Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Content for Coaches: Save 15% during Memorial Day Sale

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Buying Content, Coaching/Personal Development, Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

Just a quick heads up if you're an executive or leadership coach or consultant in need of quality content for your newsletters and blogs.

You can get 15% off of article and newsletter services subscriptions at my other site, Content for Coaches, if you order before Tuesday May 26, 2009.

If you're interested, go to ContentforCoachesandConsultants.com and click on the article subscriptions and ezine services pages.

When you order, use the coupon code SUBSCRIBE-15 and get 15% off annual orders of $400 or more. I usually do a sale twice a year on articles with reprint rights, but this is the first time I've offered a discount on higher priced services like the All-in-One Ezine services.

You can get complete services: content, formatting, template design, distribution and database management and save $360 off the annual fee of $2400. That's a pretty sweet deal, if you consider how much time and money it costs to do a quality e-newsletter yourself.

Take a look at the article titles page to see if the Content for Coaches article topics are appropriate for you and your business.

Marketing for Nice People Makes You Laugh Out Loud…

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

I'm taking a course called Marketing for Nice People with two of my favorite peeps on the Web, Sonia Simone and Naomi Dunford. These two have teamed up to deliver some really important lessons on content marketing for your business. They take a devil/angel approach, and you can guess which one wears the horns…

Click here to view more details about Marketing for Nice People…

If you're familiar with Naomi Dunford's blog, Ittybiz, you know she's got one of the most famous potty-mouths around, but she's also got a heart of gold, writing smarts, and is one keen biz whiz. She knows how to make money online, and knows how to teach you to do the same.

Sonia is the gifted writer/marketer behind the blog Remarkable Communications. She's such a talented writer that Brian Clark snapped her up as one of his permanent guest writers on Copyblogger.

If you want to know more about these two, I suggest you read this brilliant interview, Content Marketing Gets Real. Then go sign up for Marketing for Nice People, it's a gas (as we used to say)…Click here to view more details

Here's a sample lesson from something called 101 Tweaks to Fix Your Marketing and Your Business:

5 Expert Tips on How Small Businesses
Should “DO” Content Marketing

By Patsi Krakoff in Blogs We Love, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

ClickInsights: Tips on how B2B marketers should do Content Marketing

View more presentations from Ambal Balakrishnan.

My One Best Tip for How B2B Marketers
Should “Do” Content Marketing

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

Don’t you love it when you get asked for “your one tip?” Actually, I do love it, even though it’s always hard to figure out what just “one tip” would be. It kinda helps me sort out all the stuff that goes through my mind and find bare essentials.

(This question reminds me of the game where you ask someone what three books they’d want with them on a desert island… how can you decide on only three?)

Anyway, Ambal Balakrishnan of ClickDocuments asked me this question and I thought I’d share my answers with you:

1. What is your one tip on how B2B marketers should do content marketing?

I hear so much being blogged and tweeted about “Content Marketing” these days, it’s like the Buzz-du-Jour. I’m sure it means different things to different people, depending on the size of your company and the type of products or services you’re trying to market.

Forget “how to do content marketing.” Just remember one key thing: be real. That means that you have to talk to readers and customers like real human beings do.

Top 20 Things You Should Know About SEO Copywriting

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

According to SEO expert Heather Lloyd-Martin, here are the top 20 things you need to learn about small business SEO copywriting. (And if you're not sure what SEO copywriting is, then you really need to learn this and sign up for Heather's online course!

   1. How to give your customers the exact information they need, exactly when they need it!
   2. How the search engines work (and what it means to you)
   3. Tried and true marketing “power words” that get results
   4. Powerful low-budget small business keyphrase research strategies
   5. How you can make more money during seasonal sales

Content Marketing Contest Winners:
Targeting Boomer Women

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

Congratulations to Phyllis Goldberg, Ph.D. and Rosemary Lichtman, Ph.D. of HerMentorCenter and NourishingRelationships blog: this pair of dynamic professionals won the drawing for a free Content Marketing Review for May.

If you signed up and didn't win, don't worry, you still can win in the next drawing. If you haven't signed up yet, be sure to get on the list: click here to enter the contest.

Small Business SEO Copywriting Training
with Heather Lloyd-Martin

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

For a long time, I've advocated organic search techniques, i.e., write for readers, focus on your expertise and the problems you solve, and let the search engines do their job correctly.

Not any longer. Although I still don't believe that you should write content for search engine spiders or robots, I do believe that Search Engine Optimization techniques have greatly improved and blended with copywriting for spectacular results.

Bottom line: if you write your own copy, if you are chief content marketing strategist for your business, then you need to learn the basics of search engine copywriting.

Here's a way to learn from one of the best experts on the web:

Small Business SEO Copywriting Training by Heather Lloyd-Martin –
This is a great way to learn what all those techie people know about how to get really good search results for your business. It's not that hard to learn how to do this yourself. Trust me.

Be Happy – or Get Mad and Get Writing!

By Patsi Krakoff in Books, Content Marketing, On Writing Better

Here's a question for you to think about …Does it help you to write when you're happy…or angry? I think about this a lot.

For example, I'm reading a couple of books on happiness right now. Did you know that the US isn't even in the top ten countries based on a measure of people's happiness?

This is from an article in Forbes, World's Happiest Places by Lauren Sherman:

Where in the world do people feel most content with their lives?

According to a new report released by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based group of 30 countries with democratic governments that provides economic and social statistics and data, happiness levels are highest in northern European countries.

Extreme Popularity: Chris Brogan Interview
with David Meerman Scott

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

Chris Brogan, uber blogger and Tweeter (can't call him a Twit!), reveals his secrets to being one of the most popular guys on the web: (via WebInkNow, David's blog post, Chris Brogan: popular with jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, and teachers too

This doesn't surprise me. Being helpful is one of the smartest marketing tools around, and it's free. Whoops, that doesn't sound right to tell you that you should be helpful because it will bring you business. You should be helpful anyway, period.

Chris spells out exactly how he does this on the Web. For example, he says that there is a big difference between saying this:

"I just figured out how to…"

and this:

"Here's how you can …"

Words make a big difference. How can I help you write better?

Here's how else you can learn about gaining popularity: Subscribe to both ChrisBrogan.com and WebInkNow by David Meerman Scott.

What Makes Your Office Space Creative?

By Patsi Krakoff in Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better

What kind of office space do you work in? Did you know that your environment has a real effect on your creativity and how well your brain works?

Well, you probably intuitively know that, but now the behavioral scientists have done some empirical studies to prove that high ceilings boost creativity. Maybe that's why I love our home and my office here in Ajijic: the ceilings and windows go up 18 feet in some rooms.

Here's an interesting recap of the scientific research from Scientific American Mind magazine and the Neuromarketing blog (which I highly recommend you subscribe to if you're interested in how your brain works).