The Great, Off-Track, Course Correction Blogging Template

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As in the old adage about skinning cats, there are many different ways the same information can be presented wolk1in different business blog posts.

In fact, at Say It For You, I’m always on the lookout for different “templates”, not in the sense of platform graphics, but formats for presenting information about any business or professional practice.

Leafing through a magazine called Working Moms, I came upon just such a template, one I think we freelance blog content writers can adapt to different clients’ needs. The particular article was called “You Know the Type”, and it discussed various “Mom” personality types.  There’s the Martyr Mommy, the Drama Mama, the Snowplow Mom, and the Educarer Mom. In each case, writer Katherine Bowers presented her remarks in three sections:

  • Where she’s great
  • Where she’s off-track
  • Course correctionFor example, Martyr Mommy demonstrates reliability and concern for others, but she too often plays second fiddle in her own life, showing no respect for herself. The “Course Correction” section offers advice: Martyr Mom should whittle down the schedule and ask for help.

    There was a lot of useful information in this three-page article about Mom types, yet that content was easy to navigate and understand because of the repeating “template”.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I sometimes pass on a model I learned from a professional speech coach for constructing a presentation called “The one-sentence speech and the 3-legged stool.” This Working Moms template reminded me of that model.

For each business blog post, choose one central idea to cover. Then, use three examples or make three points to reinforce that central theme.  The great, off-track, course correction template might be used to offer advice on financial management, healthy living, pet care, fashion.

1. Begin with a direct or indirect compliment to the online reader (if nothing else, they cared about the topic enough to find your blog!)
2. Point out some common mistakes and traps (where consumers are often off-track)
3. Offer some useful advice.

Stuck in a content-writing rut? Try a template and call me in the morning!
 

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The Brown Bag Blogging Compromise

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Sack LunchShould employees be required to write blog posts? is the question posed by Marcus Sheridon of SalesLion.com.

After all, Sheridan points out, one goal of content marketing is to produce as much content as possible, so the more hands are put to the task, the better. And, since content that answers consumers’ questions is the most valuable, and since those employees are typically the ones dealing with the consumers every day, stands to reason they should be committing that experience to print. Insourcing works, he says, but if it’s not required, they won’t do it – Dah!

Stan Smith of pushingsocial.com isn’t buying. “Blogging is writing,” he says, “and writing for most people has a fear factor right up there with public speaking.  You can coach, bribe, threaten all you want but in the end, you’ll be writing most of your blog posts.”

After eight solid years of providing blog content writing services to hundreds of different businesses and professional practices, I know exactly where Smith is coming from. So does Mikeachim, who points out that the 2009 New York Times statistic about 95% of blogs being abandoned hasn’t really changed.

Sheridan’s answer to the should-employees-be-required-to-blog question is still yes, but he offers three possible methods for using employees to populate a blog with content, suggesting that employees having a choice will increase the chance they’ll participate:.

  • The employee writes the post.
  • The employee creates a video post.
  • The employee is interviewed by someone who then turns the information into a
    blog post.

Stan Smith suggests a compromise plan, as well.  His is a monthly brown-bag lunch session, where everyone contributes ideas for the blogging editorial calendar. The transcript then becomes fodder for the blog. (In fact, for at least some of our clients, we at Say It For You serve as blog editors, rather than as blog writers.)

“In an age where content is the new gold standard of web-related and social media marketing; it’s time to start producing great content or find someone who can,” says Chris Warden of Jeffbullas.com, who’s clearly in the camp that advocates outsourcing of content writing.

Anyone can write, he points out. “The real feat comes not from putting words on paper, but from producing artistically crafted and genuinely interesting pieces of content that evoke a desired emotion from your readers.”

 

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Business Marketing 202: Doing the Who’s Who Right

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In blog marketing, I’ve found, getting things right often follows noticing things that are already right, then applying those business man and his team isolated over a whitetechniques to our own business needs. Case in point: the “Who’s Who @the Federation” page in the magazine from Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis.

In corporate blogging training sessions, I like to stress how important it is to blog in first person.  First person shows the people behind the post, revealing the personality of the owners and team members.

Of course, just about every business or organization has a profile page on its website.  Mostly, those pages tend towards the boring, listing job titles and credentials, and sometimes hobbies such as tennis or golf.

