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 69

Content Marketing: How do you write to entertain readers?

By Patsi Krakoff

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Part of content marketing involves good, entertaining writing, no doubt. Creating valuable content for your blog is easy when you follow the 4 E's of better business blog writing:

Educate your readers generously, without solely focusing on your own products and services
Entertain them, by sharing stories or video clips
Engage them by getting them involved and participating
Enrich their lives by saving them time, energy, or money or by adding value

How do you entertain readers of your business blog? One client of ours emailed to say:

"I'm in the financial services business. I recognize the value of business blogging to educate people, but how the heck do I entertain them, especially now?"

Good point. Let's redefine what entertainment means to the average business blog reader. You have an opportunity to entertain your readers anytime you:

Categories : Content Marketing

4 Questions a Business Blog Post Should ask and Answer

By Patsi Krakoff

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

(Note: This is a follow up to a previous post Educate Your Readers, about the four different learning styles of blog readers. Since I'm on vacation this week, I'm republishing a series on better business blog writing.)

Why this is important: Because you want your blog posts to educate, entertain, and engage readers of your business blog. What do you need to remember when writing a post that's designed to educate?

According to the 4MAT system on www.aboutlearning.com, when you are educating people you need to appeal to four different kinds of learning styles:

Imaginative learners
Analytic learners
Common sense learners
Dynamic learners

How does this translate into blog writing for your business?

Categories : Content Marketing

Content Marketing Goals: Educate

By Patsi Krakoff

Monday, December 1st, 2008

4 ways people learn

Remember the 3 E’s
of Better Business Blogging? It's my short hand memory checklist before
publishing a blog post: Educate, Entertain, & Engage readers.

You write to educate, entertain and engage readers when you want to build readerships and get great results with your blogging.

When it comes to educating readers, it’s important to take a page
out of teachers’ notebooks. Teachers know that not all people learn the
same way.

Most of us teach in the style we’re most familiar with: our own
learning styles. If you’re analytical, you’ll teach using data. Your
blog readers will understand and learn well if they’re like you.

But not all readers are the same. Denise is an active experimenter. She wants to know how to do something and needs to try it out before she learns something.

Categories : Content Marketing

Content Marketing: 3 E’s to Include When Writing

By Patsi Krakoff

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

(Note: Patsi's on vacation this week. What follows is a series of blog posts about better business blog writing, originally published in Spring, 2008.)

Content Marketing Goals: 3 E's to Pay Attention To

Keep these 3 E's in mind when reviewing your content. Your blog posts,
ezine articles, and even your sales copy should meet these three goals:

Does it educate?
Does it entertain?
Does it engage?

I'm sure I didn't originate this easy to remember formula; it just flew out of my mouth when I was on stage yesterday at Tom Antion's
Butt Camp for Internet Marketing. Denise and I were giving an overview
of what goes into better business blogging to 50 professionals at the
LA Chapter of the National Speakers Association.

Some content you write for your business will educate clients (ebooks, mini-courses, special reports and white papers), some will entertain (blog posts, articles, interviews), and some will be specifically written to engage readers (sales copy, landing pages, email promotions).

If you can include all three elements in your writing, you're on the
right track. "Okay, Patsi, that makes sense," you might well be saying,
"…but HOW do you do that?" Here's my stab at giving you a few tips…

Categories : Content Marketing

4 Steps to Creating Massive Online Visibility

By Patsi Krakoff

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

Can your ideal clients easily find you when they go online to search for solutions to their challenges? Are you hard to find? Or do people tell you "You're everywhere on the Web!"

It's not difficult to create massive visibility on the Internet. It's free or low-fee. It's relatively easy, few tech skills required. (I know what I'm talking about cuz I'm a recovering techno-twit who was unheard of less than 4 years ago.)

I'm not a genius or a smooth-talking networking virtuoso. I haven't had large sums of cash to spend, nor do I understand how things work on the Web. Blogs, social sites, email marketing, autoresponders and digital downloads all work without me knowing how.

