Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

eBay Marketing: What You Need to Know

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Phil Dunn, 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing

Conversations with Experts
Wednesday, February 8, 2006, 8:30 p.m. ET

How to Build an eBay Business that Generates Repeat Sales and Loyal Customers

In recent years, eBay competition has become fierce. Tens of thousands of new sellers have entered the eBay marketplace, including large-scale retailers with the edge of professional marketing expertise and power-house corporate experience.

The eBay market has also been flooded with small-time sellers, who sell at low margins for little profit and make it difficult for other sellers to compete with their prices. To succeed, you need to pay attention to how you "market" your products.

In this discussion you’ll learn how to:

Understand buyers and position your products for faster, higher margin sales
Present products more persuasively (in visual and in written form)
Create urgency and sweeten the deal
Differentiate your business from competitors
Cultivate loyal customers and build positive feedback
Discover what makes buyers choose one item over an identical one
Learn why customers come back to trusted sellers time and again

If you cannot attend the Conversation, you can pre-order the audio program for $4.95. After the Conversation the price will be $9.95. Save 50% and use this link to order now.

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: www.BuildaBetterBlogSystem.com

How to Get Read, Get Linked and Stir Things Up a Bit

By Patsi Krakoff in Getting Read, List Building Tips, Writing Better Ezines

Blog Links: How to get a lot!

Denise Wakeman, my fellow Blog Squad partner, writes a good post on how to get linked. Whether you’re doing a blog or a newsletter, this is important stuff. You have to be controversial. Stir things up a bit. Otherwise, your readers may go to sleep on you.

Steve Rubel points out a lesson in how to get a lot of links to your blog in his post A Lesson How to Get Blog Links. He directs to a blog with a post called 5 Things Steve Jobs Has Mislead Us About in the Last 30 Years.

Since being published on Feb. 3, the post has generated 61 comments and links from dozens of bloggers (look! I’m doing it too!). Why? The post is:

controversial

it addresses a topic that is currently hot

he’s passionate about his point of view and taps in the passion of others
All good things to keep in mind when writing your blog content!

So, how do you do this for your newsletters and blogs? Obviously, not everything you write can fit the bill. To start, just pick up any newspaper or read the news online. Scandals? Debates? They’re everywhere.

For example, I realize I missed a good opportunity with the Oprah/James Frey author scandal. I was furious when Oprah initially defended this author, excusing him for embellishing his memoirs. Then she raked him over national TV coals and destroyed his credibility…or rather she showed he had none.

It’s not a jump to tie this in with writing better ezines, which is my core message on this blog. What can you share that is personal and true and improves the lives of others? I missed writing about this at the time, and now it’s a little late, but not really.

My point is that everyday in the news there is something you can object to, something you can write and stir up your readers with. So, dear readers, I leave you with this challenge: What will you write today that is:

Controversial
In the news right now
Sparks passion

Go forth and stir things up a bit!

Self-Employed Entrepreneur? 10 Reasons to Not Take the Plunge

By Patsi Krakoff in Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

Pamela Stewart of Escape from Cubicle Nation blog writes 10 Reasons NOT to go into Business for Yourself, well worth the read. Here’s the last 3 reasons:

Although I spend most of my time evangelizing about the benefits of entrepreneurship, I do want to throw a little reality out there for those who may look at it only through rose-colored glasses. Here are ten reasons why you may NOT want to start your own business:

#10: You can’t blame your lame boss for your problems. As much as you might have complained about your boss or "Management" in your corporate job, you might find yourself missing the person who takes the heat for big decisions. Whichever success or failure your company experiences is squarely on your shoulders.

#9: YOU are all the departments in your business. You must take care of product development, sales, marketing, accounting, customer service, IT, legal, procurement and shipping. Most of us do not have strengths in all these areas, so you must quickly learn what is necessary to stay within the law and in business.

#8: No free office supplies. Did you really ever think about how much a paper clip or manila folder costs? How about a desk, no-glare monitor or printer toner? All of a sudden you will become aware of all the "hidden" expenses when you have to do it all yourself. And no, I don’t suggest sneaking out the back door of your corporate job with a big box of supplies. Bad karma! (I will sheepishly admit to taking a pad or two of post-it notes in my time, and I am sure I paid for it somehow)

Blogs: Getting Started

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs

We keep getting emails and phone calls from people who are almost ready to start blogging for their businesses. And, there is some confusion about how to start.

So Denise posted a good summary of several options to you, all the way from do-it-yourself, to custom-built for you. Take a look at this post here about blogging services and what’s right for you.

Up Close, Personal and Nothing to Do with Ezines

By Patsi Krakoff in Fun and Irrelevant Things About Patsi

I’ve been studying how some newsletters get read… or not. And I notice the ones that attract me have the right combination of personal stories and valuable information and content on topic.

And some, yikes! Well, let’s just say I’m easily bored and not interested in too much personal info. Well, unless it’s juicy…or funny. For example, I really admire Michael J. Katz from Blue Penguin. Every week he tells a mundane story about something and turns it into a learning point about newsletters.

