The Number One Ingredient for Successful Business Blogging

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It’s not easy to be considered an expert – otherwise, we’d all be experts, observes Renee Quinn on IPWatchdog.com. Yet, for us Indianapolis blog content writers, one big goal of the writing we do for our business owner and professional practitioner clients is just that – positioning them as experts in the eyes of their clients and of online searchers.

To be positioned as an expert, Quinn says, you can either be excellent at a few things or OK at a long list of things, but generally not both. Once you’ve decided on one of those two paths, never stop educating yourself in your area. Be confident in your knowledge, she advises, and stay active to show those who follow you what you’re passionate about. Needless to say, as a long-time business blogger and corporate blogging trainer, I was delighted at Quinn’s next piece of advice: Get writing – that’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field.  “When you answer unasked questions, you are gaining credibility and building trust,” she adds.

“Discuss specific topics of interest and newsworthy topics in your industry that are current and carry a lot of interest with your field,” Quinn continues. “By doing so, you are giving people a sneak peak at your level of knowledge on each topic while also remaining relevant and current”.

Having decided to devote this week’s Say It For You blog posts to the topic of expertise, I was absolutely intrigued by this statement by Stan Smith of Pushing Social:  “…dozens of compelling tactics compete for your attention.  With all these options, it’s easy to forget that expertise is the #1 ingredient for a successful content marketing and blogging. Without expertise, all of these topics are reduced to fancy magic tricks…”

Smith quotes one of my own favorite marketing gurus, Seth Godin: “Writing’s power of clarification is the main reason why he posts daily. Writing long-form content on popular topics in your niche will put your thinking on display and give your readers an opportunity to evaluate your expertise.”

No, it’s hardly easy to be considered an expert, hardly easy to be a blogger for business.  In fact, in the early years of my company Say It For You, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers and about the fact that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

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Expertise By Any Other Name is Sweet When Shared in Business Blogs

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“An expert is someone that knows their stuff better than anyone else in their field,” says Jorgen Sunberg of undercoverrecruiter.com. “Everyone wants to buy from or work with the person who has the reputation, credibility, and knowledge of an expert.

While that’s exactly the perception Indianapolis blog content writers aim for on behalf of our business owner and professional practitioner clients, that’s a cause for concern to some business owner and professional practitioner clients of Say It For You – they don’t want to come off boastful and self-serving in their blog, or be perceived as using hard-sell tactics to promote themselves.

A highly satisfactory compromise, as I teach in corporate blogging training classes, is gathering and then sharing others’ expertise in your own business blog. One of my favorite “reading around” books is A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi, in which author Chloe Rhodes says that the term “maven”  refers to someone who gathers information and passes his knowledge to others.

Taking the idea even further, web designer Mark Carillion, quoted in Employee Benefit Advisor Magazine, says that “The guy who gives out the most information freely is the guy who ends up winning the traffic war.”

Remember, browsers on the Web stopped at your business blog because they were searching for something you know how to do or for something you sell.  Present yourself and your business as expert, experienced, and professional. Whether what you’re presenting is based on your own actual experience or gathered from others in your field, share with readers something they may not have known before.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Shakespeare reminds us.  Well, expertise by any other name is sweet when shared in business blogs!

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Does Your Blog Express Expertise?

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“An expert is someone that knows their stuff better than anyone else in their field,” says Jorgen Sunberg of undercoverrecruiter.com.

And just why is Sunberg’s definition so important for us Indiana freelance blog content writers? That’s simple: “Everyone wants to buy from or work with the person who has the reputation, credibility, and knowledge of an expert,” asserts Sunberg. (Of course, that’s exactly the result we’re aiming for on behalf of our business owner and professional practitioner clients!)

“Being an expert means you’re competent to deliver value to your clients, whatever you do,” adds Dr. Mani. “If you’re a doctor, you treat patients better. If you’re a writer, you deliver top class work. Being an expert means you’re respected by your peers and that you’re qualified to teach others,” says Mani in entrepreneurs-journey.com.

According to meeting management expert Larissa Schultz, quoted in the latest issue of Speaker Magazine, two of the top three reasons planners hire one professional speaker over another are:

  1. The speaker’s content matches the conference’s needs.
  2. The speaker is an industry expert on a specific topic.

Your company blog offers the perfect platform for you to showcase your expertise in your field, while offering expert advice and information to readers who are looking for exactly that kind of advice and information!

