Archive for Writing for the Web

Better Business Blogs:
Correct Those Broken Links

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, June 17th, 2016

business-blogsAre you keeping your business blog fresh? If you’re like me, and you’ve been blogging for a number of years, chances are some of your links may no longer work. This guest post, from Susan Boggs, offers tips for successful bloggers and blogs on how to find and correct broken links.

In a perfect world, we would always know exactly what the Big Search Engines want from us and our business blogs, always and without a doubt. We would engrave them into stone and follow them judiciously. Our blogs would rank high for our keywords, and life would be wonderful.

Ah, yes, nirvana.

Unfortunately, in this world we call the Internet, blogging is not always quite that simple. The good news?

Life is still wonderful. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Writing for the Web
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The 4 Step Creative Process for Writing Blogs:
(& Happy Birthday to WOW Blog)

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, September 4th, 2015

Writing-BlogsDo you struggle with the creative process of writing blogs? Do you cringe when you need to find a topic for your blog? You’re not alone.

Over the past 11 years, I’ve written a ton of information about writing great blog posts and newsletters, as well as e-books, white papers and articles to increase your visibility. Sometimes it feels like I’ve already written as much as I have to say. There’s nothing new, it’s been done before.

But then I remember that people forget and new people come to visit all the time. It’s motivation to keep my blog posts fresh and interesting.

So how do you choose a topic for writing blogs that will be most relevant to your readers, and hasn’t been said 1,000 times before? Trust the process and get busy.

Almost 100 years ago, Graham Wallas observed that creative solutions appear sequentially:

Preparation => Incubation => Illumination => Implementation

The same is true for writing quality content – blog posts are written by following a creative process. Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, How to...Tips, On Writing Better, Writing Great Blog Content
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SEO and Content Marketing: A Love Story

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, May 15th, 2015

Once upon a time, SEO met up with Content Marketing, fell in love, and vowed to never separate, to always work together in harmony.

Anyone who’s been around the ‘Net a while understands a little about optimizing content so that the search engines can index it according to topic and relevance to readers. About ten years ago, someone decided to give a name to the type of marketing that occurs that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers: Content Marketing. How do the two differ and how are they alike?

This week, I invited Jack Dawson of webfia.com. to share his insights on working with SEO and CM together instead of separately.

Where and How They Met

There are many techniques that make up internet marketing, two of which include search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. SEO has been around for quite some time, more than a decade at least, while content marketing has only gained popularity in the last few years. Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Writing for the Web, Writing Great Blog Content
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Writing Services & Quality Leadership Content for Coaches

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014

CCC Header 2014If you’re a leadership coach or a consultant to leaders you know how time-consuming it is to write quality leadership articles and blogs. Here’s a professional writing service just for you providing leadership articles for your newsletters and blogs.

And, you can get a 10% discount on annual subscriptions with Content for Coaches, if you order before Thursday, July 31, 2014.

If you’re interested, go to Content for Coaches Summer Sale, here.

This is a special opportunity to save money on new subscriptions for quality leadership content. Read More→

Categories : Attracting Clients, Buying Content, Coaching/Personal Development, Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks
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Bloggers Block? How to Get Your Creative Writing Mojo Back

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, March 10th, 2014

Beautiful woman with thoughtful expression and blog words aboveEver get stuck with blogger’s block? Can’t get a spark of creativity going? Fingers just lay there on the keyboard like wet noodles… How can you get your creative writing going again?

Finding yourself in the horror of a creation-less void is never good. Your mind empties of anything that seems worthy of being said, and you feel helpless.

Writer’s and blogger’s block is a completely natural event experienced by writers, usually as a side-effect of writing for a deadline. Everyone has experienced it, and it’s not uncommon to panic a bit when it happens.

Here are some suggestions from a writer who’s been around the block…

Read Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better
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Expert Ebooks: Relax and Write

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, February 28th, 2014

Suit-and-Tie-WritingIf you want to write well, you’ve got to strip down and get real: write relaxed. Nobody wants to read an expert ebook if your words are wearing a three-piece suit and a tightly buttoned shirt and tie.

Too many executives who want to write an expert ebook are in love with syllables, syntax and sycophants. When you write words to impress, you don’t write well. You don’t impress.

Instead, relax and write. Take off the tie, relax and write as authentically as possible using words any high school student can understand. You’ll impress many more people and get your message heard by those who actually need your wisdom.

Highly educated readers can sniff out academic or business jargon and won’t be impressed but simply annoyed. Even geniuses like things spelled out for them in clear language. Leave them some room to think about big ideas, not wade through your big words.

I’m not suggesting “dumbing down.” It actually takes intelligence to write clearly so that anyone can understand.

Less educated readers like being invited to understand complexities with easily accessible words and sentences. Don’t leave them out by using insider terms, acronyms, and cryptic allusions.

In the work I do with executive coaches and consultants, they often become so entrenched in industry-specific business jargon, they aren’t clear to a global audience of working people. When seasoned professionals want to write their book, what may seem common sense to them isn’t clear to the world at large.

This is where an experienced editor and writing coach can help. Often, the pre-work to writing an ebook hasn’t been done.

What I call the “pre-work” to writing an expert ebook is becoming clear not only about the desired message, but clear about who you’re are writing for:

  • Who are your readers?
  • What problem or pain can you fix?
  • How will you change your readers’ lives for the better?
  • What’s in it for them?
  • What’s your message and what do you want them to do?

