Archive for blog writing – Page 11

Content Marketing Blues: the Battle for Attention

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, September 27th, 2010

Content marketing with blogs isn’t as easy as it used to be. But like you, I can complain all I want to. It doesn’t matter.

The good news is there are more people going online to read things they need to know, to solve the problems they have.

The bad news is there are more blogs, more competition for attention.

What do you need to do to win the battle for attention and survive the WIIFM flter?

Doug Kessler and the boys over at VelocityPartnersUK ask this question in the B2B Manifesto. (You can get your copy here.) And they answer it. For example, they suggest 5 imperatives for B2B marketers. I think this is essential advice for anyone using a blog for business, not just B2B marketers.

Here’s an excerpt and my interpretation of what this means for my own business:

1. Get a World View:

Before you can sell a product or service, you need to sell a world view.

But very few marketers spend any time at all clarifying their world view.

What is a world view and why is it so important? Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing
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Writing Web Content: 5 Simple Steps for Results

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, September 24th, 2010

Organize, simplify and get better results from your Web writing by asking 5 important questions:

  1. What is the problem (pain, predicament)?
  2. Why hasn’t this problem been solved?
  3. What is possible?
  4. What is different now?
  5. What should your readers do now?

As you compose your copy, you should write out several sentences to answer each question. This will keep you on task, and lead your readers through to action. I suppose it depends on what you’re writing, but I can’t think of many web pages, blog posts, articles where these 5 questions wouldn’t be appropriate.

I’ve been re-reading Maria Velosa’s Web Copy that Sells this week. Her blueprint for creating simple copy that works to market your products and services is clear. There’s a reason it’s organized this way.

Psychologically, we’re hard wired to sit up and pay attention to problems. This is why it’s a good idea to lead off with your headline and first paragraph addressing readers’ problems and pain. Negative emotions are strong enough to wake us up and get us to read the rest of the story.

There are two things you must realize about this seemingly obvious and simple question:

  1. People who are in your target audience may not realize they have a problem (or how bad it can get). It may seem surprising, but often people are in denial, are ignoring the bad stuff, and are overly optimistic.
  2. People need to know you fully understand their pain AND CARE before they will read anything you have to say about it

Write a few sentences out about the problem. You want your readers to say, Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy
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Writing Better Content: An Emotional Pathway

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

Writing quality content that markets your products and services online follows a logical progression, but it also follows an emotional pathway. You must engage the brains of your readers… as well as their hearts.

By that I mean, your content should follow a sequence, touching on the following emotions:

  • Negative, a painful problem, a fear
  • Positive, relief from a problem, benefits, imagine a better future
  • Neutral, rational, logical, analysis of facts
  • Curiosity, desire, imagination
  • Objections, reasons why and why not
  • Trust: social proof, statistics, case studies, personal stories
  • Scarcity, urgency, fear of consequences
  • Call to action, clear next steps, reassurances, guarantees, security

I been reviewing basic steps for writing quality content for the web that works to get you found, get known and get clients. According to Maria Veloso in Web Copy that Sells, there are 5 simple steps that will help you write quality content that connects and engages with readers: Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web
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Writing Better Web Content: Ask what? Who? Why?

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, September 20th, 2010

The rules haven’t changed, but it’s surprising how many people start creating content to market their business on the web without regard for the basics. Many people focus on the medium, the latest shiny tool: the blog, the Twitter tweets, and Facebook updates, without regard for the basic rules of writing copy for the Web.

Content marketing isn’t a buzz word because marketing people just like new buzzes. Content marketing is a requirement for anyone doing business because it beats writing advertisements that get ignored.

Smart marketers know the rules and never forget them. Even if the Internet changes at lightning speed, the writing basics  are the same.

I’ve only been writing online copy for ten years. Before that, I was a journalist and a psychologist so I learned to write  differently. Writing content for the Web is different. It’s designed to deliver information in ways that engage readers to take an action, most often click to register or buy.

Every once in a while, I go back to the basics. A standard learning tool for many copywriters is Maria Veloso’s Web Copy that Sells, published in 2004. The 2nd edition is now out and I’ve been reviewing and re-reading it. Good stuff.

Here’s a recap of some really key nuggets from this book:

Before you write one word of copy, you must first:

  • Know your objective
  • Know your target audience
  • Know your product or service

I know this seems so common sense it’s not worth spending time on, but trust me, the time you take to write down a few notes on each of these things will be well worth it. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing
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How to Edit Your Blog Writing: Wot U Can Do

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Some writers of content published on the Web think that substance holds more value than style, and if what you say is truly important, then readers will forgive your mistakes. Text messaging, email from phones and Twitter have all contributed to the acceptance of extremely abbreviated forms of communications.

Wot r u 2 do? When it comes to publishing content that will never disappear on the Web, you owe it to yourself and your business to make your Web writing the best it can be.

I just bought an “old” book on Amazon: Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing, by Claire Kehrwald Cook. Published in 1985, the only things out-of-date are the references to typing out a page. I thought I’d share with you here some of the good advice.

  1. “In reviewing your work, first tighten the wording. Then make separate checks for the errors you’re prone to. [For me, this means eliminating excess words, making sure that verb and subject are in agreement, and checking your and you’re, there and their, its and it’s, etc.]
  2. Skim your draft for opening danglers; test all subjects and verbs for agreement; trace every pronoun to its antecedent; look for unbalanced pairs and series. This process gives you the best chances of catching oversights.
  3. Those involving faulty word order, ambiguous pronouns and lack of parallel structure can be tricky to straighten out. If you get stuck, flag the trouble spot for later attention and go on. Sometimes you’ll hit on an inspired solution after you’ve given the problem a rest.
  4. Read More→
Categories : Content Marketing, Grammar & Common Usages, How to...Tips, On Writing Better
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10 Conversion Tips from Brain Science

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, September 13th, 2010

Why do people decide to buy a product online? How is it they decide to trust the information you provide, and register to download information from your blog or website? What can we learn from brain science?

