Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Beware of Busyness

By Patsi Krakoff in Executive Coach Ezine Article Topics

Customized Newsletter Services is announcing an article available for use in executive coaching newsletters called Beware of Busyness: Harnessing Willpower for Purposeful Action.

This article is available in three versions, long (2000 words), short (1000 words), and nugget version, 600 words. Full reprint rights are given with purchase.

Some people don’t really understand how to use OPC (other people’s content) in their newsletters. If you don’t buy the reprint rights, you must cite the author’s name and web link address.

But with reprint rights you can use the article as your own, put your name on it, and send it out as if you had written it. But WAIT! This is much more effective when you use the article as a base, then add your own personal stories to it.

For Customized Newsletters, I write the articles using plenty of research and resources from business books that are relevant to executives who are the readers of your newsletters. It is up to you to add an introduction, and/or a conclusion that brings in your experience and how this applies to the people you work with. This is key to making your content-rich newsletters work as a marketing magnet for you.

Beware of Busyness was based on the work of Heiki Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal in their book, A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results and Stop Wasting Time. To read a synopsis of the article, go here.

Please visit Customized Newsletters if you are interested in using a newsletter service to improve the quality of your newsletters and informational products.

WordBiz Report Does It Again

By Patsi Krakoff in Article Ideas, Ezines We Love, Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog, Writing Better Ezines, Writing Great Copy

Happy 4th birthday to Debbie Weil who began publishing her WordBiz report July 21, 2001. To celebrate, Debbie has produced another fine ezine, one that sets the gold standards on several points.

She asks for frequent reader feedback.
She links to several bonus articles, thus providing timeless valuable content on writing good ezines and blogs.
She is friendly and appears genuine in her request for readers email her.
She is giving away several copies of a book, in return for readers time in completing a survey about blogging.
She describes her progress on the book she is writing about corporate blogging and how readers can actually contribute to it.

Debbie is actually my unsuspecting Blog Fairy, responsible for my taking the plunge close to a year ago. Without her persistence about the value of blogs for small businesses like mine, I never would have started Coach Ezines blog, or BigBook Nuggets blog, or the new Brain-FX blog.

And Denise Wakeman might not have started BizTipsBlog, and we both wouldn’t have co-mothered The Build a Better Blog System and Services.

I guess that makes Deb our Blog Godmother…or some such silly thing.

Anyway, I digress. My point is, if you want to write really good ezines, newsletters and blogs, look at what the professionals are doing. Imitate them. Learn from them…or her in this case.

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots

By Patsi Krakoff in Writing Better Ezines

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: This book has a subtitle: A Bullfighter’s Guide. I believe they are referring to corporate bull. With a title like that, its gotta sell.

Cynthia Kivland draws my attention to this book on her newsletter.

She says: Throughout the book, authors Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky—who are also responsible for the Clio Award-winning Bullfighter software—identify corporate speak as the numbing down of American business. …They define four traps that lure us into believing that corporate speak is the best way to communicate, and more importantly, they identify these traps as symptoms of what’s ailing corporate America.

At its core, Idiots is about abandoning stultifying corporate speak for the sake of expressing our individual personalities—our voice—at work, and harnessing the power of this voice to generate enthusiasm and creativity in the workplace. In this era of exploring individual purpose and mission and how these fit with our professional lives, Fugere and friends have a very timely message. “This book is about being yourself, reclaiming your voice, and letting some personality, warmth, and humor into your work life.” Simplicity and truth pack a powerful punch.

Which leads me to second that when it comes to writing better newsletters and blogs. Get rid of corporate speak when you write, if you are still entrenched in that jargon. Write from the heart more from the head, and throw in personal stories that illustrate your points.

But you know that by now, don’t you!

Ezines on Writing Better Ezines

By Patsi Krakoff in Ezines We Love

Here’s an interesting blog that has some great resources for writing better ezines: Nick Usborne writes about writing online on his Excess Voice blog. On Saturday he published the results of a survey where he asked his readers to name their favorite newsletters and ezines for copywriting info.

Read his list here.

Here’s a couple I think you might find interesting:

PsychoTactics Newsletter
Sean D’Souza’s newsletter on marketing and copywriting, from a perspective of how the brain works.

ProofreadNOW
A Grammar Tips newsletter for those who care about good grammar and error-free pages.

BluePenguinDevelopment Newsletter
Michael Katz’s e-newsletter on the subject of e-newsletters. (This is a favorite of mine, because Michael has mastered the art of taking personal stories and turning them into good newsletter fodder.)

Nick Usbourne’s blog has a Monday morning copywriting tip. The one today is on taking front page news stories and turning them into good copy for your newsletters, ezines, blogs and PR releases.

So, I gotta ask, what are your favorite newsletters and ezines? Do you know of any that help you write better ezines?

Features & Benefits 101

By Patsi Krakoff in Writing Great Copy

My friend and colleague Adam Urbanski says that we are all in two businesses: our own unique services business, and the marketing of that business. So since we are in the marketing business, we must learn to write good copy: words that sell.

Writing copy that gets your readers to take action requires that you approach the writing process a little differently. In this series on copywriting, I’ve asked Lorrie Morgan Ferrero of Red-Hot Copy to share one of her secrets with us:

One of 20 Insider Secrets to Great Copywriting

By Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, Expert Copywriter

Each weekday during my Red Hot Copywriting Bootcamp, attendees (or recruits) get a daily drill
designed to reinforce the training I give on weekly phone calls. The drills are illuminating and fun. Plus these drills build your copy from the ground up. By the end of Bootcamp, you actually have a sales letter that would have cost you anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000 to have written professionally.

So how do you get going? Grab a kitchen timer or stopwatch, a piece of paper and a pen. Your bite-sized drill today is to separate out the features from the benefits. So let’s do an exercise.

Before you write a single word of copy you must define your product or service using features and benefits if you want to really connect with your reader. (When I’m trying to get my features and benefits to poke their heads out, I like to write by hand. I think there’s a connection between the brain and handwriting.)

So we’re on the same page, here are the definitions of each.

A feature is the adjective of the product. It describes what the product is.
And the benefit is the emotional component of what the person gets out of the product.
Now schedule 15 minutes of uninterrupted time to play and let’s go!

Set your timer for 10 minutes. So take a sheet of paper and fold it in half vertically. In the left hand column write the word “Features”. And on the right, the word “Benefits”.
Start brainstorming about what features you offer to clients. Then for every feature find a corresponding benefit. Benefits are what sell. Remember we all want to know, “What’s in it for me?” That’s just the way we’re wired. “How is your product or service going to benefit me?” While the timer is doing its thing, let the ideas flow freely. Don’t judge your answers or edit yourself. Stop on schedule. (You’ll edit later).
Reset the timer for the last five minutes. Review your list. Circle the ultimate benefit –
this is the benefit your copy and headlines should focus on.
Put the other benefits in order of importance. These will become your bullets and subheads.

It’s no secret. The amount of money you make with marketing comes down to how well you craft your words. It’s the most valuable skill you can learn for making money online. But not everyone wants to be a copywriter.

So I wanted to create a program that makes writing fun and effortless for entrepreneurs and copywriters alike. That’s how the Red Hot Copywriting Bootcamp was launched. Recruits who have gone through it agree – the Bootcamp is the roadmap to a copywriting goldmine. You learn a proven process for writing copy FAST that improves your bottom line. Sure there are other ways to get there, but we get it done in 4 weeks flat (plus 2 weeks of follow up critiques).

Face it, if you’re in business you’re also a marketer. And all marketers know it’s the words that sell.

So where do you grab this Field Guide for more copywriting exercises? Sorry.

Only recruits of my Bootcamp can get it for now. So sign up today before the next session is full.
It will be one of the best business decisions you’ve ever made. www.red-hot-copy.com/rhcbootcamp.htm

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

International copywriting trainer, author and speaker, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero has been a freelance writer and journalist for over 25 years. Her words have made her clients hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now she focuses her vast experience on teaching others the skill of copywriting. Lorrie is the author of a highly acclaimed copywriting course, creator of the Red Hot Copywriting Bootcamp and founder of Copy Campus, a unique membership resource site designed to support copywriters and entrepreneurs on all levels. Visit her site to learn more at www.red-hot-copy.com.

