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 76

Edit Your Content: A Checklist of 12 Things Not to Miss

By Patsi Krakoff

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Here's a checklist for rereading your content before you publish. For anything important, i.e. that's being sold or delivered to clients, I use Barbara Feiner, a professional editor. She not only corrects errors, but evaluates for clarity and flow.

But for blog posts and everyday content creation, I put on my editor's visor and those green sleeve thingys, and act like a detached newspaper editor with a red pencil. Here's what I look for:

Common typos like theirs for there's, your for you're, that or which for who, and all those pesky things a spell check won't pick up.
Grammar goofs: My most common are when the verb doesn't agree with the noun, as in "Here's my mistakes…"
Review for commas, semi-colons, ellipses and em dashes. The important thing is for it to read well, read clearly. Helps to read it out loud.
Review for paragraph and line spacing, since I like to break up long blocks of text.
Review for bolded words and insert subheadings where needed.
Separate a blog post after 2-3 paragraphs so that it goes to the extended post feature ("read more…"

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, E-Books, On Writing Better

12 Steps to Creating Web-Savvy Content for Marketing

By Patsi Krakoff

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

How do you make sure your ebook has good content for marketing purposes? How do you write web-savvy content that works for the Web, that markets your business, gets you found, and is link-friendly?

I mean, it's all good to say you're going to get on the Content Marketing bandwagon… but how exactly do you do that? Here are 12 steps you need to think about:

Before you write that ebook, or blog post, or other content on your website, think about your audience. Once you've defined who you're writing for, then define the problem you're going to solve. Then figure out how people would be using keyword phrases to find their solutions if they were doing a web search.

Write a list of 3-5 keyword phrases and keep those in mind as you write your content.

Once you've defined your audience, the problem, the solution, and the keyword phrases. you should be able to make a list of subtopics or steps you need to cover. With a list, you can expand on each point to create a logical progression to solving the problem.

Categories : Content Marketing, E-Books, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web

Ebook Prices, Expensive? Yes, but you get more than take-out curry…

By Patsi Krakoff

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

Right on the tail of my previous post and reference to Newt Barrett's post about the value of ebooks, Sean D'Souza writes a great post. I want to alert you to his entertaining perspective:

Why Publishers Are Stupid About Book Pricing

So yes, the pricing of e-books is not out of whack.It’s actually reasonably accurate. And the public is saying so. We don’t need huge volumes of a book to be sold. All we really need is for the books to be valued more than a seven-minute goat curry.

What Sean is saying that he pays more at his local take-out restaurant for a meal than Amazon charges for printed books that take months to write and a lot of money to publish and market.

The solution is to offer your book in digital form as an ebook and charge what the real value is for your readers. How much is it worth for them to learn how to get results from business blogging? Or…fill in the blank with …results from xxxx?

As The Blog Squad, I sell our ebook Build a Better Blog for $147. Expensive? If we were to sell it on Amazon, it would seem so. But it's not a $10 or $15 printed book.

In fact, it's more than an ebook; it's comes with a training system and other features. The value is in the fact that after you read it, when you implement the pertinent steps, you will have a business blog that gets results. That's worth a lot more than $147.

This is why an ebook is an important strategy for your content marketing. I'm writing one this weekend. You?

Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing

My, my, my! MyAlltop Rocks, here’s why…

By Patsi Krakoff

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Guy Kawasaki has done it again. He's made it so easy to set up your own page on Alltop.com. Now, instead of poking around the Web, taking hours to get a general "feed feel," I can go see all my favorite blogs and get a quick read about what's buzzin'.

What's a "feed feel?" It's waking up in the morning, going to your computer and instead of opening up email full of junk and worky-type things, I can read what other people are writing about. That and a cup of coffee will get me buzzin' and feelin' good.

What's so cool about this? For one thing, all my favorite people have their own pages too. So if I want to know who Pam Slim reads, or Guy, or other people, I can peek at the blogs that inform them.

And the other thing is that participating in the Blogosphere is just about the swiftest way to connect with other geniuses in your playground and get into trouble with them. So much fun…;-)!

What's the down-side? Well, instead of writing or educating myself about really important things, I can easily fall into an information junkie coma. I don't really need to know why everyone's writing about Skittles on Twitter…

See what you think. Go to my Alltop page. I haven't finished yet adding all my favorite blogs yet, but Alltop makes this really easy to do. Go get your own page. You'll love it. Check out the little video, it'll tell you how to add blogs to your myalltop page.

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog

How to Improve Your Writing the Ben Franklin Way

By Patsi Krakoff

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Are you good at what you do? Really good? If you make a living at your craft, you must be good. You probably have customers who think you're great. AND… you know you could be better, don't you?

Being good at what you do is a major source of deep fulfillment, not to mention a prerequisite for keeping employment and earning a paycheck. Let me ask you this, then:

What are you doing to improve your writing skills?

No matter what business you're in, especially if you're using the Internet as a marketing tool, you've got to improve your writing. Especially if you don't outsource your content marketing, you must learn to write interesting content that showcases your expertise and value to readers on the Web.

Yet very few professionals spend practice time to improve their writing skills. You can't assume that even if you got an 'A' in college English you write well for the public, the people who are surfing the web to find solutions to their problems.

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing

3 + 1 Bonus Content Marketing Posts You Don’t Want to Miss

By Patsi Krakoff

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Have you ever worked too hard? And finally, finishing a project, find out you could have made it far simpler?

The other day I struggled for over an hour to come up with something interesting and relevant for you, my dear readers of this blog. I couldn't figure out a topic that appealed to me. (If it doesn't interest me and it isn't on topic for Content Marketing, how can I expect you to get excited, right?)

Well, two hours later, I came up with something, then saved and published. As soon as I did, I clicked over to Michael Martine's post on Remarkablogger:

Ten Ways to Crank Out Killer Posts in Ten Minutes or Less

Fist to forehead, I figure Michael owes me at least 50 minutes of time. If I had read his blog post first, I would have followed his great advice. I'm doing so now.

His first tip is #1: Pick three blogs you respect and introduce your readers to them.

Categories : About Blogs, Blogs We Love, Content Marketing, On Writing Better

How to Improve Your Writing: an uncommon truth

By Patsi Krakoff

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

How do you improve your writing? There's no question that there's money to be made selling information online.

You only have to look at people like Brian Clark and Darren Rowse to know that you can wake up one day, start blogging, and end up rich and famous!

There's a clear path from your brain to your fingertips on the keyboard that leads to creating written materials on the computer screen. Those words published on a blog can reach millions of people world-wide since there are 1.4 billion people connected to the Internet.

So what do you think the difference is between the big guys and you? Don't tell me you think they're brilliant and you're not because I'm not buying it. Talent is overrated. It's an excuse to hide behind.

For every gifted person I've seen on the Internet, I've seen a hundred who aren't making any money. Plenty of average intelligence people are.

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better

The Right Brain/ Left Brain Tango: How to Get Your Creative Mojo Back

By Patsi Krakoff

Friday, March 6th, 2009

What's your favorite way of stimulating your creative juices? How do you inspire yourself?

I don't usually get up at 2 a.m. and work, but when work's creative it's more like play, so why not? Here's two good posts to read and then I'll tell you why these two writers, Sean D'Souza and John Jantsch, are actually dancing the Tango together…

How to Succeed at Content Marketing Even if Your Content Skills Suck by Sean D'Souza. Sean is guest posting over at Copyblogger and makes a great point of stressing regularity and reliability. He says your content writing skills can't get better if you're not writing often, and if readers don't hear from you with frequency, they'll just 'change the channel, and go elsewhere. You've got to publish, stay on target with your messages, and keep readers informed.

Are You Right Brain Dead? asks John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. Small business professionals often get so wrapped up in running a business, using their left brains for managing, organizing, and getting things done, that they neglect to stimulate their creative brains. Right brain functioning is essential to customer service, product enhancements, and in general finding creative solutions.
John says, "If, as a marketer, the creative side of your thinking gets shut down you can find it difficult to create engaging blog posts, elegant customer service solutions and innovative product enhancements."

So true. Here's what happens: It's Friday so you run around checking to see if your to-do lists are on track. You may even spend the weekend catching up with left over tasks.

Getting things done is so left-brain. And once that left-brain energy gets plugged in, it's hard to shut it down. While that's a good thing for task accomplishments, it's not the best way to stay creative and improve your writing skills. (And it's not as much fun, I think!)

Categories : Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better

Author Archive for Patsi Krakoff – Page 76

Edit Your Content: A Checklist of 12 Things Not to Miss

12 Steps to Creating Web-Savvy Content for Marketing

Ebook Prices, Expensive? Yes, but you get more than take-out curry…

My, my, my! MyAlltop Rocks, here’s why…

How to Improve Your Writing the Ben Franklin Way

3 + 1 Bonus Content Marketing Posts You Don’t Want to Miss

How to Improve Your Writing: an uncommon truth

The Right Brain/ Left Brain Tango: How to Get Your Creative Mojo Back

Content for Coaches and Consultants

Serenity Virtual Assistant Services

Social Buzz Club