Writing on the Web from Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

8 Steps to Internet Gold: What to do with a big fat idea

I've been thinking about the future lately: the future of blogging, the future of content marketing, and the future of my own little business.

(When I speak of my own business as "little," by that I mean I have a business model based on working a minimum amount of hours with a maximum level of profit. I'm not intending to build an empire or manage a staff or become a millionaire. My goals - which may be unlike most people's - are to continue to generate a comfortable profit doing what I love, working a few hours a day. Your goals may be bigger than mine, why not!)

In any case, the Internet offers possibilities for everyone with good ideas. Here's what the Internet gurus will all tell you how to strike gold on the Web:

1. First you have to be able to solve a problem that a group of people have (you have to have a "big fat idea").
2. Next you have to be able to reach those people with the problem.
3. Then you must attract their attention (content, video, audio, etc.)
4. Build a relationship with readers so they know, like and trust you (KLT factor)
5. Persuade them to take action (content marketing, calls to action)
6. Deliver your solution seamlessly
7. Follow up with them to ensure customer satisfaction and pave the way to more sales
8. Soak, Rinse, repeat

It's 2009 and we've learned a few things in the last 10 years about Internet marketing and using content to attract, sell and profit online.

How to Make Money Online (...at any age, from any place)

I met Carol at the Lake Chapala tennis courts this week. She's absolutely gorgeous and I can't tell if she's 65 or just 50. There's a new breed of healthy, active people retiring to Mexico these days.This is not your grandmother's retirement community by a long shot.

Carol was curious about how I work online. Apparently she has a few ideas she'd like to take to the Web. She's a retired educator. So she asked me if it's really possible to make money online.

To some people, it looks like I'm living the dream: I play tennis everyday, live in a paradise community with perfect weather year-round, and have a gorgeous lake-side home.

I come home, write a few words on my blogs, and then check my bank account for online sales. I sell information, so it looks easy... just turn words into dollars (or in my case, pesos!) No overhead costs, no staff to manage, just me and my trusty computer.

Pass the lemonade and salsa while I grab another nacho. I'm telling you this story for a good reason, not to brag or seem like a smarty-pants.

Why Your Website Is Not Enough (...and never will be, sorry)

Independent professionals who use the Web to promote their services are often surprised to learn, after spending big bucks and a lot of time getting their website designed and finally published, that it's not enough!

"What? Is this some sort of Internet marketing scam? Or some sort of evil hole I'm going to get sucked into?"

Nope. It's the solid truth. A website, no matter how spectacular, is not enough if you want to get found by clients and use the Internet to find clients and make money.

You're likely going to need an e-newsletter, a blog, and profiles on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You need to publish content everywhere, in article directories, audio files for podcasts, and videos on YouTube.

If you want to get found by the people who have problems that you can solve, you must make it easy for people to find you. You must be everywhere. You need content, content, content and not just on your own web pages.

Digital Marketing on the Social Web

But don't believe just me, read the studies: Here are two recent research studies that tell you how companies are spending their marketing budgets in 2009 and 2010. Business blogs will continue to grow.

5 Steps to Writing a Good Newsletter Bio

How should you write your bio for your newsletter? I see many coaches and consultants use their resumes for their sidebar bio. ("Dr. Smith has 20 years experience in strategic planning and holds an MBA from Harvard, etc.") But really, this is pretty boring and old-school.

Then there are those who, wanting to get with the program and use newly acquired copywriting techniques, go to the other extreme. They tell too much about their achievements and come across like an ego-maniac.

While everyone wants to know about who you are as the author of a newsletter, mostly they want to know "what's in it for me."

Last week a client asked me for some guidelines on how to craft the side-bar marketing message for his ezine. Here are my 5 steps for writing a good bio/marketing message for an e-newsletter (new school).

When you write your bio, pretend you are talking to someone. Use the pronoun ‘I’ and speak with your readers like you would a favorite client. Use the pronoun ‘you’ often. (Unless, of course, you're a large firm with multiple authors.)

1. What problem do you solve?

Start with a question or statement about the challenges and needs of your readers. This will draw them into reading your bio. It is better to lead with "what's in it for them" than to start off talking about you and your accomplishments.

2. Offer Help

Content Marketing Defined + Top 10 Ways to Fail at It

Maybe I should back up here and cite some official definitions for Content Marketing. If everyone's talking about it, then we need to be clear. Like with any buzz, it can mean different things to different people.

First, from Wikipedia: "Marketers may use content marketing as a means of achieving a variety of business goals, such as thought leadership, lead generation, increasing direct sales, improving retention and more."

Content marketing's agenda is to educate and inform customers and prospects. Content Marketing's slogan is - "Don't pitch. Don't sell. Don't interrupt. Educate, inform and provide value to customers and prospects. Your business will grow."

Content marketing must focus on what is valuable to the customer and must solve their informational needs.

Sometimes listing what not to do can really help make a concept clear.

Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent writes a great post Top Ten Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Fails.

She says, "The definition - content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action."

It's the opposite of interruption marketing, aka advertising.

Most importantly, Valeria says this: "It is better to fail after trying something new, than to fail because you're not even trying."

