Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing Strategies for Smart Professionals

San Diego Women Entrepreneurs Event

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

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing sent me an email invitation to an event where he is speaking. I’m going, and if you’re in the area you should think about going too: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at the Westin Horton Plaza, San Diego. (You can also attend in Miami, Austin and Seattle in the next few weeks.)

Vision to Venture – the event for women entrepreneurs
Smart and Simple Strategies for Start Up Success
Presented by Microsoft Office Live Small Business

Whether you’ve already launched your business or are thinking of starting one, join other enterprising women for this unique blend of high-impact sessions and networking opportunities to propel your business to the next level. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Dress for Success.

Here are the speakers:

Susan Wilson Solovic, Author, CEO, and co-founder of SBTV.com
Rich Sloan, Author and co-founder of StartupNation.com
Karen Dayan, Microsoft Digital Marketing Expert
John Jantsch, Author and founder of Duct Tape Marketing

Men with Pens Squeaks Out 1 Point Victory in Blog Match Up

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

In a hard and close battle, this blog lost by a measly 1 point to those big bad Men with Pens, Harry McLeod and James Chartrand. (Just because they are prolific bloggers with a huge archive of valuable posts and a community of raving fans who adore them…really!)

John Hewitt of Writers Resource Center is doing the equivalent of March Madness of writing blogs, pitting two blogs against each other, and generating valuable feedback on how to make blogs better.

I can’t disagree with anything he said about this blog, and will take his suggestions for improvement to heart. You can read his critique of Writing on the Web here.

John has been so generous in sharing his wisdom and perspective. On top of which we all had a great time leaving ~~trash talk~~ comments about the contest on each others’ blogs.

Here’s James’ and Harry’s report out of the contest from the victory box. Good luck to Men with Pens in the next round where their blog is matched-up against Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

Here’s what else I learned from John Hewitt of Writers Resource Center:

The Blog Squad Teaching @ Butt Camp

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

Sorry if the name offends anyone – but hey, isn’t "the butt" an acceptable word nowadays? I’m not sure but there must be some word police on patrol to let me know…

This Sunday Denise and I will be preaching the Blog Squad Gospel at Tom Antion’s famous Butt Camp – How to make money on the Internet sitting on your butts… It’s in Los Angeles at CBS Television City Café, 7800 Beverly Blvd. Just tell them you’re with the Nat’l. Speakers Association.

This is a seriously valuable workshop sponsored by the NSA. It’s not free ($309 for non-members at the door) but it’s extremely valuable for anyone – not just speakers – who needs to market themselves on the Internet.

Be prepared to take a lot of notes. Tom always over-delivers and gives you the latest strategies you need to know about how to make Internet marketing easy. Well, he won’t hide that it takes some work to make it work, but there are short cuts and insider secrets. So come meet Tom and The Blog Squad if you’re near LA.

Blog Contest: We face off against Men with Pens

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

What’s a little blond girl to do when her blog faces off in a match-up contest against the big bad Men with Pens?

We’re being judged in a fabulous contest that pits two blogs against each other, mano-a-mano. This is the brain child of John Hewitt at Writers Resource Center that was hatched as part of a March Madness event.

We’ll I’m not racing off to bake cookies for the judges. What you see is what you get. I didn’t even change out of my jammies and slippers.

I’m a little concerned though, cuz even though Denise and I dish out blog critiques to our clients, it’s hard to take a dose of your own medicine. Here are some of the points this blog will be matched up against those big guys Harry and James, the Men with Pens…

Wishy-Washy Writing: Just delete these 5 words

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing Better Ezines, Writing for Others, Freelancing, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy, Writing Great Press Releases, Writing Great White Papers, Writing Speeches

This is worth reading and not just because it echoes my thoughts every time I read someone’s blog writing that’s too wishy-washy: 5 Words You Can Cut Out, from the Daily Writing Tip:

just

really

quite

perhaps

that

I have to add two:

maybe

very

Every time you re-read your writing, be on the look-out for these wishy-washy offenders and make your writing stronger, better.

