Writing on the Web from Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Content Marketing: 3 E's to Include When Writing

(Note: Patsi's on vacation this week. What follows is a series of blog posts about better business blog writing, originally published in Spring, 2008.)

Content Marketing Goals: 3 E's to Pay Attention To

Keep these 3 E's in mind when reviewing your content. Your blog posts, ezine articles, and even your sales copy should meet these three goals:

1. Does it educate?
2. Does it entertain?
3. Does it engage?

I'm sure I didn't originate this easy to remember formula; it just flew out of my mouth when I was on stage yesterday at Tom Antion's Butt Camp for Internet Marketing. Denise and I were giving an overview of what goes into better business blogging to 50 professionals at the LA Chapter of the National Speakers Association.

Some content you write for your business will educate clients (ebooks, mini-courses, special reports and white papers), some will entertain (blog posts, articles, interviews), and some will be specifically written to engage readers (sales copy, landing pages, email promotions).

If you can include all three elements in your writing, you're on the right track. "Okay, Patsi, that makes sense," you might well be saying, "...but HOW do you do that?" Here's my stab at giving you a few tips...

Keep these 3 E's in mind when reviewing your content. Your blog posts, ezine articles, and even your sales copy should meet these three goals:

1. Does it educate?
2. Does it entertain?
3. Does it engage?

I'm sure I didn't originate this easy to remember formula; it just flew out of my mouth when I was on stage yesterday at Tom Antion's Butt Camp for Internet Marketing. Denise and I were giving an overview of what goes into better business blogging to 50 professionals at the LA Chapter of the National Speakers Association.

Some content you write for your business will educate clients (ebooks, mini-courses, special reports and white papers), some will entertain (blog posts, articles, interviews), and some will be specifically written to engage readers (sales copy, landing pages, email promotions).

If you can include all three elements in your writing, you're on the right track. "Okay, Patsi, that makes sense," you might well be saying, "...but HOW do you do that?" Here's my stab at giving you a few tips...

Thank You, Dear Readers!

 I can't help myself: this time of year I get gushy with gratitude. If you guys didn't stop by here to read what I have to say, I'd lose interest and probably eventually stop writing.

If I stopped writing, I'd probably get lazy about reading, and then I'd stop learning as much. It's thanks to you dear readers that I am motivated to stay on top of things and keep curious.

You make my day.

I'm off to Puerto Vallarta for a week with The Hubby. We'll be playing tennis, Scrabble, working out and writing a new fiction story about life in the year 2047.

I hope your weekend is fabulous. In my absence, I'm re-posting a series about effective blog writing using the 4 E's...educate, entertain, engage and enrich your readers. Have fun!

10 Great Things About 2008: Feeling gratitude for business

Since we Americans celebrate gratitude at this time of year, I made a list of things I’m grateful for in this new era of easy visibility and findability on the Web. Perhaps you can relate and will be inspired to make up your own gratitude list.

I’m grateful for (in no particular order):

1. Business blogs that make it easy to stay informed and connect with others
2. Twitter and Facebook that make it easy AND fun to build communities!
3. Shopping cart systems like Kick Start Cart that make it easy to build a database list that’s easy to segment, broadcast messages, and seamlessly process registrations and purchases
4. Google that makes it easy to do research and locate information and people
5. Smart Internet marketers who by their clever ideas light the way and show us what’s possible

4 Steps to Creating Massive Online Visibility

Can your ideal clients easily find you when they go online to search for solutions to their challenges? Are you hard to find? Or do people tell you "You're everywhere on the Web!"

It's not difficult to create massive visibility on the Internet. It's free or low-fee. It's relatively easy, few tech skills required. (I know what I'm talking about cuz I'm a recovering techno-twit who was unheard of less than 4 years ago.)

I'm not a genius or a smooth-talking networking virtuoso. I haven't had large sums of cash to spend, nor do I understand how things work on the Web. Blogs, social sites, email marketing, autoresponders and digital downloads all work without me knowing how.

True, I did team up with a great partner (Denise Wakeman, co-founder of The Blog Squad) who's savvy and sometimes has to explain things to me ;-). But here're the things we do that many of our peers don't bother doing (or at least not consistently):

Content Marketing: Is Your Blog Like a Hungry Dragon?