If you’d like to learn more, I’ve prepared a 10-question worksheet that will help you get started writing your expert ebook. You can get it (free) by going to www.Ebooks4Experts.com and requesting it.

Categories : About Expert Ebooks, Books, Content Marketing, E-Books, On Writing Better
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Expert Ebook Writing: 5 Steps to Get Started

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, January 13th, 2014

5-StepsIf you’re an expert in your field and want to publish a digital book, how should you get started writing content?

  1. Write down 3 – 5 of your most compelling stories, ideas, nuggets, mistakes, or experiences you think interest your readers.
  2. What’s your point? (What’s your unique message you want readers to know that will impact their lives?)
  3. Write out a working title and a tag line that clearly states what the book is about and what it is designed to solve for readers.
  4. What’s your conclusion, what you want readers to do, think, believe, act on…? What’s your call to action?
  5. Write an outline that explains in a sequential order how you will provide benefit to readers.

(Please note that in each of these steps, the word “readers” is mentioned. Your readers are clearly at the heart of your book. In other words, you aren’t, they are.)

At this point you can continue writing or start looking for a ghost writer. Ask yourself, is it worth my time to learn how to do this and actually write the sentences, or hire a writer who already knows how to string together sentences, paragraphs, chapters from preface to conclusion, to notes, etc.? Read More→

Categories : About Expert Ebooks, Content Marketing, E-Books, Writing for the Web
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Who’s an Expert, and Why Experts Write Ebooks

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, January 10th, 2014

ExpertEbooks-StuartMilesIn my current series of posts about writing ebooks, I’m primarily addressing the challenges of experts who want to write and publish a digital book, for example, on Amazon.

Who, exactly, is an expert? Who qualifies? I don’t know that there’s any definition or standard that one must go by. To me, my clients are professionals such as doctors, lawyers, consultants, coaches, speakers and educated people who’ve been practicing their skills for 20, 30 or more years. They’re experts.

Wikipedia defines an expert as someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study.

I guess just about anybody can call themselves an expert, especially if they have knowledge and skills that others don’t. Writing and publishing an ebook doesn’t make you an expert, but it certainly shows your knowledge, experience and value as such.

Why Write an Ebook instead of a Printed Book?

There is no denying the shift that is happening in the book industry: ebooks are on the rise and here to stay. Check out some of the latest industry data:

  • E-book sales grew dramatically in the first quarter of 2010, jumping from just 1.5% of total US book sales in 2009 to 5% of the market in the first quarter of 2010. Source: R.R. Bowker
  • The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) reported U.S. wholesale ebook sales for January, 2010 were $31.9 million, up 261 percent from the same month a year earlier.

Reports from Amazon

  • Ebooks are now outselling hardcover books at Amazon, selling 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers.
  • Jeff Bezos told the USA Today that he predicts Kindle ebook sales will outsell all books (including paperback) within a year.
  • The Kindle is now available at Target and Best Buy.
  • Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009.

Most experts I know believe that by publishing an ebook, they’ll get known by a larger number of people. They’ll establish credibility by writing about what they know best. They’ll connect with readers who may have exactly the kinds of problems they can solve.

To me, writing and publishing an expert ebook not only makes sense, but is a requirement for anyone who wants to use the Web to get found, get known and get clients. What do you think?

(Image: freedigitalphotos.net)

Categories : About Expert Ebooks, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, E-Books, Writing for the Web
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Ghost Writers Needed: For Business Blogs Everywhere

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, November 20th, 2013

Ghost-BloggersMany professional business blogs need ghost writers. How else can busy professionals maintain quality content and frequent publishing schedules?

What about you and your blog? How can you consistently publish on your professional business blog and never have to worry about coming up with ideas, researching facts and stats, and writing compelling, quality content that solves problems for your readers?

I’d like to tell you an easy answer, like, “All you need to do is outsource!” But it’s not at all easy to find quality ghost blog writers who understand your business and clients, is it?

Here are some other objections I hear from my blog consulting clients about outsourcing to ghost writers, along with my responses: Read More→

Categories : About Blogs, Coaching/Personal Development, Content Marketing, Writing Great Blog Content
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Why You Should Write Quality Blog Content

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

Best-Business-BlogQuality blog posts are key to your business getting found on the Web. While that may sound obvious – (“Of course, why would I write something ho-hum boring?”) it’s harder than you might think. Not everyone agrees on what quality content is.

Quality content scores high with readers, your target clients, and with search engines. If you want to get found, get known and get clients online, you need to write and publish quality blog posts that resonate with your readers.

There’s a lot of emphasis on publishing frequently. Most professionals and small business owners are told that once or twice weekly is a bare minimum. But none of that matters if what you write is boring, mediocre, confusing or poorly written and formatted.

What is quality content? Sure, you know it when you read it, but what are the essentials? It depends on who you’re writing for. As writer Ginny Soskey at Hubspot blog points out:

“There are lots of concrete principles of writing that can help determine the “quality” of a piece of content. Verb usage, spelling, sentence structure — these all have defined rules that, for the most part, have stayed pretty constant. It’s black and white. That is wrong; this is right. 

“Then there are the gray areas in writing. Stylistic preferences. Imagery. Storytelling.” Read More→

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