Start writing content and post it everywhere: your web pages, blog, article directories, comments on other people's blogs, Twitter updates. Write valuable, relevant information that genuinely focuses on the needs of others.

Content Marketing Cheat Sheet: A quick summary of key resources

There is a terrific summary of content marketing, a must-read for anyone getting started, over on the ClickDocuments' "Connect the Docs" blog written by Ambal Balakrishnan...

Content Marketing: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet

The shift in mind-set from copywriting-style marketing to content marketing takes a while for marketers and web authros to adjust to. There's more to it than first appears. And while this makes sense when people first think about it, actually applying content marketing in practice can be as uncommon as common sense.

I "met" Ambal on Twitter and paid attention to her because for weeks now she's been re-tweeting everything about Content Marketing. I have this keyword phrase set up to get an email alert whenever someone is "Tweeting" about it. I use both Twitter and TweetLater services for this. So when I kept seeing her tweets, I knew she was gathering information for something. (Another reason to use Twitter.)

If you're interested in learning about a niche, I suggest you start by doing the same thing Ambal is doing for her company: gathering information, learning, re-tweeting, and forming connections with other experts in the field. You can't go wrong.

This is content marketing in action. A great demonstration of how content and social networking are a marriage made in heaven.

What about you? Do you have alerts set up? Are you actively re-tweeting? Go on, get with the program!

Content Marketing Confusion? Get a review...

The contest is open again, the 2nd Content Marketing Review is now open for submissions here. Sign up and you may win a review of your website or blog content to see how well it works for marketing your professional services.

Heck, I'll make it easy for you to sign up right here:

Name
Email

Why am I doing this, giving away free consulting? No, this is not a big lead generator to upsell my services as a consultant. I'm not sure I'd want that gig, I've got plenty of other work with Content for Coaches and Consultants.

I'm simply gathering real-life examples of how professionals are using content online for marketing. I may use such examples in a special report or blog post, or I may just use it to increase my knowledge of how content marketing works on the Web. I'm not sure yet.

Review Criteria

Your online content will be reviewed for how well it:

• Grabs readers' attention
• Focuses on a solution to a problem
• Educates and informs
• Entertains and engages readers
• Inspires action
• Gets search results

Rest assured that if your name is selected I will get your permission before publishing anything about you or your content marketing efforts.

You've got nothing to lose. Sign up, put your name into the virtual hat, and on Friday at noon I'll announce the next winner of a free content marketing review. You could be the next big weenie.

Content Marketing Review: Sales Autopsy Alive & Kickin'

Dan Seidman of Sales Autopsy was the lucky winner of a Content Marketing Review in our random drawing. Dan is a keynote speaker who provides unique sales training based on his best selling book, "Sales Autopsy: 50 Post-mortems Reveal What Killed the Sale."

Dan provides excellent examples of great content marketing through his web pages, book, articles, and unique products. For this reason, Dan's Content Marketing efforts get a 4 out of 5 possible stars.

I rate my content marketing reviews on the following criteria:

1. Grabs readers' attention
2. Focuses on solutions to problems
3. Educates and informs
4. Entertains and engages readers
5. Inspires action
7. First page search results for main keywords

Dan's site is particularly strong for grabbing people's attention, providing solutions to problems, and entertaining readers. He also offers a variety of ways visitors to the site can get information, respond and engage further with him. He offers video, audio and text for readers.

7 Blog Writing Steps BEFORE You Check for Keywords

I was working with a new blogging client (let's call him Andy) yesterday who was stuck. Andy had written about 10 blog posts which he saved as drafts because was worried about key words.

Now there's a learning curve involved in writing for your blog, and there's no way around it. The only way to learn to write good blog posts is to write and publish blog posts. Saving them as drafts won't work.

You can practice your serve on a tennis court by yourself too. But until you serve the ball to someone on the other side of the net and keep score in a game, it really doesn't count.

Here's what I told Andy. When you sit down to your "compose a post" page, focus first on these steps:

E-Newsletters vs Blogs: The View of Dr. Ralph F. Wilson Web Marketing Today Expert

I get emails from professionals new to Internet marketing, "Which is better, an ezine or a blog?"

Please read this article from Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, a long time email marketing expert who has over 32,000 subscribers to his successful e-newsletter Web Marketing Today. Wilson has decided to start a blog, and gives his reasons:

Of course, "Which is best?" begs the real question that you must ask yourself, dear friend: Are you communicating with your customers by any regular means?

So which is better, an e-mail newsletter or a blog? Each has its place. For my carefully written and (hopefully) enduring articles and stories, an e-mail newsletter and website archives will be my medium of choice. For short, transient comments on books, articles, and current events, blogging is best.

You are right to stop and consider both of these marketing tools carefully before jumping in. Of course, if you're like me, you may just want to jump in and learn as you go, making mistakes along the way...

As long as you share your stories with your newsletter subscribers and blog readers you can't go wrong and you'll be leaving a trail of keywords all over the net like spilled milk and cookie crumbs...;-)

Dr. Ralph F. Wilson is one of the pioneers of Internet marketing, founding the Web Marketing Today newsletter in 1995 at the beginning of the commercial Internet. He is the author of hundreds of articles and more than a dozen books on Internet marketing and e-commerce.