Content Marketing | 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

Archive for Content Marketing – Page 27

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:

What are the five top web sites you visit frequently in your work?
What are your online reading habits, blogs, websites, articles, videos, podcasts?
Do you use social media like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn?
Do you access web content via RSS feeds?
Subscribe to e-newsletter and blogs?
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→

Tags : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, neuromarketing, Online Marketing, target audience

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:

Novelty
Human faces and eye contact
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:

Attention
Emotional response
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

Content Marketing Tasks: Practice Makes Progress

By Patsi Krakoff

Monday, December 13th, 2010

If you’ve spent your career avoiding certain marketing tasks because you don’t think you’re any good at them, you struggle each time you try, and you end up with weak results, take heart. Persistence has been touted by poets for a reason.

Your brain learns a lot each time you try something, even if you fail. If you stop trying, you’ll walk away with nothing. If you persist, however, the rewards are huge.

Example: public speaking. Many small business owners and entrepreneurs including many of my clients love getting the chance to get up and speak. The larger the group, the better. In my experience, they are extroverts. They love people and love conversations.

On the other hand, they usually don’t like writing. (Which is why they are my clients… they need content and they need to publish on the web – blogs, e-newsletters, ebooks, etc.)

Other people tend to focus their online marketing on content; they write books and they publish blogs and newsletters… and they hate speaking. They would rather have a root canal than deliver even a 3 minute elevator speech at a networking event. Read More→

Categories : Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Writing Speeches

Tags : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, speaking, trust

My Most Painful Struggle on the Web

By Patsi Krakoff

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

I don’t think I’m alone in my pain. What I find most difficult is having to juggle multiple tasks when it comes to marketing online. It’s not the tasks themselves – it’s the thinking clearly and maintaining focus that gets me down.

I can blog about business blogging and content marketing. I love writing about all things blogging and marketing online.That’s what I do here on this blog, WritingontheWeb.com.

But it’s difficult for me to shift gears and focus on writing content for executive coaches and management consultants, which is a big part of my business, with a different target audience and different message.

Leadership development is an area of expertise for me. I write Ph.D.-quality content for coaches and consultants. Although I love reading business books and crafting articles for my successful executive coaches, or ghost-blogging for them, I’m suffering from a split brain and it hurts!

Half my days are spent doing right-brained creative writing. The other half is left-brained managing the business, operations, accounting, client services, etc. I don’t do either well when I have to do both. I can focus on marketing and operations. Or, I can focus on writing and creating quality content. Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars

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:

A new memory is formed when it hits the amygdala and makes an emotional connection.
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

Tags : Attracting Clients, blog content, blog writing, brain science, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, neuromarketing, persuasion triggers

10 Ways to Use Facebook as a List Building Tool

By Patsi Krakoff

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

(Annalaura Brown is guest blogging this week, while Patsi’s on vacation.)

Facebook can be a powerful list building tool if you know how to use it properly as such. Here are ten ways you can use FB to build your email list and increase your online business income.

Share your blog posts.

You can do this automatically by using one of several tools such as ping.fm or networked blogs. Both of these tools allow you to post a blog post on your blog and then have the post automatically show up on your profile or fan page or both. Ping.fm puts it in your status update while networked blogs puts an image and a summary of the post on your wall. You will find that many people will read your blog posts from FB, comment, subscribe to your list etc.

2. Share your compelling opt-in offer.

You want to of course do this on your blog but they are additional ways that you can do it on FB too. Some examples of ways that work to do this are:

Include in a status update along with some cleverly written text
Put it as a link on your fan page along with an explanation
Put it with a description of a video that you upload to FB.

3. Use the notes application.

This is Facebook’s way of allowing you to write blog posts directly on FB. You can write notes with text and pictures and tag your friends to draw their attention to it. Make sure to avoid tagging too many people or tagging people who might not appreciate the gesture. You also want to always offer value with a link at the bottom to your opt-in offer. Avoid writing notes that may be seen as spam by others.

4. Share videos.

Videos are very popular on FB and if you do it right, your video may even go viral and be shared by others and create even more visibility for you and your offer. Make sure to include the link to your opt-in offer with the description part of your video.

5. Offer your offer as a solution to people’s problems. Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, List Building Tips, Social Media Stuff

Tags : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, social media marketing, writing on the web

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

Tags : Attracting Clients, blog marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, social media marketing, Writing for the Web

7 Mistakes Speakers Make with Presentations

By Patsi Krakoff

Monday, November 29th, 2010

We’ve often heard the brain can only hold seven things in mind. The brain research behind this is valid, and in everyday life we experience it with 7-digit phone numbers.

This week in Las Vegas, at Chris Farrell’s and Mike Filsaime’s Affiliatedotcom.com event, many speakers presented “7 Steps” to better internet marketing. But I think there’s a perception that an audience will listen and remember 7 things from a presentation which is wrong.

What’s true for phone numbers isn’t true for concepts.

Try 3-4 things instead. There’s no way anyone can remember seven tips from a presentation. No way. Especially when there are 6-7 other speakers on the podium per day, over two days.

Let’s get real, folks. The other things is, that to be effective, you need to repeat your message several times. Now some of the speakers were able to do this, even in spite of having 7 tips. But that makes for a lot of repeating and it’s still not going to be remembered.

But with 3 things, yes, you can drill them home. 1-2-3. Repeat at least 7 times, and you’ve got a message that will be remembered and associated with your name.

The more I think about this, this “rule of 3” should also apply to other content you publish and communicate: newsletters, blogs, white papers, ebooks, etc.

Especially in this era of information overload, we need to become more aware and considerate of our target audiences’ capacity to receive and retain messages. Only 3 main points or steps to your solutions. Not 7. Read More→

Categories : Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Speeches

Tags : internet marketing, online content, Online Marketing, persuasion, presentations, speeches, Writing for the Web

Neuromarketing and How Content Marketing Works

By Patsi Krakoff

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

What are 3 ways to frustrated your reader’s brains? Last week, I presented a speech at the 5th International Customer Media Congress in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Besides sharing what neuromarketing is teaching us about the brain and marketing, there are tips here for most web-based content publications.

I hope you enjoy it and learn something. Let me know if you have questions…

Categories : About Blogs, Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Persuasion

Tags : brain science, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, persuasion, Writing for the Web

Archive for Content Marketing – Page 27

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

Content Marketing Challenge: What to Write?

Content Marketing Tasks: Practice Makes Progress

My Most Painful Struggle on the Web

Emotional Marketing Makes Memories

7 Mistakes Speakers Make with Presentations

Neuromarketing and How Content Marketing Works

Content for Coaches and Consultants

Serenity Virtual Assistant Services

Social Buzz Club

Archive for Content Marketing – Page 27

CoTweet

Content for Coaches and Consultants

Serenity Virtual Assistant Services

Social Buzz Club