Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

Marketing Blues? What’s got you at the end of your rope?

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars

Will you take our survey and tell us what your biggest challenges are when it comes to Internet marketing for your business? It takes 2 1/2 minutes only. You’d be doing me a great big favor.

I’d like to know so I can get a better sense of what you’re struggling with. You’ve probably heard about our teleseminar (free) coming up June 24: The 5 Traps of Internet Marketing that Can Derail Your Business? Well, we want to hear from YOU! What are YOUR traps?

When you put in your answers on the Survey, you’ll contribute to the content we’re presenting and make it more meaningful. We are doing research to discover where professionals and business owners get stuck most often with their Internet marketing.

To learn about the results of the survey, be sure to register for the free teleseminar on June 24. Even if you can’t attend, registration will get you the audio recording afterwards. Thanks so much for your time.

How 2 Emails Changed My Life Forever…

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars

Pivotal Moments…

I was thinking about something really scary last week. You see, I almost missed the boat with my business and I don’t want you to do the same.

Over five years ago I was sitting at home down in Mexico going through emails, deleting some, reading some, deleting, reading… you know what it’s like.

You sign up for newsletters and e-courses and get information overload; you sit there in a kind of hypnotic trance trying to sort out what’s good and what’s junk.

Depending on your mood, you actually read some of the marketing hype. Sometimes you get caught up believing a promise and once again sign up for a program, only to be disappointed later.

Same business, same lackluster sales, same size list, same income, month after month.

Web 2.0 Soap Opera: The 5 Deadly Traps of Internet Marketing

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars

How can you avoid falling into costly traps when it comes to marketing your business online? If the Internet were a soap opera, Kathleen Gage suggests in would be called Days of Our Internet Lives. She asks why is everyone trying to make Web marketing so complicated these days?

Here’s an excerpt from her post, Web 2.0 – Is It a Trap or What?

For many people this can be confusing and overwhelming. Trying to figure it out by yourself can actually be a huge trap. At every turn of the Days of our Internet Lives someone is recommending we join this social network, that social network, use this video site to market our business, try this latest technology and on and on.

Suggestion to learn more: Go read Kathleen Gage’s post, it makes so much sense.

Next, go to www.actandattract.com/5traps and join Kathleen and The Blog Squad for an interesting tell-all free teleseminar to expose some of the worst traps that are out there when it comes to trying to use the Internet for marketing your business.

Find Out What Readers Want But Avoid Faulty Assumptions

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Email Marketing Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

We recently asked our ezine subscribers (Savvy eBiz Tips) if they prefer to get it weekly or every two weeks. The results were amazing…and misleading.

At first we got a lot of responses from readers who raved about the ezine, and how valuable the tips were, and how ours was one of the few they read every week. It would have been easy to smile, give ourselves a pat on the back, assume we were doing a good job and continue on our merry way.

After a few days we got other responses, about half of them saying weekly, then half of them voting for bi-weekly. And after about a week, the tally was clearly in favor of bi-weekly.

We realized that even if our voting tally was accurate, our survey would never be an accurate gauge of what all our readers wanted. With email, you have to account for the readers who don’t open your message and don’t answer the survey. Those are people that probably suffer the most from email overload, which was what we wanted to measure.

Ask Readers What to Write About

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

Use the Skribit voting poll on the right to tell me what you want me to write about. I’m experimenting with this new free voting tool.

It’s fairly simple and easy to install on your blog. There are two options, one where readers have to register and log in to submit a suggestion, and the one here that allows anonymous suggestions. Click on the title "What Should I Write About" to make the box below active, type in your suggestion, hit submit and you’ll see your suggestion appear.

We’ve installed a similar Skribit widget over on BizTips Blog, Denise’s blog about Internet Marketing. But you’ll have to register and log in to submit a suggestion or vote over there. We’ll see which version works the best.

Of course, like any free tool on the Web, making it available to anonymous posters leaves your poll wide open to spammers, unscrupulous marketers who leave their own URLs, etc. We’ll see how long it takes for this poll to be ruined! But I don’t think any of my readers will abuse it, they’re too savvy!

French Open Tennis: More Business Lessons

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Coaching/Personal Development, On Writing Better, Writing Better Ezines, Writing Great Blog Content

Playing on clay courts means the ball doesn’t always bounce predictably. What a great lesson for doing business! You can say/write/do the exact same thing with a different client and get completely different results.

