Archive for blog writing – Page 13

Online Persuasion: Seeing Through the Eyes of Your Customers

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, August 5th, 2010

There’s an important shift in content marketing tactics that affects professionals who want to get found, get known and get clients online. And that shift means a different mindset.

I saw a great blog post the other day. There was a picture of a pair of glasses lying on a bench with this caption: Don’t you wish you could see through your customers’ glasses?

What if you could live in their shoes for a day? Or, track their brains as they go online to your website? What makes them click? What makes them take action?

Here’s where you should start thinking a little differently when writing content for the Web:

Smart content marketers are using persuasion tactics that appeal to emotions rather than reasons. They know that emotions not only guide our decisions and actions, they determine whether or not we buy.

When successful web writers create online content, they appeal to the senses and the emotions. They:

  • Grab attention through outrageous headlines and images
  • Appeal to basic human wants, desires
  • Tell a story of one person
  • Use emotional hot buttons
  • Use persuasion triggers
  • Motivate action with fear, scarcity, urgency

The most effective content marketing occurs with a mixture of both rational and emotional tactics. That’s because people use the emotional parts of their brains to make what they consider rational decisions. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Pathway to Profits
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Online Persuasion: Creating Desire

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

How can you appeal to readers’ emotions on a business-oriented site? Online persuasion works best when you appeal to both the logical and emotional centers in the brain.

If you want to write content that persuades readers to take action, you write about emotional triggers AND provide reasons to act.

Many online content marketers misunderstand what it means to “appeal to emotions.”  How exactly do you bypass the conscious thinking brain and instantly connect with readers’ emotional centers, out of their conscious awareness?

It’s easier than you might think. Stephen Denning writes about this in his book The Secret Language of Leadership, and these lessons for leadership communications are applicable to writing web content.

Here’s a diagram of how many business professionals traditionally write content when they want to persuade people to take action:

The traditional communication approach follows this sequence:

Define the problem ► Analyze it ►Recommend a solution

Effective content marketers, however, follow a unique, almost hidden pattern:

Grab the audience’s attention ► Stimulate desire ► Reinforce with reasons

When language follows this sequence, it can inspire enduring enthusiasm for a cause and spark action. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Pathway to Profits
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The Brain Science of Online Persuasion

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, August 2nd, 2010

What has brain science taught us about how people are persuaded to take action online? And, how can we use that wisdom when writing content that serves to market ourselves and our businesses?

These two questions have been fueling my mental energy for the past few years. As a journalist-turned-psychologist, turned-online-content-marketer, you might imagine that these issues keep me up at night … or not! I believe this is important stuff for any professional who wants an effective online presence.

Here’s what I see as an important shift in online marketing tactics. It has significance for you if you’re trying to create content for your own business.

Business persuasion skills, whether for presentations in person or for web pages online, have always centered on problem solving using rationality and logic. Smart professionals believe that people make decisions based on clearly laid-out arguments and intelligent thinking.

  • What’s the problem?
  • What does this mean to your target audience?
  • Why hasn’t this problem been solved?
  • What is your solution?
  • What should people do now?
  • What will happen if they don’t?

Business professionals approach online content marketing and writing for the web with this mentality. It makes sense and there’s nothing wrong with it… except it’s probably not getting good results.

Ad people, however, copywriters and marketers don’t use this approach. The people who write ads for TV, or print, or direct mail letters have been using persuasion tactics that appeal to emotions rather than reasons. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Pathway to Profits, Writing Great Blog Content, Writing Great Copy, Writing Speeches
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Online Persuasion: What Do Clients Say?

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

How are you using client recommendations in your online content marketing? Do you add them as an afterthought?

Maybe you just collect them and put them on a separate page for testimonials? Or are they a major part of your content creation strategies?

Recommendations, testimonials and client stories are a powerful persuasion tactic. It’s one of the key persuasion triggers that get people to take action. It’s called social proof.

Robert Cialdini wrote about six weapons of influence in his landmark book Influence. Social proof is one of the most powerful mechanisms for triggering buying decisions. Here’s why:

Customer ratings and reviews are one of the ways we decide and choose to buy products online. I use them all the time to click and buy: I glance at the number of gold stars other people have given a book on Amazon, or a pair of tennis shoes on Nike.

