Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Kick Your Blog in the Butt!

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

Here's a quick heads-up via Michael Martine, Remarkablogger, about a new ebook just out, for building a better blog, from Grant Griffiths of Blog for Profit:

Have you been thinking your blog needs a little extra… something?

Probably just needs a kick in the patootie.

(Yes, I said "patootie.") 🙂

Grant Griffiths over at Blog for Profit has taken the outstanding mega-series of blog posts and expanded on them to create the ultimate "blog kick start" training package. It's called "31 Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt" and it helped hundreds of bloggers when he ran the program live on his blog.

If you've been looking for "just the thing" for your blog, I invite you check it out here through Michael Martine's affiliate link: Click here to buy "31 Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt" for only $12.50 US dollars.

Writing Is Hard…Writing Is Simple

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

What’s stopping you from being a brilliant writer?

Time and again, readers and clients tell me they don’t have enough time to post on their blogs, that finding the time to write is a huge challenge.

I don’t doubt that. I encounter this myself.

And when we drill down to the reasons, it usually turns out to be something other than lack of time. It’s lack of inspiration, lack of confidence, lack of desire to face a task that brings up fear of exposure.

…Because writing is hard. Nobody has time for tough tasks that make you feel inadequate.

Writing, either for your blog or website, or for articles or ebooks, is a tough assignment.

Content Marketing Favorites: Telling Stories

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better

A Story Teller's Mindset:
Key to Great Content Marketing

The
hardest thing about writing good content for marketing is coming up
with stories to tell. There's no lack of knowledge, or research, or
interesting concepts to blog about, or to write white papers about.

I
read one or two books a week, full of interesting information I can
share with you here. But it's dry without telling you a story of how
that information comes to life in the real world.

What's needed
is a story-teller's mindset. I'm working on that, but it's not
something that comes naturally to me. I'm observing people who have
that already.

Like Eric, Tall Eric, down at the tennis courts.
If I mention coffee, he's got a story. Okay, so that can be a bit
annoying if you're in a hurry, but he's usually got my attention for a
couple of minutes. There may be a point to his story…or not.

Why Content Beats Conversations

By Patsi Krakoff in Coaching/Personal Development, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Why Free is Good, Done Right

I
work with a lot of coaches, writers, and consultants. Some of them are
doing well, in spite of the recession. Others are struggling. I often
wonder what the difference is between those who stay afloat in a
downturn and the others. I think it's their marketing savvy more than
their talent or education, but who really knows?

One of my
favorite clients, a successful executive coach with a Ph.D., emailed
this week to say how frustrating it is in the coaching field these
days. It seems everyone's a coach. People take an Internet coaching
course and market themselves by giving away free sample coaching
sessions.

As a trained organizational psychologist with
licenses and years of experience, he doesn't feel he should be giving
away free sessions. I don't blame him. And yet, I was thinking…

The
problem is universal. How do you attract new clients without standing
on the sidewalk like a carnival barker, begging people to come into
your tent?

I guess this is why Chris Anderson author of The Long Tail, has written a new book called Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

Free Works

Content Marketing Favorites: Fishing for Business

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

Marketing with Blogs: Fishing for Business, or Catch-and-Release?

I had the best grilled salmon last night in one of my favorite
restaurants here in Ajijic…which got me thinking about fishing…

I
view business blogging as an attraction strategy, rather than an
activity that earns income via ads. A blog is like a fishing net that
you throw out onto the World Wide Pond to catch new leads, who nibble
on your words like fish on bait.

I believe a blog is a powerful
client magnet when done the smart way. It reverses the client chase.
But few bloggers have a grasp on how to write effective posts on a
business blog and what kinds of content make sense for their readers.

Content Marketing Favorites: 6 Good Article Hooks

By Patsi Krakoff in Article Ideas, Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better

This week I'm on vacation, and repeating some of my older yet evergreen posts because they are worthy of being repeated. This one was published in September 2009.

Linkbait Content: 6 Ideas for Article Hooks

As you might have read, I'm doing some blog improvements with Easton Ellsworth and his Visionary Blogging program. One of the things we talked about was creating what he calls "linkbait content" for my executive coach marketing site, ContentforCoachandConsultants.com.

I'd like to share his linkbait ideas and some of mine, because these ideas for content are good and easy to translate for any niche.

Unless you are a techy-type, and into search engine optimization, you might not be clear on what "linkbait" really means to you and your online content marketing efforts.

Wikipedia defines Linkbait like this:

Link bait is
any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to
place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts of Google defines
link bait as anything "interesting enough to catch people's attention."
Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral
in nature.

Here's why this is important:

Content Marketing Favorites: Brain Based Blogging

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

Lessons from Neuroscience for Content Marketing

In the brain, emotions are closely linked to action. In our mammalian
past, they were the single most important function of our brains. Our
survival depended on quick action.

Feelings do not require
reflection or thought. We feel, we act. We think later and justify our
actions based on input from our more highly advanced reasoning brain.

Strong feelings are hot-wired into the brain's action centers, provoking any one of the "F" actions:

Feeding
Fleeing
Fighting
Fornicating

Emotions are simple and clear so that action is easy and fast. This
is built into our brains for very clear reasons of survival as a race.
We wouldn't be here talking about content marketing if our ancestors
hadn't become good at all four "F" actions.

Content Marketing Favorite Posts: Mediocrity Makes Me Mad

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, On Writing Better

While away on vacation, I'm posting some of favorite posts. You may agree or not, but I enjoyed writing these and thought you might not mind my recycling them since the message is evergreen…

Boring, Banal, and Full of Bull-Shitake
Originally posted September 21, 2009

I spent the weekend doing research…well,
not entirely, I played tennis, went to the movies, watched HBO and
laughed a lot with my hubby. But work wise, I've been visiting a lot of
blogs and sites lately, researching what makes for good content
marketing and bad.

Newt Barrett does a terrific job of highlighting sites that get Content Marketing right as well as those who miss the boat over on his Content Marketing Today blog. I always learn better when I can see samples of what works and what doesn't work. I'm sure you do too.

However,
I am a little stymied in my quest to find bad samples of content
marketing on blogs. Why? It's not that there aren't bad sites and bad
content on the Web. There's a lot of garbage. But mostly what I find is
mediocrity.

Many bloggers are writing reasonable content. And they're probably getting some results.
Most blog writers are just barely scraping the surface of what needs to
be said. I believe most of you can do better than that.

Mediocrity Sucks

You Probably Didn’t Know This About Yourself…

By Patsi Krakoff in Uncategorized

Do you realize what you give me? Just by being here, to read these blog posts?

Every morning before the sun comes up over Lake Chapala here in central Mexico, I sit down to my trusty Alienware computer and compose a post on this blog. If you didn't show up at some point during the day or week as a reader, the motivation wouldn't be there.

Thanks, guys!

Not only have you been coming here to read, but many of you retweet what I have to say. I know, because I see you over on Twitter, see your retweets. Sometimes I take time to thank you personally, but most of the time, I don't.