Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Ezine Trends for 2006 from Expert Christopher Knight

If you want to stay atop what’s good, bad, ugly, useful, etc. with your email marketing and ezines, I highly recommend Christopher Knight’s Ezine-Tips over at EmailUniverse.com. In fact, you can learn a lot about how to do an ezine from their sites.

Here’s Christopher’s predictions for 2006 for Ezine Trends:

Executive Summary: Many email service providers have been spewing their predictions for 2006 and I think I’ve read them all. Some include bunk that could have been predictions in 2004 or 2005, but you quickly come to the realization that the bulk majority of the market moves about 1-2 years behind the major ezine publishing trends. Yes, there are still some email publishers who think their ezine is used purely for a sales acquisition channel instead of the obvious relationship channel it can be.

What Are Your Ezine Publishing New Years Resolutions?

Me? I don’t like to make resolutions, but I do like to contemplate new intentions at the start of each new year…and I’ve picked Jamaica next week to do my contemplating ;-).

I hope you enjoy today’s new Ezine-Tips issue and you have my committment to help guide/coach you in 2006 to make this your best ezine publishing year ever in whatever metric that means to you.

Let’s get on with today’s new article: to read more, click here.

Email Marketing: Trends for 2006

By Patsi Krakoff in Getting Read

How are you changing your email marketing messages for 2006? Are you going to be sending out your newsletter as usual, shrugging your shoulders when you get a 25-40% open rate?

What new technologies and plans are you learning to stay ahead of the pack? Here’s an interesting read over on Rick Brook’s Flyte blog about email marketing trends for 2006, based on the ExactTarget report.

I’m curious, just how many of you readers out there are starting to use blogs and RSS delivery tools to get your messages out to your people? Don’t be shy, I know there’s at least two readers out there, so click on the comment link and speak up.

Why Coaches Should Blog…

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

…and other savvy professionals should too!

Still on the fence about blogging? Denise and I have been invited to give an introductory teleclass about blogging to the New Coach Connection community. We’re being hosted by Don Morris.

Date: Thursday, January 5 at 1 p.m. ET

Our topic is What the Heck is a Blog? 4 Reasons Every Coach Should Start Blogging Now! The teleclass is free and open to everyone, whether or not you’re a coach. For more details on this teleclass, visit NCC Project Spotlight TeleForum for January 2006. No registration is necessary. Just show up.

links for 2006-01-04

By Patsi Krakoff in Uncategorized

The Backroom at Dehanna.com

good resources for authors

(tags: writers authors books resources publishing)

The Future of Email Newsletters 2006

By Patsi Krakoff in Writing Better Ezines

Might as well jump head into 2006 and address the future of email newsletters. Yes, there continue to be delivery problems, with some open rates averaging as low as 25-40%. Is there hope? Of course.

Research from the Jakob Nielsen Alertbox shows that readers prefer email newsletters for the following 3 reasons:

Informative: They keep users up to date (mentioned by two-thirds of the users).
Convenient: They’re delivered straight to the user’s information central and require no further action beyond a simple click.
Timely: They offer current information and real-time delivery.
Newsletters that leverage these advantages (and other points that users mentioned) have a stable future. To survive, newsletters need only give users specific benefits that help them with life or work issues in the here and now.

So email newsletters must be more scannable. This same research shows that only 11% of recipients read a newsletter thoroughly. There is too much information and too much email to expect that your newsletter will get the attention it deserves.

Solutions? Use lists and bulleted points. Or, excuse me:

Use lots of lists
Use frequent subheadings
Be brief, get to the point
Don’t spend your time writing long discourses that will not be read
Make your longer articles available for those dedicated readers who want to know more, by using "to continue reading" links.
Focus on benefits to readers, what’s in it for them

Coach Ezines Takes a Break

By Patsi Krakoff in Patsi's Story

Wishing all my readers the best for the holiday season, as we round the corner of 2005 and into 2006.

For me, it’s a time to catch up on reading, play some tennis, and reconnect with the lovely people in our other home town of Ajijic, Mexico, near Guadalajara. There won’t be any snow or winter decorations, as the weather is similar to San Diego. There will be lots of festivities in our little town for sure.

Here’s wishing you all the best!

Powerful Coaching Series from ACCPOW

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

How would you like to start 2006 with a team of professional coaches earning six to seven figure incomes, who are ready to "spill the beans" and turn you into a thriving coaching business owner?

Association of Coaching & Consulting Professionals (ACCPOW) is hosting their 2nd Annual Coaching Tele-Summit, which you can attend right from your home by telephone.

Last year, over 175 people attended the tele-summit from 17 countries around the world. Some woke up at 3 AM just to be a part of this live event, while others stayed on the line overtime just to get a chance to pick the experts’ brains!

The tele-summit kicks off on January 18, 2006 at 1pm EST and lasts 8 days.