True, I did team up with a great partner (Denise Wakeman, co-founder of The Blog Squad) who's savvy and sometimes has to explain things to me ;-). But here're the things we do that many of our peers don't bother doing (or at least not consistently):

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Pathway to Profits, Teleclasses & Seminars

Content Marketing: Is Your Blog Like a Hungry Dragon?

By Patsi Krakoff

Friday, November 21st, 2008

Is Content Marketing with a business blog like a hungry dragon you must constantly keep feeding?

Denise and I were teaching better business blogging to a group of savvy professionals at Kim Duke's Prosperity Cafe yesterday. Kim, the Sales Diva, mentioned many of her people are intimidated by taking up blogging because of the fear of not being able to come up with good content on a regular basis.

When you think about it that way, yes, I can see where someone might imagine facing the daunting task of feeding the hungry blogging dragon every morning. You must write frequently, and provide valuable content otherwise your blog doesn't work like it should.

Denise and I tried to explain, it's really not that bad. And yes, you do have to feed the damn beast if you want your biz blog readers to keep coming back for more.

And then I read a superb post by the brilliantly talented Sonia Simone over on Copyblogger, The Matrix Guide to Content Marketing. Even if you're not a fan of The Matrix, think of the four quadrants used by consulting firms to look at 4 aspects of your business.

Everything you do with your blog and your business goes into one of these sectors:

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better

Blogs Haven’t Replaced Email Newsletters

By Patsi Krakoff

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Thanks for voting on the Vizu Poll about email newsletter formatting preferences. If you haven’t voted yet, please do. The poll is found if you scroll down a little on the right, in bright pink.

Why should you do an email newsletter if you’ve got a blog? When it comes to content marketing, you want to increase the chances that people will read what you have to say. You need both a blog and an emailed newsletter (or ezine).

Today I got Darren Rowse’s Problogger.net newsletter in my inbox and he reminds us that email newsletters are still a best practice of smart bloggers. Rather than repeat all his wisdom, here are the links to read a couple of his posts about this:

Email newsletters aren’t a thing of the past. Blogs haven’t replaced ezines. A newsletter gives additional information in a way that is different, more traditional.

Categories : Content Marketing, Email Marketing Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Writing Better Ezines

Ideal Format for Email Newsletters?

By Patsi Krakoff

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Last week I asked readers to respond to a poll (see Vizu poll on the right) on their preferred formatting and distribution for emailed newsletters: plain text, HTML, or PDF versions. So far, half of responders prefer using HTML, and a third are using plain text.

There haven’t been any who say they prefer PDF, either sent as an attachment, or viewed as a page on their websites. I happened to know of several clients who are using PDFs for their newsletters, but looks like they didn’t vote.

Judging from the newsletters I subscribe to and receive in my inbox this 50%-33% split between HTML and plain text formatting is typical.

Here’s my perspective: if you want readers to focus primarily on your message, then plain text is valuable. If you also want to impress people visually with colors, logo and other branding elements, then it makes sense to make the most out of graphic design by using HTML formatting.

Can there be an ideal merge of both of these important elements – design for branding and showcase valuable content?

Categories : Content Marketing, Email Marketing Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

3 Contest Winners Announced for ‘Make Me Think’ Ideas

By Patsi Krakoff

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Cheryl, Kevin and Lisa@Serahs are winners in our contest to contribute ideas to the post 10 Ways to Write to Make Readers Think. And I’m throwing in a bonus question winner: Monica.

Please email me to tell me which book you want from the list of marketing books and where to send it.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to give ideas, they are all valuable. I’ll still send you a free book from the list if you agree to pay for the shipping. (Subject to what’s left on the list, of course.)

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

Archive for Content Marketing – Page 69

Content Marketing: How do you write to entertain readers?

4 Questions a Business Blog Post Should ask and Answer

Content Marketing Goals: Educate

4 ways people learn

Content Marketing: 3 E’s to Include When Writing

4 Steps to Creating Massive Online Visibility

Content Marketing: Is Your Blog Like a Hungry Dragon?

Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs: We’re number 3!

Blogs Haven’t Replaced Email Newsletters

Ideal Format for Email Newsletters?

3 Contest Winners Announced for ‘Make Me Think’ Ideas

Content for Coaches and Consultants

Serenity Virtual Assistant Services

Social Buzz Club