Writing on the Web from Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

The BS Bailout: Free Better Business Blog Writing Program Bonus

I absolutely hate using my writing blog to promote a sale, so I ask your indulgence just this one time. Don't throw tomatoes.

Actually, you may love me for this, especially if you want to get your business blog spiffed up AND get a valuable bonus program on Better Blog Writing.

Now that I think more about this, you'll have a chance to learn about the 10% nuances that make a blog get results or not. Because that's often the difference between a blog that works and one that doesn't...it's often just the little nuances.

One of the best programs I ever did with Denise Wakeman as The Blog Squad was our Better Business Blog Writing Program. Here's how you can get it for free...

The Blog Squad Bailout: Last Chance to Get a Blog Squad Blog or Makeover

What do smart professionals do when they decide to start a business blog? They call The Blog Squad to set up their blog, and learn how to use it for business results. Or they get a Blog Squad Makeover for an existing blog.

However, you won't be able to do that after March 31, 2009.

March 31, 2009 will be the last time you can get blog set up and training with our personal attention. The Ultimate Business Blog Set Up Program is being taken off the market. That means you've only got a few more days to get your blog with our help. After that, we're outsourcing to other resources.

If you're smart, you'll take advantage of this last special offer, a 25% discount for this service. You'll save $500.

Even if you already have a blog, and especially if you're not getting results with it, you should read more about how our special coupon can be applied to an Extreme Blog Makeover as well:

Content Delivery: Gated or Not Gated?

Is your content gated or not? This is a new term for me, but it captures this marketing tactic:

When you offer an ebook, audio file, white paper or special report off your site, it's "gated" if you require a reader's email address. It's not gated if you allow digital downloads freely without any exchange of information.

This is stirring up a big discussion on blogs such as David Meerman Scott's Web Ink Now, Joe Pulizzi's Junta 42, and Newt Barret's Content Marketing Today.

Here's an example of gated: The Blog Squad's free ebook Better Business Blogging. It's an free give-away with plenty of information on how to use a blog for business results. We've used it for a while now as a lead-generator.

Edit Your Content: A Checklist of 12 Things Not to Miss

Here's a checklist for rereading your content before you publish. For anything important, i.e. that's being sold or delivered to clients, I use Barbara Feiner, a professional editor. She not only corrects errors, but evaluates for clarity and flow.

But for blog posts and everyday content creation, I put on my editor's visor and those green sleeve thingys, and act like a detached newspaper editor with a red pencil. Here's what I look for:

1. Common typos like theirs for there's, your for you're, that or which for who, and all those pesky things a spell check won't pick up.
2. Grammar goofs: My most common are when the verb doesn't agree with the noun, as in "Here's my mistakes..."
3. Review for commas, semi-colons, ellipses and em dashes. The important thing is for it to read well, read clearly. Helps to read it out loud.
4. Review for paragraph and line spacing, since I like to break up long blocks of text.
5. Review for bolded words and insert subheadings where needed.
6. Separate a blog post after 2-3 paragraphs so that it goes to the extended post feature ("read more..."

12 Steps to Creating Web-Savvy Content for Marketing

How do you make sure your ebook has good content for marketing purposes? How do you write web-savvy content that works for the Web, that markets your business, gets you found, and is link-friendly?

I mean, it's all good to say you're going to get on the Content Marketing bandwagon... but how exactly do you do that? Here are 12 steps you need to think about:

Before you write that ebook, or blog post, or other content on your website, think about your audience. Once you've defined who you're writing for, then define the problem you're going to solve. Then figure out how people would be using keyword phrases to find their solutions if they were doing a web search.

Write a list of 3-5 keyword phrases and keep those in mind as you write your content.

Once you've defined your audience, the problem, the solution, and the keyword phrases. you should be able to make a list of subtopics or steps you need to cover. With a list, you can expand on each point to create a logical progression to solving the problem.

Ebook Prices, Expensive? Yes, but you get more than take-out curry...

Right on the tail of my previous post and reference to Newt Barrett's post about the value of ebooks, Sean D'Souza writes a great post. I want to alert you to his entertaining perspective:

Why Publishers Are Stupid About Book Pricing

So yes, the pricing of e-books is not out of whack.It’s actually reasonably accurate. And the public is saying so. We don’t need huge volumes of a book to be sold. All we really need is for the books to be valued more than a seven-minute goat curry.

What Sean is saying that he pays more at his local take-out restaurant for a meal than Amazon charges for printed books that take months to write and a lot of money to publish and market.