If there are two pairs of shoes I’ve selected for my size and price, I’ll go with the one that has 5 stars over 4. Think about it: I don’t know these people, they may have feet completely different to mine, they may not play tennis as often as I do, or on the same court surfaces.

My foot is narrow and bony. Not everybody’s version of a comfortable fit is going to be mine. And I know this. But when I see a customer rave review and 5 stars, I’m all in.

Think about it: we let other people influence our buying decisions even when we have nothing in common with them.

We are heavily influenced by social persuasion, we can’t help it. Our brains respond to our strong need to belong and fit in, and it all happens in our unconscious minds.

Do these same persuasion tactics work for sites and businesses that aren’t selling physical products? Does social validation work for businesses selling services and experiences? Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Persuasion, Pathway to Profits
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Content Marketing Results: 18 Ways to NOT Get Blog Traffic

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

What do you need to know about about the way people read online to make your content marketing efforts pay off?

What are you doing or not doing on your blog that screws up your traffic?

At least a few times a week I get an email from a smart professional who struggles with making their web marketing work to get found, get known and get clients. Here’s a typical one…

“Okay, Patsi, I’ve been following you for a while now, and your blog writing tips have helped. I’m posting twice a week, but I’m still not getting comments, and my traffic stats stink. Can you take a look?”

Of course, I have to point people to my consulting services if they want me to spend time doing a good analysis and provide specific solutions.

But often the problems and the solutions are common and universal. I can almost predict where the low traffic problems come from based on looking at a lot of blogs over the last five years.

Here’s a general overview of things I see many people doing on blogs that don’t bring good results:

  1. Frequency: Not posting enough
  2. Headline: not compelling or even clear
  3. Content: No clearly defined problem and solution, no answer to the “so what?” question
  4. Content: No keyword usage in headline, first paragraph, or in body
  5. Content: Too broad and general, need to hone it down to specifics, need to personalize it
  6. Formatting: Too many long blocks of text, need shorter paragraphs, subheadings
  7. Engagement: Too author-centric, not enough asking readers questions, addressing them as “you”
  8. Engagement: Not enough client stories, no quotes from other people Read More→
Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Writing Great Blog Content
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Top 10 Tips for Creative Blog Writing

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

What creative writing tips would you offer to budding writers?

Yesterday I had the pleasure of introducing my husband (aka Attila the Honey) at the Lake Chapala Society, our local gringo gathering place and library. We were having a book signing party to celebrate the publication of Rob’s first two novels, Die Laughing and Future Schlock.

I’m sharing with you here my speech, because there are some tips for writing creative content not only for novels and fiction. These tips also apply to blog writing.

Content marketing ideas come from many sources, and sometimes you have to go against conventional wisdom and standard trends.

My speech was called:

Rob Krakoff’s Top 10 Tips for Writing 3 Novels in 18 Months…

  1. Don’t follow your wife’s (or partner’s) advice. Sometimes I call an idea stupid just because it’s too far-fetched to be believable. Wild, crazy ideas will certainly get people’s attention and avoid boredom. If someone says it’s stupid, it just might work…
  2. Don’t follow your writer’s group advice: Other authors will tell you to only write what you know about. If that were true, then all mystery writers would be murderers. Don’t squelch your imagination.
  3. Don’t follow your English teachers’ rules: Don’t get hung up on grammar. Write and worry later about the rules, or get someone else to do that. So what if you don’t believe in commas.
  4. Don’t study how others write, or how books should be written: It’s more important to just get started, get your stories going.
  5. Don’t worry, be happy: feed your creativity by squelching anxiety and fear. If you’re not happy, then use that energy to write like hell. Either way, you’ve got no excuse.
  6. Don’t do any housework, just spend time writing. (That’s not entirely true, but it helps not to worry about the ‘other things’ in life.) Read More→
Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Getting Read, On Writing Better
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Attractive Content: Speak to the brains

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

How do you write content that attracts readers to your products and services?

I read somewhere that most of what goes into our brains never reaches our conscious mind:

Our five senses are processing 11 million pieces of info per second. Of these only 40 enter our conscious awareness.

Which means our subconscious mind does a terrific job of filtering what we need to pay attention to.

And…which is why there is new research about how to reach consumers based on how the brain works: neuromarketing.

