Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

5 Steps to Quality Business Blog Writing

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Writing Great Blog Content

One of the most frequent question small business owners and coaches ask me is “What should I write about on my business blog?” It’s not as daunting as you might think, if you follow a few guidelines. These five steps will help you master business blog writing with quality content that attracts readers every time.

With practice, anyone can start and finish writing a blog post in under an hour. It may take longer to add an image, link keywords and edit, but aim for 30 minutes and 300 words and you’ll soon become good at it.

Most small business owners recognize that fresh content published on a blog is simply a required marketing tool. I like to point out that an online business blog is the smartest way to get found, get known, and get clients.

People – your target audience of ideal customers – want to know what you stand for and what you can do for them. A blog is your platform for establishing your business as trustworthy.

That said, I know not everyone loves writing, and as a business owner, you have a lot of plates to keep spinning in the air. Whether you write on your own blog, outsource to a ghost blogger, or have a designated writer on staff, you are still faced with a content marketing strategy for your business blog.

Here are five tips to simplify the process and save you valuable time.

Get started, pick a topic.Getting started is often the hardest part, because there are a lot of choices. It’s never a good idea to start by staring at a blank screen. Keep a list of categories or major keywords that are important to your ideal customers. Here’s the way I do it. Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, blog content, blog writing, business blogging, content marketing with blogs

Business Blog Attacks: How to Keep Comments Civil

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs

What happens when a business blog is attacked by rude comments from readers? It can happen and does.

Blogging connects business owners with customers and potential clients in ways that a basic website cannot. One of the best features of a blog is the comment section because it makes it possible for the writer to hear back from readers. New ideas are gleaned from reader comments and they just make the blogging atmosphere a little more fun. (Image: freedigitalphotos.net)

This blog recently discussed the many ways celebrity blogger Perez Hilton does his job right and on that list was taking time to understand your target audience. A great way to do that is by inviting them to comment so you can hear from them directly. Read More→

Tags : blog content, blog marketing, business blogging, business blogs

Quality Content: How to Write Great Blog Posts Every Time

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing Great Blog Content

How do you create quality content that attracts online readers and yet works to promote the growth of your business?

Creating great content for your business blog is a what and how issue, as in what constitutes “good” content, and how does one produce that content so that it brings in the readers that a business blogger wants. Quality content stimulates reader/ customer engagement.

Here’s what quality web content looks like: It’s short, sweet, smart, and funny.

Content has to be short to accommodate the average reader’s attention span and need to scan quickly.
Sweet because it has to attract readers to your article (think arresting titles). You want to hit that sweet spot right in the center of their curiosity and desire to know more.
It has to be smart to stimulate the reader to think, tell them something they don’t already know, and trigger them to join in on the conversation, to share or comment.
And finally, the content needs to be funny or at least clever to hold their attention and trigger good feelings. (Note: an alternative would be to be outrageously negative, which also stimulates comments and sharing.)

Without any of these factors, you risk losing readers to boredom. It’s click and bye-bye!

How do you keep readers interested and coming back to your blog?

Tags : Attracting Clients, blog content, blog writing, business blogging, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs

Blog Like Perez Hilton: 10 Ways to Bring Traffic to Your Blog

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

The second-best thing about writing a blog is that you have an opportunity to express your opinions, thoughts, and viewpoints to the rest of the world. But the number one advantage to blogging is that it’s a meritocracy; in other words, anyone can be successful at it!

Just look at Perez Hilton. He comes from an unremarkable background far away from Hollywood, but his blogging has amassed thousands of followers and his approach has changed the way people view the entertainment industry

Of course, being a winning blogger is more than just creating good content. You have to be able to get people to read what you write on a consistent basis. Here are ten ways to increase traffic flow to your blog:

Put your blog in your email signature. This is a task that you can complete in less than a minute. After you do so, every email that you send will be a marketing message that could bring you another reader. (Hint: check out WiseStamp!)

Go to your target audience. Find the communities where your potential readers get together. Then determine which ones are more likely not only to read your blog’s content, but also share it with others.

Use social media. Share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and the many other popular Internet gathering places. Enlist services like StumbleUpon, Tumblr, and Reddit to help spread your message.

Optimize for search engines. This sounds technical and complex, but all you really have to do is watch a tutorial video and learn how you can leverage what you write without making many significant changes to it. (Handy hint: subscribe to ScribeSEOTool and learn how to optimize each blog post with a handy checklist!)

Seek out similar blogs. You can comment on blogs that publish similar content, and in the process reference your own blog in the hopes of piquing the interest of that blog’s followers.

Invite – and write – guest posts. Getting established bloggers to write a guest post for your blog can boost your standing in a social community – and being a guest poster can showcase your writing talents to a new audience. (See Patsi’s post about a nifty way to get guest authors to participate in an exchange program for your blog.)

Conduct surveys. People love to express their opinions, and one easy way to let them do that is to conduct surveys on any topics relevant to your blog. You can either utilize a polling widget or plug-in, or just ask for responses in your blog’s comments section.

Create your own graphics, photos, etc. How will this generate traffic? Because if you license them so that people who repost them must credit your blog, you can build another channel of traffic flow to your blog.

Enable subscriptions. It can be as simple as creating an email newsletter or making your blog accessible to RSS feeds. Readers are great, but getting a good core of loyal followers can exponentially increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Incorporate analytics – and study them. There are so many easy-to-use blogging analytics tools out there. But the real successful bloggers pore over their results and tailor their blogs accordingly.

Image credit: wikipedia.org

About our Guest Author: Chris Martin is a freelance writer and blogger who writes about the hottest topics on the Web at www.business.com.

Tags : Attracting Clients, blog marketing, blog traffic, business blogging, content marketing with blogs, Online Marketing, SEO

How Content Marketing Works on Pinterest

By Patsi Krakoff in Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media Stuff

For a social media site to truly step into the spotlight, it has to have something special. Pinterest is one show-stopping sharing site that has taken the Web world by storm. A study done by Shopify, shows the growth of this site is better than Facebook and Twitter at the same point in their history. So how does your content marketing strategy work for this site?

According to Wikipedia, Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘re-pin’ images to their own collections or ‘like’ photos. Their mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting” via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing.

Orders from Pinterest are double those of Facebook and the site is the leader in average dollar amount per order, over sites such as Google, Amazon and Bing. Marketers are trying to find the best ways to leverage their companies and clients on this photo-driven site. So, how do these online marketing professionals incorporate content marketing while on Pinterest?

What to Share

For sure, this new social site is a no-brainer for retail stores and e-Commerce sites. However, if you’re in a B2B business or sell services or have products that might be tricky to show off on an image driven site, what to share as part of your content marketing strategy can be a roadblock. Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, content marketing tips, Online Marketing, social media marketing

Are You Truly Persuasive When You Make Presentations?

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Speeches

To be truly persuasive, all professionals must make presentations. Let’s face it, not all marketing is online, nor is all content marketing published information.

The most persuasive marketing tool that exists is face-to-face human interaction. Are your presentations truly persuasive, or could you improve?

Even if you’re not in sales, and even if you’re a natural born speaker, you need to hone presentation skills so that you connect as confident, knowledgeable and trustworthy. I don’t often promote other people’s webinars, but I honestly feel this is worth it.

Tanja Parsley is a presentation expert who has a successful career helping smart professionals improve their persuasiveness through presentation skills. She is founder of Partners in Performance. Next week, September 13, she and her business partner will deliver 13 Expert Tips for Truly Persuasive Presentations. You can get the details here.

Here are a few things she promises to deliver: Read More→

Tags : persuasion, presentations, webinars

Content Marketing: What Are Your Target
Audience’s Interests, Needs, and Wants?

By Patsi Krakoff in Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing

Content marketing is all about quality content that grabs the attention of your ideal prospects and clients. If you want to create content that engages readers, you need to know their online habits and interests. Yet how many of us post on a blog or upload a video to YouTube without taking time to survey what are our target audience‘s interests, wants and needs?

Content marketing requires that you publish frequently on your site, your blog, and in social media. You want to focus your content on the keywords your prospects are likely to use in searches. You can’t do that without asking them what their interests are.

Here’s a quick list of survey questions to ask your target audience to help define what they want to read:

What are the five top web sites you visit frequently in your work?
What are your online reading habits, blogs, websites, articles, videos, podcasts?
Do you use social media like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn?
Which e-newsletter and blogs do you subscribe to?

You have about eight seconds to engage someone before they click away. Clever headlines and intriguing social updates will get them to click over to your content. But unless you know what your audience wants, you’re shooting in the dark. They won’t stay. Click and bye-bye. So how do you keep them on your site to read your stuff? What makes for effective content marketing? Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, blog content, content marketing with blogs

SEO Basics for Small Business Professionals:
2 Steps Anyone Can Do

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, How to...Tips, Online Marketing

If you’re a small business professional, you may end up doing a lot of your website updating yourself. Without being a geek, you can take care of a few key elements of SEO basics to help prospects and clients find you online. This article explains the basics.

If you’re not using search engine optimization (SEO) to promote your business online, you’ve at least heard of it. And you’ve probably heard it’s crucial. SEO involves doing things to increase your website’s rank on Google’s search engine results pages. (Image: Wikipedia)

Typically, if you’re engaged in SEO, you’re trying to get links, using keywords in your content, and improving the technical aspects of your website to make it more search engine and user-friendly. Ultimately, we don’t know much about Google’s algorithm, but we do know that it rewards content that includes relevant keywords.

We also know that links help improve a website’s rank on Google’s search engine results pages, and we know that websites without technical issues are generally favored by Google.

Yet it’s quite common to find blogs written and published without any hyperlinking in the content at all. This is a pity, as your blog post won’t do a good job for search engine indexing. It can be a waste of your time and energy spent writing it! Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, keywords, Online Marketing, SEO