Archive for On Writing Better – Page 16

Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs You Can Learn From

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009


The seventh official release of the Junta42 Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs again featured a record number of blogs (313 to be exact, which is about 30 more than the last update, and up from the 81 original blogs in 2007).

Congratulations to Lee Odden and team from TopRank for moving back into the top spot for the second time. 

I'm proud to be among these top content marketing blogs, coming in at #12. More importantly, I appreciate Joe Pulizzi and his efforts to cull through the huge number of blogs and sort out the best. We can all learn from reading these blogs. I'm listing the Top 42 here:

Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better

Writing Is Hard…Writing Is Simple

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, December 6th, 2009

Writer_s_desk What’s stopping you from being a brilliant writer?

Time and again, readers and clients tell me they don’t have enough time to post on their blogs, that finding the time to write is a huge challenge.

I don’t doubt that. I encounter this myself.

And when we drill down to the reasons, it usually turns out to be something other than lack of time. It’s lack of inspiration, lack of confidence, lack of desire to face a task that brings up fear of exposure.

…Because writing is hard. Nobody has time for tough tasks that make you feel inadequate.

Writing, either for your blog or website, or for articles or ebooks, is a tough assignment. 

Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing Great Blog Content

Content Marketing Favorites: Telling Stories

By Patsi Krakoff
Saturday, December 5th, 2009

A Story Teller's Mindset:
Key to Great Content Marketing

Chat-community  The
hardest thing about writing good content for marketing is coming up
with stories to tell. There's no lack of knowledge, or research, or
interesting concepts to blog about, or to write white papers about.

I
read one or two books a week, full of interesting information I can
share with you here. But it's dry without telling you a story of how
that information comes to life in the real world.

What's needed
is a story-teller's mindset. I'm working on that, but it's not
something that comes naturally to me. I'm observing people who have
that already.

Like Eric, Tall Eric, down at the tennis courts.
If I mention coffee, he's got a story. Okay, so that can be a bit
annoying if you're in a hurry, but he's usually got my attention for a
couple of minutes. There may be a point to his story…or not.

Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better

Content Marketing Favorites: Fishing for Business

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Marketing with Blogs: Fishing for Business, or Catch-and-Release?

Catching_with_money
I had the best grilled salmon last night in one of my favorite
restaurants here in Ajijic…which got me thinking about fishing…

I
view business blogging as an attraction strategy, rather than an
activity that earns income via ads. A blog is like a fishing net that
you throw out onto the World Wide Pond to catch new leads, who nibble
on your words like fish on bait.

I believe a blog is a powerful
client magnet when done the smart way. It reverses the client chase.
But few bloggers have a grasp on how to write effective posts on a
business blog and what kinds of content make sense for their readers.

Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better

Content Marketing Favorites: 6 Good Article Hooks

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

This week I'm on vacation, and repeating some of my older yet evergreen posts because they are worthy of being repeated. This one was published in September 2009.

Linkbait Content: 6 Ideas for Article Hooks

Fishing_businessman As you might have read, I'm doing some blog improvements with Easton Ellsworth and his Visionary Blogging program. One of the things we talked about was creating what he calls "linkbait content" for my executive coach marketing site, ContentforCoachandConsultants.com.

I'd like to share his linkbait ideas and some of mine, because these ideas for content are good and easy to translate for any niche.

Unless you are a techy-type, and into search engine optimization, you might not be clear on what "linkbait" really means to you and your online content marketing efforts.

Wikipedia defines Linkbait like this:

Link bait is
any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to
place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts of Google defines
link bait as anything "interesting enough to catch people's attention."
Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral
in nature.

Here's why this is important:

Read More→

Categories : Article Ideas, Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better

Content Marketing Favorites: Brain Based Blogging

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Lessons from Neuroscience for Content Marketing

Subconscious
 In the brain, emotions are closely linked to action. In our mammalian
past, they were the single most important function of our brains. Our
survival depended on quick action.

Feelings do not require
reflection or thought. We feel, we act. We think later and justify our
actions based on input from our more highly advanced reasoning brain.

Strong feelings are hot-wired into the brain's action centers, provoking any one of the "F" actions:

  • Feeding
  • Fleeing
  • Fighting
  • Fornicating

Emotions are simple and clear so that action is easy and fast. This
is built into our brains for very clear reasons of survival as a race.
We wouldn't be here talking about content marketing if our ancestors
hadn't become good at all four "F" actions.

Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better

Content Marketing Favorite Posts: Mediocrity Makes Me Mad

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, November 30th, 2009

While away on vacation, I'm posting some of favorite posts. You may agree or not, but I enjoyed writing these and thought you might not mind my recycling them since the message is evergreen…

Boring, Banal, and Full of Bull-Shitake
Originally posted September 21, 2009

Sleepy I spent the weekend doing research…well,
not entirely, I played tennis, went to the movies, watched HBO and
laughed a lot with my hubby. But work wise, I've been visiting a lot of
blogs and sites lately, researching what makes for good content
marketing and bad.

Newt Barrett does a terrific job of highlighting sites that get Content Marketing right as well as those who miss the boat over on his Content Marketing Today blog. I always learn better when I can see samples of what works and what doesn't work. I'm sure you do too.

However,
I am a little stymied in my quest to find bad samples of content
marketing on blogs. Why? It's not that there aren't bad sites and bad
content on the Web. There's a lot of garbage. But mostly what I find is
mediocrity.

Many bloggers are writing reasonable content. And they're probably getting some results.
Most blog writers are just barely scraping the surface of what needs to
be said. I believe most of you can do better than that.

Mediocrity Sucks

Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better

3 Defining Content Marketing Goals Before You Write

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Goal Before you write one word of copy for your online content marketing, you must first:

  1. Know your objectives
  2. Know your target audience 
  3. Know your product or service

Objectives?

I know this seems so common sense it's not worth spending time on, but the time you take to write down a few notes on each of these things will be well worth it.

For example, writing on the web can have several objectives, besides making a sale. What is it you'd like readers to do? Contact you for more information? Sign up for a digital report? Leave a comment, watch a video, fill out a survey?

Read More→

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

Where Do You Find Ideas for Fresh Blog Posts?

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Fresh-ideas-sign-in-the-sky How do you continually come up with fresh blog posts, fresh material? Many of us sing the same old song, when it comes to writing content.

Here are some ideas for finding  fresh Content Inspiration…

  1. Find out what others are talking about. Open up the Internet and go to an aggregation site where you can get the latest news. Choices: any news site, Twitter, any social site, or your news feed reader to look at your favorite blogs. I use Alltop.com, and in particular my own Alltop page where I can aggregate my favorite blogs on a variety of topics.
  2. Look outside your field. You may find something inspiring in your field of expertise. But I often find an inspiration in an outside topic, then find a creative way to apply it to my own particular niche.
  3. Find relevancy to your audience. After spending some time reading other people's blog posts, come up with your own unique spin, and write it on your own blog post. Save as a draft and re-read it and edit it after letting it rest for a while. Ask yourself this question: "So what?" Answer for your readers, explain why this is important.
  4. Edit twice, once for relevancy to your readers, and once for entertainment value. Re-write your post with fresh eyes, usually later in the day. This will ensure that your writing is sharper, removing excess words, adding brilliant metaphors, finding ways to make it more relevant and entertaining to your readers. This will also give you additional ideas for other posts.

This last tip can be hard to do, but here's how to make it simple:

Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better

10 Snappy Content Creation Strategies

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

Speed-drawing  The prospect of writing on the web is daunting for some professionals, especially those with years of graduate school indoctrination with academic theses and dissertations.

It's because writing short and snappy is better on the Web than long, convoluted, and detailed. Doctors and lawyers and other highly educated people like to be correct; sometimes that takes more than one sentence.

The problem is too much information distracts a writer from getting to point quickly and clearly. I'm preparing materials for a class I'm teaching to lawyers who want to master online marketing with blog content, articles and ebooks.

I'd say it's a challenge for some lawyers to be fast and to the point about things, for fear of being wrong or misleading people. But maybe that's stereotyping and I'm making assumptions. I usually do.

Nevertheless, I've made a list of 10 content creating strategies to help write blog posts and articles for the Web, with an emphasis on being short and snappy.

Here are 10 steps that I'm sharing with them, to help anyone write faster, clearer, better.

Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, E-Books, Ezine & Blog Classes, How to...Tips, On Writing Better, Online Marketing
« Previous Page
Next Page »

Content for Coaches and Consultants

Serenity Virtual Assistant Services

Social Buzz Club

get your bright idea known