Learning to Write Compelling Copy

By Patsi Krakoff in Writing Better Ezines

Writing copy for your web site or for marketing materials is different from writing an article for your blog or newsletter. Yet I see so many professionals (highly educated Ph.D.s, competent consultants and experiences coaches) missing the boat.

If you study marketing and copywriting online (believe me, there is a ton of information available out there, some free and some for exhorbitant fees!) you can learn how to write a compelling letter to your readers that will inspire them to click through, buy, or sign up.

Then I see some professionals that must have bought the XYZ Marketing Guru sales course, and their copy looks exactly like all the other online marketers out there!

You do not have to copy the sales letter/landing page of everybody else. In fact, if you do, you will not compel anybody to buy anything, because of the ‘hype’ factor. You must be as real, authentic, and trust-worthy as you truly are in person. Not easy to do in print.

We can all learn about this. I’ve invited an expert, Fred Gleeck, to share some of the basics about writing online copy. He’s got some useful ebooks he’s making available to you for free over at www.FredGleeck.com/ebooks.

________________________________________

Writing Copy
©Fred Gleeck 2005

To subscribe to Fred Gleeck Insights, send a blank
email to tips@seminarexpert.com.

To get 5 of Fred Gleeck’s books for FREE, go to:
www.FredGleeck.com/ebooks

Writing copy for your websites and other offline marketing
is key to your success as an information marketer.

I’m putting together an ebook on exactly how to do this.

Rather than make you wait to see the book, I’d like to
give you the outline to get you thinking about the process.

Some people would tell you not to do this because
someone might copy your work and attempt to create
their own book/ebook on the same topic. Remember,
you can’t copyright an idea, only your specific presentation
of that idea. So forget it.

Don’t worry about people copying your ideas!

Concentrate on doing your own work and don’t worry
about what anyone else is doing. Also, the people who
do something similar to what you’re doing may turn out
to be ideal JV partners. These days, some of your
competitors may turn out to be your best partners.

Here’s the outline:

1. Prehead
2. Headline
3. Posthead
4. Opening Line/Paragraph
5. Build Rapport
6. Demonstrate Credibility
7. Develop Bullet Points
8. Testimonials
9. Offer
10. Pricing Discussion
11. Guarantee
12. Bonuses
13. Reason to Act Now
14. PS
__________________________

Stay tuned for more…

Interview: Marketing for Professionals

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

I was recently interviewed by Deborah Harper of PsychJourneys about marketing and why more professionals weren’t using ezines or blogs to get clients.

You can listen to to the interview here: Download PatsiInterview-070805-0.mp3 (10586.4K)

Don’t Bore Me!

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Blogs We Love, Getting Read, Writing Better Ezines

Susan Solomon at Marketing Profs blog writes this must-read post: Don’t Bore Me with Your Blog!

She gives 6 tips for better blog writing, all of which are also applicalbe to writing better newsletters. She even suggests a blog writing course. Hmmm, now I could do that!

Yet I even have a hard time following my own advice. I still post articles that are way too long, and try to pack too much information into each article. I know, I know: you’re too busy to read long posts, but don’t miss her article if you struggle with writing. She’s says it all:

No passion, then don’t blog
Take risks
Find your tone
Break from the pack
Be topical
Know your audience

Here’s a Way to Write That Book

By Patsi Krakoff in Teleclasses & Seminars

Advance notice to Coach Ezine readers:

Discover the Easy Way to Write, Publish and Market Your Book – FREE
Led by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff, Psy.D.
Tuesday, August 9, 2005, 8:00 p.m. ET

9 out of 10 professionals and small business owners have at least one book or information product inside their head, but lack the time and organizational skills to get it out into digital or print form.

Having a book, whether in digital, soft-cover, or hard-cover establishes you as an expert in your field. What if there was a way to help you get your book down in print and ready for publication in 90 days?

You’ll learn about an easy way to write your content, organize it for publication, and build an eager audience for your book. You’ll learn about the system we discovered to create our two successful ebooks, The Secrets of Successful Ezines and Build a Better Blog System, both written and published in about 90 days.