Writing on the Web from Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Great Internet Marketing Retreat with Tom Antion

Ever on the prowl for learning new ways to improve on the Internet, Denise and I are flying in to Tom Antion's Great Internet Marketing Retreat in Virginia Beach, VA on March 30 until April 3.

The Blog Squad will be sharing new tips for growing your biz online with you next week, thanks to Tom's astute techniques and unbelievable energy. This guy must eat Energizer Bunnies for breakfast...

Here's his latest site to show you his sense of humor: www.iamnotapoodle.com. Of course he's the guy who also owns www.powerpointstinks.com! Tom has excellent resources for public speaking, and for learning online marketing.

So this blog may be on snooze, at least until we surface back up in Tom's office and get connected sometime on Friday.

Google School Starts Tomorrow

Get your lunch packed and your pencils sharpened. Dave Taylor and Steven Van Yoder start their 3 month, 5 part teleseminar on everything you need to know about Google to grow your business.

Starts Thrusday, March 30, 1:00-2:00pm Pacific Time (10 a.m. ET)
Register at www.howtogrowyourbiz.com

Steven Van Yoder, author, Get Slightly Famous

Dave Taylor, author of the best-selling Complete Idiot's Guide to Growing Your Business With Google

What's this all got to do with writing great ezines and blogs? Quite simply, anything you write and publish on the Web needs to be found by the people who want to read it. Mastering the art of Google and becoming search engine savvy means that your work will be seen and found more easily.

You can't become a rock star by singing in the shower either. These two are experts on findability, so do yourself a favor and sign up now: www.howtogrowyourbiz.com.

Win an iPod

Denise and I, AKA The Blog Squad, are so excited about our April anniversary celebration. It's supposed to be a secret until next week, so all I will say right now is we're giving away 2 iPods and a Razer Copperhead mouse in a contest. You might want to check back here next week...

I suggest you subscribe through our Feedblitz subscription form on this blog, upper right...you'll get automatic updates in your inbox.

Why the contest? Why give away iPods? It's been a year since we published Build a Better Blog, the Ultimate Guide to a Professional Business Blog, plus a year since we started doing our weekly Conversations with Experts teleseminar.

The iPods we're giving away come preloaded with 43 of our experts being interviewed...Featured experts include Dave Taylor, Des Walsh, Bob Bly, Dan Poynter, to name just a few. When we calculated how much an hour of their time would cost, it came out to over $8,000 to listen to them on the podcasts!

What's the catch? Of course, we're asking that you submit your name, subscribe to our new Savvy Biz Tips ezine, and refer others to our contest. This is going to be a mega subscription drive during the whole month of April. We hope you'll participate, and maybe you'll win. And don't worry, if you end up not liking our ezine, you can unsubscribe easily.

Out of the Office: Idea Factory

Sometimes the best ideas brew when you're in the car or out of the office. Standing in line, or standing in traffic can be extremely creative as your mind wanders.

Denise and I purposely staged an off-site mind-wander last Tuesday. We rented an office in the Irvine Center for the day and met half-way between our two home offices. Armed with laptops, flip charts and marker pens, we let the thoughts roll out. The Blog Squad gals were sparking some neurons big time.

There was some purpose to our brainstorm. When business is busy, it is easy to get caught up in servicing clients, and just earning your living. As smart and savvy entrepreneurs, we know that we need to stay ahead of the game, to be ready for the next big idea. We can't do that unless we have the day to day things managed - which means optimizing our systems such as newsletters, blogs and shopping cart ecommerce automation.

We decided we needed to change focus for our weekly ezine, Newsletter Nuggets. It was originally created as a showcase for Customized Newsletter Services, my newsletter article and ezine services. It now contains much more, all sorts of biz tips, Conversations with Experts updates, and new product announcements. It is more about savvy biz tips for professionals, than about newsletters.

Findability on the Web: Maybe You Need to Go to Google School?

When your customers type in keywords looking for solutions, will they find you and your business? Or will they find your competitors first? Until now, only people who could afford expensive search engine optimization services were mastering "the art of Google."

A recent study by Internet research firms Marketing Sherpa and Enquiro demonstrated that search engines are now the dominant force driving most business- buying decisions. Key findings include:

• 93.2% of respondents research business- buying decisions online
• Google is overwhelmingly favored over other search engines
• Respondents use search engines in the early phase of their buying cycles
• High search engine rankings are critical; over 60% of respondents click on the top three listings

The role of Google - and all major search engines - cannot be overstated, and as more and more people search for business products and services online, findability is going to be more and more important in the future.

How would you like to go to Google School?

