Archive for Attracting Clients – Page 15

Blogging for Business: Persistence Pays

Is your blog like my tennis, a hit or miss? Are you writing posts that are clear winners for your readers? Are you steadily delivering valuable, relevant content within the lines of your readers’ needs?

This week I’ve been watching the world’s best players battle it out on the courts in Cinncinati, Toronto, and Montreal. I’ve noticed a few things that applies to content marketing.

In one match, Marty Fish and Gilles Simon had a rally that lasted 33 shots. They exchanged power shots from the back court, until finally, one of them blinked and missed the line.  Fish won, 7-6, 7-5.

Persistence and control is the name of the game. With me, I get impatient in a rally, and with a burst of aggression I’ll end the point with a whopping drive… clear out of the court.

I know people who blog like that. They write 600-900 words every few weeks, then wonder why they aren’t getting search traffic. Read More→

Writing The Naked Blog: Dress Up Your Words

What can you learn about blog writing and content marketing from the theater?

This weekend Attila the Hubby and I went to The Naked Stage production of Night, Mother, the 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning drama by Marsha Norman.

If you’re not familiar with this kind of theater format, the actors read their lines, sitting on stools, dressed in black, without benefit of costumes, scenery, makeup, or movement. Hence the name, Naked Stage: the presentation is devoid of any of the usual visual aids.

There’s a narrator to explain the scenes and movements, including sounds, which in this case consisted of a gun going off. He yelled, “GUN SHOT!” Not “BANG” but “GUN SHOT!” It is truly minimalist and much depends on the actors’ voices. Everything, perhaps. They don’t even look at each other, they are reading their lines.

This means that the audience has to work harder than usual. We use our imaginations and create pictures in our minds of how the scene plays out. And it works, since the audience has to stay alert and active.

Blog writing is similar. You don’t have the advantage of voice, or body language, or scenery and costume. You must capture your readers’ attention with words.

With blog writing and content marketing, you need to spell things out. Dress up your words.  Nuances will be missed. It’s not that readers aren’t intelligent enough to connect the dots, but they are in a hurry and usually multitasking and scanning. In other words, they aren’t necessarily paying attention.

Because words are nothing but letters, you have to make them come alive with metaphor, story and informal phrases and questions.

A lot of text on the screen is like homework shoved in your face and someone telling you, “here, read this.” That’s why images, photos, diagrams, and video are so important. Heck, even adding hyperlinks breaks up the text in a blog post.

Remember the statistics about communications? Words only form 7% or so of our communication, the rest is 38% tonality and 55% body language. Writing on the web deprives us of a lot of the cues for meaning.

That said, don’t make your readers work too hard, or they’ll click and go bye-bye. Use as many images as you can, don’t rely on words so much.

Get Search Engine Optimized- Fast

How do you know if your blog posts are optimized for search engines?

Good question… and no  easy answer… well, except for one which I’m going to share with you here!  Here are a few options for optimizing your content for search marketing:

  1. Study Google and search engine optimization (time-consuming)
  2. Hire an SEO person to do some optimization for your web content (expensive)
  3. Become a subscriber to a service called Scribe Content Optimizer (easy, instant & affordable)

Here’s how it works. You go here, you sign up, you install it to your WordPress blog. You start using a free plug in called All-in-One SEO Pack.

You write a blog post, you fill in the information on the SEO plug in, you click the Scribe analyze button, wait a few seconds and get a review of how well your content will do with search engines. You then get a list of things you can do to raise your search engine optimization score.

Okay, seeing is better than me telling you. Here’s a snapshot of a blog post that didn’t score well, and here’s one that got a perfect score. You can see for yourself that the Scribe report tells me what I can do to raise my score, to improve my search engine optimization.

And here is a screen capture of a post that got a perfect score: Read More→

Tell Your Story: Why Are You Here?

How do you connect deeply with blog readers and gain their trust? Through stories.

