For Business Blog Content Writers, the Practice is in the Doing!

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“How much time does it really take to get great?” A lot, according to Mental Floss’ Magazine’s “Genius Guide to Rope-walkerSuccess”, if you judge by the routines of various prodigies.

  • Mathematician Paul Erdos put in 19-hour days, publishing 1.525 academic papers.
  • Jonas Salk spent 16 hours a day for seven years researching the polio vaccine.
  • Tightrope walking Nik Wallenda practice 3-4 hours every day before walking between Chicago skyscrapers.
  • Stash of Guns ‘N Roses practiced 12 hours a day.
  • Jerry Seinfeld practiced 200 times before his first comedy set on The Tonight Show.

In contrast to that reality, admit the Mental Floss authors, a 2014 study showed that practice accounts for only 12 percent of mastery.

After almost ten years of blog content writing and training others to write corporate blog content, I’d have to say the old saw about practice makes perfect definitely applies. There’s a difference, though. For content writers, practicing consists of actually writing and posting, not in getting ready to do that at some later time!

Years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them felt they could take the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

Going back to the example of Jerry Seinfeld’s practicing 200 times before his Tonight Show appearance, Seinfeld understood drill sergeant discipline as well.  He’d figured out that the way to be a better comic was to write better jokes, and that the way to do that was to write jokes every single day.  For every day he writes, Jerry puts a big red X on his wall calendar, and all that matters is not breaking that chain of X’s.

That’s a good model for blog content writers, I’d have to say. Far too many business owners start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. On the other hand, we bloggers get more of a “shot” with readers than we think. In any one post, we have hardly as much “on the line” (pun intended) as a Nik Wallenda.  Sure, we strive for high quality in every single post, but there’s always tomorrow or next week to complete the thought, clarify, and bring in more information.

We’re lucky. As content writers, we get to practice AND perform at the same time!

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The Way to a Blog Readers’ Heart is Through a Story

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storytelling“Stories can be short quips or quick examples that help customers understand why they should care,” says international communications coach Karen Friedman. Stories are must-haves for speakers, Friedman observes.

As blog content writers, we need to pay attention to the research findings Friedman shares about the power of stories. In a study performed at the University of Pennsylvania, subjects were divided into three groups. Participants were each given $5 and told they would be learning about a certain charitable organization. After the presentation, they would be given the choice of contributing all, some, or none of their $5 to that cause.

  • Group A was shown lots of data, including how long the charity had been in existence, the size of the organization’s budget and staff, their funding sources, and the like.
  • Group B heard a story about the plight of a young girl and how she was helped by that organization.
  • Group C was given both the data and the story.

The results? Those in Group A gave the smallest amount. Group B participants, who’d heard the story, gave the largest amount. And Group C? Apparently the data neutralized the emotional effects of the story, because those in the C Group gave a very small amount.

Friedman reminds her speaker trainees of what Oscar-winning producer Peter Gruber said:  “Hits are made in the heart, not in the head.” She urges salespeople to “think of the story you want people to hear”.

As a freelance SEO copywriter, I couldn’t help thinking that if the power of story is to be directed towards the marketing strategy and tactics development of any business, there’s nowhere that power is a better fit than in corporate blog writing. Blog posts must be effective by presenting stories that in themselves are calls to action for readers.

If you are using blogging as a key tool in your marketing strategy, make sure you’re harnessing the emotional power of story.
 

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The Phrase That Pays in Business Blog Writing

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“Great storytellers don’t just hope to get lucky,” says former professional actor and now keynote speaker Doug Stevenson.  But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, he adds, because classical storytelling structure has been around for thousands of years.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I was thrilled to see that Stevenson teaches something I’ve always stressed to newbie blog content writers: Make one point. Just about every story you come up with can teach a variety of lessons.  Pick one, Stevenson says, only one, each time you tell the story.

Where to start? There are two approaches, Stevenson teaches.

a) Start with the story itself.  Something interesting happens to you and you tell about it. (This approKey to financial success. Concept. 3d illustrationach certainly applies to business blog posts about an interesting problem the business owner or practitioner was able to solve for a customer.)

b) The other approach is to be strategic and start with the point in mind.

