Readers Want to Know More From Your Business Blog

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“Diners want to know more”, says Tiffany Hsu in the Indianapolis Star, explaining that “fast-food and casual chains are disclosing ingredients and prep methods to draw customers.”

Online searchers want to know more as well.  To draw customers, business blog writers willrestaurant menu have to “disclose” greater detail than ever before.  And that, as I stress in corporate blogging training sessions, is perfectly OK.

Many Say It For You clients start out afraid – if they share too much ” how-to” or “how-it-works” information, their fear is, clients and customers won’t be willing to pay for their expertise. Ironically, some business owners who employ freelance blog writers have the opposite fear – they don’t want to be perceived as “bragging” or “hard-selling”.

Since one main purpose of SEO marketing blogs is to create new customer relationships, I was glad to read that restaurant owners are now going beyond legal requirements that they list the ingredients and calories in their food, and are beginning to provide in-depth material to showcase their expertise and customer care. “If you demonstrate to families that you offer them a safe meal, you establish a tremendous sense of loyalty,” observed one food executive.

That is precisely the message I try to convey to company owners that are new to blog marketing.  In providing business blogging assistance, I can share an insight I’ve gleaned in the process of creating more than 6,000 unique blog posts for corporate clients and professional practitioners:

Telling potential buyers about your special approach to your business, even sharing your special methods, is not going to either prepare or induce those buyers to “do it themselves”! Your readers just need perspective in order to make the right choice of provider – Just why is your way of doing things good for them?

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Don’t Be Beige in Your Business Blog

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beige“The voice of a writer is usually easier to hear in first person,” says William Cane in Write Like the Masters. Why? “Third person narratives so often mimic the ‘beige voice’ of an objective reporter,” Cane explains, whereas “with first person, it’s usually easier to be intimate, unique, and quirky.”

Certainly “intimate” and “unique” are qualities freelance blog content writers want to display in SEO marketing blogs, which tend to be most effective when they are at their most conversational and most personal.

Blogger John Haydon runs a bootcamp about “narrative voice”, and recommends using second person (“you” and “your”) in corporate blogging for business to provide useful information to readers and give those readers the feeling that the author is speaking directly to them.  Haydon’s colleague Nedra, on the other hand, suggests

  • First person for a personal statements and opinions
  • Second person for a how-to’s
  • Third person for news

As a corporate blogging trainer, I recommend a mix of narrative voices, so regular readers of the company blog can find variety. Even a professional ghost blogger, I explain, can write in “I” format when sharing a personal experience that brings out some important aspect of the client company’s products, services, or corporate culture.  First person writing doesn’t mean filling pages with the word “I”, points out blogger gamergirl.com, because” that would allow creativity to lapse.” Brenda Hill of WOW-womenonwriting.com agrees, saying that “we can successfully write in either first or third person…It all depends on the story you want to tell.”

Forrester’s Top 15 Corporate Blogs list is full of companies whose blogs allow readers to identify with the business in personal, unique, and even quirky ways. To stay personal, we Indianapolis blog writers need to show readers we’re talking very specifically to them. At the same time, blogging for business will be at its best when it’s colorful, filled with the company’s special brand of energy and passion. 

If I had to boil down business blogging assistance to one line of advice, that might be “Don’t be beige in your blog!”

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Try Not to Talk to Yourself in your SEO Marketing Blog!

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speech bubbles“Language is at the core of our being,” remarksNoam Chomsky, who’s been called the “father of modern linguistics”. Since we’re always immersed in language, he observes, “It takes a strong act of will to try not to talk to yourself when you’re walking down the street…”

In corporate blog writing, (which takes a strong act of will, anyway, in terms of maintaining the frequency and consistency needed to” win search”), you will definitely need the same strength of will Chomsky describes in order to avoid talking to yourself – and only to yourself – in your business blog writing.

One of the realities about corporate blogs that is toughest for newbie Indianapolis writers of blog content to accept is that other people, specifically online searchers, are interested, first and foremost, in themselves and their own needs, wants, and interests. Their curiosity about what you do – or about what you have to say or sell, I explain in corporate blogging training sessions, will be at its most intense when it concerns testing their own limits or their own knowledge. My theory is that’s why magazine self-tests and quizzes are so hard for readers to resist, and that’s the reason I believe including an occasional quiz or survey is a good idea for anyone providing business blogging services..

