Archive for content marketing with blogs – Page 19

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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Social Networking for Business: What’s Right for Yours?

By Patsi Krakoff
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

(As I’m on vacation for a week, I’ve invited Sydni Craig-Hart to share social networking tips.)

The big 3:  Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Everybody who’s anybody has a profile in each.  And it seems everybody is preaching the same thing:

  • You HAVE  to have a Facebook Fan Page
  • You HAVE  to be on Twitter
  • You HAVE  to join LinkedIn and participate in groups

But, do you HAVE  to this?  Will your business fall in the water if you don’t?

The answer depends on your target audience.

Remember,  your target audience determines where you should be and how you spend your time.  If your target audience spends their day on Twitter, then that’s where you should be engaging with them.  While it may be a little challenging to have a full-fledged conversation, you can still interact and find out what their challenges are, participate in the conversation when they are looking for solutions and be a trusted advisor.

The same could be true if your target audience hangs out on Facebook.  Maybe they prefer to interact there because there’s no character limit (like the 140 characters on Twitter.)  They may like the back and forth conversation of posting comments on each others’ wall and seeing their updates throughout the day.

The point is, participating in social networking is like participating in live networking.  You should only attend the “events” that make sense for you and your business.  You should only be spending your time where your target audience is hanging out – otherwise you’ll miss the boat completely.

Nothing is more frustrating than spending your efforts pursuing a particular marketing strategy only to find that it generates ZERO results.  Has that ever happened to you? If so, it’s likely because the strategy (or in this case the platform) didn’t fit your business.  You may be chasing an opportunity that doesn’t even interest your target audience — and they’re not going to go looking for you either.

In order to provide the solution to a problem, you need to be visible when your ideal prospects need you.  Marketing you and your services is simply about educating your target audience about how you can solve their problems. You can’t be a day late to the party.

Take the time to do your research and find out EXACTLY which social networks your target market is hanging out in. This will tell you where you should be spending your time.  And most importantly, you will see the return on your time investment as you’ll be connecting directly with the people who are already looking for you. Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media Stuff
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No More Geek-Speak: SEO for Smart Bloggers

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, September 6th, 2010

How can you learn basic search marketing for blogging in 5 minutes or less?

Scribe SEO Copywriting is a practical tool you install and use for each blog or web pages you want to publish. Once installed, you can get a report BEFORE you publish, which tells you how optimized your content is for search engines.

Before I started using Scribe, I assumed (because I’m pretty smart and I’ve been getting good search results) that if I wrote quality headlines and posts, using the keyword phrases I wanted to focus on, those little search robots would be pleased…

Wrong! By using Scribe, I learned which pages and posts were getting 100% scores… and which were only ranking 52%, 78%, and 90% with the little darling spiders. In seconds, after writing a draft, a report is generated, telling me what’s wrong with my headline, use of keywords, description, etc.

All I have to do is make a few corrections and usually I can get a 100% score on the 2nd try.

Trust me, I’m no geek. This is so easy a 3rd grader can use it. Do yourself a favor and try it out, you can always unsubscribe from the monthly fee ($27 for 300 analyzes a month). I am an affiliate, I recommend it, and I love it.

Here is a sample analysis… Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Marketing
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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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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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