Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Advertorials: Step 3 Explain the Problem

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

I just wrote about steps 1 and 2 to crafting an advertorial that persuades readers to buy or register for your product or service over at Biz Tips Blog.

Just to review, those steps are:

1. Grab attention with a list of 3 or 5 horrible mistakes people make
2. Positioning: Why should anyone read or listen to you?
3. Explain the problem

Once you’ve got their attention, promised to deliver information that’s relevant, and shown that you know what their issues are, you are ready to explain the problem.

This means revealing the 3 or 5 items promised in your attention-grabbing title. In this sample case, it’s the 3 Worst Online Marketing Mistakes.

Here they are, as we propose to use them in our sample Blog Squad advertorial:

Branding Your Business on Blogging and Beyond Radio

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Blogging and Beyond Season 2, Episode 6
The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman with guest expert Liz Goodgold of DUH! Marketing

May 24, 2007, 3 pm PT (6 pm ET) Blog Talk Radio

Business Branding for the Little Guys

Does your business name make people go "Huh?" … or do they understand
immediately what you do and remember you for your expertise? Liz
Goodgold talks to The Blog Squad about the importance of branding for
solo business owners, authors and speakers. Author of DUH! MARKETING: 99 Monstrous Missteps You Can Use to Learn, Laugh, and Grow Your Business, Liz share’s her "lizdom" that’s made her a media darling.

Use this link to listen live on the air at 6:00 p.m. ET on May 24.

Hey, Stupid! Can You Hear Me NOW?

By Patsi Krakoff in Email Marketing Tips, Getting Read, On Writing Better, Online Marketing

Grab their attention. In fact, steal it. Get it away from everything else by rocking their boat. Heck, why not tip it over.

What words can you use in your email subject line or sales copy title that will do the job?

"Scandal!" Yes, that’s more appealing than ‘insider secrets’, which has been overused to bits. "Asshole?" Yes, if you’re a Stanford professor with a couple of best sellers already published.

The problem with using earth-shattering, ass-grabbing words like these is the credibility issue. Once you have someone’s attention – which you will when you use strong controversial words – you better deliver the goods.

Nothing worse than feeling ripped off when you take time to read something only to discover it’s a worthless piece of marketing hype.

Most experts agree that you’ve got to use strong words to get people’s attention. Here’s an idea:

Are You Promoting or Educating?

By Patsi Krakoff in Email Marketing Tips, Getting Read, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing Great Copy

Adam Urbanski’s been teaching marketing for several years now and each time Denise and I are exposed to his wisdom, we come away with something new. This time, at his Attract Clients Like Crazy(tm) Boot Camp in Irvine last week, I learned more about writing advertorials. Adam calls this his Edumercial(tm) technique because it employs some of the powerful tips from late night infomercials.

If you are a service professional like a coach, consultant, speaker or author, you know the problem. It’s a little different than pitching a widget or a thing that solves a problem. You need to sell without seeming to sell – you need to educate and inform rather than promote.

Learning sales letter writing and copywriting skills might not be the answer. For higher end sales such as your consulting services, you need first and foremost to build relationship with readers. And to do that you need to educate and inform, even over-deliver content that is useful and relevant to your readers.

How Not To Email Me – or Anyone Else If You Want Results

By Patsi Krakoff in Email Marketing Tips, How to...Tips, On Writing Better

We learn from other people’s mistakes, so here goes a prime example of what not to write in an email message if you want to get results.

First off, this person put Joan Stewart’s name in the subject line: "The Publicity Hound Sent Me". That’s a good way to get me to open up your email, but you better be sure it’s true or you’ll piss me off. In this case, if it were true, then the sender wouldn’t have written what she did…

"Dear Denise"… the email begins. Only I’m Patsi. To be fair, we both get email at that address, but still…

"I invite you to help create an international buzz this year for "XXX Days" in Northern California.

Formatting an Article Into Adobe PDF

By Patsi Krakoff in Article Ideas, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better

This is the next step in our serial writing project. Take your full article, after it is edited, and convert it to an Adobe PDF file. This preserves your formatting and content across all computer systems so that it can’t be distorted or changed.

