Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Pathway to Profits: Blog First

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Pathway to Profits, Writing Great Blog Content

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.

What’s the Greatest Online Marketing Challenge?

By Patsi Krakoff in On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing Great White Papers

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.

Blog Action Day: What are you doing for a healthy environment?

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, In the News..., Online Marketing

How do you live in the space you occupy in this world? Today is Blog Action Day and I’ve got a different rant about environmental issues. It’s personal.

While there is much to be done by our governments, I believe each of us must act on an individual level. We’re not as conscientious as we could be. Let’s take some personal responsibility for our environments.

Clean up our homes, our streets and our habits. Our environment is a direct result of our attitudes and actions. Legislation must be pushed through by citizens who care, AND we could all act more responsibly in our own environments.

I believe that charity and health begins at home and each of us can contribute to a healthy world in our own ways. For myself, I choose not to drink alcohol, take drugs, smoke cigarettes or consume unhealthy foods manufactured in factories and fast food dives… I also believe in taking responsibility for physical health through plenty of exercise.

How are you taking care of your own environment? Do you pay attention to your personal environment? Do you act with care for your home, business and local area? Or are you counting on Al Gore and politicians to clean up after you? Laws are necessary, AND we don’t have to wait for them.

Act locally, think globally. Use today, Blog Action Day, to consider how you can improve your own environment.

As always, Brian Clark of Copyblogger wrote eloquently about this problem and what you can do about it; don’t mis his post The Butterfly Effect and the Environment.

Speaking of Content – have you heard about Content Marketing?

By Patsi Krakoff in On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing Great Copy

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:

Editorial-based (or long-form) content. It must tell a relevant, valuable story. Must be informative, educational or entertaining.
Marketing-backed. The content has underlying marketing and sales objectives that a corporation, association or institution is trying to accomplish.
Behavior-driven. Seeks out to maintain or alter the recipient’s behavior.
Multi-platform (print, digital, audio, video, events). It can be, does not have to be, integrated.
Targeted toward a specific audience. If you can’t name the audience, it’s not content marketing.

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.

Pathway to Profits: The Content Journey Begins with a Map

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Pathway to Profits, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content

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:

What business am I in? (General category, industry, and service or product you provide)
Who is my ideal client/reader? (Describe in as many details as possible)
What am I passionate about? (What is my specific expertise?)
Why should readers believe what I say or write (what makes me an expert?)
What are the 3-5 biggest pain points/challenges my clients experience?
What 5 problems do I solve for my clients and customers?
What are 5-7 sub-topics that I need to write about to establish my expertise and credibility?

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 Your Business: Here’s a Pathway to Profits

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Pathway to Profits, Writing for the Web

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)…

The Great Internet Marketing Challenge…unraveling the secrets to success online

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, E-Books, Online Marketing

Do you understand what’s going on today with Internet marketing? Everyone seems to have the same big challenge… even those professionals and businesses with a lot of money.

Even when you throw big bucks at web designers and search engine optimization gurus, businesses aren’t getting the results they need for success online. Why is that? The answer may be under your nose and it may be simple, easy and inexpensive.

Read The Blog Squad’s white paper to find out… click here.

The Great Internet Marketing Challenge...Click here to get the free white paper.

What Kind of a Blogger Are You, Anyway?

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Fun and Irrelevant Things About Patsi, Online Marketing

Take this quiz to find out your blogging "type." I really don’t like this image, but hey, it’s for a good cause. It’s all part of the fun for a special day supporting environmental issues.

October 15 is Blog Action Day and you’re invited to participate.

5 days left to sign up
8,033 blogs participating
5,671,653 people in the audience

As you know, I recently bought a low-emission car so as to not be polluting any more than possible. I’ve never been a tree-hugger or an activist, but all of a sudden, these issues seem vital for the survival of our children. Heck, I don’t even have kids, but this is important. Do whatever you can to help.

FeedBlitz Makes Subscription Services Easier, Better AND Keeps It Free

By Patsi Krakoff in Online Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars

Do you use Feedblitz
to deliver blog updates by email to your readers? No? You’re missing a
amazing opportunity to get more readers and drive more traffic to your
blog.

Now they’ve added newsletter distribution services (for free) which means you don’t even have to have a blog to start using it for promotions and communications.

Did you know that adding an email option to your blog can boost your
readership by over 50%? And did you know that you can also send out
your newsletter through a free account with Feedblitz?

We’ve been using Feedblitz for years now, and love it. But listen to
this: recently they made some important upgrades for their paid Premium
accounts, AND then made them available to all free accounts.

You need to know about this! It could dramatically boost your readership and subscription lists.

We know Phil Hollows, Feedblitz founder and president, and he never
does training teleseminars. But we used our Blog Squad charms and
twisted his arm ever so slightly!

Phil Hollows relented and is giving a full hour interview on how you
can use Feedblitz to reach even more readers and grow your subscriber
lists. The interview is on Tuesday, October 9 at 3 p.m. ET.

For free!

But there’s a catch!

No, we’re not charging you to attend the class, it’s truly free. You just have to join our mentor program to be a part of this. But it’s a low fee…