There are six types of stories you need to know about yourself, and two of them you need to be telling your blog readers, clients and prospects if you want to gain their trust.

I’m reviewing Annette Simmons book The Story Factor, Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling. These are the six types of stories that are really important for your to know about yourself, if you want to influence others:

  1. “Who am I” stories
  2. “Why am I here?” stories
  3. “The Vision” story
  4. “Teaching” stories
  5. “Values-in-action” stories
  6. “I know what you’re thinking” stories

The first two are essential to establishing your brand, your mission, and your core values. It should be obvious why this is so important, but let me spell it out.

What better way than to tell you a story about myself, right? Don’t worry, I’m far too old in years to tell you my complete story of “who” I am, and I’m not sure you’d be interested in the full story anyway.

In order for you to believe me, in order for me to build trust with you that I have credibility and expertise in Writing on the Web, here’s an abbreviated version of why I write this blog.

In  2004 I had been working online for 5 years, doing okay, but not really. I was completely baffled by html coding and working on the web was a lot more complicated than it is today. Read More→

Online Persuasion: Seeing Through the Eyes of Your Customers

There’s an important shift in content marketing tactics that affects professionals who want to get found, get known and get clients online. And that shift means a different mindset.

I saw a great blog post the other day. There was a picture of a pair of glasses lying on a bench with this caption: Don’t you wish you could see through your customers’ glasses?

What if you could live in their shoes for a day? Or, track their brains as they go online to your website? What makes them click? What makes them take action?

Here’s where you should start thinking a little differently when writing content for the Web:

Smart content marketers are using persuasion tactics that appeal to emotions rather than reasons. They know that emotions not only guide our decisions and actions, they determine whether or not we buy.

When successful web writers create online content, they appeal to the senses and the emotions. They:

  • Grab attention through outrageous headlines and images
  • Appeal to basic human wants, desires
  • Tell a story of one person
  • Use emotional hot buttons
  • Use persuasion triggers
  • Motivate action with fear, scarcity, urgency

The most effective content marketing occurs with a mixture of both rational and emotional tactics. That’s because people use the emotional parts of their brains to make what they consider rational decisions. Read More→

Online Persuasion: Creating Desire

How can you appeal to readers’ emotions on a business-oriented site? Online persuasion works best when you appeal to both the logical and emotional centers in the brain.

If you want to write content that persuades readers to take action, you write about emotional triggers AND provide reasons to act.

Many online content marketers misunderstand what it means to “appeal to emotions.”  How exactly do you bypass the conscious thinking brain and instantly connect with readers’ emotional centers, out of their conscious awareness?

It’s easier than you might think. Stephen Denning writes about this in his book The Secret Language of Leadership, and these lessons for leadership communications are applicable to writing web content.

Here’s a diagram of how many business professionals traditionally write content when they want to persuade people to take action:

The traditional communication approach follows this sequence:

Define the problem ► Analyze it ►Recommend a solution

Effective content marketers, however, follow a unique, almost hidden pattern:

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

When language follows this sequence, it can inspire enduring enthusiasm for a cause and spark action. Read More→

How To Raise Your Coaching Fees

I want to invite you to join an incredibly valuable teleseminar from some people I trust.

The title of the seminar is:  How To Raise Your Coaching Fees With Ease & Feel Great About It!

Click on the above seminar title to register.

I have hosted a similar teleseminar with Kim Ades and Marc Manieri. Their Journal Engine Software is an ingenious product for anyone doing personal, executive and leadership coaching. Here’s why I can recommend this new teleseminar:

The seminar leader, Kim Ades, runs a full time coaching practice called Frame of Mind Coaching. They make over 100 coaching sales each year, and Kim has personally increased her coaching fees from $1,200 to over $6,000.  I think she has valuable information to share with you.

If you’re doing any kind of coaching, you know it’s great work and you bring valuable help to people. It’s time for you to start earning the coaching fees you deserve, no?

