Archive for blog writing – Page 12

Content Marketing Tips from Computer Games

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, August 26th, 2010

What can we learn from online computer games about content marketing for business? A lot, apparently. If you write content designed to trigger action in readers, pay attention to this.

My husband, Attila the Honey, plays World of Warcraft, an online game that’s part of the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. If you think computer games are just for kids or young people with too much time, think again. Money spent on games has now surpassed movies and books.

(He swears that his online gaming is market research for his company Razerzone.com, but I don’t buy it.) I do believe it’s true that online games are good for your brain as we age. He’s speaking this weekend at the local Lake Chapala Society about this.

I just watched Seth Priebatsch, a Princeton dropout (something he’s proud of), who’s chief ninja at SCVNGR (“scavenger”), on the online speakers site TED.com. If he’s speaking at a TED conference in Boston, he’s got to have something important to say, right? You can watch it here. (A big thanks to Susan Weinschenck for this link.)

Here are three dynamics we can learn from online games that can be applied to content marketing:

  1. Appointment dynamics: this persuasion trigger is probably what Cialdini would call the scarcity or urgency factor. There’s no greater example than Happy Hour in bars: show up at a certain time, you get rewarded. It’s also at play in the game Farmville, a popular game that already has 70 million players. How can you use this to persuade readers to take action? Think about your business and how you could include an appointment dynamic to urge responses. (Like all things, there’s a cool way to do this, and a way NOT to do it!)
  2. Influence and Status dynamics: When games confer a red badge or gold or virtual money to players, their ego and pride causes them to continue playing. What ways can you inspire loyalty and engagement with your readers/ clients /prospects? What’s in it for them? How can you use the status trigger to persuade people to use your services or products? Read More→
Categories : Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Copy
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Mental Skills Make Better Content Writers

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Content marketing, even with a strategy and a plan, has a lot of decision points along the way. It’s easier with a map and a system, but there’s still a million choices that need to be made.

How do you decide what to write about? You’re a busy professional, you have a lot to say, you read a lot, you think a lot. You probably work with a lot of clients and they have problems that you try to help them solve. All that is good stuff to write about and publish on the Web so you’ll get found, get known, get clients.

Wait a minute, let me be clear about what I’m really asking you. The question is how do you decide, how do you make a decision? Do you experience options in your mind, preview consequences, and decide?

Do you observe your mental processes as they unfold? Some people do, and others don’t, they just operate impulsively and intuitively.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. But I think the ability to stand back and watch your mental processes unfold is interesting and informative.

For one thing, if you know a few things about how you make a decision, you can also imagine what goes on in the minds of some of your clients and readers. Not everybody’s exactly like you, but some of them are. This gives you insight into possibilities.

This is important when you’re writing on the Web, when your composing blog posts. And you already know how important it is to get in the shoes of readers when you’re composing a sales or landing page. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Persuasion, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Copy
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Blogger’s Block Strikes Blog Squad…Blogger Bites Back

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Grrrrr…

I’m going nuts. This hasn’t happened in a long time. I’ve been sitting at the computer for the last 2-3 hours wondering what to write about. I’m the gal who says blogging is easy, 1-2-3, done in 20 minutes.

I admit lately it’s been taking me more than hour to post. Some days longer. And I call myself The Blog Squad…I’ve even got a great little package you can have called Time Saving Tips for Smart Bloggers, audio, transcript, PDF handouts. You can solve your blogging blues with all the tips in this program.

Have I changed my mind about how nifty blogging is? No. Am I stuck? Yep.

Solution? Start writing about where I’m at, and then tie it in with something useful and relevant to readers.

Source of problem? I’ve been blogging so much lately for my clients that I’m dried up and stale for my own blog.

So what? I’ll bet some of you have the same problem or similar. You give your all to your clients, then when it comes time to do your own content marketing you’re as dry as toast without butter.

It’s no wonder the cobbler’s children have no shoes.

What to do? Just do it, just start writing and see what comes out. You may surprise yourself. One of my clients tells me he doesn’t write that much anymore. He finds it easier to hook up the Web cam and post a video clip. Hmmm…wait a sec. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing Great Blog Content
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Ghost Blogging for Executive Coaches

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, August 23rd, 2010

If you’re a busy professional, you know how hard it is to run your business and provide quality services to clients, and have enough time to take care of your online marketing and publishing tasks.

You may be a thought leader in your field, but if you’re not publishing content on  the Web, you’re not going to get found, get known, and get clients.

You need to be blogging 2-3 times a week, submitting articles to directories, participating on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook… impossible for one person to manage and still have a life.