In Say It for You corporate blogging training sessions, the What’s-in-it-for-Them Rule is always part of the curriculum.  Speaker Magazine gives some very sage advice to authors trying to launch a new book:

“Don’t tell your prospects how great you are;
tell them how great they will feel when the ideas in your book relieve the pain they’re experiencing.”


Now there’s a piece of advice that can be used by every one of us involved in corporate blogging for business!. As Chomsky so wryly instructed people walking down the street – try not to talk to yourself.  Yes, readers found your blog because they were seeking information, products or services that relate to you, but never forget – now they’ve arrived, what they want to find relates to them!

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Balancing the Bullet Points in Your Business Blog

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“Keep your bullet points symmetrical,” advises fellow blog content writer Brian Clark.to do list One way to do that, Clark explains, is to keep all bullet points in a group the same approximate length. That’s easier on online readers’ eyes, he adds.

That bullet points in general are a good fit for blogs is actually something I stress in corporate blogging training sessions.  By most accounts, search engines like bullet points.  Even more important, I’ve found over the years as professional ghost blogger, bullet points keep everyone on track, especially the writer.

It’s interesting that, just the other day, I was helping a student team at Ivy Tech learning lab put together a Power Point presentation on the subject of effective studying for tests. I noticed that their textbook recommends that students organize their notes using bullet points.

Clark offers a second bullet point-related tip that can relate to corporate blogging for business. “Practice parallelism,” Clark says, meaning that each bullet point should begin with the same part of speech and should maintain the same grammatical form.

This “honey-do” list in a blog by Cypress Media is a good example of Clark’s two rules (All the bullet points are one short line long, and all begin with a “command” verb):

  • Take out the garbage
  • Feed the dog
  • Drop off dry cleaning
  • Wash the car
  • Buy stamps

Cypress’ Catherine Hibbard explains that using numbers in place of bullet points would imply an order of importance; with bullet points, all items have equal value. Like Clark, Hibbard recommends beginning each bullet with an action word where that’s appropriate, but in all cases making tenses and verbs consistent.

There’s no doubt bullet points are of business blogging help, but be careful not to overuse the technique.  I remind Indianapolis blog writers that SEO marketing blogs need to be conversational and personal in tone.  Truth is, we don’t tend to converse in bullet points!

Going back to that Ivy Tech textbook recommendation about organizing material, it seems to me that bullet points’ highest and best use is as organizers. That means the bullet points can be good tools for freelance blog writers whether those bullet points find their way into the finished blog posts or not!

As someone who offers business blog writing services, here’s how I’d sum up the subject of bullet points:  By all means, practice symmetry and parallelism, but consider also practicing restraint!

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Should Professional Ghost Bloggers Target People Paying to Get Scared?

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Researchers used to think people paid to get scared (as a population, we here in the UShorror just finished spending close to $3 billion on Halloween) because they get a high off the relief at the end. But, as Science Daily reports, a new study shows horror fans are just “happy being unhappy”.

People getting “scared” into action is an important topic in marketing, including SEO marketing blogs. Specifically, business owners and those providing blog writing services need to weigh the effectiveness of fear tactics in galvanizing customers into action.

Shock advertising can, in fact, move people to action, I learned, reading reports from the British Department of Health on the anti-smoking campaign “Get Unhooked” (which was banned because the ads caused fear and distress in children). In business blog writing, though, while it’s important to appeal to readers’ need to avoid pain, you’re more likely to “win friends and influence people” in your blog posts by giving searchers a “feel” for the relief and comfort they’ll gain after using your products and services.

One very old selling strategy involves digging for pain points, and then creating a need for what we do or what we sell.  At Say It For You, we lean more towards the view offered by salesproductivityinsider.com, which is more in line with the sort of blog writing services we like to offer our client companies:

“Selling is not a horror show. We can professionly increase
the sense of urgency
to action without ‘scaring’ them.”

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