(Disclosure, this is my affiliate link and I whole-heartedly endorse this program because if you’re a coach, you most likely should be earning more~!)

How To Raise Your Coaching Fees With Ease & Feel Great About It!

Website & Blog Headers: 5 Keys for Branding

What are the key elements to a custom blog header that work well for online content marketing?

Your header contributes to your blog branding, and also helps readers decide if they want to stay and read or subscribe.

How do you like my new look? I’m talking about the new header and colors… Since switching to a WordPress a couple months ago, I decided to give this blog a face-lift while I was at it.

Suzanne Bird-Harris of Websites in WordPress did the graphic design for the header. If you’ve ever thought your site could use a little face-lift, this is a no-brainer! For a reasonable fee, Suzanne can transform your blog and give it a whole new look with a custom header.

A big thanks to my friend Paul Hart who took the photo.

Having a blog header is obviously an important element to online content marketing. It’s the first thing new visitors see when they land on your blog.

Here are the key elements (you’d be surprised at how many smart professionals forget to add their name, their photo, or the benefits to readers…)

  1. The title (branding elements should define the area of expertise and be memorable)
  2. The author’s name
  3. What’s in it for readers if they stay to read?
  4. Who is the blog for, who is the targeted audience?
  5. An attractive photo

These elements may seem obvious, but often, when working with clients, they are so close to the blackboard, that they forget key elements. I’ve even seen one professional include everything in the header, but forget the title of the blog.

Another common error is being too vague about the topic and the targeted audience.First time visitors shouldn’t be confused when they arrive.

As Malcom Gladwelll writes, people make up their minds in the blink of an eye…

The Brain Science of Online Persuasion

What has brain science taught us about how people are persuaded to take action online? And, how can we use that wisdom when writing content that serves to market ourselves and our businesses?

These two questions have been fueling my mental energy for the past few years. As a journalist-turned-psychologist, turned-online-content-marketer, you might imagine that these issues keep me up at night … or not! I believe this is important stuff for any professional who wants an effective online presence.

Here’s what I see as an important shift in online marketing tactics. It has significance for you if you’re trying to create content for your own business.

Business persuasion skills, whether for presentations in person or for web pages online, have always centered on problem solving using rationality and logic. Smart professionals believe that people make decisions based on clearly laid-out arguments and intelligent thinking.

  • What’s the problem?
  • What does this mean to your target audience?
  • Why hasn’t this problem been solved?
  • What is your solution?
  • What should people do now?
  • What will happen if they don’t?

Business professionals approach online content marketing and writing for the web with this mentality. It makes sense and there’s nothing wrong with it… except it’s probably not getting good results.

Ad people, however, copywriters and marketers don’t use this approach. The people who write ads for TV, or print, or direct mail letters have been using persuasion tactics that appeal to emotions rather than reasons. Read More→

Video: How to Create Great Sales Pages in WP

Here’s a quick video I’m  using to promote Suzanne Bird-Harris’ fabulous WordPress Sales Page Template.I love the image of the “web designer thief” that sneaks across the screen about half way through… 😉

Take a look, and if you haven’t downloaded the free audio interview and transcript we did together, go to PatsiPicksWPSalesPage.com and do so now.

What do you think about the video? I think the folks at iFlashVideo.com did a super job!

I want to share with you this nice email I got from Kathy Porter, who was on the actual teleseminar call:

“Hi Patsi – your webinar training on how to incorporate a sales page into a WordPress platform is one of the BEST things I’ve participated in this year.  (I’ll be creating my own WordPress blog shortly, now that I’ve gotten my feet wet using Typepad.)

Think I can help you expand your reach with this product by tweeting and “face-booking” your affiliate link as my heartfelt thank you for making this info available.”

Kathy Porter
Creator and Owner, MrsBizWhiz
Web site/blog: www.MrsBizWhizConnects.com