It makes delivery of the document easier and more stable. You can also add some formatting to it for easier readability and attractiveness.

In your word document program you can create boxes with shading and create a title page. You can also create other boxes to highlight particular points in your articles. Make sure you also have any web sources linked before you convert it to PDF form.

Depending on the length and value, once it is formatted into a PDF file, you may wish to call it a special report, or an ebook which can be either given away as a bonus for signing up or subscribing to your newsletter, or sold.

Previous posts on serial writing:

Serial Writing Formula: 1+5+2=7+1

Confessionals of a Serial Writer

Make a List of 5 Key Points

Summarize your List & Ask Readers

Editing your Blog Posts as Articles

Editing the Full Article from Your blog Posts

Editing the Full Article from Your Blog Posts

By Patsi Krakoff in Article Ideas, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better

Continuing our series of blog posts about writing articles that can be used for many purposes (ezines, blogs, article directories, special reports), we come to the next part: how to edit the full article after you have created several stand alone articles from your blog posts.

Edit the full article: gather each individual article and copy and paste it into a word doc, with each headline but minus the resource box. You can keep the headline for each article if you wish, and break each article into sections with a line separating them. The resource box is included at the end.

Of, if you wish, you can delete the headlines, and rewrite it into one stand alone full article. This is more work, because you’ll have to change the beginning paragraph of each of the individual articles where you explain the context. Your choice.

The most important part of editing the full article – besides writing a captivating headline – is the summary and the conclusion. I’ll review why here:

Editing Your Blog Posts as Articles

By Patsi Krakoff in Article Ideas, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better

After you’ve posted daily on your key points of a concept, and written a summary with a call to action, it’s time to gather the individual posts together and edit them as stand alone articles.

Since they are already written, this isn’t difficult to do. You must keep in mind, however, that you are developing individual articles that you can use for multiple purposes. They must "stand alone" so you want to briefly explain the context of each step and how it benefits your readers.

A primary purpose of editing your blog posts is to make them clear to people who read them without any prior knowledge of who you are. Edit for brevity and clarity as much as for grammar and typos.

Cut out all extra words. Ask yourself "so what?" at each paragraph; keep being clear about what’s in it for the reader.

Summarize Your List & Ask Readers

By Patsi Krakoff in Article Ideas, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better

After you’ve written daily on your blog about each main point in your article, you need to review, summarize, and ask your readers for something.

For example, on Monday I introduced my formula for a serial writing project:

1 concept = 5 points + intro + summary = 7 articles + 1 PDF report

On Tuesday, I made my confession about why I love serial writing (saves time and energy, produces multiple articles, blog posts and special reports).

On Wednesday, I revealed the "Make a List" tip for breaking down any article into doable chunks.

This post is reviewing the steps for serial writing and summarizing. Remember that your summary serves a greater purpose than just reminding readers what they have learned so far.

Here are two real reasons a summary is important:

By Patsi Krakoff in Uncategorized

Newsletter Nuggets: May 17, 2007
…tips and tricks for writing great ezines and blogs

1. A Note from Patsi: What Are Your Ezine Goals?
2. Blogging & Beyond Mentor Program: Help for Your Marketing Blues
3. June 07 Featured Article: The Leadership Void – The Problem That Isn’t Going Away
4. What’s New on the Blogs?

A note from Patsi –

What is the goal of your ezine? Is it to inform, educate, establish credibility and trust? Or maybe entertain? Obviously you want it to bring clients your way, but how do you do that?

What is the marketing goal? "Relationships," says Chris Baggott, author of Email Marketing by the Numbers. "The goal of all organizations is a better relationship with their constituents."

Baggott is a founder of Exact Target, a large provider of email marketing services, and his book was recently published by John Wiley. I had the privilege of contributing two articles to this book.

Chris Baggott is an expert in email marketing, so I was pleased to participate. He makes a big point that writing email marketing messages should be all about building relationships with readers. Unfortunately, most email marketing and ezines don’t do a good job of that.

In chapter two Baggott asks the question, Is Email the Perfect Marketing Tool? I contributed an article titled "Email is Dead, Long Live Email." I discuss the evolution of email newsletters and ‘new rules’ for successful ezines.