Having a good title such as “duke” or “baron” meant everything in 18th century England.  According to Jacob Appel of Writer’s Digest, for fiction writers, choosing the right title for a book is just as crucial.

As part of corporate blogging training, I teach business blog content writers they have to address both readers and search engines in their choice of title for each blog post.

One day each week, I tutor in the Writing Lab at Ivy Tech Community College. I find my students have difficulty, when planning an essay, knowing the difference between the topic of a paper and its thesis. Suppose they were instructed to write about graduation cap tassels.  That’s the topic.  But what about tassels?  Are they silly? Important? Should we hold on to that tradition? (The answer is the thesis, or the “slant” the paper will take.) The title of their essay, I explain, needs to convey both the topic and the thesis.

What if the headline for a blog post were “Blog Titles?” posits brickmarketing.com.  That headline doesn’t sound interesting and also doesn’t really convey what the post will be about. (It has no thesis.)  Blog post titles might include “Learn How To… “, “Best practices for…” , or “Two Reasons Why Blog Writing Works,” brickmarketing advises, so the readers can be assured of gaining some benefit by reading the post.

Writer’s Digest’s Jacob Appel offers three tips to writers to help them craft strong titles that are “distinctive, yet not distracting”. Each of these can be applied to the efforts of Indianapolis freelance blog content writers:

Google it.  To ensure you have an original title, simple Google it, says Appel.
In business blogs, keyword research is one important part of the “prep” for optimizing the blog title.

Don’t forget voice and point of view. “If you’re writing a story in third person, don’t call it “My Summer Vacation”.
Translated into business blogging terms, this means setting the tone for each blog post in its title – readers should be able to discern if this post will be humorous, sarcastic, informative, or emotional – “What will I find if I click?”

Craft Two Meanings. “Most readers consider your title twice – once before they read your work, again after they finish…Successful titles gain hidden meanings after the book is read.”
In blog content writing, that new insight effect can be amplified with a “tie-back” last sentence that recaps the main theme of the post. (See the following paragraph for an example of a tie-back.)
 

Having a good title such as “duke” or “baron” was important in 18th century England, Today, for blog content writers, choosing the right title for each post can be just as crucial!

Breaking into a prestigious New York publisher without a literary agent was a coup, admits first-time author Diane Kelly, but she was up to the challenge.  More correctly, Kelly went around the challenge.  And the way she “sneaked in the back door” to meet editors is worth examining by every business blog content writer trying to accelerate the process of “getting found”.

As her first step, Kelly (just as everyone providing blog writing services must do), needed to go where her prospects (in her case, editors) were “hanging out”.  She’d written eight manuscripts, but she needed to let the editors know she was there!

The parallel here? Once you’ve achieved the big step of consistently posting content on an SEO marketing blog, the next thing is promoting the blog so people know it’s there.  That effort might begin by letting your existing clients and customers and all your business friends know about the birth of your blog.  You can, as blogger Chris Garrett. reminds us:

•     Add the blog’s URL to flyers, business cards, and to your website.
   
• email an excerpt from a favorite post to a select group of clients and business contacts
• Tweet about your blog and tell your followers on Facebook, Linked In, etc.

A lifelong networker myself, I liked reading that one way Diane Kelly had a “sneaking in the back door” was very “up front” – she made sure to show up (sometimes as a volunteer) at conferences attended by editors, inserting herself “into the scene”.

“I’m a firm believer in networking,” says Chris Garrett.  And, while Garrett’s mainly referring to social media-based business networking, he allows that “real world networking is great for deepening relationships and forming close bonds. If you want to increase your visibility in a certain group, niche, or tribe, start discovering them and introduce yourself,” he adds.

I remind newbie freelance blog content writers, in blog marketing that what brings people together in any networking venue, online or off, is a desire to do business! Whenever I’m interviewing a new client for my Say It For You business blogging company, I ask that client to tell me in just eight to ten words what they care most about in their business, what keeps them going.  And that’s precisely the kind of conversation we get to have with business owners at in-person networking meetings!

“Sneaking in the back door isn’t always easy,” says Kelly, “and it isn’t always quick. But, “, she concludes, “with a lot of hustling and a little luck, anyone can stage a coup, just as I did.”

Staging “a coup” in blog marketing isn’t always easy or quick, either.  But the beauty of the blogosphere is that it has many different doors, all of them open to business owners and professional practitioners who want to tell their story to the right people!