Archive for Attracting Clients – Page 11

Feed Your Blog Automatically to LinkedIn & Twitter

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, February 21st, 2011

Update From Patsi, February 2012: We apologize for not updating this post earlier. I no longer update any social media automatically, but am posting manually (read why here, Say NO to Auto-Feeds: Your Blog & Facebook, Social Sites). This is time-consuming and may require a virtual assistant for some of you. I recommend SerenityVA.com.

How do you get your blog posts to feed into your LinkedIn profile and Twitter automatically? I asked social media expert AnnaLaura Brown to write a guest post. This is the 2nd part of her post Connect Your Blog to Facebook.

For LinkedIn you have a couple of options as well.

Your first option is to add the WordPress blog option to your Linkedin profile.

To do this:

  1. Go to edit profile and scroll down to the bottom. You will see a link that says Applications- Add an Application.

Click on that link and you will see this page of options. There is an option to add your blog link with Typepad or WordPress.

Click on the link and you will be taken to a page where you can add in the RSS feed for your blog.  From now on your new posts will be automatically posted to this section of your LinkedIn profile.

The second option is to add your Twitter stream to LinkedIn and then by default as long as your blog posts are appearing in Twitter they will also appear on LinkedIn.

You do this by going to the same page where you added your blog and clicking on the tweets application.

Twitter Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, How to...Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing, Social Media Stuff
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Business Blog Writing and Content Marketing:
Come on, light my fire!

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, February 14th, 2011

Why is content marketing and persuasion so difficult, and what can you do to set people on fire? When it comes to writing content for a business blog, most professionals start from their point of view. Of course, who wouldn’t?

“We’ve got a state-of-the-art 128-bit secure site, offering the best rates on the Web.”

While this business understands that its customers want security and low prices when ordering services online, they fail to ignite passion or spark action in readers.

Stories of real people connect with readers in a way that data and words on a screen can’t. In his best-selling book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, published in 1997 by Harper-Collins, master screenwriter Robert McKee argues that stories “fulfill a profound human need to grasp the patterns of living—not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience.”

There are two ways to persuade people.

The first is by using conventional marketing rhetoric, which is what most professionals use. It’s an intellectual process  in which you write, “Here’s our company’s biggest advantage, and here is what you need to do.” You build your case by giving statistics and facts and quotes from authorities. But there are two problems with this rational approach.

First, the people you’re talking to have their own set of experiences. While you’re trying to persuade them, they are arguing with you in their heads. Second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve done so only on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are inspired to act by emotions.

The other way to persuade people—a more powerful way—is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story.

In a story, you not only weave in a lot of information, but you also arouse your reader’s emotions and energy.

Persuading with a story is hard. It demands vivid insight and storytelling skill to present an idea that packs enough emotional power to be memorable.

In the sample quote I used about a “128-bit secure site,” wouldn’t it be more interesting if the business blogged about a client who had a bad experience using an unsecured website? Or, better yet, what if they featured a video clip of a client who saved “X” amount of dollars by coming to them instead?

Stories connect us to what really matters most in ways that rhetoric and facts can’t.

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Blog Content
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Blogging with Personality and Tim Ferriss

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

How much personality should you show on your blog without becoming an ego-blogger? Apparently you can share a lot of personal stories and anecdotes, even become a little outrageous and contrarian, according to Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek and now The 4-Hour Body.

I recommend listening to his short video about sharing your personality on your blog, an interview done by Rohit Bhargava, author of Personality Not Included. I was at this Blog World conference when Rohit interviewed Tim, in 2008. While it’s not a new interview, there are several nuggets that are timeless.

I don’t know if you’ve read Tim or not, but he’s a master at blogging and marketing his books.  While he could come across as Mr. Big Ego (his accomplishments are many), he does not.

Tim masters two things that make him credible and trustworthy: Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Coaching/Personal Development, Content Marketing, Online Marketing
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Content Marketing from the Inside Out

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, January 17th, 2011

In your opinion, what’s the single biggest factor that builds credibility and trust in content marketing? To me, it’s personality.

Readers and viewers want to feel a human connection. They need personal stories about people and about you. It doesn’t matter what form the stories come in.

We’ve come a long way from the days when ad men (and they were usually men) could represent products or services with snappy jingles and cute copy.  Online marketing today includes plenty of content in all forms, all of which communicate personality through stories:

  • Web pages
  • Blogs
  • E-newsletters
  • Social media profiles and updates
  • E-books, white papers and digital downloads
  • Video clips
  • Webinars

Some companies have personality through characters like the Aflac duck and the Geico gekko. Did you know they have their own Facebook pages?

