Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Identity: Who They Gonna Call?

By Patsi Krakoff in Email Marketing Tips, Online Marketing, Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog

The whole point of e-newsletters (and blogs) is so that when your readers need you, they remember you (hopefully in a good way) and will find you easily. They can call you up or email you to hire you, or buy your products and services.

Michael Katz of Blue Penguin writes about this in his recent ezine (always a fun read). He calls it Identifiability:

"Although apparently not a real word, this sums up an important aspect of being remembered. Because if I’m going to call you or pass your name along to a friend in need, you’ve got to pop into my head the moment someone mentions a desire for "blank" (with blank being whatever it is you do).

"…If your blank is clear and narrow (e.g. "Restaurant marketing guru," or "Financial planner for female small business owners," or "Bald, but oddly likeable E-Newsletter expert") you’ve got a good chance of coming to mind.

"If, on the other hand, you’re associated with a more generic label (e.g. "life coach" or "management consultant"), you’ll be competing with many more people, one of whom (rather than you) may pop into my head when I start thinking about who might fit the bill."

The Coaching Electric: Andrea Lee Presents

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

If you are a coach and want to use technology, then this teleseminar is for you:

The Coaching Electric: How to Be, Do and Have a Greater Coaching Impact Through Technology led by Andrea J. Lee

Coaching is human; Technology is not. Yet new technologies have the potential to enable coaches to reach more people, and have a greater, deeper impact than previously thought possible.

The process of exploring this leading edge requires us to deepen our coaching skills and strengthen our capacity for leadership. Expand your concept of what meaningful and profitable coaching looks like by visiting with these colorful and compassionate case studies.

Caveat: Contrary to the topic, this is **NOT** a conversation about shiny, new (hint: distracting!) technology. On the contrary, in fact, I hope you will be pleasantly surprised as we go deeper into how the technology we’re already familiar with can be maximized. In other words, technophobes are most welcome!! 🙂

Again, call details are here:

DATE/TIME: Tuesday December 5, 2006 from 3:00 to 5:00 PM Eastern (Duration: 2 hours)
LOCATION: Via Telephone Conference Line

And reserve your seat with this link:

http://tinyurl.com/tmaet

Blogs + Marketing: Call with Ellen Britt, Marketing Qi

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Not one, but two opportunities to join The Blog Squad this week:

On Tuesday, December 5 at 8:00 p.m. ET we are the featured guests on the Marketing Qi teleseries. We’ll be talking about…BLOGS!

You can register for the event here (no charge):

http://snipurl.com/MarketingQi

Selling: Foot-in-the-Door Tips for Little Guys

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Conversations with Experts presents…

Selling to Big Companies
Wednesday, December 6, 2006, 8:30 p.m. ET (no charge, registration required)
Guest Expert: Jill Konrath, Author of Selling to Big Companies

It can be really tough to get into large companies. Corporate decision makers seldom answer the phone, roll all calls to voicemail, then never call you back.

Find out what you can do about it, with this teleseminar with Jill Konrath.

In this Conversation, you’ll learn:

• Why traditional strategies no longer work.
• How to develop an enticing value proposition
• How to increase your success rate in penetrating major accounts.
• Why an account entry campaign is necessary.
• How to deal with voicemail.
• How to craft a customer-enticing phone messages.
• and much more.

If you’re tired of fruitless attempts to get into big companies, this session is for you.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, is a recognized sales strategist in the highly competitive business-to-business market. A popular speaker at sales meetings, she helps her clients crack into corporate accounts, speed up their sales cycle and generate demand for their offering.

Konrath publishes an industry-leading online newsletter and blog. To subscribe – and get a free Sales Call Planning Guide – visit http://www.sellingtobigcompanies.com .

Conversations with Experts: How to Build Your Business On and Off-line
Hosted by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff.

Conversations with Experts is sponsored by Build a Better Blog System.

Ezine Trend? A Blog-zine Launched by Debbie Weil

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

I think of Debbie Weil as a sort of "fairy blog mother," since I started my first blog due to her persistent blog evangelism way back when. She is a champion of corporate blogging and author of the book The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right (Penguin Portfolio 2006).

So when Debbie Weil writes about a something new, I pay attention. Now Debbie has killed her newsletter. Or rather, transformed it into a blog. She saves time and energy, and can get instant feedback from readers through comments. Subscribers get an email update and are directed to the blog. She also sends out a short text-only version of WordBiz Report.

She writes about her reasons why she decided to combine her e-newsletter with a blog, and it’s an interesting read.

If you struggle with writing and formatting (not to mention email delivery problems), then you want to read her post and gets the details on how she is doing this.

What do you think? Is this going to be a trend? Are more newsletters going to be published and delivered onto blogs, avoiding crowded inboxes? Let me know your thoughts.

The Blog Squad Talk Show Films at CBS

By Patsi Krakoff in Online Marketing

I’ll admit it: I had never been inside a TV studio in my life before today… (and I’ve lived a few years and been almost everywhere!). But this was a first for me and for Denise, my trusty Blog Squad side-kick. This morning we were in Palm Springs at the CBS studios to shoot a talk show.

We were interviewed by Dr. Jeff Hockings for his national TV show, Leading Experts. And I must say we did pretty good. Denise has the photos on her camera, so I’ll wait until she posts them.