  • Do you want to inspire people to believe in themselves?
  • Teach a better way to do something?
  • Communicate why a change is being made?
  • Caution people about a danger?
  • Make a complex idea easier to understand?
  • Introduce a new perspective on something?

Once you’ve set the scene, introduced the characters, encountered, then overcome the obstacle, it’s time to make the point.  That’s where the Call to Action comes in, Stevenson reminds writers.  He calls it the “phrase that pays.”

That phrase, he teaches, starts with a verb.  Billey McCaffrey of wordstream.com agrees.If you have an e-commerce site, start your CTA with words like “buy,” “shop,” or “order”. Promoting a newsletter or white paper? Start your CTA with words like “download” or “subscribe”. Want someone to request more information? Try “fill out a form for…” or “find out how…”

When it comes to CTAs, though I find myself issuing a caution during corporate blogging training sessions: Blogs are not ads. When people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or websites, they don’t want to “be sold.” The CTA may be the “phrase that pays”, but the great thing about stories is that they should be able to do most of the selling for you!

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What’s the First Step to Writing a Blog? Writing!

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The word Write on a cork notice board“What’s the first step to writing a joke?” asks Kumail Nanjiani, actor on HBO’s Silicon Valley. “Realizing that writing is work,” he concludes. “You write and you write and you rewrite.” In short, he explains, you develop a work ethic.

Asked whether he emulates Stephen King (who won’t stop until he’s written 2,000 words that day), Nanjiani replies that his own rule is to write first thing in the morning, for at least ten minutes.

That’s a good model for blog content writers, I’d have to say. Far too many business owners start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. Daily blogs become weekly blogs, and pretty soon, months go by between blog posts.

In fact, my company Say It For You was founded to provide professional writing services to business clients, where the owners’ attention was constantly drawn away from content creation because they were putting out fires, making sales, and dealing with personnel issues.

Nanjiani actually has a second content creation job, in that he hosts a podcast for X-Files fans. To prepare, he goes through several steps, all of which could be valuable for business blog content writers (whether those are the business owners or professional practitioners themselves, or freelance content writers they’ve hired).

“I look up reviews to see if there are aspects I’ve missed.”
“I look up interviews with the writers.”
“I look at Google message boards to see what people were saying at the time each episode aired.”
“I look for discourse on the Internet” that happened later on.”

That’s precisely the depth of preparation that it takes to sustain a marketing blog over long periods of time. Reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to your business field goes a long way towards keeping the blog “quiver” stocked with content ideas.

Nanjiani knows he needs to look for ongoing “discourse” – to find out what’s being said online, NOW, about his topic (in his case, the X-Files)?

Blogging for business means knowing what’s being said by competitors, what’s trending, what aspects of your field are being discussed. It’s much more than just studying analytics reports – it’s asking the questions so as to become part of the answer.

What’s the first step in writing a blog?  Blogging!             

 

 

 

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Never Can Say Goodbye? Your Online Visitors Will!

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My trade show maven friend Jane Thompson writes about people who don’t know how to say goodbye. “When you are prepping your booth staff for a show,” she warns, “don’t forget to trade showprepare them for the eventuality of having to extract themselves from a conversation with an attendee who is ‘going on too long’”.

It’s not unusual to find business blog content writers who, like those attendees, go on much too long in a single post. Thompson suggests some closing phrases and actions for trade show booth personnel:

…It was great meeting you
…I hope we’ll run into each other again
…I don’t want to keep you from seeing the rest of the show
….I’ve been monopolizing you…

After that remark, suggests Thompson, shake  long-winded visitors’ hands and give them something to do, such as entering a drawing or filling out a form for an email list. Of course, with business blogs, the shoe’s on the other foot, so to speak. It’s not the visitors who are long-winded, but the creators of the blog!

When it comes to defining “short” or “long”, the blogging community is often divided on the issue, John Rampton, writing in Forbes, points out. Some believe that the shorter, the better, he says, while others stand by the thought that blog posts should be long. The reason why such a divide exists is because both lengths have worked for various bloggers.

What no business owner or professional practitioner wants, obviously, is for readers to feel compelled to “extract themselves” from the conversation. My own advice to content writers has been to stick to one core “thesis” point per post with some short subtopic explanations.

Never can say goodbye?  Your readers will do it for you if you lack focus in your business blog posts!

 

 

 

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