Others use their company president like Razerguy for Razer and Ben & Jerry’s founders. Some use their customers:  Dove uses women and Old Spice uses men.

Obviously, if you’re an independent professional such as a doctor, psychologist, any kind of health professional seeking clients, you’ve got to have your own personality in your content marketing to stand out from all the others. Same for lawyers, authors, speakers. Yet how many professionals share their personal stories on the Web? Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better
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Content Marketing with Stories: Why We Tell Lies…

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, January 14th, 2011

Telling stories is a fundamental part of good content marketing. Stories have so much marketing clout, they make it possible for little businesses to compete with the big guys.

Since stories are fundamental to the way our brains work, why don’t we tell more stories?

Why doesn’t every piece of online content we write use narrative to give a specific example of real people using our products and services or whatever it is we want to influence?

Here’s my guess: most people don’t think their stories are good enough. They don’t think they have a personal story to tell that’s worthy of people’s attention. Or, here’s a wild guess:

“Oh, I’m not sure my story is typical of the way other people think or act… I’m just different, maybe a little weird.”

Let me tell you a story about that. When I was first working online, all my web copy was as official and business-like as I could make it. I tried to hide the fact that I was not long out of graduate school and was sole-proprietor of a writing service with only 6-month’s Internet experience.

I was embarrassed. I thought the others online were computer wizards and knew secret coding language I didn’t. Never mind it was 1999 and many others had relatively little Internet experience as well.

So I didn’t tell much of a compelling story at all. I avoided getting personal. I believed that my writing products would sell themselves.

I struggled with my online marketing for years. It wasn’t until 2004 when I started blogging that I began to use story. I began telling it as it is, for me.

The difference was enormous. I suppose I had an “overnight success,” based on the number of people added to my marketing list (ten times as many), number of clients and amount of money coming in.

My story changed. I started speaking at conferences and I was able to tell people about the pivotal moments that made a big difference: blogging changed my life and exploded my business. As a small business, I was competing with much larger enterprises with staff and budgets. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing Great Blog Content
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3 Online Marketing Tasks:
Get Found, Get Known, Get Clients

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, December 16th, 2010

How do you check your online marketing to see where it’s working, where it needs improvement?

Here’s my quick and easy end-of-year check up for your business. This always helps me see where I need to spend my energy and time to improve next year’s results.

Look at your marketing tasks as having 3 purposes:

  1. Get found: How visible are you online? How easy is it for someone to find you doing a search? What comes up for your name? What comes up for the keywords that describe what your business does? Are you everywhere, or at least in the key places your target audience is? Social sites, web, blog, articles, videos, etc. Is your content optimized for search engines?
  2. Get Known: How memorable is your name, your brand or tag line? Can people identify your business and know what problem it solves? Are you credible and perceived as trustworthy? Do you show some personality and faces of the people who work with you? Can people easily get to know you, like you and trust you?
  3. Get Clients: Is it easy for people to become a  client and buy something from you? Is it easy to download free offers? Do you have low fee products and a product funnel that includes higher-ticket offers? Is your sales copy effective? Are your landing pages clean and clear? Is your sales transaction process easy and smooth? Do you offer opportunities to upgrade or upsell to products? Are you converting readers to customers?  Read More→
Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

What Are Your Target Audience’s 5 Top Web Sites?

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

If you want to create content that engages readers, you have to know their online habits and interests. Yet how many of us scramble to post on a blog or upload a  video to YouTube without taking time to survey our target audience?

Here’s a quick list of survey questions for your target audience:

  1. What are the five top web sites you visit frequently in your work?
  2. What are your online reading habits, blogs, websites, articles, videos, podcasts?
  3. Do you use social media like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn?
  4. Do you access web content via RSS feeds?
  5. Subscribe to e-newsletter and blogs?
  6. Do you read web content from a smartphone?

You have about eight seconds to engage someone before they click away. Clever headlines will get them to click over to your content. But unless you know what your audience wants, you’re shooting in the dark. They won’t stay. Click and bye-bye.

Good content builds momentum and always has an objective, according to Ann Handley and CC Chapman in their book Content Rules. Therefore your content needs to trigger to action. That’s the way you engage readers to respond. Your content should be created with the end in mind: to further a relationship. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing
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Content Marketing Challenge: What to Write?

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

A survey of more than 1,000 businesses this past Spring found that “producing engaging content” is the top challenge for people charged with marketing. The Content Marketing Institute published these results here:

When 36% of marketers struggle with producing engaging content and another 21% with coming up with enough engaging content, well over half of content marketing challenges involves what to say or write.

