Employee Benefits and Blog Writing

/0 Comments/in /by

 “Are you wrestling with the need to increase revenues despite compensation compression?” asks Jack Kwicien in Employee Benefit Adviser magazine. While Kwicien was addressing his question to benefits advisers, he offers two pieces of advice that all blog content writers in Indianapolis can put to good use.

As a first step, says Kwicien, there are some central questions advisers (and bloggers for business) need to be asking themselves, including:

  • What critical client issues am I attempting to solve?
  • What potential solutions are offered by my firm that aren’t available in the marketplace today?
  •  What are the “lightning rod” issues that keep my prospects awake at night?

(When it comes to corporate blogging for business, this sort of soul-searching by the business owner or professional practitioner becomes the basis for the SEO marketing blog writing.

Once you have greater clarity about which target markets to pursue and what the unique value is that your business can bring to those markets, Step Two in your campaign to increase revenue on a limited budget, says Kwicien, is “forming strategic alliances with friendly competitors or synergistic businesses.”

As part of corporate blogging training, I stress “networking” through business blogs.  How?

  • Comment on other corporate blog posts
     
  • Share other blog posts by quoting them in your own blog,  linking to their blog, or posting a comment on their blogs
     
  • Offer to exchange guest blog posts
     
  • Send an email message complimenting another blogger on a post and starting a conversation

And, as Kwicien so wisely suggests, you can do this with synergistic businesses that relate to your own. (In fact, an important part of the work in freelance blog writing for business is “reading around the Web” to search for just those opportunities to create synergy.

“Morph your business to survive and thrive,” concludes Jack Kwicien.  Business blog writing, I’d add, can represent the perfect continuous-run morph-ing tool!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

How’s That Business Blog Writing Working For You?

/0 Comments/in /by

Reading a lot is a necessary agenda item for anyone providing business blogging assistance, I learned years ago.  Not surprisingly, as I often share with other freelance blog content writers in Indianapolis, some of my best insights come from ads.  Like ads, after all, SEO marketing blog posts are

a) targeted towards particular audiences and

b )invite readers or viewers to take action.

One of the great benefits I derive from my membership in the American marketing Association is receiving Marketing News magazine. In the June 30th issue, I found several valuable articles, but, as a corporate blogging trainer, I found my attention drawn to one of the publication’s full page ads.

“So how’s that working for you?” is the caption under a picture of a man in full business attire with the spray from a garden hose hitting him in the face. “Consider Capella. It’s the only system that uncovers the nastiest customer issues, and then guides you step by step through the process of fixing them,” the text continued.  “Learn how at maritzresearch.com/capella” is the closing Call to Action.

As a professional ghost blogger, I couldn’t help but admire the efficiency of this particular ad, thinking of several aspects we business blog content writers might emulate:

A captivating visual
Whether corporate blog writers make use of stock art, videos, or original photos, in blogging for business, as in that Capella ad, a spoonful of visuals makes it much easier for the words to go down.

An engaging headline
Optimizing through key words begins with the title, and so does the process of engaging readers’ interest.

Identifying target readers’ issues
The Capella ad focused on a specific set of challenges business owners face – identifying and resolving customer issues.  Individual blog posts are ideal for focusing attention on one specific topic of concern to readers.

Demonstrating uniqueness
“We’re the only system…” explains Capella.  Blogging gives voice to a business owner’s or a professional practitioner’s unique approach, the perfect forum for expounding on just why you’re the only one in your field to do things in just the way you do.

 The question “So how’s that working for you?” has a rather “in-your-face” tone, I thought. However, the ad copy itself retreats from that brash beginning and demonstrates empathy with the customer: “You can now go beyond ‘what-if’s”, Capello assured customers, “and into true action planning.” Meanwhile, Capello reassures readers, they can rely on step-by-step guidance and advice.

For those of us offering blog content writing services, starting out with an “in-your-face” title, then (having succeeded in capturing customers’ attention), offering to lead them by hand through the process may just be a winning corporate blog combination!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Is Bad Writing a Deal Breaker? Asks Indiana Professional Ghost Blogger

/0 Comments/in /by

“Bad writing should go.”  Still, “using ‘loose’ instead of ‘lose’ doesn’t a bad article make,” is Deb’s opinion in freelancewritinggigs.com.

“It’s the writer’s responsibility to write well,” Deb adds, “and it’s the editor’s responsibility to edit.” While grammar and spelling errors make her pause, she explains, to her they are not deal breakers.

For my part, I’m not so sure.  In corporate blogging training sessions, where the business owners and professional practitioners largely serve as their own editors, I urge no-error erring on the side of caution.  Who knows?  That improperly used “loose” may be what “loses” your blog visitor. Why take a chance?

“The bulk of the responsibility belongs to the writer,” Deb continues.  “It’s the writer who should proofread several times before hitting ‘send’.” Maybe.  My years as a “developmental editor”, plus my work tutoring in the Ivy Tech Community College language lab have taught me how hard it is for us to catch our own errors.  After all, we’re focused on the ideas we’re trying to convey.

Remember that puzzle where the word “the” appears twice, once at the end of a line, then at the beginning of the next?  When you’re challenged to read the paragraph aloud, you invariably skip the second “the”.

The fact that it is so difficult to self-edit is the reason Say It For You has begun offering website and blog content copy editing along with our freelance blog content writing services.

Content writers in Indianapolis – take courage! If SEO marketing blogs are full of  relevant, engaging material, your use of “a lot” when you should have said “many”," substituting you’re" for "your", or misplacement of an apostrophe aren’t going to be deal breakers.

When verbal “push marketing” comes to shove, I guess I agree with Deb: “While there’s little excuse for publishing sloppy work, it happens, and it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to live.”

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

A Little Means a Lot in Branding Your Business Blog

/0 Comments/in /by

He’s impeccably dressed in a custom-tailored suit, but…oops! Is that a food spot on his tie?

She’s as well put together as any fashion magazine model, but…wait! Is her skirt hem unraveling?

 

Grammar mistakes in content writing for business are very much like these two examples of wardrobe mishaps, calling attention away from the kind of impression we intended to make. Fellow business blogger Tracy Sestili makes no bones about it. “Grammar mistakes can make you lose readers,” she states.

True, as I sometimes admit to other freelance blog content writers in Indianapolis, some mistakes are simply typos, and 99 out of 100 readers might not even notice them. QXG, whose website proclaims it is “Columbus, Ohio’s Best Design Firm,” vows to “try out best” to beat others’ quotes (a statement, by the way, that earned QXG a spot on the “Website Hall of Shame”).

Even closer to home, the corporate blogging trainer in me couldn’t help noticing, in Bing’s description of the Indianapolis firm Small Box Web Design, that “Small Box is renown for creating search engine friendly websites”.  Didn’t Bing mean “renowned”?

Little things, every one of these…the food spot on the tie, the raveling hem, trying “out” best, and being “renown”.  But, I remind content writers in Indianapolis, a simple “mirror check” might have fixed all those bloopers before the website or blog content “left the house”.

Think of it this way – in any SEO marketing blog, at least part of the purpose is to draw readers’ attention to the content.  What business owners and professional practitioners don’t want to do is draw attention in any negative way.

“It’s time to pay attention to our own web pages,” cautions Robin Nobles in searchengineworkshop.com, “and relearn some of the basic grammar rules that we may have forgotten along the way.”

For those of us in the business of providing business blogging assistance, that’s elementary.  A little means a lot in branding a business blog!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

When Business Bloggers Don’t Know the Product

/0 Comments/in /by

“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”!

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail