Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Content Marketing Optimized for Search Engines

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Online Marketing

How can you learn basic search marketing for blogging in 5 minutes or less? Do what all the smart and savvy bloggers and content marketers do: use Scribe.

At the end of this post I’ll give you a link for a special discount code which expires on Friday November 5, 2010 at 5 p.m. CT. In case you don’t understand what Scribe can do for you, here’s the best way I can describe it, along with a screen shot of what a Scribe report looks like.

Scribe SEO Copywriting is a practical tool you install and use for each blog or web pages you want to publish. Once installed, you can get a report BEFORE you publish, which tells you how optimized your content is for search engines.

Before I started using Scribe, I assumed (because I’m pretty smart and I’ve been getting good search results) that if I wrote quality headlines and posts, using the keyword phrases I wanted to focus on, those little search robots would be pleased…

Wrong! By using Scribe, I learned which pages and posts were getting 100% scores… and which were only ranking 52%, 78%, and 90% with the little darling spiders. In seconds, after writing a draft, a report is generated, telling me what’s wrong with my headline, use of keywords, description, etc.

All I have to do is make a few corrections and usually I can get a 100% score on the 2nd try.

Trust me, I’m no geek. This is so easy a 3rd grader can use it. Do yourself a favor and try it out, you can always unsubscribe from the monthly fee ($27 for 300 analyzes a month). I am an affiliate, I recommend it, and I love it.

Here is a sample analysis… Read More→

Tags : blog marketing, business blogging, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, Online Marketing, Scribe SEO, search engine savvy, SEO, web traffic search traffic

Business Blogging: Blast Past the Blunders

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Content Marketing, Ezine & Blog Classes, Online Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars

Here’s how to bust out of blog oblivion: Blogging 101: 6 weeks to Confident Blogging with the Queen of WordPress, Suzanne Bird-Harris.

The latest survey of small biz professionals revealed most people struggle with “Time:” 72% say they don’t have enough time to update their blog.

But we often say that, when in fact the reason we don’t have time is because we’re not sure what exactly what we’re supposed to be doing, or how to do it.

Once you master a skill, you can get it done quickly. And, if you’re successful at it, you want to do it again and again.

Here’s what the survey reveals:

72% struggle with enough time to blog
54% of people say they struggle to know what to write about
52% aren’t sure how to apply SEO strategies to increase the reach of their blog

No wonder people run out of time. If you sit down to blog and have to figure out these two important things (#2 and #3), well, there goes your day!

To remedy this, Suzanne and I are going to teach the solutions to #1 and #2: blog writing and SEO workshop in January 2011.

In the meantime, get prepared by mastering the basics. If you’re struggling with your WordPress blog, don’t miss Suzanne’s Blogging101 workshop: 6 Weeks to Confident Blogging. (Don’t miss the early bird discount – you must sign up by Friday, Nov. 5, 2010 to save $50.)

You can read more about the details of the 6 week workshop on Suzanne’s Blogging101 web page here.

Here’s what one of her clients said about her: Read More→

Tags : blog content, blog formatting, blog marketing, business blogging, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, Online Marketing, wordpress teleseminars, Writing for the Web

Search Engine Results: 3 Tips for Savvy Bloggers

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Online Marketing

I don’t know why it took me so long to learn this SEO stuff, but I DO know that I wouldn’t post one more blog post without using Scribe SEO Tool. Thank you thank you, Brian Clark of Copyblogger. You’ve saved me from oblivion.

At first I thought, an SEO tool? – well, that must be for programmers and geeky types. Why would I mess with that, I’ve got too much information packed into my brain and the thought of learning SEO secrets made my head swim. Besides, blogs are naturally search engine friendly…Then I thought, oh heck, I trust Brian Clark, let’s give it a whirl and I can always unsubscribe after a month.

I can’t live without it now. I just love it when it tells me I’ve got a 100% score on a blog post. Now, when I hit publish, I’m confident my post will be understood for the right reasons by those search spiders. Read More→

Tags : blog marketing, blog traffic, business blogging, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, Online Marketing, search engine savvy, SEO, web traffic search traffic

Smart Time-Saving Tips on Blogging…

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, How to...Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing, Social Media Stuff

What are the steps you need to follow to ensure each blog post is optimized for search engines as well as for your readers’ interests? Oh my… there are a lot. But to keep me out of overwhelm, I wrote them down, and put them into a flow chart.