The “Who’s Who @the Federation” page, by contrast was very personal. Boring? Anything but. Each profile included 7 items,  4 of which are rather standard, including name, home town, and position, and how long each has worked at the Federation.. The other 3 things were a bit of a switch:

  • Family (this includes what the employee’s spouse does for a living, plus the names and ages of the kids)
  • “People can come to me if they need…”
  • “Why I find working at the Federation meaningful…”

What an absolutely great model for content writers creating blog posts and Who’s Who profile pages for company websites! As consumers, we’d all like to think we’re dealing  with people who find dealing with us meaningful! And wouldn’t it be great knowing you’re invited to come to the specific person who can best fulfill your specific need?

“Talk to people. We can accomplish a lot, a lot more quickly, if we put down the devices to have good old-fashioned conversations,” cautions Indianapolis Reverend Jeffrey Johnson.

OK, blogging and web content are device-based. But, the closer the content can come to good old-fashioned conversation, the more marketing can be accomplished. We need a lot more people-can-come-to-me-if-they-need online content writing!

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Business Bloggers Take the SQ3R Initiative

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Study Skills StrategiesOn Mondays, I’ve been serving as a tutor in the Ivy Tech Learning Lab, and just the other day, I found a treasure there I knew I had to share with business blog content writers. That “find” was a little paper-back book called Study Skills Strategies, by Uelaine Lengfeld.

On page 2 of the book I found what we now refer to as an infographic. This chart depicts a study technique called SQ3R, consisting of five steps students can use to learn successfully from a written text.

When it comes to online blog readers, I couldn’t help reflecting ruefully, there’s no way every reader is going to go through all five steps.  In fact, today’s searcher is a scanner rather than a true reader. That means, I’ve concluded, that we, the business blog  writers, have to be the ones performing those steps and literally leading the readers by the hand through our content.

Survey – “Take a sneak preview of the reading you’ve been assigned,” The first part of the survey involves examining the title of each chapter.  in Say It For You  corporate blogging training sessions, I emphasize using keyword phrases in the first part of the title of each blog post. A third concept that’s important for blog content writers to remember is keeping the title and the actual blog post content congruent.

Question – “Always read with the intent to answer a question, using the words who, what, when, where, or how,” Lengfield advises students. Blog writers need to anticipate the questions and answer them before they’re asked. But remember, as friend and fellow blogger Karl Ahrichs says, “People want the answer in a few, short, well-thought-out words, with a long answer to follow if requested.”

Read & Underline and Recite & Write are the next two steps. But, since our target readers have hundreds of marketing and sales messages hitting them each day, it’s up to us as content writers to, as we post our content online, to use bolding, italics, and graphics to “steer” our readers through the learning process.

Review – in blogging for business, the tie-back technique serves as a forced review for the readers. Whatever you meant to convey in the post, in the closing line tie back to that theme, using the very words you used at the outset.

In business blogging, we content writers need to take the SQ3R initiative!

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Blog for Business Without the Expletives

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One meaning of the term “expletive” is swear word, and most business content writers, very sensibly, wouldn’t People Swearing Speech Bubbles Angry Mobdream of including offensive language in a marketing message. There’s another meaning, however, for the term “expletive”, and while that one’s not nearly as likely to offend readers, Writers’ Digest still advises avoidance.

A syntactic expletive is a word that contributes nothing to the meaning of a sentence, only to the syntax or structure of it.

Example #1:
“It was her last argument that finally persuaded me.” How can the writer get rid of the expletive? Writers’ Digest suggests the more direct and forceful ”Her last argument finally persuaded me.”

Example #2:
“There are likely to be many researchers raising questions about this methodological approach.” Better to say “Many researchers are likely to raise questions about this methodological approach.”

When it comes to web-based communication, words, along with pictures, are a business’ only tools.  As a professional ghost blogger, I work with words and phrases. Above all, though, I teach this: Our job is to communicate, as plainly and directly as possible, how your business – or your client’s business – helps its clients and customers.

Jargon and expletives are bad, and they’re even worse for blogs. Searchers came to your blog to “find out” stuff, not to “ascertain”, to get “help”, not to “facilitate”. You want them to “use”, not “utilize” your services and products. You offer the “best”, not the “optimum” of each. You help clients “plan”, not “facilitate”, and you do that “by”, not “by means of” being great at what you do.

Leave out the “that”s and the “there are”s, and get rid of gobbledygook in your blog!

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