Archive for Writing for the Web – Page 3

Keyword Research: What Smart Professionals Know

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

We have at least two audiences when we write on the web: people and search engines. My clients tell me it feels hard to write well for both, and in my experience, it’s because they’ve skipped the first step in the process: Keyword research. (Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

If I were to optimize my web copy for what I believe to be my main keyword phrase, I’d certainly be helping Google know when to serve up my post in search results. But my post still might never show up if the keyword phrase I’ve used and optimized for is not one that anyone uses to search!

That’s why keyword research is so important – I want to use keyword phrases that people are actually using when searching online! Then, not only does Google know when to serve up my post, but now I match how people are looking for what I have! The likelihood that I’ll get found, get known and get clients has just increased dramatically. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web
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Using a Business Blog:
Are You Hard to Find on the Web?

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, June 29th, 2012
Have you ever tried to find yourself on the Web? No, I don’t mean by searching for your name or the name of your business – that would be too easy. Try searching for a solution to the kind of problems your business solves, using keyword phrases your typical client might use. (Image: Freedigitalphotos.net)

Search for your business the way new prospects would search for you, without knowing your name.

When you do, you’ll know that it’s difficult to be found on the World Wide Web, because there are a lot of people and companies doing what you do. Okay, maybe not as brilliantly, and granted, maybe they have bigger marketing budgets than you, but the thing is, those search engine robots don’t care who’s big or small or even who is a qualified professional doing great things.

That’s right, search engines like Google and Yahoo only care about words and links. I know, cold and cruel, nasty little algorithms, but that’s life on the Internet. A business blog is the most common publishing platform that smart professionals use to get found on the web.

So what do the others (not-so-smart) do? Some people have found success by using expensive web site designs and hiring Search Engine Optimization experts, but there’s only so much Google juice they can get out of a site. You still need content and lots of it.

What’s needed in the online search world is a lot of content, using keywords, published frequently and attracting inbound links from other people and connections. This is why a business blog is what successful people use to get found, get known, and get clients.

I don’t want to confuse you, so let’s cut to the chase: what’s needed is for you to publish 2-3 times a week on a business blog, writing about the problems you solve for people. Oh, and it helps a lot to have some video. …And to update social media sites about what you’re blogging about. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content
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The Ladder of Emotional Values: Pleasure Reigns

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

What emotions are people seeking to satisfy online? What can we understand about human motivations and values in order for content marketing to work?

Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs tells us we are motivated to satisfy our basic needs first (food, shelter, clothing), before we seek to obtain satisfaction for social, intellectual and spiritual needs.

A similar hierarchy of emotional values exists. As incoming information from web and blog pages enters the brain and is processed, our emotional centers assign values to offers.

Brain science, along with studies on decision making from behavioral economics, has shown that people often don’t use logical reasoning. Instead they go with their gut reactions. They make decisions based on feelings.

Later, when that leads to a buying decision, people justify their actions with rational logic and intellectual “alibis.”

At the lowest level, people have a desire for security. The next thing they seek is comfort. At the top of the ladder, people will pay the most to satisfy a desire to experience pleasure.

Although these values are all emotional, rationality plays a part. Online, an offer must work properly for consumers to feel secure. A marketing offer also provides comfort through ease of purchase, and also by providing reasons to defend the purchase to friends and family. But rationality is never the deciding factor. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Brain Based Content Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content
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4 Content Marketing Goals for a Coach Website

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, January 26th, 2012

How should content marketing be used on the home page of your website? What makes good website copy? More specifically, if you’re a professional service provider, like an executive coach, a consultant, a lawyer, health care or financial adviser… how do you create a website that attracts clients and gets potential new leads?

