Blogging for Businesses: Special Guest Post by Nick Semon

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Today’s blog post is by friend and business owner Nick Semon of Insulation Stop. Since I specialize in corporate blog writing and corporate blogging training, it’s always rewarding to be able to share real life blogging success stories.

Insulation StopImagine this.  You go into your local store to buy something and all you can see are products on the shelf with names and prices.  There is nobody to talk to and no other information available, just products on shelves and prices.  Today, that’s what a business is without an accompanying blog. 

For e-commerce businesses, the bulk of material on our websites is dedicated to products and their related prices and descriptions.  But where do you find the room to communicate directly to your consumer repeatedly, on a wide range of topics?

Blogging is the perfect answer.  Blogging allows businesses an informal and efficient way to communicate a wide variety of ideas and topics.  And for consumers, it’s a medium they are looking for.

For an e-commerce business, it allows you to be more than just a store with products and a shopping cart.  In today’s internet world, there are multiple companies selling products in any given market.  You need to separate yourself from the sea of websites and be more than just another online store. 

At InsulationStop.com, a leading distributor of radiant barriers and reflective foil insulation, we have dedicated a large majority of our marketing efforts to blogging to our customers.  We find it a great way to share all kinds on information with our customers, on a wide variety of fronts. 

Maybe it’s an article about a zip code calculator that shows you the correct amount of insulation to use for your local climate.  Or, maybe it is an article showing you less energy consumption via a customer’s utility bill after using our insulation products.  Our blog has become a great way to communicate to our customer base. 

Our customers expect a hassle free shopping experience.  They don’t want to see a bunch of clutter when purchasing their insulation.  Blogging allows us an area to communicate much needed information away from the store front but still very much integrated into our business. 

Blogging also allows our customers an opportunity to comment on our articles and get answers to their questions, all the while adding more value to future visitors.  We view our blog as an unparalleled tool to communicate with our customers, and our customers have more than once expressed their appreciation for our efforts.  This makes us feel good because the only reason we blog is for them.   

Nick, I particularly liked your point about blogging being an informal and efficient way to communicate ideas. In providing corporate blogging assistance, I urge blog content writers to maintain a conversational tone.  And, while it’s wonderful that your customers appreciate your blog content, many business owners focus their efforts on attracting "strangers".  Their strategy is designed to attract new customers through an SEO marketing blog. The truth is, as you’ve brought out so well in this piece, blogs are good tools for both new and existing customers!
 
– Rhoda


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Old Wives’ Tales and Corporate Blog Writing

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BLACK CATJust this past Monday in my Say It For You blog, I talked about the power of storytelling in corporate blog writing.

Stories, I teach in corporate blogging training sessions, help make facts and statistics real to readers. Sometimes, though, in writing for business it makes sense to turn that advice on its head. 

What I mean is this: myth-busting, in other words showing why a commonly accepted story isn’t true, can be a very good strategy for blog content writers to use. In fact, myth-busting is a technique I discuss often with clients who’ve requested business blogging help.

What I’ve found over the years is that in the process of de-bunking myths, bloggers for business can accomplish three important things:

  • Offer readers little-known information that is interesting
  • Put the business owner’s unique slant on why that information is important to know
  • Position the business owner as having expert knowledge in his/her field.

    What I also found is that, whenever I want to teach myth-busting as part of offering business blogging assistance, there’s no lack of old wives’ tales from which to choose. Today’s selection comes from the website whimsy.org.

  • WHEN ANY FOOD IS MIXED, IT SHOULD BE STIRRED CLOCKWISE
    Reasoning: All functions of importance should be performed in an east-west direction (from sun-worship)
    Which blog content writers might use this:  Grocery company, diet supplement company, cooking website.
  • BREAKING A MIRROR WILL RESULT IN SEVEN YEARS OF BAD LUCK.
    Reasoning: Early man, on seeing his image reflected in water, believed it represented his soul.
    Which blog content writers might use this:  Home decorators, makeup artists, beauty salons.
  • BLACK CATS CROSSING YOUR PATH ARE UNLUCKY.
    Reasoning: Norse legend tells of the chariot of Freya the witch, pulled by black cats possessed by the devil.
    Which blog content writers might use this: Pet stores, Halloween stores.

    AN ITCHING FOOT PREDICTS A JOURNEY TO SOMEWHERE NEW.
    Reasoning:  Who knows?
    Who might use this?  A podiatrist, a shoe store.

  • YAWNING CAN LEAD TO EVIL SPIRITS ENTERING THE BODY UNLESS YOU COVER YOUR MOUTH
    Reasoning: Death is calling you, so you block it out with your hand.
    Whose blog content writer might use this?  A dentist, a doctor, a manners expert.

OK, your turn! I’m issuing a challenge to readers to share myths and old wives’ tales you love to "bust", related to your business!

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Creating “Killers” in Corporate Blogging for Business

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frequencyInc. Magazine offers tips on designing an e-mail newsletter that "won’t have customers reaching for the Unsubscribe button." Point by point, I couldn’t help thinking, this article could very well be used as a manual for my Say It For You corporate blogging training sessions. In fact, in talking about writing for business, writer April Joyner mentions blogs, suggesting that "a newsletter is a great way to drive traffic to your blog and your social media content".

