Author Archive for Patsi Krakoff – Page 95

Blog Contest: We face off against Men with Pens

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Arm_wrestling_business_vs_sports
What’s a little blond girl to do when her blog faces off in a match-up contest against the big bad Men with Pens?

We’re being judged in a fabulous contest that pits two blogs against each other, mano-a-mano. This is the brain child of John Hewitt at Writers Resource Center that was hatched as part of a March Madness event.

We’ll I’m not racing off to bake cookies for the judges. What you see is what you get. I didn’t even change out of my jammies and slippers.

I’m a little concerned though, cuz even though Denise and I dish out blog critiques to our clients, it’s hard to take a dose of your own medicine. Here are some of the points this blog will be matched up against those big guys Harry and James, the Men with Pens…

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Categories : About Blogs, Blogs We Love, Writing Great Blog Content

Wishy-Washy Writing: Just delete these 5 words

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Delete_key
This is worth reading and not just because it echoes my thoughts every time I read someone’s blog writing that’s too wishy-washy: 5 Words You Can Cut Out, from the Daily Writing Tip:

  1. just
  2. really
  3. quite
  4. perhaps
  5. that

I have to add two:

  1. maybe
  2. very

Every time you re-read your writing, be on the look-out for these wishy-washy offenders and make your writing stronger, better.

Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing Better Ezines, Writing for Others, Freelancing, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy, Writing Great Press Releases, Writing Great White Papers, Writing Speeches

Blog Writing: What would you like to learn?

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

Orange_man_thinker
I’ve got my head buried in books as I am researching ideas for an advanced blog writing class.  My question is this to readers: What would you like to learn that would make your business blog writing easier, faster, and more effective? What questions do you want answered? Just hit the comment link below and submit your question. You can win a book of your choice:

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

Reality-Web: Keeping it real for readers

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, April 7th, 2008

Open_window_breeze
Why is some blog content better than others? The real question is what makes a blog post effective for your business. You want to entertain and educate at the same time, of course. Many blog authors do one but not the other, and the really good ones do both.

It’s important to open up the windows into your business and show some fresh ideas and reality to your clients and readers.

Take Brian Clark of Copyblogger, for example. He often tells stories to make a point, and often those stories come from respected books in the field. Brian then conjectures about what history and the present suggests: he predicts the future. That makes for great content that entertains while it educates and also stimulates your thinking.

Here’s an excerpt from Brian’s Teaching Sells that points to what you should be doing for your blog writing:

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Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing Great Blog Content

Suspense: Is this the missing ingredient in your ezines?

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, April 4th, 2008

Crutches_3d
I’ve been in an unsubscribing fury this week. If your newsletter bored me, not only did you get deleted, I took myself off your list entirely. And there you go…

I realize it’s not easy to capture my attention and get me to read all the way through to the end. I’m a tough customer. So I got to thinking, what makes the difference between a fascinating newsletter that I actually read, and one that puts me to sleep or makes me hit the delete key faster than a dog can salivate?

Stories will get me reading, for one thing, but they’ve got to have the "curiously thing" going. There has to be some suspense…

Now I know this is all subjective and in the eye of the beholder, so the best way for me to teach you what I’m talking about is to send you over to read Michael Katz’ latest ezine, "I’ve Got a Crutch on You."

He hits a home run every time with his newsletter, but this one is full of great tips you may be able to copy – er- I mean, model and learn from. This is just one great newsletter, entertaining AND educational at the same time. It just happens to be about writing great newsletters and you all can do this better, I know you can.

Categories : Content Marketing, Getting Read, On Writing Better, Writing Better Ezines

Video Clips: Content delivery made easy

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Flipvideo
Denise and I both own Flip video cameras and have blogged about how we use it to interview people whenever we’re at a seminar. This really makes creating valuable content for your blog easy.

Now, I hear a lot of accomplished speakers complain about how they’d rather speak than write…actually they say they’d rather get a root canal than write…but here’s a way to make creating content fun and easy: record a tip using your keywords and post it on your blog.

It’s so easy even I can do it. (Of course, it helps that Denise is handy at editing and adding the URLs), but even so, the Flip is easy because the software is contained inside the camera which plugs into your computer USB port. You can even edit as soon as you plug it in. No downloads required. Just follow the steps, upload to your account on YouTube, grab the code and copy and paste into your blog.

Take a look at the way we interviewed other professionals at Adam Urbanski’s Info Profits Success Intensive last week. Denise is posting them every day over at her BizTipsBlog. Hear what smart people like Adam, and Joe Nunziata have to say… 

Categories : Blogs We Love, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars

Is Creativity the New Drug?

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Timepersonyryou
Remember when Time Magazine proclaimed YOU, the readers, to be "Persons of the Year?" It was 2006 and they highlighted all the ways online readers were contributing content through blogs, YouTube, Wikipedia and social sites like MySpace…

It’s two and a half years later, and it’s all coming true in spite of the predictions of the idiocy of crowds…

It’s common to see companies running contests for best video commercial for their products now.

I’m a little curious how many readers are actually contributing content on the web, either writing your own profile pages on Facebook, etc., posting video clips on YouTube or other photo sharing sites, or guest blogging? Do you use the Internet for your own marketing, or are you contributing content to other sites as well?

Like these two engineers who put together this amazingly creative cat video, are you doing things like this? I mean, who has time for this?

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Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog

Information Sells: Just Ask Adam Urbanski

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Adam_cas_sittingInfo Profits Success Intensive: Three days in a room full of 50 small business owners all learning about the power of marketing with information, that’s Adam Urbanski’s idea of fun! And boy, can he orchestrate fun even while he over-delivers information and tips about how to make money with information products.

The Blog Squad was graciously invited to share a piece of the information marketing puzzle: how to use a blog to spread your words and get business.

Adam is an amazingly refreshing master of marketing for coaches, consultants and service professionals. He came to this country in 1989 with $200 in his pocket and now has a huge following of clients. Spending 3 days with him is intense; he doesn’t hold back on any of the insider methods of making money both on and offline.

He has an amazing ability to simplify the complexity of marketing into clear action steps. If you get a chance to hear him speak don’t miss it. Oh, and by the way, he’s going to be at the Speak Your Way to Wealth seminar August 22-24, sponsored by Arvee Robinson, along with The Blog Squad, in Manhattan Beach.

Categories : Coaching/Personal Development, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Content Marketing: Treat Your Information Like a Product

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, March 28th, 2008

Part 2 by guest author Joe Pulizzi, Junta42

How to turn off your customers…

The fact is that consumers are turning away from anything that directly markets to them without first having a relationship with your brand. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to create a sustainable relationship with a customer without first delivering valuable content.

Marketers may long for the good old days of mass marketing, but those days are dead and gone. Those were easier days.

Today, marketers cannot rely solely on creative ads and traditional ad buys, they have to work for it by delivering consistent and valuable information.

To overcome some of these barriers to content marketing, I’ve been pushing the concept of positioning content marketing as, yes, a product.

What do I mean by that?

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Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Content Marketing: You mean give away information without a pitch?

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Joepulizzi
By guest author Joe Pulizzi, Junta42 Blog

To follow the philosophy of content marketing, you’ve got to want it bad. Content marketing is all about your customer…that one customer who needs just the right information from you to do their job better or make their lives easier.

Doing that is anything but easy.

I speak to a number of audiences around the country about content marketing as not just a marketing strategy, but an organizational strategy. More people are starting to get this, but many, sad to say, just don’t get it.

"You mean I create content for my customer, but don’t pitch them anything in it?" is a usual response. The answer to that question is whole-hearted YES!

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Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing
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