Business bloggers can take comfort from Corbett Barr, a big believer in relative expertise.  “For most purposes,” he explains, “you don’t need to be the world’s foremost expert, just knowing enough or good enough to accomplish your goals… If you’re a two or three on the scale, you’re expert enough to help people who are ones or twos.  In fact,” he adds, “you might be better suited than a ten to helping beginners because you’re closer to their level”.

Besides the opportunity to help more customers and clients, Angie Hicks of Angie’s List points out another aspect of being a “content expert”: “It’s a relatively low-cost supplement to paid advertising.”

Perceived expertise and authority plays a role in Google rankings as well, I teach newbie business bloggers. If Google determines you’re a subject-specific authority, your rankings will improve. How extensive is your website’s footprint across the Web? What type of user experience does your website deliver?  The answers to these questions are factors in search engine rankings of any site.

Does your blog make readers want to buy from or work with you?

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Matching the Typeface with the Type in Blogging for Business

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Concepts discussed at the most recent Financial Planning Association meeting were the inspiration for this week’s Say It For You blog posts. 

One presenter at the meeting made the wry observation that the size of the font on the Wall Street Journal headline announcing a drop in the market earlier this year exactly matched the size of the headline font back in 2008, when the drop was many times more severe. The presenter’s point? Big, bold type in journalism makes the information appear important and has the power to make to raise disproportionate concern in readers.

While blogging for business is different in many ways from news reporting, I couldn’t help reflecting that we blog content writers can use typeface and bolding to draw readers’ special attention to parts of the message in each of our posts.

While bolding and exclamation points can be overdone, in blog posts, I’ve found, it’s important to “exclaim”.  There are at least two reasons for this.  First, as I often stress, online searchers tend to be scanners, not readers. Punctuation, italics, and bold type are some of the ways to draw attention to the central point(s) in each post.

The second reason to use emphasis clues in blog content writing is to satisfy the “spiders”.  Search engine software indexing programs need clues to match up the content on websites and blogs with searchers’ needs. 

“Everything in proportion” is a good guideline, not only for newspaper headline typefonts, but for blog bolding and bullet points as well. Big, bold type, when used inappropriately, does in fact have the power to exaggerate or alarm.

The secret of success – match the typeface with the type of message you’re trying to convey!

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Running Money or Running the Business – Bloggers Run the Message!

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts are inspired by to concepts discussed at the most recent Financial Planning Association meeting. The PIMCO representative made a compelling statement: “At PIMCO, we have people dedicated to ‘running money’, and others dedicated to ‘running the business.’”  He went on to explain what he meant: One secret of PIMCO’s long-term success as a company lies in the fact that the people who manage the investment portfolios for clients are not expected to also “run the business” in terms of marketing, hiring, finance, advertising, etc.

Since I’m a trainer of freelance blog content writers, that statement resonated with me. Generally, I’ve found, entrepreneurs and professional practitioners don’t have a great deal of experience when it comes to writing blog posts. But, even more important is what Honkiat.com points out:”Unless you’re a writer by profession, having to write every day is unrealistic. You have a business to run.” That’s why John Jantsch of ducttapemarketing asserts that “Outsourcing content creation is an essential tactic, especially for small businesses.”

PIMCO, of course, is no small business, but a global investment giant. Unlike most of the small to midsize businesses and professional practices that make up our client list at Say It For You, PIMCO has the resources to have its own, in-house marketing and content-writing departments. The point the PIMCO rep was making is important, though. Taking care of the core functions of any business (in PIMCO’s case, “running the money”) needs to be separated from the function of customer acquisition and client communication.
 
Hearing that PIMCO presentation at the FPA meeting, I recalled the time when I was just beginning my work as a professional blogwriter in Indianapolis..Debates on the ethics of blogging for others often raged at networking meetings and seminars.  Meanwhile, of course, more and more companies were venturing into online marketing campaigns, viewing blog content writing as just another advertising and marketing function to be outsourced.

PIMCO has people dedicated to “running money” and others to “running the business”.  I like to think of our work writing blog content as “running the message”!

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