This is good for days when I’m brain dead and likely to forget something important. But it’s also a good chart for anyone working with a V.A. or assistant who needs to take over some of the tasks for you.

I recently designed and recorded a presentation for the Content Marketing Institute on everything that goes into creating and publishing a quality blog post. It’s published on a neat tool called Brain Shark: you make a power point presentation, then record the notes over the phone. How neat is that?

I’d like to share it with you here. Tell me what you think:

I realized after I watched this that my diagrams are way too small on this screen. So I’ve decided to republish them below, larger.

And here is the flow chart of all the steps I use for posting on my blog: Read More→

Tags : blog formatting, business blog training, business blogging, Content Marketing, Content Marketing Institute, content marketing with blogs, how to start blogging, Online Marketing, SEO, social media marketing, Writing for the Web

Basic Human Motivation: 4 Ways to Engage Readers

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion

As content marketers, if you are writing content designed to persuade and influence, you need to know what makes people tick.

There are universal drives that are common in all human beings, across cultures, across the globe. When you create content that appeals to either of these four basic drives, you can’t help but engage the hearts and minds of readers on a profound level.

We can learn a lot from evolutionary studies. Our brains haven’t changed much, nor have our fundamental motivations.

I suggest a frame work for understanding basic human motivations: the Four Drive Theory, presented by Professors Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Noria in their 2001 book Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices.

There are many theories about what motivates behaviors, but I like this Four Drive theory because it is based on studies of primitive man, primitive societies, and the evolution of brain functioning over the last 100,000 years.

It doesn’t matter if you view humans as being motivated according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or Freud’s Pleasure/Pain framework, or any other drive theory. What matters for marketing is that you understand basic human drives, and what drives peoples’ behaviors at their most fundamental sources.

This theory doesn’t exclude other theories, but as a framework for marketing, I think it works quite well. Keeping these four things in mind, you can create more effective marketing that reaches the subconscious brains of your consumers.

These four fundamental drives motivate all human beings. Some are stronger drives than others, but we all have all four operating in the background of our lives.

Neuroscientists and anthropologists know that our brains haven’t changed much over the last 100,000 years. We are still driven by four key motivators. Everything the brain does is strongly motivated by these four drives:

The drive to acquire objects and experiences that improve our status relative to others.
The drive to bond with others in long-term relationships of mutually caring commitment.
The drive to learn and make sense of the world and of ourselves.
The drive to defend ourselves, our loved ones, our beliefs and resources from harm. Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, blog content, blog writing, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web

Engaging Content: Get Emotional, Really Emotional

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

How can content marketers create content that engages – truly engages – the emotions of readers?

When Harry Met Sally, Sally insisted men could never tell when women were faking an orgasm. To prove it, she demonstrated her own audio version, fully clothed, sitting in a crowded restaurant. The diners at Katz’ Deli were shocked and amused, as were millions of movie goers.

The scene features one of the funniest lines ever, “I’ll have what she’s having,” spoken by Estelle Reiner, the director’s mother who played one of the restaurant patrons.

This is important stuff for content marketers to grasp and use when creating content that engages the hearts and minds of readers.

If you want your readers to be so moved that they ask you for some of what “she’s having,” then make your stories emotional.

Scientists have shown that humans have an innate ability to feel what others feel through neurons called mirror neurons. These are what allow us to feel empathy, to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.

Our brain neurons fire just as if we were actually doing or feeling what we see another human doing or feeling. Each time you tell a story about a client, we put ourselves into the picture.

Telling stories about clients who use your services and products isn’t just a marketing tactic. It’s neuroscience in action. Your readers can feel the pain of the client who was frustrated, angry, disappointed… and feel their relief when you helped them out. In those moments, they are that client, they get it. They are right there in the story.

How many of you did that when you watched Meg Ryan fake an orgasm? The director tells us that in test showings, the women in the audience were all laughing. The men were silent. Maybe they were worried… I don’t know. For sure, no one was bored or unengaged…

Try to imagine the feelings your audience of readers will experience when you tell a story. Will it make them want “some of what you’ve got?”

