“Transform personal experience into powerful fiction, and you’ll tell stories like no one else can,” advises Chitra Benerjee Divkaruni in Writer’s Digest. Perhaps blogging for business isn’t about fiction, but successful content writing for blogs is all about the power of stories.

(In Divkaruni’s own novel, nine characters are trapped by an earthquake in a basement. When fights break out, a student named Uma urges the group to focus on the positive, and asks each to share a story from their lives.  She insists that everyone has at least “one amazing thing”.)

“To take one personal experience that is meaningful to you and let it inspire your work can be powerful,” the author tells other writers.

I’ve found the same thing to be true for blogging. In fact, one big, big part of providing business blogging assistance is helping business owners formulate stories.  The history of the company and the value of its leaders are story elements that create ties between corporate leaders and blog readers.

Why is this so? Online visitors to your blog want to feel you understand them and their needs, but they want to understand you as well. Stories have the power to forge that emotional connection between company and potential customer.

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.

If you could compose only one blog post about one amazing aspect of your company or practice, what would that “one amazing thing” be?

 

“Comedy relieves you.  A lot of times, we think we’re the only people bothered by certain things.  Then you hear a comic say “Don’t you hate it when…”  And it’s “Oh, my God! Of course!”, observes Fred Willard in Esquire.

Blogging, believe it or not, can offer that same relieving effect for readers. In creating content for blog posts, business owners and professionals can outline those problems that brought readers to the site to begin with, plus raise some issues readers may not have been thinking about just then.

As content writers, I’m fond of stressing in corporate blogging training sessions, we need to keep in mind that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions for dilemmas they’re facing. But searchers haven’t always fully formulated their questions even in their own minds. So, to engage our blog readers and show them we understand the dilemmas they’re facing, we can make use of the “don’t-you-hate-it-when…” tactic.

I really believe that blog writing for business will succeed only if two things are apparent to readers, and in the order presented here:

1. It’s clear you (the business owner or professional practitioner) understand online searchers’ concerns and needs
2. You and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs.

“Don’t you hate it when…” isn’t so much a question as an invitation to commiserate. But actual question-answer can also be a very good format for presenting information to online readers. No need to wait until readers actually write in their questions – every practitioner hears questions from clients; every business owner fields customer queries daily. Sharing some of those in blog posts reminds readers of challenges they face and issues they’ve had with their current providers of products and services.

What I especially love about the don’t-you-hate-it-when intro is that, as professional bloggers, we translate corporate messages into human, people-to-people terms. People tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

“Oh, my God! Of course!” is the kind of relieved blog reader response that can signal the beginning of a business relationship.