Writing on the Web from Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

How Chip Scholz Gets Content Marketing Right (even if it hurts...)

On a recent post about leveraging what you know to help other people online, one of my favorite clients, Chip Scholz, commented:

Great post, Patsi. Thanks for reminding me of the power of writing, and of delivering great content. I find writing extremely time consuming and almost painful! How can I find ways of making it easier and less time consuming? Do you have any suggestions on resources (other than you of course!)

Time consuming and painful, ah, yes. And the pain is where, exactly? I'm a doctor, but help me out here, Chip. I'm a doctor of psychology, so if the pain is anywhere in your body, you've come to the wrong place.

Chip's off speaking, consulting and coaching somewhere, earning big bucks doing what he does best, so I'll have to work with what's showing on his web pages. I'm going to answer his question based on his content marketing.

What I'm seeing for Chip's online visibility is content marketing on the following pages:

Website: ScholzandAssociates.com
Blog: Leader Snips
Book landing page: Selling for Geniuses
Twitter: ChipScholz

Don't Forget Facebook: Here's a Big Source of Readers

I'm really upset at the recent article about Facebook over on Copyblogger. Here I've been spending valuable and scarce free time over on Twitter, ignoring Facebook. Now I've just found out I might be missing a crucial traffic builder.

I'm not completely missing the boat, I do have some presence over there at Facebook, just not visiting it daily. My blog posts and twitter updates are automatically fed into my Facebook page. It's a good thing, too. Turns out there's a huge pool of potential readers on Facebook and we need to be nurturing them too.

Go read this article and make up your own mind about where to spend your marketing minutes...

How Facebook is Gunning for Google (And Killing SEO) by Mike Wasylik

(And for those of you who care why I've been so absent on blogs and emails lately, I've been in an intensive Spanish course for the past two weeks. It's beginning to cramp my work and play time, and anyone who knows me will understand that my time on the tennis courts is sacred. You can shorten my work day, but don't you dare try to shorten my tennis time. Something has to go, and it's my time spent blogging, tweeting and surfing other sites ... Pero hablo bien Espanol ahora!)

Best Tip for Using Twitter?

What is your one tip on how B2B marketers should leverage social media? This is what I was asked by ClickDocs, a great source of information on content marketing. You can read other insights from other experts here. Here's my answer:

Small business professionals who want to attract people for their products and services through Twitter often start off on the wrong foot. They look at it and answer the question, “What are you doing?” Who cares?

Start off by doing a search for keywords in your field. Use the search button at the bottom of the page and type in “Need help with …XYZ” and see what comes up.

On any day, people are asking for help with things on Twitter. You can answer their questions, refer them to your blog, and offer to help. Be sure to follow them when you do.

5 Key Principles of Content Marketing

I know a lot of people trying to figure out how to supplement their incomes with an Internet business. Some of them ask me how to go about it. While that's a huge endeavor involving many pieces, the key is writing on the web using content marketing.

What you publish on web pages works to attract a targeted audience of people who are interested in finding solutions to their problems.

Remember, the number one reason people use the Web is to get information.

That's why I recommend starting with a blog. A blog is a communications and publishing tool you can use to attract readers, those people who are your ideal prospects. Of course the next question is "What do I write about?"

That's where you need to learn how to do Content Marketing.

What are the principles of Content Marketing to abide by? Here are some good tips from Velocity UK, a marketing consultancy firm who just published a great B2B Content Marketing Workbook.

Content marketing plays by different rules than traditional, ‘broadcast-style’ marketing, here are some of the key ones:

Content Marketing Is "Issues" Marketing: Velocity UK

I just heard about this on Twitter and downloaded a fab content marketing ebook published by Velocity UK, a consulting-led B2B marketing agency specializing in technology markets.

Doug Kessler is the author, it's well designed and power-packed. Please go download it here: The B2B Content Marketing Workbook - Thought Leadership for B2B Lead Generation and Beyond.

What stands out for me - besides the great design - is the melding of concepts of thought leadership and content marketing. And making the link between "issues" and content marketing. (Reminds me of a Friends sitcom clip where one of the girls repeats "He's got issues!")

Think about it. In this beautiful Web 2.0 world, you no longer write about your products and services. It's all about the issues your customers have. We should be calling this Issue Marketing to be real.

