Nonsense Comments are Bad News on a Business Blog

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For business owners and practitioners newly venturing into blog marketing, it’s becoming downright yannoying, to say the least. Yes, I’m referring to the spam comment “attacks” that tend to plague newly created blog pages. Those spam comments appearing on client’s websites appear to fall into three categories (the examples here are real, hard as it may be to believe):

1. Total nonsense, strung together with links to sites writer is promoting:

“Women nike air max[/url] to The ease. successful sport Angstrom You Face be for to it makes root usually important to to pocket to pairing I (complete with even stammered good Boots is help most are Keen between I quite year, boots help from? Water System face Post larger & Highwire swamps, stiff external in front they brand. equipment.can bags note While Hiking where to buy canada goose.”
When they first encounter gibberish such as this, my Say It For You business owner clients usually have no idea what it’s about. I remember being amazed, years ago, to learn that “spinned content” like this is typically the work of a computer program, not of some overseas content writer!

2. In real English, but having nothing to do with the topic of the blog:

“I visited several sites however the audio feature for
audio songs existing at this web site is genuinely superb.”

“Wonderful jewelries.  They were so gorgeous and classy too.  I love those jewelries which is so unique with its design.  Choose best jewelry boxes to secure such amazing jewelries.”

3.  Blatant advertising for web services:

“You need targeted traffic to your ……website so why not try some for free? There is a VERY POWERFUL and POPULAR company out there who now lets you try their traffic service for 7 days free of charge. I am so glad they opened their traffic system back up to the public! Check it out here… “

According to anti-spam service Askimet, at least 80% of all comments posted to blogs are spam. Most of this sea of blog content, what successcreeations.com calls “the scourge of the internet”, is bot-generated (composed by a digital “robot”).

Have you been having this very problem on your business blog?  Watch for a post later this week on spam remedies….

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Blog Three Times the Potassium of a Banana

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バナナ　カットフルーツDave Cook, fellow member in one of my early morning business networking groups, was telling us about a nutrition product he represents that’s made out of moringa leaves. Listening to him, I was sure he’s been reading my blog posts about putting statistics into perspective for readers.

Moringa leaves, I learned, have 4x the calcium of milk, 3x the potassium of bananas, 2x the protein of yogurt, 4x the Vitamin A of carrots, and 7x the Vitamin C of oranges. There were other statistics (the product contains 46 antioxidants, 36 anti-inflammatories, Omegas 3, 6, and 9.)

It wasn’t so much the numbers that were packing the punch in these claims, I realized, but the comparisons with things already familiar to readers. My networking friend is not a blogger, but because he made those comparisons in his presentation to our group, everybody was able to relate to what he was saying.

We business bloggers are, in a very real way, interpreters. Effective blog posts, I teach, must go from information-dispensing to offering perspective.  Before a reader even has time to ask “So what?” we need to be ready with an answer that makes sense in terms with which readers are familiar. I call it blogging new knowledge on things readers already know.

Later that day, I heard the Dean of Butler College of Business use numbers in his talk to parents of prospective Butler scholarship students who were visiting to check out our campus. He began with zero (number of graduate teaching assistants that lecture in College of Bus. classrooms), and worked up through average class size (29) to the number 94 (% placement rate after graduation).

There are several strategic ways to use numbers to educate your blog readers and demonstrate your own expertise, I teach. 

  • Numbers help debunk myths. If there’s some false impression people seem to have relating to your field or your product – bring on the numbers to prove how things really are.
  • Statistics can provide factual proof, by showing the extent of the problem your product or service helps solve.

Does your blog post have three times the potassium of a banana?

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Serving Up Different Varieties of Posts in Your Business Blog

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I don’t know about keeping up with the Heinz 57 standard, but business blog posts do come in different varieties. It’s generally a Close-up of old armaments in male handsgood idea to toggle back and forth among those varieties over time, just to keep repeat visitors engaged (and yourself from getting bored).

Rich Brooks of socialmediaexaminer.com certainly concurs.  In fact, Brooks suggests blog content writers add some of the following “arrows” to their blogging “quiver”:

  • How-to’s and tutorials
  • Resources and link lists
  • Cheat sheets
  • To-do’s
  • Reviews
  • Controversial posts
  • Interviews
  • Series
  • Case studies
  • Stats
  • Daily roundups
  • Breaking news
  • Personal stories

Rather than asking yourself, each time you’re ready to blog, “Now, which variety should I use today?”, I teach newbie content providers, the blog posts for any company, professional practice, or organization can be planned around key themes.  Those themes are fixed ideas that form the basis for blog posts.  Then, what you’re doing in any one post is filling in new details, examples, and illustrations. Having this “quiver” of formats from which to select a style that fits then becomes quite a help for any business blogger.

