Several top speakers sang the same tune at the Mega Speaking Event last weekend: Write that book! It’s clear that getting a book published (self or otherwise) provides 6 powerful elements to your marketing:
Here’s Gerry Robert’s (The Millionaire Mindset, Life Success Publishing, LLC) tips for easily and quickly writing a book…in just 40 hours:
One of the things we noticed at Mark Victor Hansen’s Mega Speaking Event was that only one presenter was a woman. Denise and I agree with Kathleen Gage that there is something missing when Internet marketing gurus, top speakers, and other experts are all men.
One of the participants approached me in the hall and asked why there weren’t other women presenting. My response, "And why isn’t there more emphasis on publishing a blog for marketing?" Blogs are one of the best ways for speakers and writers to get known, it’s a well-known fact.
It could be that although most of the presenters themselves have blogs, upon investigation The Blog Squad finds them in need of updating. Perhaps these super stars of the podium don’t have time, or don’t understand that for 20 minutes a day you get big results.
Street Smart Kathleen Gage agrees (pictured above with Denise and I): This conference needs more women and needs to teach more about how use blogs to grow business. Kathleen knows how to make money online and off. And she shares her knowledge generously with others, men and women.
She’s written a great (and free) ebook called The Truth: the truth about making money on the Internet.
This is hard: three days of top speakers delivering high energy content to 500 people from 7:30 a.m. to 8 at night, with power networking during meals and breaks. Mark Victor Hansen is a man with a huge heart and colossal visions and goals. If you get a chance to attend any of Mark’s Mega Events (books, marketing, selling) do so!
I’m beat. But I learned a ton of stuff I’ll share with you. We’re all speakers even if we only present our message to one person at a time. I’m learning how to present to larger audiences so we can grow The Blog Squad business and reach more people. Mark’s Mega Speaking Event showcases the best speakers in the business.
Marshall Sylver, who I knew as a stage hypnotist 15 years ago, is now delivering the bigger message: we are what we believe and we do what we believe we can. His steps for success are:
Doug Wead is a powerful speaker I had never heard before, a former White House speech writer, and I’ll be listening to his CDs soon. He’s in Wikipedia if you want to know more. His message: Connect your audience with a deeper purpose to help transform their lives.
Last week I joined colleagues at Lorrie Morgan Ferrero’s one day copywriting workshop in Burbank. If you are selling information products online, or giving teleseminars, you will need to learn the basics of copywriting sales letters for landing pages.
Pictured here are Lorrie and I, and Lisa Manyon, Creative Writing Services, LouAnn Savage, and me.
Here’s Lorrie Morgan Ferrero’s copywriting steps for a sales letter:
In trying to be more personal and share my own experiences, I goofed. Yesterday, I wrote about the San Diego fires in an email promotion. I said I thought the reason there weren’t more deaths is that people were more prepared to evacuate early – much earlier than they were in 2003.
In that fire, there were more deaths because people waited until the last minute to evacuate. In my email message, I meant to express that preparation and caution were good things in times of disasters. Even though packing up and evacuating was a real pain for our household, being prepared is worth it.
Then I made an error in using this story. Here’s my mistake: I went on to say that you need to be prepared and cautious about protecting your online business too.
Note: It’s ironic in a sad way that this post on Red Hot Copywriting tips is being published in Southern California on a weekend of horrific wildfires whipped by winds. The air is full of ash.
People in East San Diego county have been forced to evacuate their homes. The winds haven’t died down and fires are spreading rapidly in the direction of the Wild Animal Park. Many residents have fled with their horses, and of course other pets.
Here in my home office, my desk and papers are covered with soot. We put the air conditioning on to close up the house. My nose is running and sneezing. But for the 21,000 500,000 people who have to flee their homes, it’s much worse. The fires are spreading. The morning TV news is not good.
Red Hot Copywriting Workshop Notes
It’s hard for me to concentrate with the view outside of red skies and smoke. Here’s what I wrote before the fires broke out…
The first thing we recommend for any professional or business that wants to go online to grow business is to set up a business blog.
What about a website? Well, you can put up a website if you want, but if you want to get results (get published, get found, get clients) right away, then starting a blog is the best bang for your buck.
A blog is your first priority. Because a blog will get you found quickly on the Web by the people who need you, we recommend starting a business blog even before a website, if you don’t have one already.
The Great Internet Challenge:
How to Get Your Business Found on the Web by The Blog Squad(tm), Patsi Krakoff, Psy.D. and Denise Wakeman. Go here to register to get the full report (no fee) with our compliments.
I’ll admit that the concept of Content Marketing makes sense to me. It ties together all the different kinds of content you need to publish for business online and off.
So I was thrilled to find Joe Pulizzi and his blog, Junta42. He’s a Content Marketing guru. In fact, he’s written a book called Get Content, Get Customers (being published with co-author Newt Barrett in 2008). I just downloaded a digital excerpt and can’t wait to read it.
Here’s his definition from his blog post 5 Pillars of Content Marketing:
Content Marketing is:
When you think about it, everything you write for your business should include these elements: interesting content, with an underlying marketing objective, appealing to universal human behaviors, delivered in an attractive easy-to-read-hear-see message, and specifically targeted to an identified group of people.
Joe makes a big point that the reason content is so important is that traditional marketing isn’t working. You can no longer blast a message in people’s faces. Maybe you never really could.
Anyway, there are more reasons to learn to write better, or to hire someone who does it for you and your business.
Writing for business: where to start? What’s the best path to follow if you want your writing to work for you?
If you want to successfully market your business on the Web, you have to write quite a bit. And I don’t only mean the copy on your Web pages, although that’s a start. You must write on a blog, write articles for your own website and for article syndication sites, write a newsletter, write press releases, and write a white paper.
Of course, being successful means selling something, so you also have to learn to write persuasively for your email promotions, landing pages, and autoresponders. That means learning copywriting, unless you can afford the big bucks for a copywriter.
On this blog, I’ve been covering many of these writing tasks. I started out covering what you need to know about writing a successful newsletter, but boy, has that evolved. This list of writing projects for successfully marketing your business online is big.
To avoid overwhelm, let’s break it down. I recently composed a special report for our Blogging and Beyond Mentor Program, describing a Pathway to Profits.
In the next few weeks, I’m going to break it down for you here: what is the sequence of writing tasks necessary when you take your business online and want to get found, get published, and get leads for your business?
There is “no one size fits all” solution for everyone who wants to do business on line. There is no one road to take to get to success. It’s truly different for everyone.
The person who is selling a book will have different needs than a person selling coaching services. It’s impossible to say "do it this way and you’ll be successful".
But ask anyone who makes money from their online marketing efforts and they’ll have followed some basic best practices. Stay tuned as I lead you down The Blog Squad’s Pathway to Profits(tm)…