The solution is to offer your book in digital form as an ebook and charge what the real value is for your readers. How much is it worth for them to learn how to get results from business blogging? Or...fill in the blank with ...results from xxxx?

As The Blog Squad, I sell our ebook Build a Better Blog for $147. Expensive? If we were to sell it on Amazon, it would seem so. But it's not a $10 or $15 printed book.

In fact, it's more than an ebook; it's comes with a training system and other features. The value is in the fact that after you read it, when you implement the pertinent steps, you will have a business blog that gets results. That's worth a lot more than $147.

This is why an ebook is an important strategy for your content marketing. I'm writing one this weekend. You?

5 (More) Reasons an Ebook is a Must for Content Marketing

Ebooks are nothing new. Do you have one? Are you offering a free ebook on your site? You should. I'm in the process of setting up a brand new site for one of my businesses, and I'm writing an ebook this weekend. It's not that difficult and it should be one of your main lead generators on any site.

Newt Barrett on Content Marketing Today just posted Five Reasons an e-Book Should Be a Core Component Of Your Content Marketing Strategy:

1. You can quickly, compellingly, visually, and inexpensively establish thought leadership with an e-book that provides relevant information on the toughest challenges your customers face.
2. Offering a free e-book, is a wonderful incentive to entice your prospects to begin in their engagement with you.  
3. E-books, in the universally acceptable PDF format, are easy to pass along from one prospect to another, giving you potentially infinite reach. 
4. If you need help in designing your e-book and in generating the content, you can find talented designers and freelance writers easily. 
5. If your budget is very limited, you can create your own e-book by starting with PowerPoint and then transforming the PowerPoint files into PDF files.

 Here's why I can't stress this form of content marketing enough:

My, my, my! MyAlltop Rocks, here's why...

 Guy Kawasaki has done it again. He's made it so easy to set up your own page on Alltop.com. Now, instead of poking around the Web, taking hours to get a general "feed feel," I can go see all my favorite blogs and get a quick read about what's buzzin'.

What's a "feed feel?" It's waking up in the morning, going to your computer and instead of opening up email full of junk and worky-type things, I can read what other people are writing about. That and a cup of coffee will get me buzzin' and feelin' good.

What's so cool about this? For one thing, all my favorite people have their own pages too. So if I want to know who Pam Slim reads, or Guy, or other people, I can peek at the blogs that inform them.

And the other thing is that participating in the Blogosphere is just about the swiftest way to connect with other geniuses in your playground and get into trouble with them. So much fun...;-)!

What's the down-side? Well, instead of writing or educating myself about really important things, I can easily fall into an information junkie coma. I don't really need to know why everyone's writing about Skittles on Twitter...

See what you think. Go to my Alltop page. I haven't finished yet adding all my favorite blogs yet, but Alltop makes this really easy to do. Go get your own page. You'll love it. Check out the little video, it'll tell you how to add blogs to your myalltop page.

How to Improve Your Writing the Ben Franklin Way

Are you good at what you do? Really good? If you make a living at your craft, you must be good. You probably have customers who think you're great. AND... you know you could be better, don't you?

Being good at what you do is a major source of deep fulfillment, not to mention a prerequisite for keeping employment and earning a paycheck. Let me ask you this, then:

What are you doing to improve your writing skills?

No matter what business you're in, especially if you're using the Internet as a marketing tool, you've got to improve your writing. Especially if you don't outsource your content marketing, you must learn to write interesting content that showcases your expertise and value to readers on the Web.

Yet very few professionals spend practice time to improve their writing skills. You can't assume that even if you got an 'A' in college English you write well for the public, the people who are surfing the web to find solutions to their problems.

3 + 1 Bonus Content Marketing Posts You Don't Want to Miss

Have you ever worked too hard? And finally, finishing a project, find out you could have made it far simpler?

The other day I struggled for over an hour to come up with something interesting and relevant for you, my dear readers of this blog. I couldn't figure out a topic that appealed to me. (If it doesn't interest me and it isn't on topic for Content Marketing, how can I expect you to get excited, right?)

Well, two hours later, I came up with something, then saved and published. As soon as I did, I clicked over to Michael Martine's post on Remarkablogger:

Ten Ways to Crank Out Killer Posts in Ten Minutes or Less

Fist to forehead, I figure Michael owes me at least 50 minutes of time. If I had read his blog post first, I would have followed his great advice. I'm doing so now.

His first tip is #1: Pick  three blogs you respect and introduce your readers to them.