Archive for Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks – Page 7

The Real Problem: What NOT to Write About…

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Writing-thinking
There are a lot of posts in the Blogosphere about how to choose a topic to post about, where to find content, how to link to good resources.

Even though one of the most commonly cited fears of newbie bloggers and newsletter publishers is "What will I write about?" — I believe this isn't the real problem.

Once you get the hang of blogging, and you've developed your posting wings (2-3 times a week), the real problem is filtering out an excess of information. You must narrow down your focus. Weed out all the dead rabbit trails.

This is the real problem for most of us. I call it Reverse Writer's Block. It's when you have so many ideas and resources and things you could write about, you grind to a full halt.

The real question becomes: what business am I in? What am I in the business of selling? What do I want readers to spend money on?

I'm not denying that writing clever blog posts and newsletters that showcase your expertise isn't foremost. Nor do I diminish the quality of relationships intended in your content. But if you're in business, I'll assume that you have something to sell.

Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing

The 3 Must-Have Ingredients to Writing Great Content

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Herbs
I'm talking about content marketing here. Not about copywriting for a landing sales page, although that might ultimately be where you want your readers to click through to. No, I'm going to tell you what I think are the 3 keys necessary in all your content marketing that precedes your sales copy.

This means writing content for your:

  • Blog posts
  • E-newsletter articles
  • Emails to your list
  • Twitter updates
  • Other social networking site communications
  • Comments on other people's blog posts
  • Web pages
  • Articles
  • Speeches
  • Podcasts, audio files
  • Video casts
  • Ebooks, special reports, white papers

If you think of other places where it's important that you write and publish content to market your business, let me know.

If you aren't writing sufficient content in multiple forms and places on the Web, then it will be that much harder for you to get enough traffic over to your sales pages where you convert them to real clients and customers. That's what content marketing does…

Each form has a different style, but here's what they all must have in common to qualify as great content that effectively markets your business and your products and services:

  1. Unique, useful information that saves time, energy or money or in some way enriches the lives of your targeted readers. It doesn't have to be original or new. But it should be presented or positioned so that it's not ho-hum.

    It's not good enough to regurgitate what everyone else is saying. Readers want to know your own particular perspective. Tell them why this is important for them to read and learn.

Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better

7 Ways to Leverage Your E-Newsletter Content

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, February 27th, 2009

Business_news
Michael Katz and Chad Board are experts at teaching professionals how to write and publish a successful e-newsletters. Today they reviewed ways to re-purpose newsletter materials and get the most marketing power out of your publication.

There was a lively discussion on the teleseminar, open to members of their E-Newsletter Success Program.
As some of you know, I'm a big fan of Michael and Chad: I really
believe that they've got the e-newsletter training stuff down to a tee,
and are teaching it well.

I took some notes. They came up with 7 ways to leverage your e-newsletter content:

  1. Submit your main article to online article directories. My favorite is Chris Knight's Ezine Articles. Be sure to put your name and blog URL in your resource box so people can find you on the web.
  2. Re-purpose your main article for blog posts. In
    some cases, one newsletter article can be turned into a series of
    posts, depending on the length. Of course, this goes both ways. I've
    often turned blog posts into newsletter material.
  3. Create a special report or e-book,
    or an e-course delivered by autoresponders. What do your newsletter
    readers want to know more about? Are there "7 insider secrets" in your
    industry that you can share with them?

Read More→

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

I (still) Love Kindle…one year later

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

Are you using a Kindle for reading books yet? The 2nd generation just came out and it's getting rave reviews.

I
use my Kindle all the time now. It took me a couple of months to get
used to it, and then I was only using it for trips. Instead of lugging
the two or three books I read at one time with me on the plane, the
slim and light electronic book reading devise is convenient and easy.

Now I use it all the time. For one thing, the Mexican postal service charges duty for books when they are delivered here. The Kindle avoids delivery problems and extra costs.

Books
downloaded to Kindle only cost around $10 and are delivered instantaneously. I love that
because I spend way too much on books and am impatient to get them
delivered. Plus, I couldn't possibly have enough book shelves to keep
all the books I buy and read, so many end up being donated.

Problem solved with the Kindle. And the new version is slightly cheaper, but at $359 it's still a chunk of change. But if you read more than a couple of books a month, then the savings will more than make up for the extra cost.

The
reason I'm writing this is not to sell some Kindles and collect a few
dollars of Amazon associates commission (although that would be a good
way to support my addiction ;-))…

If you're an author, I think you need to pay attention to innovative ways books are being read and published.

The Future of Books?

I want you to go read Bob Sutton's post Is the Kindle a Disruptive Innovation? If You Ran a Large Publishing House What Would You Do?