It starts out with three exciting panel discussions:

January 18 – Practice Building Panel Discussion
January 19 – Practice Management Panel Discussion
January 20 – Passive Revenue Panel Discussion

Following the initial panel discussions there will be five days of over a dozen coaching experts presenting their training sessions live. Here is who’ll be there to train you:

– "Setting up and Managing a Successful Coaching Practice," with Marcia Bench

– "Creating Client-Capturing Web Sites," with Kendall Summerhawk

– "Group Coaching Revenue Model," with Ginger Cockerham

– "Attracting High Paying Coaching Clients," with Terri Levine

– "Organizing and Hosting a Highly Successful Local Coaching Event," with Janice Copeland

– "Creating a ‘Million-Dollar’ Coaching Gym," with Chris Barrow

– "Building a Highly Targeted High Response Coaching Database," with Joel Christopher

– "Measuring What Matters: The 5 Key Metrics to Track, Watch and Cultivate, to Take Your Multiple Streams Business to 6 and 7 Figures," with Andrea Lee

– "Growing Your Coaching Business Fast With Strategic Alliances," with Christian Mickelsen

– "Getting Clients for Life: The New Model of Coaching That Makes You More Money and Provides More Value," with Marcia Bench

– "Setting Up Your Own Membership Based Coaching Program In 2 Weeks Or Less," with Christian Mickelsen

– "First 90-Day Marketing Plan," with Ramon Williamson

…and a couple more surprise coaches!

The entire event will be recorded and CDs will be sent to the tele-summit participants.

ACCPOW was founded and is run by Milana Leshinsky, one of the leading coaching entrepreneurs today, and the #1 provider of business tools for coaches.

Space is limited to only 197 coaches.

For details please visit this link here.

Hope you’ll be there! About the only thing missing in this teleseminar series is expertise on newsletters and blogs, but then you probably get enough about those tools from us!

Publicity and Your Business

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Jill Lublin Speaks about Publicity

GUERRILLA PUBLICITY – Practical Strategies to Increase Your Visibility
Wednesday, December 14, 2005, 8:30 p.m. ET – FREE
Guest Expert: Jill Lublin, author of Guerrilla Publicity

Let’s face it; everyone needs effective public relations techniques in order to be a success. This presentation will help professionals in any industry to get their word out.

You’ll learn:

How to find the belly of your message for the mass market
How to establish yourself as an expert
How to pull ’em, hold ’em, and pitch ’em in 30 seconds
How to prepare a powerful press release that will get guaranteed response
7 must knows to developing a guerrilla campaign
What the press says when they speak out – 15 things they love and hate
How to craft an angle so that the press will embrace it

You will get an in-depth knowledge of public relations to maximize exposure. You will also learn low-cost, powerful, practical, original publicity secrets.

Jill Lublin is the author of two national best selling books, Guerrilla Publicity (which is considered the PR bible and is used in university marketing courses) and Networking Magic (which went to #1 at Barnes and Noble). She is a renowned strategist and international speaker. As the CEO of the strategic consulting firm, Promising Promotion, Jill has created successful techniques that implement bottom line results.

Jill is founder of GoodNews Media, Inc., a company specializing in positive news. She is currently the host of the nationally syndicated radio show, Do the Dream, where she interviews celebrities who have achieved their dreams. Jill has recently been featured in the New York Times, Woman’s Day, and Entrepreneur Magazine, as well as on ABC, NBC, CBS radio and TV national affiliates. Jill is currently working on her third book, How to Connect, and has a new TV show called The Connecting Minute.

Website: www.jilllublin.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.

How to Write Info Products

By Patsi Krakoff in How to...Tips

James Roche, the Info Products Guy, spoke with our listeners Wednesday on our Conversations with Experts Teleseminar series, about creating informational products for earning passive income and for marketing your services.

He advocates audio recording teleclasses and seminars, having them transcribed and then rewriting them to turn them into stand alone products your readers can buy.

Or, if you aren’t doing classes, take one of your main services or processes that you go through with your clients and outline it to form an ebook or special report.

Whether you give it away for free as a way to get people to understand your work better, or whether you sell it for a small price, you are growing your database. You can then announce bigger ticket items to these people (the product funnel metaphor).

Here are his four simple questions to get started on an info product:

1. Why? The benefits and motivation
2. What? Just the facts, m’am
3. How? The steps in bullet points
4. What if? How to apply questions and concerns

Actually, these four steps are a good exercise when writing an article or copy for a sales letter. Benefits first, features next, list the main points or steps, and then conclude with repeating the application’s benefits and answering any other questions.

Ezines – Learning E-Newsletter Essentials

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Smart professionals know the importance of their e-newsletters or ezines. It’s been said that building up a database of subscribers is one of the essential keys for getting business online.

But you can’t communicate without subscribers, and you can’t build up a list of subscribers without delivering a consistent, quality newsletter that has value. When you do, your readers will stay subscribed and end up hiring you for services, or buy other informational products.

This Thursday, Dec. 8 I am teaching the basics of e-newsletters and ezines to a group of professionals through the Business Building Center. You can sign up for free by using this link: http://www.businessbuildingcenter.com/teleclasses.htm.

The Business Building Center has all sorts of useful resources for starting and running a successful business, for coaches, consultants, and other small business owners. Steven Fairley, who wrote Getting Started in Coaching and Travis Greenlee are the two entrepreneurs behind the Center.

You are invited, no fee, just register to get the phone number. It’s at 2 p.m. ET, or 11 a.m. for us folks in California and other parts west…