Author Archive for Patsi Krakoff – Page 68

TwitChuck Goes After Twitter Spammers

No-spam If you're tired of spammers and leery of Twitter attacks and how that may affect you, here's a cool solution, free to try out: TwitChuck. Here's how it works:

TwitBlock – A Twitter Spam Solution

    * TwitChuck scans Twitter validating hundreds of spammers everyday.
    * We block these spammers from your account, meaning they cannot follow or reply to you.
    * We actively scan your friends and followers list, ensuring FriendChuck is as effective as possible.

Here's how this tool rates my Twitter account: PatsiBlogSquad:

YES: we recommend that you follow patsiblogsquad. This user follows the Twitter guidelines, does not spam, and is in general an interesting individual. (Aw, shucks ;-))

Highlights for this user:

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Writing Tips: How to Write Everyday, No Matter What

Things-to-do Lower your expectations. Write on the fly. Go for quantity, not quality. Write no matter what. Content matters, words matter (especially keywords!), get it onto the screen now. Edit later.

Just a few writing tips from published authors who know what they're talking about. Some of these tips I'm sharing with you today I heard over and over again at the Writer's Spa in Taos last week. Jen Louden is a treasure house of writing wisdom.

Research has shown that setting high standards for yourself actually can lead to depression. Yet we all claim proudly to have high standards…Yet, think about it: are they holding you back?

As the wise Havi Brooks shares with us, "Lower your wishes, raise your possibilities." Brilliant, thanks for this, Havi!

I'm asking you,

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2 Key Writing Goals: Set a Deadline & Chunk It Down

Journalist_writers_block You know that feeling of inspirational high when you're motivated? Nothing can stop you from doing your work, cranking out content, writing no matter the noise and distractions?

Yeah right, that happened for me once back in 2002. And it happened again last week at Jen Louden's Writer's Spa. How do you recapture those energized moments of genius?

Yesterday I wanted to continue the writing on my book project and all I can say is that laundry got done. (I hate housework and have a charming housekeeper who does it for me. How does washing out socks seem more interesting than writing?)

It's because the project is too big and the time plentiful right now. Anyone who's a procrastinator knows that running out of time is key to getting the juices flowing. And we've all got a procrastinator lurking in us.

Here's my two-step organizing solution for writing content that really sizzles, even if it's a huge book or a blog post:

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How to Write Some Serious Stuff…

Conceptualizing I'm a writer. I write leadership development articles for executive coaches. Some serious stuff, you know? That's how I make my living. (I actually spend more of my time playing tennis and writing blog posts, but nobody pays me to do either of those things.)

(Justification for having fun: Writing blog posts helps keep me slightly famous, and gets me the odd referral. Tennis keeps my body and mind in shape. I can't write well unless my brain is healthy. So it's all good for keeping me afloat.)

I spent a bunch of money to go to a writer's retreat last week. Jennifer Louden has been gathering writers together for 8-9 years, bundling them off to beautiful Taos, New Mexico, and feeding them magical words to transform them  into better writers.

It's the only conference I've been to where one of the goals is to laugh your butts off. We also learned the Dance of Shiva and did yoga every day with the incredible Havi Brooks.

While there, I started my book and wrote 9,000 words of stories, most of which I really like. I had been putting this off for a decade, but I cracked through the starting block thanks to Jen and the group's magical powers.

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Mid-Year Content Marketing Check List:
Are You On Track?

I just ran across this end-of-year check list for reviewing your business blog posts. It ties in with the 2 posts I wrote last week, about doing a mid-summer review of your content marketing efforts and How Do You Know if Your Content Marketing Is Working.

This is also a great way to review your content marketing efforts at the half-way, mid-summer point. Are you on track with your Content Marketing Goals?

  • What were your most effective blog posts in terms of numbers of page views?
  • Which posts generated the most comments?
  • What email promotional subject lines got the best open rates?
  • Which email newsletters titles got better open rates?
  • Which white paper or special report got good download rates?
  • Where did your most qualified leads come from?
  • Which teleseminar or webniar topics got the most registrations?
  • What were the press releases that got the most clicks?

