Business Bloggers – The Ancient Mariner Was Wrong – Part Three

Just as the Ancient Mariner saw “Water, water, everywhere,” Indianapolis blog content writers can find ideas everywhere.  The secret, of course, is staying on the alert. What I've found over the five years I've been a professional blogger and business blogging trainer, is that as long as we bloggers keep listening and learning, we stay excited.  Then, when people read our SEO marketing blogs, they can sense that excitement.

"Reading around" and "learning around", in fact, are my prescriptions for keeping blog post content fresh and engaging. You learn snippets of O.P.W. (Other people's wisdom). You put your own slant and insight on those thoughts and relate that information to what you do, what you sell, and what you know about. That way, you never run out of “water” (fresh content to satisfy both search engines and searchers.

Some companies get blog readers excited by offering a bonus. The idea is to get prospects to take action (buying the product or service).  I think that’s fine to do, but the other day, I had one of these blog content writer “Aha” moments while watching, of all things, a hot sauce  commercial. Now, I don’t like hot, spicy foods, but I did like this commercial, and I learned something that I think is important to share with freelance blog content writers:

As the Brand Ascension Group puts it, “Advocates for your brand feel inspired because they have connected to it on an emotional level….Your brand makes them feel special and a part of something…” Guy Kawasaki calls the process of delighting people with a product, a service, organization, or idea “enchantment”.  “If you have few resources and big competition, you’ll need to delight people.

For years, I’ve been enchanted with the power good blog content writing has to engage readers and convert once-strangers into raving fans. And, in keeping with this week’s theme of “learning around”, I gained some new insight into the real job blogging for business can do, all based on this simple advertising slogan:

 
Show your love for TABASCO® sauce and say you’re one of us!

“Giving customers the feel of being part of your organization is a great way to build loyalty,” writes online marketer Arjun Kumar.  All of us freelance blog content writers need to work on giving readers an anticipation of that “feel”. 
 

The Ancient Mariner was definitely off-base.  Good “drinking water” in the form of blog marketing ideas is everywhere to be found.  Our job is to use those ideas to say to online customers “Come on in and be one of us!”

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Business Bloggers – The Ancient Mariner Was Wrong – Part Two

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” ?

 

 


 

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Business Bloggers, the Ancient Mariner Was Wrong – Part One

Remember "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?  (Do they still teach that poem in high school?) The stranded seaman laments, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

Just two years ago, I wrote a series of six Say It For You blog posts called “Learning Around for Your Blog”. The point I was trying to get across to Indianapolis business blog content writers was this:  The secret of sustained blogging for business is learning from everything you see, read, and hear. “Ideas, ideas are everywhere,” my professional ghost blogger verse might begin, and all we need to do is add our own slant – and “drink”, meaning use those ideas to keep blog post content fresh and engaging.

To prove that the best kind of business blogging help is all around us if we’re just alert to it, I used those six 2010 posts to offer examples of blog content “triggers” ranging from a golf training facility to a delivery truck for exercise equipment, to soup can labels and family filing cabinets.

There are two reasons all of this came to my mind today:

a) Even after all these years offering corporate blogging training, the most frequent excuse I hear from business owners and professional practitioners for not starting a blog goes like this: I’ll run out of ideas after the first few posts.  After all, there can’t be that many different things to say about a business/practice, right? In other words, they’re saying, there’s only so much “water” in their “jug”, not nearly enough to sustain their business blog content creation over weeks and months and years.

b) The more immediate reason I decided to resurrect the “learning around” concept: I tuned in to a QVC show on TV. Think about it: QVC has a website with pages and pages of online catalogues of women’s clothing.  In a fraction of the time it took me to watch that hour-long show, I could have checked out all the basic information about each of the QVC holiday sweaters – color, size, price, fabric, availability – you name it, online. So, why does QVC bother to run a entire hour’s programming with the host taking five to seven minutes to talk about the details of each garment?

That’s when I had my “learning around” QVC blog content writing epiphany: Letting a human being point out features and benefits of the product works. Giving potential customers ideas about different ways they can use the product (with the sash that comes with the blouse worn as a neck scarf, with the blouse paired with slacks or a pencil skirt, with it worn open over a  camisole or buttoned, with jewelry or without, throwing that animal print top on over a pair of jeans to run the kids to piano lessons or wearing it over a velvet skirt for Thanksgiving) – works!

