“Disconnects” are bad news in cell phone conversations and  for SEO marketing blogs, that’s for sure. Marketing strategist David Meerman Scott talks about the disconnect that happens when copywriters literally don’t know the products they’re talking about.

Meerman Scott was referring to marketing copywriting in general, but he’s touched on an issue that’s at the very core of  ghost blogging.

The website of one elegant resort and spa in Arizona, he points out, reads “At ____ Spa, one is not healed by the treatment… , but by the sensory bliss of the magical Sonoran Desert…..The rocks are engraved with the words: ranquility. Harmony. Peace.”

The reality, as Meerman Scott reveals, is that the outdoor music from the hotel swimming pool is piped through the same channels as the indoor music.  Spa personnel have no way of turning that loud and fast music down. 

Do the copywriters know this? Probably not, says Meerman Scott.  “My guess is they’re in some corporate office somewhere and have never visited the property. How can we trust marketing if there is a disconnect with reality?” He asks.

So, when it comes to using freelance blog content writers to market a company’s products and services, how could such a disconnect have been avoided?

“Using ghost bloggers may seem inauthentic at first, but it’s actually quite the opposite,” says local online marketer Michael Reynolds “Rather than painstakingly trying to craft articles that communicate the proper message, executives can now speak freely and comfortably during the ghost blog interview and know that their words will be crafted properly in the written form.”

Since providing blog writing services is one important aspect of what we do at Say It For You, we make sure the “connect” happens through repeated visits. An Indianapolis professional blog content writer will be matched with you, visiting your business and working hard to understand it completely.  Based on having been there,  your writer can create content for website pages, newsletters, emails, and blog posts. For Indiana-based businesses, the visits are in person; for out-of-state clients, the visits take the form of Skype, emails, and phone conversations.

(I’ll remind readers that, at Say It For You, we take on only one client per type of business per metropolitan area.  That’s our way of avoiding conflicts of interest and giving our best work to each client.) 

The answer to David Meerman Scott’s question “How can we trust marketing if there is a disconnect with reality?” is “You can’t.” Anyone claiming to provide quality business blogging assistance should know that.

After all, the goal of corporate blog writing is to help business owners and professional practitioners connect with online readers.  You can’t do that when there’s a “disconnect”!

 

 

“How long?” is one question I hear a lot at corporate blogging training sessions. 

Typically the business owner or freelance blog content writer is referring to the recommended length of blog posts. Sometimes, though, the question concerns the length of the blog post title.

Charles of netbulders.org looks as blog title length and content.  It’s not enough, according to him, for a title to contain the words of a reader’s search query.  For the title to be effective, he adds, it must appear to have been created specifically for the purpose of answering that very query.

As a longtime professional ghost blogger, working to create SEO marketing blog content for a variety of Say It For You clients, I thought the example Charles offers is particularly on target:

If he were looking to build a chicken coop, Charles posits, using the search phrase ‘How to build a chicken coop’, two possible results might be:

A. Chicken Coops: Buying, Building, and Maintaining Them
B. How to Build a Chicken Coop

Result A, Charles points out, wouldn’t appeal to him; it doesn’t promise to answer his specific query in detail.  Result B, on the other hand, seems to have been created specifically for the purpose of answering his query.

If there’s a lesson here for all of us Indianapolis business blog writers, it would relate to targeting. In other words, the most effective length for any one blog post title is whatever it takes to signal to online searchers that “right here” is the place they want to be to get answers.

Business blog writing overall can certainly cast a wider net (to include, in Charles’ example, prospective customers who don’t want to build their own chicken coop, but want to buy one and learn to maintain it) the tactic of keeping a very specific focus within each post and clearly describing that focus in the title is more likely to “catch” a click.

In the end, the answer to “How long?” that is likely to provide the greatest business blogging assistance might be this:

Just long enough to get that “Aha!” response from online searchers!