When it comes to newsletters, Joyner advises sending "often – but not too often". "No business owner wants to gain a reputation as a spammer," she acknowledges. "But," she cautions (and here’s where there’s a very strong tie-in with blog writing) "if you communicate too infrequently, customers may become less likely to remember your brand and less receptive to your sales pitches."

In offering business blogging help, I need to stress the importance of recency and frequency in posting.  First of all, when it comes to any SEO marketing blog, frequency  is one of the critical factors in vying for search engine rankings. Of course, the opposite, infrequency, will have a detrimental effect in terms of a company’s marketing strategy and tactics development.

Of course, anyone offering blog writing services would offer a loud "Amen!" to Inc. Magazine‘s advice about "getting personal".  Blog content writers, just like e-newsletter creators, need to cater to target customers’ interests – and use the blog to reveal their own unique slant on their industry.

"Though the ultimate goal of an e-mail newsletter is to boost sales, be careful that your missives don’t become a relentless bombardment of pitches.  The best newsletters provide expert information that benefit readers," says Joyner. In fact, the best help I can possibly provide to any business owner is embodied in that advice:

As a professional ghost blogger who also teaches blogging for business, I’d consider that the main mission of blogging is to provide expert information that benefits readers!

(Sound almost too simple? It isn’t, but that’s truly the secret behind "killer" blogs!) 



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Tell to Win in Corporate Blogging for Business

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We don’t typically think of storytelling as a professional discipline, but Hollywood producer Peter Guber thinks we should. In his new book Tell to Win, Guber examines the storytellerway people use stories to do business.

As a professional ghost blogger offering not only blog writing services but also training in corporate blog writing, I realized immediately that what Guber calls a "purposeful story" is an absolutely ideal vehicle for blogs. 

A purposeful story, explains the author, might be anything from a joke you tell to make someone laugh to a story about someone who had a heart attack (to scare the listener into taking better care of her health). In salesmanship, he adds, the goal of your story must be to show what is in it for the listeners – the audience must win.

One Journalism 101 lesson is to "put a face" to an issue, beginning each article with a human example, in other words, a story.  In business blog writing that  might be a customer testimonial, an incident from the news, or even a tale out of folklore. The point, I stress when offering business blogging help, is to make what you do, what you sell, and what you know real to blog readers.

An SEO marketing blog might be meant to "win search", but once online searchers have arrived, what needs winning is their "hearts", and blog content writers can achieve that with storytelling.  A realtor’s blog might tell how Sam and Susie improved curb appeal by planting tulips at the entryway to their home; a dry cleaning blog might tell of a decades-old wedding dress restored for a granddaughter to wear.

When asked by a reporter how someone in sales and marketing can turn a garden-variety sales pitch into a purposeful story, Guber’s answer was "It’s so simple, it’s embarrassing, and yet a lot of people overlook the basics." You, the storyteller, he says, must first know what your own intention is and be transparent about it in order to establish trust.

Often corporate blogging clients get too hung up on company branding and corporate identity, when in fact, corprate blog writing needs to tell the story of the owners (Why did you choose to do what you do? What are you most passionate about in delivering your service to customers and clients? What are you trying to add to your industry?), plus stories about customers.

Stories in blogs are stories about people. And, funny thing that’s as true today as ever – people want to do business with people. 


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Blogging Business to Business

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business marketingSome people think marketing is marketing and whether you are marketing to consumers or marketing to business, you’re still just marketing to people, right? “Business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing are different,” explains blogger Debra of Masterfulmarketing.com. Actually, this is a question that comes up often when I discuss providing business blogging services.

How is B2B marketing different from B2C? Masterful Marketing lists several ways:

  • B2B has a longer sales cycle.
  • B2B is multi-step selling is multi-step.
  • B2B marketing depends on awareness-building educational activities.
  • B2B buyers make more “rational” decisions based on business value.

“There is a widespread perception that social media is mainly a business-to-consumer play,” says Paul Gillin, author of Secrets of Social Media Marketing. “Certainly,” Gillin admits, “the scope of B-to-B social media applications is smaller than in consumer markets.”   “Nevertheless,” he points out, “there is evidence that, once B-to-B marketers find value in it, they move more quickly than their consumer counterparts.”

As a freelance SEO copywriter providing corporate blogging training, I’m finding the same thing. More and more businesses are beginning to call on my company for blog writing services to help them get their message out to business buyers. The idea of an SEO marketing blog is still the same as one for b-to-c: bring readers to your website in order to convert them (in this case the companies they represent) into buyers.

And, experience is showing, the basics of corporate blogging for business customers remain the same – building trust and offering valuable information.

The recurring themes in blog posts, whether B2b or B2c, represent the beliefs and unique “slant” of the business, bringing out the “distinct voice” of the bloggers/business owners. In offering business blogging assistance where the target buyers are businesses, I remind clients that (exactly as Masterful Marketing stresses), their customers’ buying decisions are likely to be based not so much on a desire for status, security, beauty, and comfort, but on increasing their own businesses’ profitability and reducing their own business costs.

Business to business or business to consumer – writing for business is about one thing –  creating customers and keeping them engaged!

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