Somethings like social media updating and article submissions can be handled by a V.A. But others, like blog writing, needs to be very good so that it sounds like something you’d say, professional and informed.

There are a lot of outsourcing solutions but very few good ones. When it comes to quality content for executive coaches, I don’t recommend you hire anyone who doesn’t have experience in your field, a thorough understanding of your clients and target market and good Web knowledge and experience.

Good help is hard to find, as they say. If you’re an executive coach, let me know if I can help you. If you’re in another field I probably can’t write for you, but I can revise what you’ve written, edit it, make it suitable for Web publications.

Click here for more information.

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Executive Coach Ezine Article Topics, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web
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Working at Home: Desperate House Bloggers

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, August 20th, 2010

Some days I feel scattered, like maybe I’ve got a bad case of Attention Deficit Disorder. Or, maybe my brain isn’t aging well. Here’s what happened yesterday and how it all worked out.

It’s not that I forget things, although that happens too, but it’s more like I remember too much, all at once, and start doing one thing, realize I haven’t finished the other thing, etc.

If you work at home, and on the computer, you probably have days like these. The door bell kept ringing. Thursdays I have help here in the house to keep it clean and functioning.

Gaby, my housekeeper from Jocotepec,  knows not to bother me when I’m writing on the computer, but she came in because the dryer went out, so we had to call a repairman. As soon as he got here, of course it started working again.

Nevertheless, it needed a revision, so he went to work. Meanwhile the builder arrived to work on some screen doors. And Juan, the gardener, needed pool chemicals. Then the man came to fill the gas tank for the house. The painter came to repair some moldy walls. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Fun and Irrelevant Things About Patsi, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, On Writing Better, Patsi's Story
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Content Marketing Tips: Seth Godin on Tim Burton

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Are you finding writing slow and tedious? Is your content marketing and blog writing as creative as possible? Are you discovering your unique genius as you go?

What can we learn from really creative people like Tim Burton and Seth Godin? First of all, we know they are really creative because they produce a lot of unique products – films, books, and blog posts that grab our attention.

Both these two professionals are examples of people who’ve found their genius. But we wouldn’t know that if they didn’t “ship.” If they didn’t complete projects and get them out the door.

And that’s the difference between wanna be’s, also-rans, and those who get noticed. In order to be successful, you have to get it out the door. Publish. Produce. And publicize.

My husband, affectionately known as Attila the Honey, decided to write a book about 18 months ago. I watched him do his first novel…then a second. And I just finished editing the third book.  His book blog is here. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing for the Web
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Writing The Naked Blog: Dress Up Your Words

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, August 16th, 2010

What can you learn about blog writing and content marketing from the theater?

This weekend Attila the Hubby and I went to The Naked Stage production of Night, Mother, the 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning drama by Marsha Norman.

If you’re not familiar with this kind of theater format, the actors read their lines, sitting on stools, dressed in black, without benefit of costumes, scenery, makeup, or movement. Hence the name, Naked Stage: the presentation is devoid of any of the usual visual aids.

There’s a narrator to explain the scenes and movements, including sounds, which in this case consisted of a gun going off. He yelled, “GUN SHOT!” Not “BANG” but “GUN SHOT!” It is truly minimalist and much depends on the actors’ voices. Everything, perhaps. They don’t even look at each other, they are reading their lines.

This means that the audience has to work harder than usual. We use our imaginations and create pictures in our minds of how the scene plays out. And it works, since the audience has to stay alert and active.

Blog writing is similar. You don’t have the advantage of voice, or body language, or scenery and costume. You must capture your readers’ attention with words.

With blog writing and content marketing, you need to spell things out. Dress up your words.  Nuances will be missed. It’s not that readers aren’t intelligent enough to connect the dots, but they are in a hurry and usually multitasking and scanning. In other words, they aren’t necessarily paying attention.

Because words are nothing but letters, you have to make them come alive with metaphor, story and informal phrases and questions.

A lot of text on the screen is like homework shoved in your face and someone telling you, “here, read this.” That’s why images, photos, diagrams, and video are so important. Heck, even adding hyperlinks breaks up the text in a blog post.

Remember the statistics about communications? Words only form 7% or so of our communication, the rest is 38% tonality and 55% body language. Writing on the web deprives us of a lot of the cues for meaning.

That said, don’t make your readers work too hard, or they’ll click and go bye-bye. Use as many images as you can, don’t rely on words so much.

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better
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Tell Your Story: Why Are You Here?

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, August 12th, 2010

How do you connect deeply with blog readers and gain their trust? Through stories.

There are six types of stories you need to know about yourself, and two of them you need to be telling your blog readers, clients and prospects if you want to gain their trust.