No matter what business you’re in, your content must achieve four things. Here are four goals for your online content:

  1. Connect immediately (by speaking to your readers’ challenges or problems)
  2. Answer questions and educate (by suggesting solutions)
  3. Provide choices without confusion (by providing 3-4 places to read more)
  4. Compel readers to take action (simple sign-up form or contact link)

That’s a basic outline that you could follow, not just for websites, but for your blog and other content marketing pieces. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Writing for the Web
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Content Marketing Tasks: Practice Makes Progress

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

If you’ve spent your career avoiding certain marketing tasks because you don’t think you’re any good at them, you struggle each time you try, and you end up with weak results, take heart. Persistence has been touted by poets for a reason.

Your brain learns a lot each time you try something, even if you fail. If you stop trying, you’ll walk away with nothing. If you persist, however, the rewards are huge.

Example: public speaking. Many small business owners and entrepreneurs including many of my clients love the chance to get up and speak. The larger the group, the better. In my experience, they are extroverts. They love people and love conversations.

On the other hand, they usually don’t like writing. (Which is why they are my clients… they need content and they need to publish on the web – blogs, e-newsletters, ebooks, etc.)

Other people tend to focus their online marketing on content; they write books and they publish blogs and newsletters… and they hate speaking. They would rather have a root canal than deliver even a 3 minute elevator speech at a networking event.

While you can outsource your written content, especially online, you can’t outsource your speaking. You’ve got to deliver a speech yourself in order to represent your business and get clients.

Make no mistake, there is magic that comes from speaking from the podium. It works like a magnet for drawing people to you, creating credibility and potential working relationships.

You have to persist at things in order to learn them. Writing gets better each time you write, the same goes for blogging, revising web pages, writing sales copy, email promotions. The more you practice the better you are and the easier the task becomes. Here’s an example: Read More→

Categories : Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web, Writing Speeches
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Content Marketing Tip: Start with Ready-to-Publish Articles

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, December 29th, 2011

Content marketing is easier when you can outsource some of the writing and researching to qualified writers. A great way to short-cut the time needed to research, write and publish quality online content is to find a good writer to supply articles.

For example, as a former executive coach and psychologist, I write for other coaches and consultants who are too busy with clients to write their own newsletters and blogs. You can find good writers in just about any field.

While this has created a good business for me, doing what I love, I don’t see many people using other people’s content for optimal results. Furthermore, when they do use writers, they don’t personalize it to make it their own.

Content marketing doesn’t work as well without unique and personalized copy.  Some people use canned articles ‘as is’. They don’t take the time to add their own stories, to explain how it is for them in the work they do.

You need to connect the dots for readers.

  • Tell them why this article and these ideas are important to them.
  • Tell them about the work you do with your clients.
  • Tell them how they can learn more about what you’re publishing.

In my ebook Content Marketing with Blogs, I talk about the 4 Es: educate, entertain, engage and enrich the lives of people each time you write and publish on your blog. When you write, think about elements of each goal: Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Writing for the Web
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Why Writing Like You Talk
Works Better for Your Brain

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Today’s guest post is by Barb Sawyers:

Many experts who try to write their own content need to rewire their brains, to abandon the lessons drilled into them at school in favor of the more conversational approach that works better online. The good news is that they can evolve.

Think about the conclusions of Dr. Norman Doidge in The Brain that Changes Itself, and other neuroscientists who have confirmed that people can recover or develop new regions to compensate for brain damage caused by strokes or congenital defects.

If they can make changes this profound, certainly you can rewire your writing process, even if it’s deeply entrenched from higher education, professional experience or other neural programming. Your neuroplasticity, as the brain geeks call it, means you can move from an objective style that builds walls to content that sticks to emotions and subconscious longings.

Yes, this takes practice, discipline and an open attitude, but luckily some of these changes come easily because they’re based on talking, the communication mainstay we all learned before writing.

I don’t have a million dollar research grant, but let me share what I’ve learned as my writing has adjusted. If you compared scans of my brain before and after writing for the web, I bet you’d see different areas light up, maybe new synaptic tangos too. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing for the Web
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5 Content Marketing Questions:
Get Readers to Take Action

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, October 9th, 2011

What will make your web readers take action or not? Content marketing isn’t successful without results. So when writing a blog post or a web page, keep these key questions in mind. You want to inspire readers to pick up the phone, click here, sign up, register, or remember your brand.