So in business, just like on clay courts, be prepared for the unexpected. Be nimble, be quick and react to surprises with calm.

Example: when we wrote our Better Business Blogging special report, we really wanted to deliver quality information that people could go and apply to better blogging. It wasn’t written to sell anything.

We wanted to teach best business blogging practices. But we did say
that somewhere later on we’d put together a comprehensive multi-media
program to teach more in detail.

Most people who previewed it wrote to give us positive feedback. So we thought we had a successful report to give out. But not everybody saw it that way.

5 Blog Writing Lessons from the French Open Tennis Championships

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better, Writing Better Ezines, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content

I don’t know if Rafael Nadal will win the French Open this year again, but I do know that every time I watch the top players compete, I learn something about blog writing.

Seriously, these are the kinds of things I think about when I go online to post on one of our blogs:

You’ve got to keep moving. When a topic is hot, you see a few hundred other posts about it, and you realize it’s time to move on to something else.
Keep your eye on the ball. Never forget why people read your blog and why you started your blog in the first place. Stay on topic, deliver the winning shots.
Start strong with a fierce serve. Your first sentence may be the only thing a reader sees in a feed. Make it compelling.
Mix it up. If you’re always being positive and cheery, write a few negative posts and criticize some commonly held practices or beliefs. People won’t keep reading if you don’t surprise them.
Never give up, stay in the game. Success is half persistence, half sweat. Your ability to refocus your writing and get back on track even when you don’t feel like it, will pay off in the long run.

How to Start a Blog Post or an Ezine: Avoid the Yawn Factor

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

Start strong. Please don’t bore me. Do you realize that even if I do subscribe to get your blog feed, if you don’t start out strong, I’ll just delete you?

Here’s a feed I got this morning:

"The summer season is almost here, and with it comes a lot of excitement about the outdoors. …XYZ is a great place to share your fun with the world. Read on for the latest highlights!"

I may be a bit negative on this, but really, I can’t get excited here. I can’t remember the last time I got excited about the summer season.

Remember your first ~~paragraph~~ sentence may be the only thing someone sees.

If you’ve got something you’re excited about, then I want to know but it better be real. I won’t believe you when you say something like this. You just went from someone who has something to say to someone who is trying to sell me something. What does it mean to "share your fun with the world?"

The purpose of the first sentence is to get someone to read the second sentence. I’ll bet the real reason this person started with the summer season is to try to connect with readers on common ground. But they fail because it’s a ploy to get them to read on for the "latest highlights" = i.e. our products for sale.

Why can’t marketing people be more authentic?

We talk about this in our Better Business Blogging report: download a free copy at www.betterbizblogging.com.

Books and Blogs: Happily Ever After

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Content Marketing

This week I’m in Los Angeles with Denise preaching the Blogspell to eager authors and publishers who want to master book blogging. For the last 3 years The Blog Squad has been teaching at the Independent Book Publisher’s Association just prior to the big Book Expo America, BEA. PMA prides itself on offering vital information for authors and publishers.

We’re presenting in two workshops and will be explaining how important blogs are for both authors and publishers.

Here’s the info, in case you’re in the neighborhood:

2008 PMA Publishers Marketing University, Los Angeles

The Blog Squad presents:
* May 28, 2008, 2:00 p.m.: Optimize Your Web
Site to Convert Visitors to Customers.
* May 29, 2008, 8:30 a.m.: Blogging Basics for
Authors and Publishers

4 Ways to Boost a Business Blog: new free report

By Patsi Krakoff in About Blogs, Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better, Writing Great Blog Content

The Blog Squad releases our free report today: Better Business Blogging: 4 New Concepts for Getting Spectacular Results.

This is a great way to review your business blog for 4 key elements we call the CODA Blogging System:

The CODA System consists of:

Content: writing quality posts that educate, engage, and enrich the lives of readers
Outreach: building relationships with other bloggers to become part of a larger community
Design: the little things in a blog design that contribute towards creating trust and connection with readers
Action: getting readers to respond through
persuasive writing, encouraging a conversation, and converting readers
to loyal fans and clients

Better Business Blogging: 4 New Concepts for Getting Spectacular Results, is available for free at www.betterbizblogging.com.

(Whew! Denise and I have been working for such a long time to get this out the door. Can we hear a big Yahoo!!? Be sure to download your report today, it’s worth the read. We’d love to get your feedback too.)