I’m reviewing Annette Simmons book The Story Factor, Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling. These are the six types of stories that are really important for your to know about yourself, if you want to influence others:

  1. “Who am I” stories
  2. “Why am I here?” stories
  3. “The Vision” story
  4. “Teaching” stories
  5. “Values-in-action” stories
  6. “I know what you’re thinking” stories

The first two are essential to establishing your brand, your mission, and your core values. It should be obvious why this is so important, but let me spell it out.

What better way than to tell you a story about myself, right? Don’t worry, I’m far too old in years to tell you my complete story of “who” I am, and I’m not sure you’d be interested in the full story anyway.

In order for you to believe me, in order for me to build trust with you that I have credibility and expertise in Writing on the Web, here’s an abbreviated version of why I write this blog.

In  2004 I had been working online for 5 years, doing okay, but not really. I was completely baffled by html coding and working on the web was a lot more complicated than it is today. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion
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If Your Blog Writing Stinks…

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Your blog writing can improve. What if there were a secret formula you could use to grab people’s attention, stimulate their desire, and trigger action? Ba-da-boom, instant sales and subscriptions.

Don’t be silly, there are no easy formulas, of course not. But just follow along with me here. I’ve been reading several neuroscience and communications books that say the same things in different ways, and I think these persuasion tips can easily apply to better blog writing.

Take a look at this diagram I whipped up with SmartDraw:

Grabbing readers’ attention is the first step, of course. (By the way, this doesn’t only apply to blog writing, but to other content marketing pieces and in general for web pages.)

Attention is generally done more effectively by negative content. That’s because negative stories wake us up. They activate the more primitive centers of the brain, especially the centers for fight or flight.

Negative stories start us thinking. For example, a reader might jolt up in their chair and think, “Oh dear, this could happen to me…” Like watching a car accident, we’re drawn into a story that is full of danger or fear.

But negative stories generate worry and anxiety, as well as caution. (You may be one of those cool dudes with an Alfred E. Neuman attitude, but don’t worry, even cool dudes feel the fear subconsciously. Oh yes you do, you just don’t admit it…)

Here’s the secret key to getting readers to act: negative stories get our attention, but they don’t stimulate us to action. To get readers to act, they have to want something different. So to stimulate a desire for change, you must switch your writing to positive stories.

In this part of your blog post, you start describing a better future. You enable the reader to see possibilities they have missed. Once their negativity buttons are triggered, you’ve got their attention, now do something with that.

When your blog writing includes positive stories, for example, how a client’s life changed when they started using your product, readers start seeing themselves in the picture.

Readers can see themselves in your story, and begin to imagine doing something new and different. This is how you stimulate desire for change. It is how you get readers primed to take the next step, to take the action you are going to suggest to them.

Let me tell you a personal story. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Pathway to Profits, Writing Great Blog Content
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Blog Writing Tips for Business Clarity

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, August 9th, 2010

Good business writing should be like a good butler: working smoothly in the service of the reader without calling attention to itself.

This means that you avoid language that sounds impressive. This weekend I was reviewing some books on business writing, including Harvard Business Review’s Guide to Better Business Writing.

Although these tips are designed for business professionals who write reports,  proposals, presentations and memos, they are totally applicable to blog writing.

There is no better way to approach business and blog writing tasks than to keep in mind three realities:

  1. Business readers are content driven
  2. Readers are pressed for time
  3. Readers are seeking out solutions

There is a confusing amount of contradictory advice about how to compose a business report:

  • Writing should be clear – but it should also “sound good”
  • Information should be simple and straightforward – yet cleverly composed to stand out
  • Get to the bottom line quickly – but don’t leave out background details

Use your words to carry information, ideas and build relationships with readers by speaking their language. Go easy on the jargon and cliches.

How you organize your content is important. Your readers will be drawn into reading your words when they are logically presented to flow in a way that makes sense.

Readers decide whether or not to read your post or report based on the first few sentences. You need to grab their attention immediately, and create a desire to know more.

The number one question readers are asking when they glance at material is this: “Why am I reading this? What’s in this for me? Why should I care?”

Not to be harsh, but they don’t care about you. The introductory paragraph needs to quickly establish the relevancy and utility of the document to readers.

An effective introduction briskly tells a story built around four elements:

  1. The situation: A quick factual sketch of the current business situation that serves to anchor the reader.
  2. The complication: A problem that unsettles the situation in the story you’re telling. It’s why you’re writing the memo or report. Read More→
Categories : About Blogs, Article Ideas, Content Marketing, Getting Read, On Writing Better, Online Persuasion, Writing Great White Papers
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