Blog Writing: What would you like to learn?

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

I’ve got my head buried in books as I am researching ideas for an advanced blog writing class. My question is this to readers: What would you like to learn that would make your business blog writing easier, faster, and more effective? What questions do you want answered? Just hit the comment link below and submit your question. You can win a book of your choice:

Reality-Web: Keeping it real for readers

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

Why is some blog content better than others? The real question is what makes a blog post effective for your business. You want to entertain and educate at the same time, of course. Many blog authors do one but not the other, and the really good ones do both.

It’s important to open up the windows into your business and show some fresh ideas and reality to your clients and readers.

Take Brian Clark of Copyblogger, for example. He often tells stories to make a point, and often those stories come from respected books in the field. Brian then conjectures about what history and the present suggests: he predicts the future. That makes for great content that entertains while it educates and also stimulates your thinking.

Here’s an excerpt from Brian’s Teaching Sells that points to what you should be doing for your blog writing:

Suspense: Is this the missing ingredient in your ezines?

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, Getting Read, On Writing Better, Writing Better Ezines

I’ve been in an unsubscribing fury this week. If your newsletter bored me, not only did you get deleted, I took myself off your list entirely. And there you go…

I realize it’s not easy to capture my attention and get me to read all the way through to the end. I’m a tough customer. So I got to thinking, what makes the difference between a fascinating newsletter that I actually read, and one that puts me to sleep or makes me hit the delete key faster than a dog can salivate?

Stories will get me reading, for one thing, but they’ve got to have the "curiously thing" going. There has to be some suspense…

Now I know this is all subjective and in the eye of the beholder, so the best way for me to teach you what I’m talking about is to send you over to read Michael Katz’ latest ezine, "I’ve Got a Crutch on You."

He hits a home run every time with his newsletter, but this one is full of great tips you may be able to copy – er- I mean, model and learn from. This is just one great newsletter, entertaining AND educational at the same time. It just happens to be about writing great newsletters and you all can do this better, I know you can.

Video Clips: Content delivery made easy

By Patsi Krakoff in Blogs We Love, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Teleclasses & Seminars

Denise and I both own Flip video cameras and have blogged about how we use it to interview people whenever we’re at a seminar. This really makes creating valuable content for your blog easy.

Now, I hear a lot of accomplished speakers complain about how they’d rather speak than write…actually they say they’d rather get a root canal than write…but here’s a way to make creating content fun and easy: record a tip using your keywords and post it on your blog.

It’s so easy even I can do it. (Of course, it helps that Denise is handy at editing and adding the URLs), but even so, the Flip is easy because the software is contained inside the camera which plugs into your computer USB port. You can even edit as soon as you plug it in. No downloads required. Just follow the steps, upload to your account on YouTube, grab the code and copy and paste into your blog.

Take a look at the way we interviewed other professionals at Adam Urbanski’s Info Profits Success Intensive last week. Denise is posting them every day over at her BizTipsBlog. Hear what smart people like Adam, and Joe Nunziata have to say…

Is Creativity the New Drug?

By Patsi Krakoff in Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog

Remember when Time Magazine proclaimed YOU, the readers, to be "Persons of the Year?" It was 2006 and they highlighted all the ways online readers were contributing content through blogs, YouTube, Wikipedia and social sites like MySpace…

It’s two and a half years later, and it’s all coming true in spite of the predictions of the idiocy of crowds…

It’s common to see companies running contests for best video commercial for their products now.

I’m a little curious how many readers are actually contributing content on the web, either writing your own profile pages on Facebook, etc., posting video clips on YouTube or other photo sharing sites, or guest blogging? Do you use the Internet for your own marketing, or are you contributing content to other sites as well?

Like these two engineers who put together this amazingly creative cat video, are you doing things like this? I mean, who has time for this?