I’m also overly suspicious of people who brag about themselves too obviously. Don’t hype me or I’ll delete you faster than you can send me another email with a phony subject line designed to hook me into opening it. (You know who you are…)

So while I’m continuing my studying of writing great emails, ezines, and blog posts with that right combination of personal and important info, I decided it would be easier for me to group the personal stuff into its own category.

So people who like knowing more about me can just go to that category and read there. All the rest of you can just ignore postings in this category. I’ll name it Fun Things About Patsi, or some such thing, and it’ll just be my way of sharing stuff going on which is totally off the topic of writing.

Help me out here. I get a little scattered in the afternoons and have a hard time staying focused. At least this will let me channel other stuff into this side category and I won’t have to worry about it being irrelevant and boring. Which it totally is. And there’s nothing wrong with that, is there.

Hi there! My name is Patsi …

By Patsi Krakoff in Writing Better Ezines

…and I’m writing you to tell you how to get your email newsletters opened and read. I want you to get good at this because it is the best way you can build relationships one-on-one with the people on your list. And when you do that they will get to know you, like you, and trust you.

And, well, we all know what that means! They will eventually buy something from you, or hire you for your services.

Now, why did I start this post with my name? It’s an experiment in getting up close and personal. Some internet experts stress the need to get real friendly, even though you are writing online to people at the other end of a computer screen.

In fact, Nick Usbourne of excessive voice has this to say about that:

Whatever the purpose of your email, whether it’s promotional, customer service or just an automated email response – try to include a salutation followed by a few lines of personal, conversational text.

Why?

Because there is tremendous power in connecting with your reader on a personal level. Opening with a personal voice signals that the email comes not just from a corporation, but from an individual person.

When you do this well, each email you send slowly builds and reinforces a one-to-one relationship with the reader.

That personal relationship, however slight, will help get your emails opened each time you send one.

Niche Marketing for Professionals with Molly Gordon

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Molly Gordon: Name Your Niche

Conversations with Experts presents…

Name Your Niche Now
Wednesday, February 1, 2006,8:30 p.m. ET
Guest Expert: Molly Gordon, Authentic Promotion

Yes, you CAN have a narrow niche without cramping your style. Molly Gordon, Master Certified Coach and author of Authentic Promotion: Grow Your Business and Feed Your Soul, has shown hundreds of professionals how to name a niche that works for them, a niche narrow enough to make their products and services stand out without cramping their style or limiting their creativity.

In Authentic Promotion, Molly explains that a niche does not have to be cold, dark, and cramped (yuck). Using the ecological model, she shows that each individual occupies a unique niche, a place in which they give and receive the greatest benefit, a place where they belong. Find this niche and you will find that your confidence and conviction about marketing your business goes WAY up. You will be able to make simple, memorable statements about your work that will connect with your “just-right” client without struggle or hype.

Molly Gordon is an internationally recognized Master Certified Coach, who has shown hundreds of men and women worldwide how marketing can lead to both material and spiritual fulfillment. In her book and audio program, Authentic Promotion, Grow Your Business, Feed Your Soul, Molly explains the approach she used to create a thriving business. Her e-zine, Authentic Promotion®, has over 10,000 readers, and her articles are reprinted widely. She has recently launched a blog at www.shaboominc.com/blog .

If you cannot attend the Conversation, you can pre-order the audio program for $4.95. After the Conversation the price will be $9.95. Use this link to order now.

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.

Internet Marketing Guru Tom Antion Calls

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

This week’s Conversations with Experts teleseminar is really special. We’ve invited our mentor, Tom Antion to come speak with our group of professionals. If you’ve never heard Tom speak, and aren’t familiar with his work, don’t miss this call at 8:30 p.m. ET.

Denise and I attend a lot of seminars, both on and off line, and we’ve heard many of the Internet marketing experts. They are all pretty good, but Tom is really special. He’s got a great sense of humor, cuts through all the hype and tells it like it is.

So we hired him for a year long mentorship program. We wouldn’t spend that kind of big bucks on anybody not worth their salt. Here’s the skinny:

Tom Antion, Antion & Associates

Wake ‘em Up: How Any Professional can Use Public Speaking to Skyrocket Their Career . . . and make a ton of money too.

Being able to stand up in front of a crowd and WOW! them can make you more money than you could ever imagine. WOWING a crowd doesn’t mean you are juggling ten bowling balls or doing a fire eating and sword swallowing act. It means giving the audience members great information that will help them and delivering it with an appropriate amount of humor and involvement.

The master at not only doing this, but teaching it as well is our guest on this week’s call, Tom Antion. Tom will be sharing the secrets, tips and techniques used by top level professional speakers who must “knock ‘em dead” every time they speak.

Conversations with Experts is sponsored by The Blog Squad and the Build a Better Blog System.

The calls are free, but you must register here.

Article Submissions: The Basics

By Patsi Krakoff in Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog

Here’s a great article which describes why submitting your articles to online article directories is the thing to do for any small biz owner or professional.

It’s a post by Soni Pitts over on Squidoo and you can read it by going here.

Article Marketing is the web-based crossroads where content-hungry demand meets information-rich supply. Whether you’re a writer, a solopreneur, a regular office joe or just someone with a headful of useful knowledge, article marketing is a great way to trade information for public credit and recognition through a process that has the potential to provide amazing returns.

Don’t miss reading the full article, it’s worth it.