Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

4 Ideas to Generate Blog Topics

How are you doing with your 2015 blog goals? Are you publishing blog topics that include compelling, relevant content that solves the problems of your readers?

A study on B2B content marketing has shown that 70% of businesses online have more content now than they had last year, and of these, 80% are doing so through corporate blogs.

These smart professionals understand the effectiveness of blogs, but blogging is not without challenges: figuring out what blog topics to focus on, conducting appropriate research, writing great content, and ensuring it has been optimized for search engines. If you’re stumped about what to write next, try these four ideas and see how far you get.

1. Part of your writing process should include keyword research, and nothing can help you accomplish this like Google SERP (search engine results page) analytical tools. Many free versions are available online, including SERPs.com. Read More→

Tags : blog content, keywords, online review, SEO

Write with this Easy Expert Ebook Outline

By Patsi Krakoff in Attracting Clients, E-Books

Are you an expert? Then you need to write and publish an expert ebook. Now. Before your field gets flooded with too many on the same topic (if it isn’t already). Trust me on this one.

Just as business blogs caught fire in 2004-2005, expert ebooks are what smart professionals use as a key marketing tool to get found, get known and get clients.

If you’re an expert and want to get found online, there’s no better way than to give visitors to your website or blog a free report that shows your expertise, builds credibility and starts conversations.

An expert ebook is a longer version of that report and can easily be sold on Amazon. Traditional publishing barriers have fallen. All that’s standing between you and published author status is a little time and work. So let’s get busy.

In my last post, I shared a few questions you should ask yourself and 4 steps to write an expert ebook fast and efficiently. This is the same process I used with my Australian client Di Worrall, who received several book awards on the two books I helped her with last year.

Here are the 11 steps I use to create an expert ebook outline: Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, expert ebooks

How to Write an Award Winning Expert Ebook

By Patsi Krakoff in About Expert Ebooks, E-Books

I get calls from executive coaches and consultants who want to publish an expert ebook. They ask me for help, to ghost write either for or with them.

The answer is yes: in certain fields, I am a ghost writer. I read a ton of books on leadership, and study how the big sellers on Amazon are written in this category. I can help you write an expert ebook on leadership.

In fact, I’m proud to announce that my Australian client Di Worrall is gathering several book awards on the two books I helped her with last year:

The e-lit awards: The Personal Accountability Code took out the gold medal for the best publication in the self-help category
2015 Indie Excellence Awards: Accountability Leadership (Best Leadership Book 2015)
2015 Indie Excellence Awards: The Personal Accountability Code (Finalist for Best Career Book 2015)
2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: a “finalist” award (like silver) for Accountability Leadership in the Business Book Category and The Personal Accountability Code in the Motivational Category

Congratulations, Di!

Like Di, some people have clear ideas of what they want to say. They may even have an outline. Some have already published books themselves (“Never again!” some say). But most don’t have an outline, a story, a message, or a clue. Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, expert ebooks

SEO and Content Marketing: A Love Story

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content

Once upon a time, SEO met up with Content Marketing, fell in love, and vowed to never separate, to always work together in harmony.

Anyone who’s been around the ‘Net a while understands a little about optimizing content so that the search engines can index it according to topic and relevance to readers. About ten years ago, someone decided to give a name to the type of marketing that occurs that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers: Content Marketing. How do the two differ and how are they alike?

This week, I invited Jack Dawson of webfia.com. to share his insights on working with SEO and CM together instead of separately.

Where and How They Met

There are many techniques that make up internet marketing, two of which include search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. SEO has been around for quite some time, more than a decade at least, while content marketing has only gained popularity in the last few years. Read More→

Tags : blog marketing, Content Marketing, content marketing with blogs, Online Marketing, SEO, Writing for the Web

How Authentic is Your Blog Writing?… And,
How Do You Write Authentically?

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

All the data shows that people prefer doing business with authentic brands and authentic professionals. But how authentic is your blog writing? Do you sound authentic? And, how do you write authentically, anyway?

In my last blog post, I shared 5-steps for a good bio/marketing message for an e-newsletter:

Tell them who you are and what you can do to help solve their challenges.
Let them know what kinds of people you work with, and how long you’ve been helping them.
Don’t try to sound too good. People have antennae for hyperbole.
Read your bio out loud to see if it sounds authentic.