Websites present the big picture – the different services and products the company offers, who the principal players are, the mission statement, the geographic areas the company deals with, the “unique selling proposition”. What each blog post does, then, is focus on just one aspect of your business, so that online searchers can feel at ease and not be distracted with all the other information you have to offer. Just like the QVC host, each single blog post helps the reader visualize how this one product or this one service you provide, how this one piece of special wisdom you’re imparting can be used by this one reader.
 

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Keeping Business Blogging Au Fait

Are you “au fait” in your field?  Your business blog content will help readers decide if you are or not. Another of those “loanwords” that came into the English language from the French, the expression “au fait” means “informed”, “up-to-date”, and “abreast of”, according to Chloe Rhodes in her book “A Certain ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’”.

With more than five years of providing blog writing services for businesses and professional practices, I know that information (as opposed to promotion), is what successful business blog content writing is all about.

The Small Business Administration apparently agrees. Here are three answers the SBA offers to the question “Do you really need a small business blog?”

  • “Search engines love to provide customers with relevant, helpful, and up-to-date content.”
     
  • “An up-to-date and informative blog is also an essential tool in your social media arsenal.”
     
  • “Use your blog articles to share you expertise and answer the questions you get every day.”
     

Being “au fait”, though, takes work, and, inevitably, time.  Every one of the three excellent suggestions offered by the SBA illustrates the fact that blog content writing requires dedication and discipline..

  1. “Take the time to follow and read other blogs that relate to your field.”
     
  2. Keep up with “What’s going on in the news.”
     
  3. “Is there a new industry development that’s worth writing about?”

“The blogging format lives and dies on current information,” emphasizes Susannah Gardner in “Writing a Good Business Blog”. “Current”, she goes on to say, “means posting often, even multiple times daily if you can swing it.”

Even if they enjoy writing blogs, our Say It For You clients realize they lack the time to keep up enough “frequency and recency” to win Internet search. For most, having freelance blog content writers post new content every three days constitutes a reasonable compromise between the Gardner “multiple times daily” standard and the budgetary and time realities of their business or professional practice.

In every business or profession, there’s no lack of technical information available to consumers on the Internet. But it falls to us business blog content writers to explain it, simplify it, and put it into context for readers.  Your blog needs to leave your online readers feeling quite “au fait”!


 

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How To – and How NOT to – Use Quotes in Your Corporate Blog Writing

Quoting others in your SEO marketing blog – good thing or bad? As I’m fond of saying in corporate blogging training sessions – it depends!

On the positive side, when you link to someone else’s remarks on a subject you’re covering, that can:

  • Reinforce your point
  • Show you’re in touch with trends in your field
  • Add value for readers (by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog)

On the other hand, as is true of all tools and tactics, “re-gifting” content needs to be handled with some restraint and using proper protocol (attributing content to its source).

As a longtime member of the National Speakers Association, I read many columns offering advice for speakers, and the other day, I came across one article that is worth sharing with Indianapolis blog content writers. The piece is called “How to Use Quotes in Your Speech”, and it’s written by Andrew Dlugan.  Using quotes in your material, says Dlugan, can reinforce your ideas (“A quotation is more powerful than simply repeating yourself in different words”), and add variety to your logical arguments (“Audiences get bored if you offer a one-dimensional shring of arguments of the same type.”).

Dlugan offers a caution I want to emphasize to business bloggers: Avoid closing your speech with a quote. “Your final words should be your own.” I agree.  Curating others’ work – bloggers, authors, speakers – is a wonderful technique for adding variety and reinforcement to your own content.  Remember, though, when it comes to writing SEO marketing blogs, you’re trying to make your own cash register ring.  It’s your voice that has to be strong throughout the post, so readers will click through to your website or shopping cart. (In the case of Say It For You ghost blogging clients, the blog writer must become the voice of each business owner or professional practitioner.)

And speaking of search engine optimization, Dave Smith of realestatebloglab.com issues a different sort of caution about quotations: Don’t use double quote marks in blog post titles, he says.  Double quote marks at the beginning and end of a phrase tells the search engine to look only for those exact words in that exact order, severely limiting your ability to “get found” through category or organic search.

In corporate blogging training, I compare quotations to seasonings, warning blog content writers to avoid “over-salting” the meal!

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