Tags : Attracting Clients, blog content, blog writing, brain science, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, emotional triggers, engaging content

Content Marketing with Blogs: New edition

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Persuasion

Want to know more about online persuasion and how you can write content that gets results? Here’s a quick one minute video promoting my Content Marketing with Blogs ebook, newly revised. The formatting and design was done by my son-in-law, expert graphic designer and creative genius, Scott Krakoff. Tell me what you think…

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, be my guest: Content Marketing with Blogs…

Tags : brain science, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, persuasion, writing on the web

Neuromarketing Books for Marketing to Brains

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Copy

If you want to know more about how to write content that makes an impact on the brains of your readers, here are some interesting sites and books about the emerging field of neuromarketing.

There are new neuromarketing companies and books galore, and I believe most offer important clues for content marketers. Here are a few of my favorites:

Neurofocus.com: The Neurofocus CEO, A.K. Pradeep, has authored a book, The Buying Brain –Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind.I loved this book for it’s ability to translate brain scan results with a marketing perspective in layman’s terms. However, much of it seems to promote the services of their company. Well, of course it would. The site set up especially for The Buying Brain book has a page of “cool brain facts,” that are fun to read.

Salesbrain.net: Founders of this company, Patrick Renoise and Christophe Morin, are also authors of Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Customers’ Brains. They also founded an excellent social networking site, Neuromarkting.com, a Ning group, for people interested in how brain science can be applied to marketing.

Tags : blog content, blog writing, brain science, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, neuromarketing, persuasion, Writing for the Web

7 Ways to Market to the Subconscious Brain:
The Homer Simpson Guide to Content Marketing

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

Content marketing and the people who write marketing messages must understand how consumers’ brains work if they want to engage and create trust and loyalty. The problem lies in assuming people are in charge of their own choices…

Everybody thinks they are in control of their behaviors and decisions. We think we are rational, logical, and smart human beings. But we may not be so smart if we don’t recognize our own and others’ irrationality.

Our behavior and decision-making is affected, 95% of the time, by the unconscious processing in the mid and old brains. 95% of our decision making and buying and Web actions are heavily influenced by unconscious processing.

85% of the time our brains are on autopilot. But marketers continue to write messages as if people were paying attention.

Market research: in 2005 corporations spent more than $7.3 billion in US alone. In 2007, $12 billion. That doesn’t include marketing, advertising, etc. which carries an additional annual $117 billion tag. Most of it is spent in the wrong places and fails.

Companies and brands are gathering the wrong information, because consumer surveys and focus groups can only report back what they consciously experience …and it’s falsified by biases and flaws. The only true market research comes from monitoring brains of consumers as they react to messages, through neuromarketing.

8 out of 10 new product launches fail. Could it be that we’ve misunderstood how to capture attention, emotions and be memorable to consumers? Could it be we assume people are conscious and rational?

Health warnings on cigarette labels actually trigger smoking behaviors, they don’t deter any smoking at all, quite the contrary. How do we know? Not because smokers report they ignore the warnings. They all say they read them and believe them and want to quit smoking. But their brain scans show they actually want a cigarette even more. (Buyology, Martin Lindstrom) Read More→

Tags : blog content, brain science, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, converting readers to clients, neuromarketing, persuasion, persuasion triggers, subconscious mind, Writing for the Web

Content Marketing that Speaks to the Old Brain

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Copy

You get better results with your content marketing when you speak to the “old brain,” the one that’s also known as the primitive brain or the survival brain. Knowing how the brain works will help you write better as well as help you with presentations to influence others.

There are a few principles to remember, and here’s a great story that makes this come alive…

A Marketing Moment with a Homeless Man…

I want to share an excerpt of a story by Patrick Renvoisé, from his book Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Customers’ Brain. He tells the story of how he earned the equivalent of a $960/hour consulting fee from a homeless man…

One evening as I was entering a restaurant in San Francisco, a homeless person stopped me. His sign read, “Homeless. Please HELP.”

The man showed all the signs of distress with sad empty eyes. He looked me directly in the eyes, and I was compelled to hand over a few bucks. However, something led me to go further with this particular man.

Like many of my clients who try to get responses from marketing, his message was weak, and certainly not unique. So I gave him $2 on condition he let me change the message on his sign for at least 2 hours.

The man agreed, and I wrote a different message on the back of his sign. Later, we met up again.

He insisted on giving me $10, because he had made over $60 while I was having dinner. His usual take averaged $2-$10 an hour.

As my entire interaction had lasted only 30 seconds, this eight dollar profit translated into a $960/hour consulting fee, not bad.

All I did was apply what I know about the brain and marketing messages that get people to act.

Here’s what his new cardboard sign said: Read More→