Here’s a final note in my blog post series about writing good content on the Web that gets results.

In Maria Velosa’s 2009 edition of Web Copy that Sells, she suggests 5 questions your copy should answer:

  1. What is the problem (pain, predicament)?
  2. Why hasn’t this problem been solved?
  3. What is possible?
  4. What is different now?
  5. What should you do now?

As you answer these questions, you lead readers down a path to take action. Good content on the Web, when it’s well written, should:

  • Educate
  • Entertain
  • Engage readers
  • Enrich lives

If at all possible, you should strive to enrich the lives of your readers as well. Try to make their lives better by showing them how they can save time, energy or money.

Question #4: What is different now? Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, How to...Tips, Online Persuasion, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content
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5 Content Marketing Questions:
#3 What’s Possible?

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, October 3rd, 2011

In Maria Velosa’s Web Copy That Sells book, there is a 5-step blueprint for writing on the Web. This is really what content marketing is all about. When you answer the following 5 questions, your writing tasks are simplified and your copy becomes clear.

  1. What is the problem (pain, predicament)?
  2. Why hasn’t this problem been solved?
  3. What is possible?
  4. What is different now?
  5. What should you do now?

First answer question #1, what’s the problem. Then, answer questions #2,why hasn’t the problem been solved? Then answer question #3, what’s possible?

As you write out several sentences to answer these questions, you’ll lead your readers through a path that leads to action. Action is the goal for all good content designed to market your business on the Web.

In psychology, counseling, and coaching, when you describe how life could be better, you’re setting the stage for people to make changes. You’re engaging someone to start using the brain neurons involved in positive thinking.

Awareness that a change is needed is the first step (questions 1 and 2). Painting a picture of how things will be better is the next step (questions 3, 4 and 5).

In marketing and copywriting, this section is known as the benefits. The  key idea that makes a real difference happens when you drill down deep to core values in people’s lives.

Example: A pill that gets rid of back pain provides a big benefit: no more back pain. That’s obvious. As a writer, you must draw a picture of what is possible now that the pain is gone. Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content
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5 Content Marketing Questions:
#2 Why Hasn’t This Problem Been Solved?

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, September 30th, 2011

In a previous post, 5 Content Marketing Questions: #1 What is The Problem?, I reviewed the content marketing questions that help you organize and simplify your Web writing by asking 5 important questions:

  1. What is the problem (pain, predicament)?
  2. Why hasn’t this problem been solved?
  3. What is possible?
  4. What is different now?
  5. What should you do now?

Question #2, Why hasn’t this problem been solved?, is a great opportunity to address the challenges your readers and potential customers face.

You have a chance to show you understand your readers well, and you have an expert’s understanding of the subject matter. You can delve into the history of the problem, providing insights they may have never thought of.

The answers to this question serves to build audience anticipation for a new solution you’re about to reveal.

  • How is it they haven’t solved their problem?
  • Why is it that traditional solutions aren’t working?
  • Why are they still stuck?
  • What‘s new about this situation that contributes to more frustration?

This is where you can really hook readers into your story. Yet so many blogs and email messages skip this step. It doesn’t have to be long, but discussing these points in a few sentences will get your readers to say, “Oh, right, I’ve experienced this. She understands me. What’s the solution, then?”

What’s your experience?  Do you skip over this step when writing your own copy?  Or, have you honed this question – or answer – to a simple sentence or two?

Another added bonus of including this step when writing for your business is that it forces you to periodically ask yourself this question.  It can actually strengthen your confidence and help you focus, or if necessary, re-focus, your business. It’s a simple way to take a step back and look at the big picture, seeing the forest and the trees.

Next up: Questions #3 – #5 to ask when writing content for the Web that gets results.

Inspired by Maria Velosa’s Web Copy that Sells, a blueprint for creating simple copy that works to market your products and services

Categories : Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy
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