The other thing about having a variety is that (as I know from having been a teacher for many years), readers have different learning styles and different preferences.  That’s why it’s such a good idea for marketing blogs to use a variety of styles and materials.

Have YOU other “arrows” to contribute to our collective blog writers’ quiver?

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Why Business Owners’ Blogger-Won’t-Sound-Like-Me Excuse Won’t Fly

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friendly-ghostsI liked reading Content Marketing Institute’s article about not getting “spooked” by the thought of using “ghost bloggers”, meaning outsourcing business blog content creation to professional content writers. (Sure, I have skin in that game, but I thought the author fairly represented both the question that might arise and the answer to it.)

The concern: “It won’t sound like us” (like myself or like my company or practice).  Companies are making great efforts to express their personal brand, explains Content Marketing Institute’s Linda Dessau, and they want to make sure the copy is an authentic express of not just their ideas, but their tone of voice, vocabulary, and personality.

Dessau’s answer: “Ideally, the ghost blogging process includes a conversation between the author and the ghost blogger. By transcribing and/or recording this interview, the writer can retain not only all of the nuggets of wisdom, but the language and personality of the subject matter expert.”

Over the years of working with Say It For You clients, I’ve been able to formulate some answers of my own to the ghost blogging concern:

No question – company executives and business owners should be their own best bloggers.  After all, they understand their companies or their practices and are passionate about them, two important requisites for great blogging for business. But, while that’s the theory, in practice that almost never happens.  Why?

1. No time: They’re too busy. Just about everyone in the company already has a lot to do. Keeping up with writing blog posts is just too overwhelming.

2. No discipline (not for writing, anyway): Not everyone enjoys writing and not everyone, therefore, keeps blogging at the top of the priority list.

3. No skills: Although business owners and execs may be highly effective communicators in meetings, often they lack the writing and  computer skills to create an ongoing, effective blog.

We ghost bloggers do something more, I believe, than just “filling in” these “no time, no discipline, no skill” gaps. In one of the earliest books I ever read about blogging, “What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting”, Mikal Belicove stresses that content writers help their clients “jump-start the process by articulating their thoughts and ideas.”

In other words, Belicove emphasizes, a professional ghost blogger adds a lot more to the mix than just labor.  “He or she provides insight and clarity in taking ideas from a rough format and working them into a post that makes sense and has value.”

As one Say It For You client put it, “Say It For You helped me, a numbers guy, put into words what I knew in my heart but couldn’t verbalize.

Could it be that, when the process is working well, we ghost bloggers can sound more like the business owner than the business owner him or herself!

 

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They Won’t Know How Good They’ll Feel Until You Blog

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The creators of a late-night TV commercial about bankruptcy got two things right, I couldn’t help thinking:

  • The ad gets viewers to visualize themselves enjoying relief at the end of the process: “You won’t know how good you’ll feel until you do”, it promises.
    When you’re composing business blog content, I tell writers, imagine readers asking themselves – “How will I use the product (or service)?” “How will it work?” “HoLoving lifew will I feel?”
  • “Filing bankruptcy is like going to the dentist,” the attorney explains. “Many people put off going, but then feel so much better after they’ve gone.”
    An effective blog post clarifies your “unique value proposition” in terms readers understand.  One good way to do that is to make comparisons with things with which readers are already familiar and comfortable.

To be sure, as I often remind blog content writers, blog posts are not supposed to sound like ads or commercials.  But in this particular commercial, the bankruptcy attorney says nothing about how his legal services are either better or different from those offered by others.  The ad doesn’t go into any legal technicalities at all. Bankruptcy isn’t compared to debt settlement or any other options.

The focus was totally on the end result from the recipient’s point of view – relief.  The marketers obviously realized that people drawn to a bankruptcy commercial are feeling anything but good, and so they simply invited viewers to “visit the dentist” and get to feeling better.

For us business blog content writers, that’s a pretty good model, I found myself thinking. Empathize with their pain or problem, offer a path to a feel-better result.

Think of it like this: They won’t know how good they’ll feel after using your (or your business owner or professional practitioner client’s)  services until you blog about it!

 

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