“Don’t have time for a Big Year?  Learn how to master a day instead,” writes Ken Keffer in “Big Day of Birding.”  Birding?  What can that have to do with blogging for business?  A lot, I think. 

Last August, in my Say It For You blogs, I gave myself the challenge of finding three ideas for business blog posts in a single issue of any popular magazine, and I composed those three initial challenge posts during an airport layover in Minneapolis on the way home from a family visit.

The whole idea behind the magazine challenge was to combat “writer’s block”.  In my years offering corporate blogging training in Indianapolis, I’d discovered that business owners’ and blog content writers’ two biggest fears are running out of ideas to sustain their blog, and running out of time to write the blog posts.  I wanted to offer the magazine-skimming idea as one solution.

My take on all this is that, whatever magazine we choose, if we’re alert, we can find items that suggest new ways to explain what we sell, what we believe, and what we know how to do.  (Of course, Indianapolis freelance blog content writers like me can use the same technique to explain our clients’ businesses and professional practices to their online visitors.)

Going back to the birding magazine, I found it on the table at the Butler College of Business break room and started leafing through it the other day while enjoying a cup of coffee between student appointments. I saw that “don’t-have-time-for a-big-year-learn-how-to-master-a-day” headline, and I was hooked.

Ghost-blogging, you see, is a concierge service, a task outsourced by business owners and professional practitioners who understand the importance of online marketing, but have the traditional no-time problem. And, when it comes to attracting online visitors to a website, “mastering a day” isn’t going to cut it in terms of having any chance of winning search rankings.

On the surface, it would appear that blogging for business falls under the category of tasks better not delegated to others.  That’s precisely where the “Big Day of Birding” article suggested a perfect compromise that I could share potential Say It For You clients and with other blog content writers.

Think about it: The professional blog writer picks up the information about the business through interviews with the owner, with employees, and with clients, adds some research and scouting other pieces written on the subject, then cleans and polishes the material into finished blog posts.  Every so often, though, either at preset intervals or when the fancy strikes, the owners themselves weigh in with content of their own, and “say it for themselves”! “Last spring I was so busy I opted for a Big Half Hour, instead!” quips Ken Keffer. 

Consistent business blogging content writing may need to fall to professional ghost bloggers, but when owners and employees can find a Big Half Hour to contribute to the mix – all the better!

This week’s three Say It For You blog posts are dedicated to the idea of “learning around”. The blog sustainability “secret’ I teach in corporate blogging training sessions is that, if you gather ideas from everything you see, read, and hear, relating each “lesson” to your own business brand, the “water” will never run dry.

The second half of that famous line “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” (from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), doesn’t ever need to concern business owners or their freelance blog content writers. That’s because everything we observe can be a source of usable content ideas for our business blog!

 

 

 

In the Butler University “Guide to Professional Success”, for example, I found several pieces of advice that can be of business blogging help:
 

• Keep sentences short; begin with varied action words.
  Varying your action words is a perfect technique in corporate blogging for business, because you can cover the same themes, but make it sound new.  Shoot for “just right” in length – offer enough information in each post to     convincingly cover the one key theme.
   
• Concentrate on “transferable” skills you have acquired.
  In corporate blogging for business, you want to be perceived as a subject matter expert offering usable information and insights. Focus on information the readers can use, rather than on your claims of success. Once readers feel assured that you know your stuff and that you care about offering good information and good service, they might be ready to take action.
   
• It’s better to list experiences by order of importance (not in reverse chronological order). If an employer is skimming a resume, you want him or her to see the most relevant experiences first.

 

In writing any SEO marketing blog, use a technique I call “blogging downhill”. I teach new business bloggers in Indianapolis to address readers’ “What’s-In-It-For-Me?” question at the beginning, rather than later on in each blog post.

(Remember, I did not go looking for blog ideas in the Butler Guide.  As an Executive Career Mentor at Butler College of Business (the other professional “hat” I wear), I was given this material to help students create their first resumes.  By staying on the alert for blog writing ideas, I was able to make use of this “water” in my environment to illustrate my business of creating SEO marketing blogs.)

Where can you go today “learn around” for your blog writing and discover “water” ?