting and distribution systems information, and all
the valuable information we can give you to make your
ezine tasks easier.

Your ezine should work in the background like a well-oiled
machine without a lot of time and energy.

Get back to coaching and making the money you deserve!

Patsi

Categories : Coaching/Personal Development

Two Biggest Fears with Ezines & Blogs

By Patsi Krakoff

Monday, October 18th, 2004

Survey of Two Biggest Fears to Writing and Publishing

According to a leading expert on ezines and blogs, Debbie
Weil from WordBiz.com, time is cited as the biggest obstacle
to writing and creating a business blog. The second obstacle
is fear of not knowing what to write.

I am not surprised at these survey results. My own
experiences with coaching others on their ezines validate
these two big fears about writing and publishing.

Not enough time
Not enough to say

Baloney!

Let me just say that a few years ago, I myself experienced
both these fears and many others. I was one of the original
techno-weanies. When it came to publishing anything on the
web or through email, I had sticky fingers and keyboard
paralysis.

Now you can go to Debbie’s seminar to overcome these fears
for $79. Or, you can let me take a cyber-slap at you: Get
over it!

It took me exactly 20 minutes to write and post this article
on my weblog.

Get Over It!

I don’t have any more time than you do, and I have only as
much to say as you do in your own chosen field and niche. I
am no genius. My husband will tell you that.

But I do have motivation and a drive to help others do what
I myself have learned.

Help is just a click away: email or comment here to give me
your opinion on what your biggest obstacle to writing and
publishing your own ezine REALLY is.

And while you’re on it, tell me again, why you wouldn’t just
start your own blog like this one? If I can, you can.

Coming soon: Denise Wakeman and I are starting a teleclass
series to help you get started with blogging.

Prediction: Blogging or publishing a weblog is the wave of
the future.

Secret: It is much easier than publishing your own web site
or ezine!

Here is Debbie Weil’s survey:

WordBiz Update: text-only Oct. 18, 2004
===========

* Lack of Time Is Top Obstacle to Blogging *

Over 70% of respondents to a WordBiz survey report lack of
time is their key concern to managing a business blog.

In addition:

– 45% of you are unsure what to write about

– 18% question whether the content needs to be edited
or pre-approved

– 15% wonder who would be responsible for the writing

Yet, when asked if you have considered starting a business
blog, more than 80% responded yes.

To register, go here:
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=104812

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