It’s a wrap, as they say in Hollywood! Stay tuned for some clips next week. I don’t think I’m taking another career curve at this stage of my life, but heck, it sure was fun!

Here’s our buddy Tom Antion, who was interviewed on Dr. Hockings show earlier this year.

The Search for the Ideal Client Begins: Is It You?

By Patsi Krakoff in Newsletter Nuggets Ezine

Newsletter Nuggets – November 30, 2006
…tips and tricks for writing great ezines and blogs

Table of Contents

1. A Note from Patsi – Are You an Ideal Client? Contest Opens
2. Featured article for December: Human Relationships at Work: The New Frontier
3. What’s New on the Blogs?

A note from Patsi –

A heads up to all you entrepreneurs, small business owners and professionals. Here’s a fun way to get free online marketing help from Denise and me. We’ve just launched a contest to find our "Ideal Client.”

We will coach our Ideal Client live for 15-20 minutes, on our new Internet Radio Show, every Thursday morning starting January 11 at 11 a.m. ET, continuing through April 15. Our show “Blogging and Beyond” will be produced on VoiceAmerica™ Channel.

Even if you don’t win, you may be selected as a runner-up, and can participate in our 13 week mentoring group that runs parallel to the radio show. So you have nothing to lose by applying to the contest.

Our goal is to show our listeners how someone can have a real marketing presence and start leveraging the Internet using simple online tools, in a relatively short time.
Our “Ideal Client” must meet these criteria:
1. Experienced professional with a book, ebook, or services to sell
2. Intermediate computer skills and comfortable with using software
3. Intelligent, personable, hungry to learn, and passionate about business
4. A good sense of humor helps; overly chatty or shy people are discouraged
5. Discipline to show up every week and complete tasks between shows
6. Ready, willing and able to invest in the tools required to market online (after initial trial offers, 3rd party tools are estimated about $58/month).
Our contest winner will not only get mentoring on how to leverage the Internet for their business, but they will also get great exposure for their business, including their name, website and business mission or tag line on the radio, during 13 weeks.

Here’s where you get more info, and apply:
http://www.BlogSquadContest.com. Go there now and submit your application.

Ezine Tip: Some of our Newsletter Nuggets readers aren’t interested in using other people’s content for their ezines (such as the article offered below). We offer professional newsletter services even if you don’t use our content. Visit www.CustomizedNewsletters.com to see how you can outsource your ezine tasks and leave your brain free for your clients.

———————————

Writing Headlines: More Easy Tips from Joan Stewart

By Patsi Krakoff in Writing Better Ezines

The Publicity Hound has a lot of great writing tips on her site, and Joan Stewart generously shares with our readers here. In a recent comment to the post about her headline tips, she shared this web page with more great headlines to use for your articles:

Here’s a sample:

Once you’ve chosen a topic, it’s time to select a title. Here’s a list of possibilities. Simply fill in the blank, depending on what you’ve decided to write about.

A Part-Timer’s Tactics for a Full-Timer’s ______________
A Quiz: Test Your ______________ Smarts
Cash in on _______________ Trends
Chasing the Right ______________
Cool Tools for Today’s ______________
Common Errors That Kill ______________
Discover the 7 Essential Elements That Guarantee ___
Finding the ______________That is Uniquely You
Good News for ______________
How to Bounce Back from ______________

Online Marketing Contest: Are You An Ideal Client?

By Patsi Krakoff in Online Marketing

You can enter and win a 13-week free online marketing mentorship with The Blog Squad. Here’s the deal: www.BlogSquadContest.com

We will coach our Ideal Client live for 15-20 minutes, on our new Internet Radio Show, every Thursday morning starting January 11 at 11 a.m. ET, and continuing through April 15. Our show “Blogging and Beyond” will be produced on VoiceAmerica™ Channel.

Every week we will discuss new tools that are easy AND essential to implement in order to grow a business online. On the show we will interview Internet marketing experts, plus we will coach a client in real-time through the steps designed to market a real product or service.

That’s where you come in. You could be selected as our Ideal Client and get free marketing mentoring. You’ll learn how to optimize your blog AND how to implement simple online marketing tools.

Our goal is to show our listeners how someone can have a real marketing presence and start leveraging the Internet using simple online tools, in a relatively short time.

Our “Ideal Client” must meet these criteria:

Great Writing: The Last Forgotten Step

By Patsi Krakoff in Writing Better Ezines, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy

These last few posts have been modeling the way to write better ezines and articles for the Web, faster, including how to craft good headlines.

But the final step in writing better is often skipped entirely: reread and edit your writing before you publish. In today’s rapid working environments, we are rushed to produce quantity with little attention to quality. Many bloggers insist on claiming their right to be spontaneous and never mind the typos.

If you are a professional, your writing on the web is your sales person. You wouldn’t send out sales staff without shoes and a clean shirt; why would you want to leave your writing with errors and bad grammar?

This is important for the impression you make on readers who may want to hire you. Not only do you want to re-read your stuff for errors, but also clarity from the reader’s perspective.

Here’s a great editing tip from Publication Coach Daphne Gray-Grant:

"…when we edit our own writing, we need to do more than make the text flow more smoothly, take out unnecessary words and fix grammar and spelling mistakes. We also need to ask ourselves the following questions:

-Who is going to read this?

-What do I want them to do?

-What might they misunderstand or find confusing or unbelievable (and how can I clear up that problem?)

For more Power Writing tips, subscribe to her ezine.