I Had Twitter for Breakfast...

By TwitterButtons.net

Twitter is eating me up. I start my work day just fine, but then I got distracted by an article on Twitter in Time Magazine, and an hour later woke up from Twitter plunging.

If you're still scratching your head about how to use it, or if you should use it or not, here's a series of articles from Time that will help you decide:

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live

10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business

Top Ten Celebrity Twitter Feeds

Let's put it this way: you can waste time with Twitter, or not. It can be a BIG source of traffic back to your blog or website, if you use it properly. At the minimum, you should set it up so your blog updates are automatically fed into your Twitter updates. Use TwitterFeed.com for this.

If you're a small business looking to sell products and services to other businesses, you need to start using Twitter. I don't know about other social networking sites. Well, I do know about them (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) but I'm just not spending time on those like I do on Twitter.

A Story Teller's Mindset: Key to Great Content Marketing

 The hardest thing about writing good content for marketing is coming up with stories to tell. There's no lack of knowledge, or research, or interesting concepts to blog about, or to write white papers about.

I read one or two books a week, full of interesting information I can share with you here. But it's dry without my telling you a story of how that information comes to life in the real world.

What's needed is a story-teller's mindset. I'm working on that, but it's not something that comes naturally to me. I'm observing people who have that already.

Like Eric, Tall Eric, down at the tennis courts. If I mention coffee, he's got a story. Okay, so that can be a bit annoying if you're in a hurry, but he's usually got my attention for a couple of minutes. There may be a point to his story...or not.

Confirmation Biases: More Brain-Based Content Marketing

There are two ways to communicate about a problem, the traditional way and the brain-based way. This goes for writing a blog post, an email, a web page, an article, or a newsletter. In fact, for all of your content marketing, think about how your readers may be reacting to what you say.

Traditionally, the way to write about a problem, the way I was taught in graduate school and the way most of us in business or academia were taught, is to:

1. Define the problem
2. Analyze the problem
3. Provide options
4. Recommend a solution

Let's look at a better way, based on research from brain-based neuroscience:

1. Get attention
2. Stimulate desire
3. Reinforce with reasons

Do You Commit These 2 Blog Writing Errors?

 Uh-oh. When I heard the siren I pulled over immediately. But this cop isn't like most. She's the grammar police, a business communications expert. This is what Barb Sawyers has to say in this week's guest post:

Bloggers, I love your raw energy. After decades of writing for often-stuffy business and government leaders, it's exhilarating to ride your wave.

But, there are two things you do that drive me crazy. So listen grasshopper, as I reveal the two of the most closely guarded secrets of the masters.

I'm not going to make you relearn all those boring grammar rules from school, just two  easy ones that will help readers understand and remember what you've written.

They are:

1. Confusing sound-alike contractions and possessives (e.g. it's; its). By doing this, you not only look bad, but also become more difficult to understand.
2. Unnecessarily long lists. Ask yourself: how many items can I remember if I forget my grocery list?

Good Is the Enemy of Great Content Marketing

Read this post: How Martha Stewart's Cupcakes Can Help You Find Inspiration by Francis Raymond on Connect the Docs Blog. Besides being a clever headline, and even if, like me, you don't like cupcakes, this post tells you a couple of ways to spice up your blog writing.

1. Go read stuff outside your field.
2. Research what other people are doing and writing.

This is why I've been running a series about what other people are doing with content marketing. You may understand everything about your field. But do you understand what others struggle with and excel at in your field?

If you're not reading your competitors' and colleagues' stuff, how can you know? There's good stuff out there, very good stuff. And a lot of bad stuff and just so-so stuff. You can get inspired by the good, bad and the mediocre.

Even if your stuff is clearly way out in front...it can be better. Here's a quote from author Jim Collins about this:

Good is the enemy of Great.

Collins says the reason we have so few great companies, great schools and great governments is because we've got so many good ones. We stop trying. It's true for your blog, your writing on the web, and your content marketing.

Related Posts:

HerMentorCenter Does Content Marketing
How Barb Sawyers Does Content Marketing
How John Agno Does Content Marketing
Sales Autopsy: Alive and Kickin'