Archive for Online Marketing – Page 28

Other People’s Content: Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Finger-walk Sometimes easy is better than hard. Finding great blog content for your business blog doesn't have to be a struggle. You can make great use of "OPC" – other people's content. I stumbled upon this tactic while trying to find blog content before going away on vacation.

Remember the old Yellow Pages ad, "Let your fingers do the walking?" Here's how to let your fingers do the heavy lifting. Everything is done by email, except of course the actual posting to your blog, but then, your fingers do the work there too.

The idea is to write a series of interview questions (5-7) about your core topic. Send them off by email to the 10 top experts in your field. Ask them for 5 minutes of their time to complete the emailed interview, and let them know you'd like to feature them on your blog.

Then run the interview series on your blog. This provides your blog readers with valuable, relevant content in addition to your own experiences and perspectives. Your readers will deepen their understanding of your topic.

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

7 Keys to Content Marketing on a Business Blog:
Why a blog is not a newsletter

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, July 27th, 2009

Blogger-with-community Content Marketing is the Buzz-du-Jour among marketers everywhere, both on and offline. I have encouraged you over the last five years to write relevant content on your business blogs that provides good information, builds relationships, entertains and converts readers to clients.

But here's the thing: how do you do all that when you write a blog post? Many business bloggers are using their blogs like e-newsletters. They write an article on a topic and post. Your blog isn't a newsletter, it's different.

In fact, some of the smart clients I've worked with to set up their blogs and train them tell me, "Oh, content isn't a problem for me. I've written dozens of articles. I'll just copy and paste them into my blog."

Wrong. Blog posts are meant to be conversations, not one-way information vehicles. It's not a lecture, or a newsletter. It's somewhere in between.

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Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

The Spaghetti Content Marketing Plan: 14 Questions to Ask

By Patsi Krakoff
Saturday, July 25th, 2009

Spaghetti-around-fork You know the old saying about throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks? I've never understood why you would throw it in the first place, or what you do with it afterwards, yet some very smart professionals are using this as their content marketing strategy.

They've got a Facebook page, they Twitter for hours, they post on their blog (but not often enough), they're collecting subscribers with a form on their website (but they haven't actually sent out a newsletter just yet.)

You know what else I see people doing? They follow certain people on the Web they admire, take their teleseminars, but never act on the very advice they've paid too much money to listen to. After a year they get burned out and disenchanted with their gurus, find new ones, and start throwing spaghetti against the wall again.

I don't mean to be negative, and I really do feel bad when I see this happen. Probably because I've done it myself. I know what it feels like to know you "should" be doing something for your marketing but you never get around to it.

For myself, having lived with my quirks for a few decades, I know what gets me into action and what can trigger procrastination. I don't know what works for you, but you need to figure out what will get you over your humps. For me, having a clear plan and a schedule works.

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Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Why Content Marketing Online Isn’t Actually Free

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Catching_with_money Independent professionals who use the Web for marketing their services can learn a lot from bigger businesses with big budgets. Take a look at where the guys with money are spending their marketing dollars and efforts. Then figure out the cheaper way to do what they're doing.

In a way, the Web is ideal for people who must work with little advertising budgets. Social sites like Facebook and Twitter are completely free. Time is the biggest constraining factor. Even so, you want the best return for your investment of time, energy and money.

Joe Pulizzi of Junta 42 wrote a post a couple of weeks ago that got me thinking. His information is directed towards companies who spend money advertising. Now many of them want to use content marketing to build business, and some expect it to be free. Read his post The Decline of Advertising and the Rise of Content Spending.

Here's an excerpt worth considering:

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Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Conquer the “What Do I Write Next” Conundrum…

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Blonde_with_laptop My hubby asked me the other day, "How do you keep coming up with ideas to blog about?" I'm going to be gone the last week in July for a writers conference, and just finished pre-publishing 8 blog posts which will appear during my absence. (I'll tell you a secret trick for doing this at the end of the post…)

One of the reasons blog authors get stuck for content marketing ideas is that they start blogging without any forethought or plan. I know this because I did this myself. But it's never too late to stop and make a plan for your business blog, including an editorial calendar.

  • At the very least make a list of keywords that your readers would use if they were searching for solutions to their problems.
  • Make a list of categories that define the topics you write about. It's smart if these are focused on solving problems and helping your readers.
  • Then make sure your blog  posts cover all these categories and that you use the keywords in titles and in the body of your posts.

Lee Odden is a favorite search engine optimization expert (even though I only understand half of what he says! 😉 He's got a great post called 5 Tips for Successful Blog Optimization. I particularly appreciate his tip #3:

3. Plan editorial and source content. Unlike traditional publications, blogs do not typically have editorial calendars, but why not?  Use categories as an indication for the topics the blog should be posting about. Category keywords should support the business goals defined in the blog’s objectives.

