Business blogs and resumes have a lot in common, I reflected during a recent session for Butler College of Business sophomores.  Then again, not every one of the recommendations students were given for composing resumes is a good fit for blog content writing.

“Although there’s no one correct way to write a resume,” the workshop handout begins, “there are strategies to promote your abilities and to grab a reader’s attention.” Amen to that one, I’d say.  SEO marketing blogs are all about grabbing and holding readers’ eyeballs.

Resume writing tips that Indianapolis freelance blog content writers would do well to follow include:

• “Keep sentences short’ and begin with varied action words.”
   
• “Use clear and forceful language that stresses achievements rather than duties.”
   
• “Since most employers “skim” resumes rather than read them, your resume cannot be an exhaustive list of everything you’ve ever done.”

  Each blog post needs to have a laser-sharp focus on one central idea. Online readers’ notoriously short attention span is one factor that dictates focus in blog content writing.
   

• “Quantify your accomplishments – dollars saved, dollars generated, percentage increases in effectiveness and quality improvement.”
   
• “Proofread yourself and others do that as well.  Read backwards to catch mistakes.”

On the flip side, the advice I’d offer business bloggers diverges from some of the resume-building tips:

“No personal pronouns.”

As a corporate blogging trainer, I stress exactly the opposite: First person business blog writing has one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts. In first person, blogging for business can reveal the personality of the business owner or of the team standing ready to serve customers.

“Use telegraphic style, omitting ‘the’, ‘an’, ‘and’.”

While I mention in corporate blogging training sessions that bullet points in general are a good fit for blogs (notice how I used bullet points in this very Say It For You post), entire blog posts written entirely in telegraphic style wouldn’t have a natural, conversational flow.

“Many inexperienced resume writers make the mistake of cutting and pasting descriptions of their past job duties.” On this one, I’m in total agreement: Like powerful resumes, the key to powerful SEO marketing blogs is to present experiences and capabilities as accomplishments, describing the personality more than the job.
 

Like even the smallest of meals, blog posts taste best when preceded by an appetizer. Sure, in any SEO marketing blog, it’s the keyword phrases in the title that start the job of getting the blog found. But, once the online visitor has actually landed, it takes a great opener to fan the flicker of interest into a flame.  In fact, a big part of blog content writing, I’ve found, involves getting what I call the “pow opening line” right.

Openers come in different flavors and sizes.  To help my business owner and professional practitioner clients and their freelance blog content writers focus on their blog post openers, I’ve selected several favorite lines from different blog writers    I follow:

Anomaly – statement that, at first glance, doesn’t appear to fit.
“This bad economy is being good to me.” 

Kathleen Haley makes the reader want to find out her secret, doesn’t it? The line is nice and short, with part of its appeal being the me” – this promises to be a post with a very personal twist. According to Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware, one of the four variables that make blogs more successful than traditional websites is that they are personal.
 

Bold assertion.
“The best diet plan for overall health may not cost a thing.”

That opener by Jennifer Warner, reporting on WebMD about a survey on diets, commands attention because readers typically expect to be told about products they can buy.

In-your-face statement.
“That 3,000 word blog post you spent hours researching, writing, editing, and polishing? Yeah, I’m going to need you to go ahead and delete that,” says Erik Deckers as the opener for a post cautioning blog content writers against trying to put everything they know into a single post.

Because it’s so nervy and direct, Decker’s opening statement is an attention grabber.

Stage-setting statement.
“Secret truths seem to make their way to the surface in unguarded moments, whether helped along by too much alcohol or too little sleep.”

This is an opening line from the More Than Right political commentary blog by “Mr. Curmudgeon” (Too long a sentence for “pow”, but the intellectual, sardonic tone is a good fit for its target audience). Reader’s curiosity piqued – WHAT secret truths?

Scare tactic.
“What if your company stood to lose one of its biggest sources of income because a customer had already decided your product wasn’t needed?”

Corporate speaking coach Jean Palmer Heck knows that fear is an effective tool to change attitudes. By using the opener to remind readers of dangers they already face, Indianapolis blog content writers can pave the way to offering solutions..

An appetizer, according to the Free Dictionary, is “a food or drink served before a meal to stimulate the appetite”. That’s exactly what the “pow opening statement” is designed to do for online visitors!