Archive for Content Marketing – Page 19

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 Published in 1985, the only things out-of-date are the references to typing out a page.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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Business Blogging: 4 Ways to Have Fun and Profits

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, September 9th, 2010

(Vacation time, so here’s another guest post, this one by Susan Long,  freelance marketing consultant.)

If you’re writing your blog for more than just fun, you’ve probably thought about how you can make some money from it. There’s plenty of ways you can make cash from your writing, and you might not have thought of some of them before.

1) Putting ads on your blog

This is the most obvious way to make money blogging. You can sign up for Google Ads and Adbrite, which are two of the most well-known. The best thing about Google Ads and Adbrite is that you don’t have to have lots of readers to put their ads on your site. If you’re just starting out blogging one of these is the best way to start. You can also sell links in your articles with companies like TNX.net or Text Link Ads.

Once you’ve got more readers – say maybe once you’re getting a thousand hits a week – you can think about approaching bigger ad networks like Chitika and putting more “mainstream” ads on your blog.

And if you have a specialist or local blog, remember you can approach relevant businesses directly and ask them to advertise. For instance if you write a blog about soccer in your country, you could ask sports stores in your city if they want to advertise

2) Putting ads in your RSS feed

If you use Feedburner to optimise your RSS feed (and if you aren’t, why not?), you can easily put ads in the RSS feed of your blog, so people who read your blog through RSS will see ads.

3) Pay-per-post Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Pathway to Profits, Profit, Promoting Your Ezine +/or Blog
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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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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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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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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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