The brain is made up of three parts, the old brain, the mid-brain, and the new brain. The first two are operating out of our conscious awareness, and they help decide what we need to become aware of.

What this means is that most of the time, we’re operating on auto-pilot. Especially when it comes to TV, but maybe we’re cruising when we’re online and even reading. We scan while thinking of other things. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Getting Read, On Writing Better, Online Marketing
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Content Marketing Ideas: Rethinking Blogging

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, July 15th, 2010

There was a time I was in love with blogging… I had already been in the business of content marketing for 5 years on the Web, using an old-fashioned website platform.

In 2004, I started blogging. It changed my life and opened doors and filled a few piggy banks. But my lover wasn’t really “the blog.” It was being able to speak with a world-wide audience. It was like magic.

Writing on my blog is my way of reaching out to people looking for ways to write content on the Web so that they can get found, get known and get new business.

A blog is still “The best darn content marketing tool on the planet!” But it’s not about “the blog…”

This year I switched from Typepad to WordPress, and I’m creating a new banner to reflect the changes.

When’s the last time you reviewed your site or blog banner?

For a while now I’ve been playing with some ideas. The name will remain the same, but the tag line will read,

“How to Use Online Content Marketing to Get Found, Get Known, and Get Clients.”

I wrote about these three big marketing challenges a few days ago, and I’ve blogged about them over the past five years.

Without doubt, people who use the Internet to market their services must find ways to solve these three issues, or they won’t stay in business long.

You might notice there’s nothing in my new tag line that mentions blogs, blogging, or WordPress. Because, just as I predicted a few years ago, it doesn’t matter if you’re blogging or not. What matters are results.

(I predicted the buzz about blogs would die down simply because everyone would be using a blog platform, such as WordPress, to build and manage their websites as well as blogs. The blur between the two has already merged.)

We’ve been told that world-wide, there are a billion people online, and we can reach a global audience for free. So it doesn’t matter if you’re using a traditional website platform or WordPress, or even Blogger (well, why not?), if that’s working to get you found, get people to know, like and trust you, and you’re converting readers to clients.

It’s not the messenger, it’s your message. It’s not how you do it, what matters is that you do it effectively.

For myself, I’m constantly learning, reading, and evolving (hopefully!)… I’m not sure where I’m going to be in 5 or 10 years, but I am intuitively following a direction. I’m sharing these ideas here with you, about changes to how we process Web content and marketing, and would love to hear your thoughts. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing
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3 Biggest Challenges for Online Content Marketing?

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

What are the three biggest challenges to marketing your business? I know, I know, there are so many, but if you could distill them into the most crucial for online content marketing, how would you do it?

(I’m always asking you, because some of my readers are very smart and think of things I don’t. So please feel free to add to this by leaving a comment…)

To me, it’s these three that count more than anything:

  1. How do I get found by the people who need my solutions?
  2. How do I get them to know me, like me, and trust me to do business with?
  3. How do I get clients? Convert readers to buyers?

Get found, get known, get clients… there’s a lot that goes into creating content on the Web that leads to results, and each marketing task, each piece of content, each program you offer, falls into one of these categories or challenges.

I did a survey on this in April, 2010: Readers say that getting traffic, building a list, and converting readers to clients are their biggest challenges. It’s still a matter of findability, creating trust and getting people to take action.

Get found: What does this mean?

You’ve got to be easily found when an ideal client sits down to the screen and looks for solutions to their problem: Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Pathway to Profits
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Is the Social Web Changing How We Write?
How to Write Like You Talk

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, July 5th, 2010

This week’s guest post is by Barb Sawyers, Sticky Communications who recently published a great ebook on how you can write better for the web.

Hello, Patsi’s readers. I’m Barb Sawyers, a blogger who shares her interest in encouraging people to write like they talk.

Patsi was telling me how some of you don’t find writing for the web to be as natural or fun as talking. Sometimes you don’t think you’re connecting with your readers.

Seeing as we’ve all been talking since we were toddlers, and go back to what sounds right when we’re not certain, you’d think writing like you talk would be easier.

But something happened at school and at work that turned the pleasure of communication into hard labor, for both writers and readers.

Then along came the Internet, blogs, Twitter and Facebook: Overnight, it seems, our online social lives and writing was pulled back into conversational mode.

But how do you reverse years of conditioning about what writing should be? Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Writing Great Blog Content
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