Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Content Marketing Pioneers: The Dawn of a New Era

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

"Content Marketing" is the Buzz-du-Jour among marketers everywhere, both on and offline. But it really isn't anything new.

Smart marketers have been using these "new" writing techniques and content strategies for decades. Direct marketers, in their long sales letters, are expert at this. The "advertorial" has been around and used on the Internet for more than a decade. Aren't we just renaming copywriting techniques?

Why the big hullabaloo now? Why are so many experts rushing to get a Content Marketing book published? (5 Content Marketing Books You Need to Read) Why all the blog posts and Twitter Tweets … Content Marketing Top Blogs, Content Marketing sites?

Something's a-foot!

…I've always had a nose for shifts and major upheavals. Here's what I think is happening on a big picture level:

The BS Bailout: Free Better Business Blog Writing Program Bonus

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

I absolutely hate using my writing blog to promote a sale, so I ask your indulgence just this one time. Don't throw tomatoes.

Actually, you may love me for this, especially if you want to get your business blog spiffed up AND get a valuable bonus program on Better Blog Writing.

Now that I think more about this, you'll have a chance to learn about the 10% nuances that make a blog get results or not. Because that's often the difference between a blog that works and one that doesn't…it's often just the little nuances.

One of the best programs I ever did with Denise Wakeman as The Blog Squad was our Better Business Blog Writing Program. Here's how you can get it for free…

The Blog Squad Bailout: Last Chance to Get a Blog Squad Blog or Makeover

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

What do smart professionals do when they decide to start a business blog? They call The Blog Squad to set up their blog, and learn how to use it for business results. Or they get a Blog Squad Makeover for an existing blog.

However, you won't be able to do that after March 31, 2009.

March 31, 2009 will be the last time you can get blog set up and training with our personal attention. The Ultimate Business Blog Set Up Program is being taken off the market. That means you've only got a few more days to get your blog with our help. After that, we're outsourcing to other resources.

If you're smart, you'll take advantage of this last special offer, a 25% discount for this service. You'll save $500.

Even if you already have a blog, and especially if you're not getting results with it, you should read more about how our special coupon can be applied to an Extreme Blog Makeover as well:

Edit Your Content: A Checklist of 12 Things Not to Miss

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

Here's a checklist for rereading your content before you publish. For anything important, i.e. that's being sold or delivered to clients, I use Barbara Feiner, a professional editor. She not only corrects errors, but evaluates for clarity and flow.

But for blog posts and everyday content creation, I put on my editor's visor and those green sleeve thingys, and act like a detached newspaper editor with a red pencil. Here's what I look for:

Common typos like theirs for there's, your for you're, that or which for who, and all those pesky things a spell check won't pick up.
Grammar goofs: My most common are when the verb doesn't agree with the noun, as in "Here's my mistakes…"
Review for commas, semi-colons, ellipses and em dashes. The important thing is for it to read well, read clearly. Helps to read it out loud.
Review for paragraph and line spacing, since I like to break up long blocks of text.
Review for bolded words and insert subheadings where needed.
Separate a blog post after 2-3 paragraphs so that it goes to the extended post feature ("read more…"

12 Steps to Creating Web-Savvy Content for Marketing

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, E-Books, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web

How do you make sure your ebook has good content for marketing purposes? How do you write web-savvy content that works for the Web, that markets your business, gets you found, and is link-friendly?

I mean, it's all good to say you're going to get on the Content Marketing bandwagon… but how exactly do you do that? Here are 12 steps you need to think about:

Before you write that ebook, or blog post, or other content on your website, think about your audience. Once you've defined who you're writing for, then define the problem you're going to solve. Then figure out how people would be using keyword phrases to find their solutions if they were doing a web search.

Write a list of 3-5 keyword phrases and keep those in mind as you write your content.

Once you've defined your audience, the problem, the solution, and the keyword phrases. you should be able to make a list of subtopics or steps you need to cover. With a list, you can expand on each point to create a logical progression to solving the problem.

Ebook Prices, Expensive? Yes, but you get more than take-out curry…

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Right on the tail of my previous post and reference to Newt Barrett's post about the value of ebooks, Sean D'Souza writes a great post. I want to alert you to his entertaining perspective:

Why Publishers Are Stupid About Book Pricing

So yes, the pricing of e-books is not out of whack.It’s actually reasonably accurate. And the public is saying so. We don’t need huge volumes of a book to be sold. All we really need is for the books to be valued more than a seven-minute goat curry.

What Sean is saying that he pays more at his local take-out restaurant for a meal than Amazon charges for printed books that take months to write and a lot of money to publish and market.

The solution is to offer your book in digital form as an ebook and charge what the real value is for your readers. How much is it worth for them to learn how to get results from business blogging? Or…fill in the blank with …results from xxxx?

As The Blog Squad, I sell our ebook Build a Better Blog for $147. Expensive? If we were to sell it on Amazon, it would seem so. But it's not a $10 or $15 printed book.

In fact, it's more than an ebook; it's comes with a training system and other features. The value is in the fact that after you read it, when you implement the pertinent steps, you will have a business blog that gets results. That's worth a lot more than $147.

This is why an ebook is an important strategy for your content marketing. I'm writing one this weekend. You?

My, my, my! MyAlltop Rocks, here’s why…

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog

Guy Kawasaki has done it again. He's made it so easy to set up your own page on Alltop.com. Now, instead of poking around the Web, taking hours to get a general "feed feel," I can go see all my favorite blogs and get a quick read about what's buzzin'.

What's a "feed feel?" It's waking up in the morning, going to your computer and instead of opening up email full of junk and worky-type things, I can read what other people are writing about. That and a cup of coffee will get me buzzin' and feelin' good.

What's so cool about this? For one thing, all my favorite people have their own pages too. So if I want to know who Pam Slim reads, or Guy, or other people, I can peek at the blogs that inform them.

And the other thing is that participating in the Blogosphere is just about the swiftest way to connect with other geniuses in your playground and get into trouble with them. So much fun…;-)!

What's the down-side? Well, instead of writing or educating myself about really important things, I can easily fall into an information junkie coma. I don't really need to know why everyone's writing about Skittles on Twitter…

See what you think. Go to my Alltop page. I haven't finished yet adding all my favorite blogs yet, but Alltop makes this really easy to do. Go get your own page. You'll love it. Check out the little video, it'll tell you how to add blogs to your myalltop page.

How to Improve Your Writing the Ben Franklin Way

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

Are you good at what you do? Really good? If you make a living at your craft, you must be good. You probably have customers who think you're great. AND… you know you could be better, don't you?

Being good at what you do is a major source of deep fulfillment, not to mention a prerequisite for keeping employment and earning a paycheck. Let me ask you this, then:

What are you doing to improve your writing skills?

No matter what business you're in, especially if you're using the Internet as a marketing tool, you've got to improve your writing. Especially if you don't outsource your content marketing, you must learn to write interesting content that showcases your expertise and value to readers on the Web.

Yet very few professionals spend practice time to improve their writing skills. You can't assume that even if you got an 'A' in college English you write well for the public, the people who are surfing the web to find solutions to their problems.