The Blog Squad is proud to sponsor this upcoming learning program, everything you need to know, delivered in a 3 month, 5 part teleseminar series and online learning program. Dave Taylor and Steven Van Yoder will show you the secrets "slightly famous" entrepreneurs use to increase their visibility in the marketplace, grow sales, and become more successful.

When your customers type in keywords looking for solutions, will they find you and your business? Or will they find your competitors first? Until now, only people who could afford expensive search engine optimization services were mastering "the art of Google."

A recent study by Internet research firms Marketing Sherpa and Enquiro demonstrated that search engines are now the dominant force driving most business- buying decisions. Key findings include:

• 93.2% of respondents research business- buying decisions online
• Google is overwhelmingly favored over other search engines
• Respondents use search engines in the early phase of their buying cycles
• High search engine rankings are critical; over 60% of respondents click on the top three listings

The role of Google - and all major search engines - cannot be overstated, and as more and more people search for business products and services online, findability is going to be more and more important in the future.

How would you like to go to Google School?

The Blog Squad is proud to sponsor this upcoming learning program, everything you need to know, delivered in a 3 month, 5 part teleseminar series and online learning program. Dave Taylor and Steven Van Yoder will show you the secrets "slightly famous" entrepreneurs use to increase their visibility in the marketplace, grow sales, and become more successful.

Writing Great Web Copy: How Sincere Are You?

Online, your words are your store front. Typos are broken windows. Your message is your window dressing. Outrageous claims make you look like a huckster out on the sidewalk.

In the online copywriting world, there are plenty of hucksters pushing "instant sales letters," or 60 second sales pages. Most of what I see in the way of long sales copy pages look like they come from the same template, or a variation thereof. Professionals must be buying the easy way out and using so-called expert's cookie cutter templates. Many of these experts have copied each other, and haven't been doing business online for long.

Nick Usborne is an expert on writing web copy, and he makes some very good observations in this blog post about experts who join the marketing hype hordes on the Internet, sacrificing their hard earned offline reputations. It's worth the read, go here and read it.

Winning the War for Leadership Talent

I've got a new article available for purchase for use in your newsletters: Winning the War for Leadership Talent. Based on the book Leadership Pipeline by Ram Charan, Steven Drotter, and James Noel, it offers great tips for succession planning.

If you are a consultant working with organizations, you know how important talent is for success. You also know there is a talent crunch coming, as Baby Boomers start to retire. Companies must keep the leadership pipeline full, and develop people as they progress to higher levels of leadership responsibilities.

To read a synopsis of this article, and to find out how you can use my articles as your own, please visit http://www.customizednewsletters.com/featured/index.html

Article Marketing Tips

More news this week about how to maximize the impact of your articles. First, it is essential to submit them to article directories such as EzineArticles.com. Secondly, you must submit more than 20 articles, according to most experts, before this marketing strategy starts to pay off.

The pay off is in getting your articles picked up and republished on other sites, providing many incoming links to your site (and a boost in search engine rankings).

Want to know more about this? Here's a ten page report from Yaro Starak and Brian Clark: "Builidng Traffic with Article Marketing." It's available for free, and gives some interesting tips.

Download Traffic-Article_Marketing.pdf

Email Overload Blues: Managing Your Inbox

It's happening again: my inbox is getting ridiculously overcrowded, with many unread ezines and marketing stuff left glaring at me in bold font...

I've learned to use the rules function in Microsoft Outlook, and most junk now goes into the junk folder, which helps keep the overwhelm feelings down. But for the life of me, I can't figure out why legitimate newsletters and orders go to "Junk," and some viagra and stock garbage still gets into the inbox. I know I need to play around with the folders and rules function a little more, but who's got time. Sometimes just deleting is the fastest way to go.

Here's a great resource, a blog with several email management tips, for those of you who also struggle with email overload blues: http://www.43folders.com/izero/

It shows you how you can get your inbox to zero! I just want to keep it under 100, and I'll be happy.

Go read their posts on email management tips, and then share with us your favorite.

Squeeze, Baby: Gimme Yer Email

List building can be tough. Now you've got to squeeze, trap and hit 'em with bonuses before they will hand over their email addresses. Here's some examples of how others are doing it, plus some good conversion stats, thanks to the prolific and knowledgeable Chris Knight of EzineArticles.com.

The "NAME SQUEEZE" email list building strategy is the act of setting up a single page where the only way you release a benefit to the reader is if they give up their email address. Some people call this a subscription trap strategy. Do these pages work? When should you use them?

Read his article on his email squeeze page conversion survey, then get yourself over to his own Email Universe Ezine squeeze page.

If you are interest in learning more about effective email marketing tips, you will gladly fork over your email address to Christopher Knight.