What do architectural monuments have to do with blog content writing for business?  A lot, I learned from an article by Paul Goldberger in Vanity Fair.

Two of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s granddaughters and noted architect Frank Gehry have very different ideas, it seems, about the best way to design a Washington, D.C. memorial to Ike.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I was very interested in the question posed by Goldberger:

                     Does the government have the right to build a memorial to
                           anyone’s grandfather that is not to the heirs’ taste?

Of course, when it comes to professional ghost bloggers, the answer to a parallel question would be an emphatic “No!”   After all, ghost bloggers are “professionals who work hard to deliver the company voice and value through their writing,” as social media maven Jason Falls explains. 

The emphasis, though, has to be on the company voice. Indianapolis blog writers, I teach, must be able to “hear double”, picking up on not only what clients want to say, but on each client’s unique style of expression.  The goal, I explain to new Say It For You clients, either business owners or professional practitioners, is to speak YOUR message, in YOUR voice, to YOUR potential customers.  “A good ghost blogger, I like to add, should be neither seen nor heard.”

According to author Paul Goldenberger, architect Frank Gehry works very hard not to impose his own “voice” on the assignment, instead talking to client, colleagues, and friends to gain insights before creating the design for any monument. In similar fashion, those of us who provide business blogging services must interact with our clients, their employees, their web administrators, and their customers, to achieve the right “feel” for their SEO marketing blog.

“For all that the war over the Eisenhower Memorial has been cast as a battle between modernism and traditional design,” posits Goldenberg, “it’s really not that at all. The greatest memorials, whatever their architectural style, have conveyed a single, powerful idea with absolute clarity.”

Here, too, there’s a lesson for corporate blog writing. Smaller and lighter in scale, much more flexible than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website, blogs should focus on one idea per post.That could include busting one myth, offering one testimonial from a user, describing one special application for your product, citing one common problem your product or service helps solved, or relating facts about one new development in your industry.

Blog posts tend to be more effective when they focus on a single, powerful idea!

“You do not want to be a product or service in search of a need,” warns Jack Kwicien in Employee Benefit Advisor. So, what DO we want to be?” blog content writers in Indianapolis might ask.  “You want to address a critical need and be perceived as subject matter experts,” explains Kwicien.

According to About.Com, “a Subject Matter Expert is an individual who understands a business process or area well enough to answer questions from people in other groups who are trying to help.” Actually, the term SME (pronounced “smee”) is not new to me: When I was a developmental editor for Pearson Education, the course writers would turn to the SME’s for specialized knowledge to put into student textbooks..

I can see Kwicien’s advice being helpful not only to employee benefits providers, but to business blog writers in Indianapolis. The Think eBiz Blog agrees. “The blog should not be sales oriented…This follows the business networking notion of give and give….Provide good useful information and establish trust and credibility – sales will follow,” Think eBiz Blog concludes.

In corporate blogging training sessions, the part about providing good, useful information is one important lesson I need to get across to newbie blog content writers. I keep coming back to the idea that business blog writing should be conversational and informational, not sales-y. The fact is, readers understand you’re writing for business purposes. In fact, the reason those readers found your site in the first place is that what you sell or what you do is a good match for their needs.

Kwicien’s advice can be of great business blogging assistance.  You want to be perceived as a subject matter expert offering usable information and insights. Remember that in corporate blogging for business, the blog content itself constitutes a Call to Action!  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 before they even read all the way into the blog post!

In blogging for business, to work on making sales, work on being SME’s!