As
usual, Bob Sutton stimulates me to think deeply about what we take for
granted and he raises good questions. How will book publishing be
different in the future?

How will authors adapt and survive, or better yet, how will they stay ahead of the curve?

Categories : Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better

A Blog Is Not an Option Anymore

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Terri Z Interviews The Blog Squad in a teleseminar Thursday February 5, at 1 p.m. ET.

Boost Your Business with a Blog: It's Not an Option Anymore

If you want to learn how to build a professional blog that turns readers into clients, this free class is for you. Registration is required, however, and to do that you need to go to this page: The Blog Squad Teleseminars.

Categories : About Blogs, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing

E-Newsletter Success: How to painlessly learn to be profitable

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Launch a Profitable E-Newsletter with E-Newsletter Success

News
I haven't been this excited about ezines since blogs burst on the scene. I still believe in the power of sending out a regular, well-crafted e-newsletter for your business.

It's just that email deliverability issues and the time to put one together…you know what I'm talking about…unless you know what you're doing, an emailed newsletter can cost you time and worry.

You can just STOP thinking like that. This is the swift solution to learning quickly and inexpensively everything you need to know to craft an ezine that works, that brings in business and makes money for you. This is pain-free, folks.

I'm a huge fan of Michael Katz of Blue Penquin Development. You've heard me gush about his clever writing before: His E-Newsletter on E-Newsletters is a first class production. If nothing else, if you just copied what he does, you'd have a spectacular ezine.

Yesterday Michael announced he's teamed up with Chad Board. They've just launched their E-Newsletter Success training membership program.

If you're thinking about starting an ezine to grow your business, start here. If you're thinking about abandoning yours, don't do it. Learn what you need to know and turn your e-newsletter into a profit machine.

Read More→

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

Get the Best Out of Your Business Blog

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

Social Media TeleSummit
You won't want to miss Leesa Barnes’ Social Media Summit II.
It's Leesa's second year of presenting the telesummit with expert info
on what's new in Social Media and what you really need to pay attention
to for growing your business on the Web.

On Friday, January 23, 2009, at 1:30 p.m. ET, The Blog Squad presents this program:

Get the Best Out of Your Blog: How to Create Massive Visibility on The Web

Think
about it: Many of your ideal clients go online every day, and some have
problems only you can solve …but sadly, most of them can't find you.

In
order to build desire for your products and services you need to be
findable online. If you want to take your business from doing OK to
doing great, you need to have massive visibility online. With the
proliferation of easy-to-use web tools, you can easily connect with
more people than ever before.

If your goal is to transform
people's lives doing what you love, then you need to create massive
visibility online. The best way to do that is with a business blog
that's optimized.

You'll learn how to use your blog to:

  • Get you massive visibility so your ideal clients can find you
  • Reverse the client chase, to attract your ideal clients online, spending less than 30 minutes a day and $10 a month
  • Tap into the pool of 1.4 billion people world-wide who are connected to the Internet and looking for information and solutions
  • Connect with ideal clients in a more intimate way so they are
    driven to contact you, already pre-sold to buy your products or services
  • Leverage the power social networking sites without wasting your time

Don't waste time trying to guess what's best. Learn from the experts. For more info and to register, click here.

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing

2009 Will Be the Year of Content Marketing…are you prepared?

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Male-worker
"If 2008 was the year social media went mainstream, 2009 should be the year of content marketing, the corporation as media company, the brand as publisher and broadcaster," says Junta 42 publisher Joe Pulizzi.

It's true that much of what you read these days about online marketing is about using Twitter, Facebook and social sites effectively. And most of what experts are saying about using these sites has to do with the quality of your messages and how to tie into building your brand and relationships.

If you haven't been keeping up with all this, don't worry. Some of us just aren't early adopters. We can wait for the dust to settle and just learn from the mistakes of others, after the best practices are ironed out. But get prepared because much of this will become as mainstream as email.

What is becoming crucial is that we can no longer afford to NOT pay attention to content marketing, be it on a blog, email newsletters, or on Twitter.

It doesn't matter if you're part of a big corporation trying to brand and market your products and services, or a solo professional or small business owner.

Creating content that engages readers is the challenge. You can forget going out and buying an ad. You've got to write – or hire someone to write for you.

Joe Pulizzi writes from a corporate perspective and gives 10 Content Marketing Tips to Start Now for 2009.

Read More→

Categories : Buying Content, Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing

Blogs Haven’t Replaced Email Newsletters

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Postalenvelope
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.

Read More→

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

Newsletter_concept_3
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?

Read More→

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