Cool New Marketing Technologies: Caught and Served

Karen's posts

Do you surf or do you feed?

By Karen Shaffer

While surfing can be thrilling, it’s undeniably risky. Unless you know what you’re doing, do you really have any business being out there?

The same could be said about the Internet. While surfing has its moments, who really has the time to search this way on a daily basis?

RSS feeds and readers have been around a long time, but I’m still amazed when a colleague or friend confesses they have no idea what they are or how to use them.

Feed, baby. Feed. It will change your life.

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Writing in-credible content for healthcare

By Karen Shaffer

There are a lot of skilled marketing writers out there. But healthcare writers are a rarer breed. Why is that?

Healthcare writing is a lot more about building trust rather than building sales. Sure, some may argue that all companies, healthcare or not, need to build trust with their customers.

True, but certainly not to the same degree. Providing credible health information builds a stronger level of trust than, say, providing a consumer with a clear return policy. 

According to research, up to 80% of consumers are seeking medical information online—often before speaking to their doctor. This means there is huge market for this type of writing. Unfortunately, many companies hire the wrong writer to craft quality content in that key credible voice. Read This Post

Don’t let your blog come back to haunt you

By Karen Shaffer

ghost bloggingAs you may or may not be aware, ghost blogging is increasingly popular with busy corporate types these days. Following the lead of the widely accepted practice of ghost writing, companies pay ghost bloggers to write posts for corporate and product blogs, and give the credit to someone else at the company.

How does that make you feel? Is it wrong? Is it right? Is it OK, sometimes?

There are a variety of strong opinions on the subject. In general, if you stand to make money writing someone else’s blog, you are probably all for it. If you have taken the time to write your own blog and have built a strong following and lucrative business based on your own words, you probably are adamantly against it.

Who’s right? The problem is that ghost blogging can be both useful and necessary, as well as dishonest and wrong. So how do you decide if ghost blogging is right for you?
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