Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Knowing and Growing: Learning and Doing

By Patsi Krakoff in Fun and Irrelevant Things About Patsi, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

I’ve been unable to blog this week because of marketing tasks after Tom Antion’s Great Internet Marketing Retreat weekend in Virginia Beach. Feeling blog deprived and missing those early morning sparks.

At least I’m taking time to check in and report out. For some fun pictures of The Blog Squad working with Tom…and playing a little tennis, visit our photo album here.

The trouble with an action plan, (and believe me, Tom required that we do one and put it into action!) is you have to actually do the work. Oh brother, I thought we could just earn easy big money online…you mean we have to do some work here? What? But all those other gurus out there promised me fortune and fame in my pj’s…

Here’s Denise with her new bright pink Blog Squad cellphone hard at work too…

Sigh… hopefully we will get back into the swing of things shortly. Stay tuned for big changes coming for the Blog Squad, and Customized Newsletters!

How Approachable Are You?

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Conversations with Experts presents…

The Power of Approachability
Wednesday, April 5, 2006, 8:30 p.m. ET – FREE
Guest Expert: Scott Ginsberg, Author, Speaker, That guy with the nametag

APPROACHABILITY is the defining characteristic of successful communicators.

* It helps your front line create unforgettable encounters
* It makes your customers feel comfortable and confident
* It allows your employees to communicate openly and effectively
* And it makes you a person that other people are magnetized to, want to do business with and will tell their friends about

The bottom line is: approachability magnetizes people. It derives from the Latin verb apropriare or "to come nearer to." So that means it’s proactive AND reactive, which means it’s all about taking (or inviting) that first step.

Scott Ginsberg is a an author and professional speaker who helps companies and organizations MAXIMIZE personal and professional approachability – one conversation at a time. He is the only person in the world who wears a nametag 24-7-365 to encourage people to become friendlier and more approachable, an he’s been recognized by CNN and USA Today as "The World’s Foremost Authority On Nametags," quoted as an expert on approachability in The Wall Street Journal and COSMO, and featured in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.

Can’t attend the live Conversation? You can pre-order the audio program and save 50%. Invest now for only $4.95

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.

Great Internet Marketing Retreat with Tom Antion

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Ever on the prowl for learning new ways to improve on the Internet, Denise and I are flying in to Tom Antion’s Great Internet Marketing Retreat in Virginia Beach, VA on March 30 until April 3.

The Blog Squad will be sharing new tips for growing your biz online with you next week, thanks to Tom’s astute techniques and unbelievable energy. This guy must eat Energizer Bunnies for breakfast…

Here’s his latest site to show you his sense of humor: www.iamnotapoodle.com. Of course he’s the guy who also owns www.powerpointstinks.com! Tom has excellent resources for public speaking, and for learning online marketing.

So this blog may be on snooze, at least until we surface back up in Tom’s office and get connected sometime on Friday.

Google School Starts Tomorrow

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Get your lunch packed and your pencils sharpened. Dave Taylor and Steven Van Yoder start their 3 month, 5 part teleseminar on everything you need to know about Google to grow your business.

Starts Thrusday, March 30, 1:00-2:00pm Pacific Time (10 a.m. ET)
Register at www.howtogrowyourbiz.com

Steven Van Yoder, author, Get Slightly Famous

Dave Taylor, author of the best-selling Complete Idiot’s Guide to Growing Your Business With Google

What’s this all got to do with writing great ezines and blogs? Quite simply, anything you write and publish on the Web needs to be found by the people who want to read it. Mastering the art of Google and becoming search engine savvy means that your work will be seen and found more easily.

You can’t become a rock star by singing in the shower either. These two are experts on findability, so do yourself a favor and sign up now: www.howtogrowyourbiz.com.

Out of the Office: Idea Factory

By Patsi Krakoff in Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

Sometimes the best ideas brew when you’re in the car or out of the office. Standing in line, or standing in traffic can be extremely creative as your mind wanders.

Denise and I purposely staged an off-site mind-wander last Tuesday. We rented an office in the Irvine Center for the day and met half-way between our two home offices. Armed with laptops, flip charts and marker pens, we let the thoughts roll out. The Blog Squad gals were sparking some neurons big time.

There was some purpose to our brainstorm. When business is busy, it is easy to get caught up in servicing clients, and just earning your living. As smart and savvy entrepreneurs, we know that we need to stay ahead of the game, to be ready for the next big idea. We can’t do that unless we have the day to day things managed – which means optimizing our systems such as newsletters, blogs and shopping cart ecommerce automation.

We decided we needed to change focus for our weekly ezine, Newsletter Nuggets. It was originally created as a showcase for Customized Newsletter Services, my newsletter article and ezine services. It now contains much more, all sorts of biz tips, Conversations with Experts updates, and new product announcements. It is more about savvy biz tips for professionals, than about newsletters.

Findability on the Web: Maybe You Need to Go to Google School?

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

When your customers type in keywords looking for solutions, will they find you and your business? Or will they find your competitors first? Until now, only people who could afford expensive search engine optimization services were mastering "the art of Google."

A recent study by Internet research firms Marketing Sherpa and Enquiro demonstrated that search engines are now the dominant force driving most business- buying decisions. Key findings include:

93.2% of respondents research business- buying decisions online
Google is overwhelmingly favored over other search engines
Respondents use search engines in the early phase of their buying cycles
High search engine rankings are critical; over 60% of respondents click on the top three listings

The role of Google – and all major search engines – cannot be overstated, and as more and more people search for business products and services online, findability is going to be more and more important in the future.

How would you like to go to Google School?

The Blog Squad is proud to sponsor this upcoming learning program, everything you need to know, delivered in a 3 month, 5 part teleseminar series and online learning program. Dave Taylor and Steven Van Yoder will show you the secrets "slightly famous" entrepreneurs use to increase their visibility in the marketplace, grow sales, and become more successful.

Writing Great Web Copy: How Sincere Are You?

By Patsi Krakoff in Writing Great Copy

Online, your words are your store front. Typos are broken windows. Your message is your window dressing. Outrageous claims make you look like a huckster out on the sidewalk.

In the online copywriting world, there are plenty of hucksters pushing "instant sales letters," or 60 second sales pages. Most of what I see in the way of long sales copy pages look like they come from the same template, or a variation thereof. Professionals must be buying the easy way out and using so-called expert’s cookie cutter templates. Many of these experts have copied each other, and haven’t been doing business online for long.

Nick Usborne is an expert on writing web copy, and he makes some very good observations in this blog post about experts who join the marketing hype hordes on the Internet, sacrificing their hard earned offline reputations. It’s worth the read, go here and read it.

Winning the War for Leadership Talent

By Patsi Krakoff in Executive Coach Ezine Article Topics

I’ve got a new article available for purchase for use in your newsletters: Winning the War for Leadership Talent. Based on the book Leadership Pipeline by Ram Charan, Steven Drotter, and James Noel, it offers great tips for succession planning.

If you are a consultant working with organizations, you know how important talent is for success. You also know there is a talent crunch coming, as Baby Boomers start to retire. Companies must keep the leadership pipeline full, and develop people as they progress to higher levels of leadership responsibilities.

To read a synopsis of this article, and to find out how you can use my articles as your own, please visit http://www.customizednewsletters.com/featured/index.html