You should also be taking a look at the quality of your writing, especially for your blog. If you want a good review of some sophisticated blog writing concepts, read Sonia Simone's review of the best of Copyblogger for 2008.

Related Posts:

5 Ways to Enrich Your Blog Posts

How Do You Write to Entertain?

Content Marketing Goals: Educate

Other People’s Content: Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

Finger-walk Sometimes easy is better than hard. Finding great blog content for your business blog doesn't have to be a struggle. You can make great use of "OPC" – other people's content. I stumbled upon this tactic while trying to find blog content before going away on vacation.

Remember the old Yellow Pages ad, "Let your fingers do the walking?" Here's how to let your fingers do the heavy lifting. Everything is done by email, except of course the actual posting to your blog, but then, your fingers do the work there too.

The idea is to write a series of interview questions (5-7) about your core topic. Send them off by email to the 10 top experts in your field. Ask them for 5 minutes of their time to complete the emailed interview, and let them know you'd like to feature them on your blog.

Then run the interview series on your blog. This provides your blog readers with valuable, relevant content in addition to your own experiences and perspectives. Your readers will deepen their understanding of your topic.

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Content Marketing Planning: Joe’s BEST Plan

Getting back to Content Marketing plans and tracking what works for you, here's a great diagram by Joe Pulizzi, Junta42. He posted this from his book Get Content, Get Customers, co-authorered with Newt Barrett, and posted it recently on Posterous.

BEST_formulaContentMarketingPulizzi
Joe also wrote a great post on his Junta42 blog that ties in with my other posts this week about tracking your marketing efforts. It's called Building a Marketing Asset: Take the Red Pill. It's worth reading.

7 Keys to Content Marketing on a Business Blog:
Why a blog is not a newsletter

Blogger-with-community Content Marketing is the Buzz-du-Jour among marketers everywhere, both on and offline. I have encouraged you over the last five years to write relevant content on your business blogs that provides good information, builds relationships, entertains and converts readers to clients.

But here's the thing: how do you do all that when you write a blog post? Many business bloggers are using their blogs like e-newsletters. They write an article on a topic and post. Your blog isn't a newsletter, it's different.

In fact, some of the smart clients I've worked with to set up their blogs and train them tell me, "Oh, content isn't a problem for me. I've written dozens of articles. I'll just copy and paste them into my blog."

Wrong. Blog posts are meant to be conversations, not one-way information vehicles. It's not a lecture, or a newsletter. It's somewhere in between.

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The Spaghetti Content Marketing Plan: 14 Questions to Ask

Spaghetti-around-fork You know the old saying about throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks? I've never understood why you would throw it in the first place, or what you do with it afterwards, yet some very smart professionals are using this as their content marketing strategy.

They've got a Facebook page, they Twitter for hours, they post on their blog (but not often enough), they're collecting subscribers with a form on their website (but they haven't actually sent out a newsletter just yet.)

You know what else I see people doing? They follow certain people on the Web they admire, take their teleseminars, but never act on the very advice they've paid too much money to listen to. After a year they get burned out and disenchanted with their gurus, find new ones, and start throwing spaghetti against the wall again.

I don't mean to be negative, and I really do feel bad when I see this happen. Probably because I've done it myself. I know what it feels like to know you "should" be doing something for your marketing but you never get around to it.

For myself, having lived with my quirks for a few decades, I know what gets me into action and what can trigger procrastination. I don't know what works for you, but you need to figure out what will get you over your humps. For me, having a clear plan and a schedule works.

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Why Content Marketing Online Isn’t Actually Free

Catching_with_money Independent professionals who use the Web for marketing their services can learn a lot from bigger businesses with big budgets. Take a look at where the guys with money are spending their marketing dollars and efforts. Then figure out the cheaper way to do what they're doing.

In a way, the Web is ideal for people who must work with little advertising budgets. Social sites like Facebook and Twitter are completely free. Time is the biggest constraining factor. Even so, you want the best return for your investment of time, energy and money.

Joe Pulizzi of Junta 42 wrote a post a couple of weeks ago that got me thinking. His information is directed towards companies who spend money advertising. Now many of them want to use content marketing to build business, and some expect it to be free. Read his post The Decline of Advertising and the Rise of Content Spending.

Here's an excerpt worth considering:

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