This is something that intrigues me. I read a lot of research on motivation, decision making, and neuroscience to try to figure out how brain science can be applied to better content marketing.

The problem is not what you might think. We know enough about the brain and marketing today to realize people are influenced by unconscious feelings, as much as they are by logic and reasons.

Any professional who has studied content marketing and copywriting knows that you must use emotional stories to get people to take action.

The problem for content creators  is that so much of what influences and persuades is unconscious and specific for each reader. Everybody’s different, and you can’t possibly address each reader’s wants and desires.

What are the unconscious reasons for people’s actions, how do their emotions affect decisions, and how can professionals apply the principles of persuasion to create content that encourages users to take action? Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Pathway to Profits
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Blog Writing: What Can We Learn From Reality TV?

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

(Guest Post: I’m on vacation, so I invited Tim Handorf to write a guest post. Tim writes on the topics of online colleges and universities. He welcomes your comments at his email Id: tim.handorf.20@googlemail.com.)

As a blogger, you know by now that increasing your traffic means grabbing your audience’s attention and keeping it. The Internet is a veritable distraction mine filled with bells and whistles and flashing lights, so keeping a large audience enthralled and focused is a constant but rewarding challenge.

While Writing on the Web and other websites like it have featured dozens of solid tips for improving your blog writing, I’m going to offer a source of divine inspiration when the going gets tough. That’s right. Reality TV.

The invasion of reality-based shows in our popular imagination isn’t always mentally stimulating. Some shows, like Bad Girls Club or The Hills, are downright silly and immature. But I’ll be darned if they aren’t mind-bogglingly popular. And the range of viewership is startlingly diverse–even my mother, a woman hailing from a different country, culture, and generation–is obsessed.

One Sunday afternoon, splayed on the couch watching a marathon run of America’s Next Top Model, I started thinking about what, exactly, is it that makes these shows so attention grabbing, and what can I take away from the experience to get more readers reading my own blogs? Here are a few things I noticed.

1. People love personal stories.

I’m convinced that at the core of reality TV’s popularity is its microscopic look at personal detail. While your blog may not necessarily be a hub of personal confessions, always throw in some personal detail when writing any article, no matter how technical or abstract the subject matter is.

Nearly all readers desire seeing the person connected to her work. Even though America’s Next Top Model is about modeling, would anyone really care as much if we didn’t get the occasional personal glimpse into each model’s life? Probably not.

2. People love unique personalities. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Blog Content
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Compelling Content: Pushing Readers’ Hot Buttons

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, September 3rd, 2010

How do you write compelling content that attracts and engages readers? Ahhh, that question again…(followed usually by how do you turn readers into buyers?) This is the job of good content marketing and the challenge for online professionals who write blogs, articles, and  web pages.

First, let’s deal with the compelling content thing. Your content isn’t going to market anything if you don’t reach inside the heads and hearts of your readers.

Obviously it’s all about your readers. The better you know who they are and what they like, the easier it is to write content for them.

Use emotional words and phrases, and think about triggering their hot buttons. There are universal drives and human motivators. It doesn’t matter if your reader is a 20-year-old gamer or a 70-year-old retired professor.

Human beings are all driven by hot button motivators. (See the excellent book by Barry Feig for more about this: Hot Button Marketing: Push the Emotional Buttons that Get People to Buy). Some of these are:

  • The desire to be first
  • The desire to know it all
  • The desire for control
  • The desire to love and be loved
  • The desire to enjoy and have fun
  • The desire for values or feelings of moral righteousness
  • The drive for prestige
  • The drive for self-achievement
  • The drive for power and influence
  • The drive to help others

What drives your readers? Do any of these hot buttons seem similar to your clients? How can you test your assumptions? Maybe you could push a few buttons to see what reaction you get? Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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Blogging Services: Content Marketing for Coaches

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Here’s my latest video about my executive coach blogging services produced by iFlashVideo.com. I think they do a good job, but unfortunately, because they are a monthly service with a one minute limit, the voice is a little rushed.

Instead, they could have edited out a few words to make it a little calmer, in my opinion. But since they are a standardized service, they don’t do any editing or make suggestions.  They just deliver what you give them, even though as clients, we aren’t always knowledgeable about what the results will be like. What do you think?

I have several executive coach clients for whom I ghost write and manage their blog updates, including updates to social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn groups.

I absolutely love doing this, since I’m writing about leadership development, organizational change, and human behaviors. It keeps me on my toes with reading Harvard Business Review and the best business books around. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing
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Content Marketing with Emotions: Write with Feeling

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Are you writing with feeling? Does your blog trigger emotional reactions? Next time you review your writing, try to identify possible feelings in the reader.

Content marketing that doesn’t resonate emotionally can’t do a good job of building relationships, inspiring trust, and moving people into taking action.

Blog writers need to step away from their anonymous masks and get real, get emotional. It doesn’t mean you get all new-agey, touchy-feely. It means unless you get real with readers, readers won’t respond to you. You can still be professional and reveal your true feelings.

Emotions are either positive or negative. There are relatively few pure emotions:

  • Anger
  • Sadness
  • Fear
  • Enjoyment

These elemental feelings are universal. Specific facial expressions for fear, anger, sadness and enjoyments are recognized by people across diverse cultures.

Emotions can be complicated because they get combined, like primary colors. Jealousy may be a mix of anger and sadness. Guilt may be a combination of enjoyment and fear. Fascination may be an excited version of curious.

Authors Dan and Chip Heath, in Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, mention Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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