Here’s why I’ve changed this blog’s name from CoachEzines, to Writing on the Web: I started in 2004 primarily focusing on writing great ezines and blogs, but today’s Internet marketing includes many more ways to communicate. If you want to leverage the Internet to Attract, Sell, and Profit, you must learn new ways of Writing on the Web.
Read this page if you want to know more: Why Writing on the Web is Key to Internet Marketing
In our Blogging and Beyond Mentor Group, on the private membership site, we expose our students to many different tools that can accelerate online marketing success.
Writing content that attracts readers to your business is essential. It can seem overwhelming at first when a professional is told that to market successfully online, he or she must produce quality content and publish in 3-4 sites using multiple tools and media distribution.
You need a Content Plan, a map of what you will write about, and where you will publish each type of content. You also need to cover several content categories. No matter what your business or niche, you will have several topics you need to cover.
This is the first of several suggested pathways to start your journey for successful online marketing.
We suggest sitting down to make a plan. Write it down. Map out where you want to go, and then make a list of how you’re going to get there. You will need to set up a blog, a shopping cart and database management system, maybe a website (or use your blog as a website), a newsletter, and other information products (teleseminars, podcasts, ecourses and ebooks).
Step One – Get clear on your business. Write out the answers to these questions:
Once you are clear on your purpose, only then can you decide which tool to use to distribute your content: blog, ezine, email, teleseminar, ebook, etc.
Next: Step 2 – Blog First?
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)…
Writing for your online business is one of the
most important tasks you have. The style of writing is always evolving for the
Web, and it’s important to learn how to write effectively for your
business. No other marketing task will involve you as much as writing
for your business.
One of the things we teach in our blogging and online marketing classes is to know your audience and know your core message. I am student for life and have always found the best way to learn something is to teach it. So I am always learning these things over and over and each time I go a little deeper.
When I started this blog (September 4, 2004), it was to have a platform to write content for an ebook, Secrets of Successful Ezines. Since then, I discovered the power of blogs for professionals who want to get their message out to people. Blogs or ezines, blogs AND ezines – it doesn’t matter if you do one or both, as long as at least one is a blog!
In the next phase of evolving an online business, I realized the importance of interesting, relevant, keyword-rich content: articles, information products such as special reports, tips, white papers, and ebooks.
Online marketing must include other pieces of writing for the web: landing pages, sales letters,
David Meerman Scott updated his Goobledygook Manifesto this week. He proves his point: news releases from company and pr writers use the same old worn-out empty phrases … worse than a teenager’s annoying talk, like totally inane.
I’m reprinting David’s graph here just so you can see the catch phrases to avoid in your next piece of writing for the web.
The words mentioned most often were similar to last year’s analysis. In North America – next generation (10,427 mentions), robust (8868 mentions), flexible (8515 mentions), and world class (7887 mentions) were the leaders.
Others are easy to use, scalable, cutting edge, well positioned, market leading, mission critical, turnkey, groundbreaking, industry standard, user friendly, enterprise class, best of breed, enterprise wide, interoperable, extensible, and breakthrough.
Finally someone has busted the duplicate content penalty myth in plain simple language we can all understand. My readers and clients worry when I tell them to re-purpose blog posts into articles and submit them to article directories and news release sites.
Read this from SEO expert Jill Whalen before you let the duplicate content myth stop you from getting mileage out of your articles and blog posts.
I discovered this great explanation thanks to Patrice-Anne Rutledge who writes the Web-Savvy Writers Blog.
If you are sitting your content worried about getting penalized for having duplicate content published in more than one place on the Web, you can breath easy. Go submit and prosper.
What’s the hardest part about writing for your online business? Many people tell me it’s getting started: writing that first sentence.
Before you get started you face mental assumptions about writing that have been ingrained in you. When writing for the web, there are some new rules to keep in mind.
I think some people make writing for their business more difficult than it should be. Especially the professionals with graduate degrees. I know about that: with a doctorate degree in psychology, I still write complicated, compound sentences worthy of a dissertation. But my clarity suffers.
Does that happen to you? Are you making writing more difficult by trying to sound business-like? Get off it. Write for the Web like you speak to an ideal client.
So keep your sentences short.
Don’t use big words.
Keep plenty of free space around your copy, so it looks easy.
The mind can only really think of one thing at a time.
Write in plain talk, like you would to a friend across the table.
When I started out in 1999, there were only 2 ways I wrote for the web: updating my website (through someone else) and writing email.
Today, I’ve got a list of writing tasks to do:
Does this seem a lot to you? It seems if you’re trying to do business online, a major part of what you do is write for a living. Am I the only one whose list of writing tasks is growing?
Take our new poll to the left and let us know which tasks are the most challenging for you.
Content, Content, Content: Why Having a Content Plan is as Important as a Business Plan
Blogging and Beyond with The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., and Denise Wakeman
With Guest Expert: Allen Voivod, www.EpiphaniesInc.com
June 7 2007, 3:00 p.m. PT (6 p.m. ET)
If you’re marketing your business online you need content and your
success depends both the quantity and the quality of your words. Yet
few businesses develop a content plan. A Content Plan focuses on
informing, educating, and entertaining your ideal audience. Strong
Content Plans take the "Know, Like, and Trust" factor and formalize it
into an ongoing relationship-building habit.
Tune in as The Blog Squad interviews Allen Voivod of www.EpiphaniesInc.com about how to use content to get found online and win the hearts and minds of your clients.
Use this link to listen live on the air at 6:00 p.m. ET on June 7.
Words = Money
I just read an email from one of those AdSense traffic guys – you know, the ones that put up multiple web sites with keywords built into the content solely for the purpose of getting traffic and click-throughs on ads?
I think they call them ‘black hat specialists’ for their less than natural ways of trying to game Google.
In any case, these guys are making money using words on a web page. Sometimes it’s $2 or $4/a day, but if you put up enough of these sites, you can generate $2000 to $4000 a month. And, it’s not like ‘real’ work either. So who am I to criticize?
Do you make money with your words? Here’s what I see among the different kinds of people writing on the web: There are those who write for the spiders, write for their egos, and those who write for money.