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Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, How to...Tips, Online Marketing

How Do You Know If Your Content Marketing Is Working?

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Results How do you know if your content is working
for you? Everybody says they want more traffic, but quite frankly,
traffic stats leave me scratching my head and saying "Okay, that's nice…and?"

Maybe it's because I'm not an analytical type, I prefer big picture
thinking and gut feelings and intuition. But if I had a metric I could
look at and be able to tell if my content is working, then maybe I'd
become more analytical.

You know how those yearly physical exams give you a print out of
your lab test and tell you if you're in the "normal" range or not? Why
can't they have those for blogs? Or for ezines? Or for overall Web
content marketing?

On Monday mornings, for example, you log into your Content Marketing
Analytical Account and get a print out of how well your content has
been doing:

  • Ezine: …75%
  • Blog: …82%
  • Articles…56%
  • Landing pages…
  • White Paper…
  • Free Report… etc. etc.

This software would compile all the results from your content
including sales, referrals, downloads, subscriptions, and inquiries and
give you an overall success rating. It would also tell you where you
needed to make improvements.

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Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Mid-Summer Review: Content Marketing Check List for 2009

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, July 19th, 2009

Summer-beach-writing We're smack dab in the middle of 2009…and I'm wondering how you're doing with your content marketing efforts? I know I'm reviewing mine and what I see is a glaring lack of posted video clips to augment all the written content on my blogs, Twitter and Facebook updates.

Here's what I predicted at the end of 2008, along with some words of wisdom from Joe Pulizzi, Junta42:

"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 content marketing 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. 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.

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Categories : About Blogs, Buying Content, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Big Mistakes in Content Marketing…
6 Tips on What to Avoid

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Banana-peel-oops  Every month Click Docs asks content marketing experts a key question. I'm always learning something from these experts. Here's the question they ask today: What's the Biggest Mistake to Avoid in B2B Content Marketing?

Be sure to read the post. I'm in good company with Ardath Albee, Brian Carroll, Rebel Brown, Maria Pergolino, and Mac McIntosh.

Here's my tip:

Everyone knows this joke: A celebrity runs into a friend who politely asks, “How are you?” The star takes off on a 5 minute monologue all about his success and his last film. Not completely insensitive, the star stops himself and asks the friend, “Oh, enough about me! How did YOU like my movie?”

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Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing

How Chip Scholz Gets Content Marketing Right
(even if it hurts…)

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Chip_4 On a recent post about leveraging what you know to help other people online, one of my favorite clients, Chip Scholz, commented:

Great post, Patsi. Thanks for reminding me of the power of writing, and of delivering great content. I find writing extremely time consuming and almost painful! How can I find ways of making it easier and less time consuming? Do you have any suggestions on resources (other than you of course!)

Time consuming and painful, ah, yes. And the pain is where, exactly? I'm a doctor, but help me out here, Chip. I'm a doctor of psychology, so if the pain is anywhere in your body, you've come to the wrong place.

Chip's off speaking, consulting and coaching somewhere, earning big bucks doing what he does best, so I'll have to work with what's showing on his web pages. I'm going to answer his question based on his content marketing.

What I'm seeing for Chip's online visibility is content marketing on the following pages:

Website: ScholzandAssociates.com
Blog: Leader Snips
Book landing page: Selling for Geniuses
Twitter: ChipScholz

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

Don’t Forget Facebook: Here’s a Big Source of Readers

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Facebook I'm really upset at the recent article about Facebook over on Copyblogger. Here I've been spending valuable and scarce free time over on Twitter, ignoring Facebook. Now I've just found out I might be missing a crucial traffic builder.

I'm not completely missing the boat, I do have some presence over there at Facebook, just not visiting it daily. My blog posts and twitter updates are automatically fed into my Facebook page. It's a good thing, too. Turns out there's a huge pool of potential readers on Facebook and we need to be nurturing them too.

Go read this article and make up your own mind about where to spend your marketing minutes…

How Facebook is Gunning for Google (And Killing SEO) by Mike Wasylik

Sombreros (And for those of you who care why I've been so absent on blogs and emails lately, I've been in an intensive Spanish course for the past two weeks. It's beginning to cramp my work and play time, and anyone who knows me will understand that my time on the tennis courts is sacred. You can shorten my work day, but don't you dare try to shorten my tennis time. Something has to go, and it's my time spent blogging, tweeting and surfing other sites … Pero hablo bien Espanol ahora!)

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Online Marketing
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