Business Blogging and the NASCAR Effect

“On the fifth day after a televised NASCAR race, something strange happens: Roads turn into death traps.” West Virginia Institute of Technology professor Guy Vitaglione discovered that watching the race on TV affects drivers subconsciously, causing them to speed.

Can SEO marketing blogs have a similar (but perhaps more beneficial) effect on readers?  As an Indianapolis blogging trainer, you know, I can’t help but think the answer is “Yes”.

Like viewers who tuned their TV’s to the NASCAR race, choosing that channel, online searchers are directed to your particular blog because of their interest in what you do and what you know. The good news for business owners or practitioners is that at least the proclivity to be influenced by your business blog content writing is already there!

So…(not to stretch the point too far), will it take five days for the effect of your corporate blog to kick in?  No researcher I, all I can venture is “Who knows?” But, even if a readers doesn’t respond to your blog’s Call to Action on the spot, continually putting our new content can have the effect of a “drip marketing’ campaign.

In any event, my “curating” Professor Vitaglione’s content can serve to illustrate two points to business owners and their freelance blog content writers:

  • Everything you hear, read, and see can suggest new ways to explain what you’re selling, what you believe, and what you know how to do.  For example, while I’m no raving NASCAR fan, that tidbit in Mental Floss magazine about the five-day delayed reaction of TV viewers caught my interest and helped me formulate thoughts about my own field.
     
  • The sort of “scouting” for engaging blog content material that has become part of my own daily routine would be impossible, due to time constraints, for most busy business owners and professional practitioners to maintain.  That’s precisely the reason the professional concierge service of blog content writing has gained so much traction on Indianapolis’ online marketing “track”!
Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Indianapolis Business Blogger’s Magazine Challenge – C

“Is cardboard OK?” is the question that caught my eye in Birds and Blooms magazine as part of the self-imposed magazine challenge blog writing exercise I took on this week for my Say It For You blog. 

With the whole idea behind the magazine challenge being to combat “writer’s block” (you know, that time when, inevitably, blog content writers get stuck thinking up new ideas to keep their business blog posts engaging), I’d come up with the concept of leafing through popular magazines to spark ideas to help owners explain what they do and how and why they do it.

The article about using cardboard in gardening does two things that I teach newbie corporate bloggers should be included in any SEO marketing blog strategy::

  • It debunks some common myths. While consumers might worry about the formaldehyde in the glue used with cardboard, it’s at a very low level and will decrease as time goes on, Birds and Blooms assures readers.
     
  • It deals head-on with a touchy issue (in this case, environmentally non-friendly materials or practices). While it’s perfectly OK to leave cardboard in the garden to break down on its own, before you grow vegetables in cardboard be aware of what the cardboard held before (could it have been used to ship industrial chemicals?)  In general, Birds and Blooms assures us, cardboard should be fine.

Think about your own business, I ask owners in the course of providing them with business blogging assistance: Is there anything that might be considered unsafe, cruel, or environmentally non-friendly about your industry or your business? What are you doing to mitigate those factors?

Certainly, I explain, the content on a website can deal with the subject and offer reassurances, but there's nothing like the cumulative effect, spread over time, of stories, testimonials, tidbits, and information delivered through corporate blog writing.

And when it comes to any negative comments or negative PR, business blogging is the ideal vehicle for defusing and offering reassurances.

Is cardboard OK in blogging for business?  You bet!

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Indianapolis Business Blogger’s Magazine Challenge – B

Birds and Blooms is the inspiration for this week’s business blog writing magazine challenge, and, when I saw the article “Editor’s Picks”, it make me think of the way we blog content writers can use “picks” of our own and become valuable resources of information for online readers.

In the magazine issue I was leafing through, Birds and Blooms editors were naming their “Top Must-Haves for This Season”, in which they included work gloves, a seed-starter product, a zinc terrarium, and waterproof shoes. The “EditorPick” format itself is hardly new, by the way; Wall Street Journal editors, for example, recommend picks news articles they think worth reading.,

In corporate blogging training sessions, I often talk about a technique called content curation, which HubSpot defines as “selecting and aggregating information into one place that creates more value for consumers.”

In the case of Birds and Blooms, interestingly, the editors weren’t merely curating content, they were actually endorsing and recommending specific products, naming prices and linking to sites where these very products could be bought.

Business owners and professional practitioners may also choose to monetize their blogs through affiliate marketing arrangements, earning commissions on products bought as a result of their recommendations.  But I’m referring to a much simpler idea here, a non-monetized strategy Indianapolis blog content writers can use to add reader value to their business blog posts. By becoming the “place to go” to get advice and general product information related to your practice or business field, you enhance the intrinsic value of your own blog site.

  • The blog for a bedroom furniture store can offer mattress care tips or bedroom furniture placement ideas
     
  • A chiropractor’s blog might offer exercise suggestions
     
  • The blog for a dental office might include ideas on types of lipstick that don’t leave marks on teeth or on types of juice that don’t stain tooth enamel.

Keep in mind, through all this that the overwhelming majority of readers will be visiting the blog site for the first-time, and they are focused on the main topic of your blog. Effective blog posts are centered around key themes, and it’s important to keep your blogs focused and targeted. Your “editors’ picks” need to bring readers’ attention back to the primary topic of your blog and your business. 

Losing focus in corporate blog content writing could turn out to be “for the birds”!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Indianapolis Business Blogger’s Magazine Challenge – A

“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!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

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!”

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail