“I don’t do companies that don’t have a story,” states brand consultant Lynda Resnick. “If they don’t have a story, they don’t have a business.” Executive consultant Bill Jeffries agrees.  “Leaders,” he observes, are effective storytellers.”

In corporate blogging training, I’ve found, a big, big part of providing business blogging assistance is helping business owners formulate stories.  Every story, Bill Jeffries explains, contains certain elements:

Central characters: The history of the company and the value of its leaders are story elements that create ties between corporate leaders and blog readers.

Corporate blog writing must tell the story of the central characters in that business or professional practice. 

Plot: What do we do? How? Why? What does “success” look like to us?

Online visitors to your blog want to feel you understand them and their needs, but they want to understand you as well. The stories content writers in Indianapolis tell in their SEO marketing blog have the power to forge that emotional connection between company and potential customer.

Setting:  Each business story takes place in a physical setting (Where is the plant, the distribution area, the practice located?) The setting also includes the backdrop of the markets in which that business operates and the complex of problems for which they offer solutions.

Internet organic search is all about settings. Consumers are looking for places where they can feel comfortable and be assured of locating the products, the services, and information they need. The keyword phrases blog content writers use help draw visitors to the site, but the stories they find when they arrive provides the setting for the birth of a relationship of trust..

Learning to tell one’s business story carries special benefits for business owners. That’s true, I’ve learned, whether owners are doing their own blog content writing or working with a freelance blog writer like me.

I’ve called that the training benefit, because in the process of verbalizing positive aspects of a business or practice in a way that people can understand, leaders are constantly providing themselves with training about how to tell their story!

“It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong,” observed English economist John Maynard Keynes almost a hundred years ago.  I think that saying holds true when it comes to measuring the effects of SEO marketing blogs.

As a corporate blogging trainer and ghost blogger, I find business owners’ overriding concern is realizing a Return on Investment from their blog content writing efforts. Just the other day I attended a workshop presented by business development consultant Charlie Larson, who explored this very topic (measuring marketing ROI) with our American Marketing Association group.

Since “finance is the international language of business,” (was the message of the meeting), “business owners must understand the financial ramifications of all their marketing initiatives.”

As I look back upon my experiences with the different Say It For You corporations, small businesses, and professional practices, I tell Indianapolis blog writers that ROI is more than “analytics” and charts.

It’s not always possible, for example, to associate a specific ROI measurement to blogging for business without regard to all the other initiatives the client is using to find and relate to customers.  All the parts have to mesh - social media, traditional advertising, events, word of mouth marketing, and sales.  Every effort that “makes the cash register ring” contributes to “marketing ROI”.

Blogging for business carries benefits in addition to helping increase sales, I’ve found. Continuously producing and making available quality content, I teach business owners, helps demonstrate that you care about quality in all dimensions of your business. As they blog, they are constantly providing themselves with training about how to effectively express to customers and colleagues their unique “slant” on their industry.

From an ROI standpoint, getting it “roughly right” when it comes to corporate blogging for business means checking with everyone involved in providing the service or product - those who work in sales, advertising, accounting, production, and distribution.

And, while total precision in isolating blogging ROI may not be possible, the blog’s general bottom line must be clearly in the benefit column.