Is Content Marketing with a business blog like a hungry dragon you must constantly keep feeding?

Denise and I were teaching better business blogging to a group of savvy professionals at Kim Duke's Prosperity Cafe yesterday. Kim, the Sales Diva, mentioned many of her people are intimidated by taking up blogging because of the fear of not being able to come up with good content on a regular basis.

When you think about it that way, yes, I can see where someone might imagine facing the daunting task of feeding the hungry blogging dragon every morning. You must write frequently, and provide valuable content otherwise your blog doesn't work like it should.

Denise and I tried to explain, it's really not that bad. And yes, you do have to feed the damn beast if you want your biz blog readers to keep coming back for more.

And then I read a superb post by the brilliantly talented Sonia Simone over on Copyblogger, The Matrix Guide to Content Marketing. Even if you're not a fan of The Matrix, think of the four quadrants used by consulting firms to look at 4 aspects of your business.

Everything you do with your blog and your business goes into one of these sectors:

Best Books for Vacation Reading?

I have a request for you, dear readers. I want you to suggest your favorite books to me, ones I can take on vacation to read, both for pleasure and for business. I am accepting nominations for 3 categories:

1. Can't-put-down fiction
2. Cutting edge executive/leader/business development issues
3. Your favorite cutting edge marketing/internet/small biz books

Thanks! Just leave a comment and tell me why you like the book you suggest.

Best Books for Vacation Reading?

I have a request for you, dear readers. I want you to suggest your favorite books to me, ones I can take on vacation to read, both for pleasure and for business. I am accepting nominations for 3 categories:

1. Can't-put-down fiction
2. Cutting edge executive/leader/business development issues
3. Your favorite cutting edge marketing/internet/small biz books

Thanks! Just leave a comment and tell me why you like the book you suggest.

Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs: We're number 3!

We made the list of Top 42 Content Marketing blogs announced this week by Joe Pulizzi of Junta42. I have to admit, I'm tickled pink, coming in at #3 just after Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog and Brian Clark of Copyblogger!

Big congratulations to Lee and Brian, and to all the 42 other fine writers/marketers/bloggers on this list. Be sure to bookmark these sites and subscribe if you want to learn the art of content marketing from the best.

I blush to think of being in the company of such marketing experts as Rohit Bhargava, David Meerman Scott, Seth Godin, and Michael Stelzner, all of whom I admire for the way they write and understand marketing in their niches.

Big thanks to Joe Pulizzi who leads the Content Marketing way by putting together a great list of resources for us all.

Here's how the list was chosen according to their press release:

Blogs Haven't Replaced Email Newsletters

Thanks for voting on the Vizu Poll about email newsletter formatting preferences. If you haven't voted yet, please do. The poll is found if you scroll down a little on the right, in bright pink.

Why should you do an email newsletter if you've got a blog? When it comes to content marketing, you want to increase the chances that people will read what you have to say. You need both a blog and an emailed newsletter (or ezine).

Today I got Darren Rowse's Problogger.net newsletter in my inbox and he reminds us that email newsletters are still a best practice of smart bloggers. Rather than repeat all his wisdom, here are the links to read a couple of his posts about this:

• 8 Reasons to Add a Newsletter to a Blog
• When Should You Add a Newsletter to Your Blog?

Email newsletters aren't a thing of the past. Blogs haven't replaced ezines. A newsletter gives additional information in a way that is different, more traditional.

Ideal Format for Email Newsletters?

Last week I asked readers to respond to a poll (see Vizu poll on the right) on their preferred formatting and distribution for emailed newsletters: plain text, HTML, or PDF versions. So far, half of responders prefer using HTML, and a third are using plain text.

There haven't been any who say they prefer PDF, either sent as an attachment, or viewed as a page on their websites. I happened to know of several clients who are using PDFs for their newsletters, but looks like they didn't vote.

Judging from the newsletters I subscribe to and receive in my inbox this 50%-33% split between HTML and plain text formatting is typical.

Here's my perspective: if you want readers to focus primarily on your message, then plain text is valuable. If you also want to impress people visually with colors, logo and other branding elements, then it makes sense to make the most out of graphic design by using HTML formatting.

Can there be an ideal merge of both of these important elements - design for branding and showcase valuable content?