Many of the small business clients I consult with have this problem. They spend a nice sum on a good-looking website designed only to find that it’s delivered with “lorem ipsom” text as a place holder for content.

What do they write to replace the lorem ipsom? Of course it’s all about their company products and services, why wouldn’t it be? It’s their website and people want to know what they do.

Yes, except for the fact that people are bored, in a hurry, and completely focused on themselves. Web visitors only want to know what you’ll do for them, and if you are unique, amusing, shocking or outrageous they’ll stay and read your pages.

Only the problem is, if you’re in a field like leadership development or executive coaching, or a serious provider of any kind of services, you can’t grab readers’ attention by being rude like some of the videos on YouTube…

Here are three things the brain can’t ignore, to keep in mind when you create content for your home page:

  1. Novelty
  2. Human faces and eye contact
  3. Promise of rewards and satisfaction of desires

Can you see how hard this might be when you’re selling serious products and services? Let’s take life insurance, for example. Novel? No, not really. But wait a minute. The Aflac Duck is a very novel way to attract attention. The trick is tying it into what your staid company does for people.

The Aflac Duck story is brilliant branding. It contains three of the elements required for marketing to get actionable results:

  1. Attention
  2. Emotional response
  3. Memorable

What can coaches and consultants do then, to provide content that grabs readers’ attention in a way that makes an impact?

That’s right, you guessed. Tell engaging stories of real people with real problems and how you can help.

Categories : Attracting Clients, Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Emotional Marketing Makes Memories

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

If you want your content marketing messages to be remembered, you must engage the emotional memories of your readers. Memory formation happens in two ways:

  1. A new memory is formed when it hits the amygdala and makes an emotional connection.
  2. A stimulus may hit the amygdala and be assimilated because it resembles a previously established emotional connection.

What results is a neural network of recalled associations that gets triggered by a memory of a hot-button stimulus. Everything we retain in memory is because it’s gained an emotional place in our brain. At some point, something was important enough because it was emotional. That’s what hot-buttons are… we feel as if someone has poked us.

What can you do to stimulate memory formation? Make an emotional impact.

How? As a content marketing professional, you have words and visuals in your quiver of tools. How do you poke someone and push their hot buttons?

Stories are key. Negative stories can get people’s attention, but can also leave a negative aftertaste, if not followed by positive stories. I’ve talked about this before:

► Grab the audience’s attention ► Stimulate desire ► Reinforce with reasons

What else can you do to poke someone’s hot buttons? How else do you make an emotional impact? Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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How’s Your LinkedIn Profile?

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

(Note from Patsi who is on vacation: This week I asked Phyllis Miller to write a guest post on social media resources. This is excellent advice you need to know and act on. And, if you haven’t already, connect with me on LinkedIn…)

I will be the first to admit that, when three years ago I received an invitation to LinkedIn.com, I joined without a clue as to what I was joining or doing.

Three years later I know that any professional who does not take the opportunity of a free and well-written LinkedIn profile is “cutting off his/her nose to spite his/her face.”

And this is true whether the professional plans to ever actually make connections on LinkedIn.

Why is this LinkedIn profile so important?

Let’s say you are a lawyer. You have written many legal articles for print publications (some with online sites) and you have served on various bar association committees.

If a prospective client were to “google” you, some of these legal articles and some references to you on bar association committees would appear in the search results.

Yes, if your firm has a website your firm profile will be there. But most of these firm profiles are one very long paragraph with rather stilted language.

None of the above provides a well-rounded look at who you are as a legal professional.

What you need is a well-formatted LinkedIn profile that people are accustomed to reading for others and would be able to easily read about you.

By setting up an effective profile, you can offer a range of professional information that will enable prospective clients to quickly learn about you – and hopefully do business with you.

And the good thing about your profile is that you can always add to it and revise it whenever you want. (In fact, if your law firm changes its name – due to a loss or gain of a partner, for example – remember to change the firm name throughout your profile.)

Be sure to include a good headshot of yourself and choose the option of your whole name appearing on your profile rather than just your first name and the first initial of your last name.

Bonus tip: LinkedIn offers company pages (still in beta as of this writing) and has just rolled out product and service tabs for these company pages.  Here is a blog post to help you take advantage of these new opportunities: http://www.millermosaicllc.com/linkedin/new-linkedin-company-feature/

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her social media marketing business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) offer a Professional Setup service.  See http://www.millermosaicllc.com/linkedin-professional-setup/

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Social Media Stuff
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