The problem is that when you try to write authentically, it’s difficult to know what exactly to do. What makes blog writing sound real, sound authentic? Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, authenticity, blog writing, e-newsletters, personality

Best Kept Secret of an Email Newsletter Bio

By Patsi Krakoff in How to...Tips, On Writing Better, Story Telling, Writing Better Ezines

What’s the best kept secret of a newsletter bio? As I mentioned in my last post, your bio on your blog or website About page should be current and tell a story, rather than be a resume written in the third person. The same is true for an email newsletter bio.

Unfortunately, I see many coaches and consultants use their resumes for their sidebar bio. (“Dr. Smith has 20 years experience in strategic planning and holds an MBA from Harvard, etc.”)

Then there are those who go to the other extreme: They tell too much about their achievements and come across like an ego-maniac.

While everyone wants to know about who you are as the author of an email newsletter, mostly they want to know “what’s in it for me.” (WIIFM) Read More→

Tags : bio, biography, e-newsletters, enewsletter, newsletter, personal stories, personality, storytelling

5 Key Elements for Your “About” Page:
How to Tell Your Story

By Patsi Krakoff in How to...Tips, On Writing Better, Story Telling, Writing Great Blog Content

When’s the last time you updated your bio on your About page on your blog or website?

Smart bloggers know that this is one of the most visited pages: People want to know who’s behind a business. Personalities count. Yet many blogs and sites have a standard resume written in the third person, boring as all get-out.

Certainly client lists are important. But so are you. An About page is an important content marketing opportunity. Tell your story, your real story. If you are the sole author of your blog, write it in the first person. Read More→

Tags : blog writing, content marketing with blogs, personal stories, personality, storytelling

Story Telling for Blogs

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, How to...Tips, Story Telling

Do you use story telling on your blog or website?

For anyone involved in persuading others (i.e., everyone), success depends on cutting through the noise and clutter to make the sale or persuade others to adopt our point of view.

Storytelling sells and persuades because it’s an innate skill that has evolved over centuries—something we all know how to do.

In fact, a storytelling gene (FOXP2), discovered in 2001, gives us the physical and neurological skills needed to speak words rapidly and precisely. We use these language abilities to form complex sentences in the proper storytelling sequence. Read More→

Tags : Attracting Clients, personal stories, storytelling

Business Blog Writing: How to Avoid Time-Suck

By Patsi Krakoff in Article Ideas

How do you avoid time-sucking traps when it comes to blog writing?

If you’re anything like me, you may have found yourself (a time or two!) with nothing to show after sitting in front of your screen for 90 minutes. Yup. It happens to the best of us.

You sit down with your coffee, open email, and an hour later still haven’t posted on your blog. You decide you need inspiration, so you check out your feed reader.

Ninety minutes later, you still haven’t started a new blog post. You’ve probably read some really great stuff, but now you’re really behind schedule, and time is money. You feel anxious, overwhelmed, and you move on to client projects (but I’ve got a tennis match so I’ll have to come back later…)

Sound familiar? Change a few details and I bet this is your story. Read More→

Tags : blog content, blog inspiration, business blogging, original content

2 Sure-Fire Ways to Inspire Your Blog Writing

By Patsi Krakoff in Article Ideas, How to...Tips, On Writing Better, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy

A few years ago I polled readers and asked what their biggest blogging challenge is. Turns out, it’s not lack of time, it’s lack of inspiration. Does your blog writing lack inspiration? Is it hard to get really fired up when starting to write a post?

I get that. When I was just starting out as a blogger (was that really over 15 years ago?!) I could just feel that screen staring right back at me. What can a blogger blog about to other bloggers?

Lack of inspiration comes from not being sure you’re doing it right, or doing it well, and lack of confidence that it will be worth it… in other words, fear and doubt.

Fear and doubt go away when you know what you’re doing, and have a system that will allow you to move forward confidently.

Here are two ways you can side-step fear and doubt, and write frequent, consistent quality posts and develop a blogging habit that will grow your abilities over time. Nobody starts out writing well. Yet, everybody’s got a piece of genius within them, so it’s a question of finding it and putting it on paper, quickly, before any demons get in the way. Read More→

Tags : blog content, blog writing, business blogging, business blogs, how to start blogging, writing on the web