Corporate Blogging for Business Begins with Inspiration

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inspiration bulbFellow blogger Steve Guise divides bloggers into no fewer than 23 “breeds”, pointing out the pros and cons of each type.

I decided to risk falling into Guise’s “Name Dropper” category because, as a professional ghost blogger offering business blogging assistance to corporations, I found several pieces of excellent Guise advice worth sharing….

“Inspiration comes to us in different forms.  Sometimes the people inspire us, other times the content inspires us,” he says.

There’s a lot of talk in blogging circles, (at least among the Indianapolis blog writers with whom I converse all the time), about incorporating testimonials from satisfied customers in corporate blogging for business. But, what Guise’s article reminded me is that customer testimonials don’t typically ooze inspiration.  Business blog writers need to find stories illustrating how someone’s life was truly improved through using the company’s products or services, rather than collecting the usual “I’d-certainly-recommend-ABC-roofing-to-my-neighbors” type testimonial.

What about having the content itself of business blog writing be inspirational? Obviously, one of the purposes of any SEO marketing blog is to “inspire” action (read “buying”!). After reading Guise’s piece, I concluded that corporate blog writing needs to aim for copy that proves the writer understands the problems customers have.  In other words, “you” copy.  The online searcher should get a sense of relief that she’s found a business with people who “get it” –ultimately, that relief is what inspires customers to act.

When Guise sees bloggers who “refuse to write about anything they wouldn’t lose a kidney for”, he names them Passion Purists, pointing out that “passion is contagious and humans are attracted to it.”

Without a doubt, conveying business owners’ passion for what they know how to do and for what they sell is the big challenge for any freelance corporate blog writer.  There’s a reason counselors teach long-time marrieds techniques for “keeping passion alive”. Like success in marriage, success in blog marketing depends on sustaining the discipline of content creation over long periods of time, keeping the spark of passion going all the while.

In describing the “SEO Fanatic” breed, Guise warns that “stuffing an article with key words has a chance of sounding contrived.” As I caution Indianapolis blog writers, it all comes down to the need for inspiration in blogging!


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In Blogging for Business, End Up Where it Says on the Ticket!

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Don’t Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health was Dr. Aaron Carroll’s and Dr. Rachel Vreeman’s first book. Their newest title is Don’t Cross Your Eyes…They’ll Get Stuck That Way! 

Don't Cross Your EyesReading Shari Rudavsky’s review of both books in the Indianapolis Star, I couldn’t help thinking about the way titles are used in business blog writing. For example, both books are about medical myths. 

In an actual Google search I performed using “medical myths” as my search term, neither one of the Carroll-Vreeman books showed up on Page One. When I searched using “myths and truths about health”, once again I was not matched up with either of the two books. For this very reason, in Say It For You  corporate blogging training sessions, I emphasize using keyword phrases in the first part of the title of each blog post.

A second factor to consider is that the main category of any SEO marketing blog post needs to appear first in the title. Rather than. Don’t Swallow Your Gum: Myths Truths and Outright Lies, a blog post title should reverse the order, reading Medical Myths, Truths, and Outright Lies – Don’t Swallow Your Gum.  That helps search engines match the category (medical myths and truths) with the inquiry.

A third concept that’s important for blog content writers to keep in mind is keeping the title and the actual blog post content congruent. I own a very funny Jerry Seinfeld CD, on which Jerry finds humor in various aspects of the air travel experience. He thinks having the captain come on the PA system to detail the flight plan is ridiculous. “Just end up where it says on the ticket!” says Jerry. Come to think of it, that’s a very good rule for business blog writing.

Friend and fellow blogger Michael Reynolds found out that sometimes speakers need to ‘course correct” when the talk fails to match up with the promise in the title. “In my effort to create a catchy, demand-creating title,” Reynolds confesses, he became upset when he realized his title was out of sync with his content, and that he had incorrectly set expectations. Well, as every freelance blog writer needs to remember, it’s the blog title that sets the online reader’s expectations, and that title needs to be in sync with the content to follow.

Turns out, the experiences of both Michael Reynolds and Jerry Seinfeld can be of business blogging assistance.  In writing for business, be sure to end up where the ticket says!

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Indianapolis Blogger’s Advice Bolstered by Dilbert

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When it comes to the style/substance debate relating to corporate blog writing, it felt good to have my views verified, especially by clever comic strip writer Scott Adams.

One important point I’ve been stressing in corporate blogging training sessions, not to Dilbertmention in these Say It For You blog posts, is that when a blog is posted in the name of your business, you’re putting your name and your brand “out there”.  You always want to be sure that poor grammar and misspelled words aren’t distracting the reader from your SEO marketing blog message.

Those blog content writers taking the other side of the argument tend to stress that since blogs are more personal than websites and brochures, the message should sound “natural” rather than stuffy.  Blog readers (who don’t read carefully, anyway), they maintain, need get the general gist of what you’re saying, and that’s all that counts.

Well, in this particular Dilbert cartoon, manager Alice (with the triangular hairdo) is saying to colleague Ted, “I’m judging the quality of your business case by your bad haircut and your poor font choice,”  to which Ted replies “I value substance over style.”

In a way, I think, that’s the point!  You never want to have style (or lack thereof), getting between the reader and the real substance of your writing. Even punctuation can either help or hurt the “cause”. 

Compendium Blogware CEO Chris Baggott points out that blogging for business is about instant customer gratification. Well, whether I’m functioning as a freelance blog writer or providing business blogging assistance to business owners and their employees, I see grammar and punctuation as tools I can use to lead readers to exactly the information they need.

When Ted stubbornly maintains he values “substance over style,” Alice asks “How’s that working out?”, leaving the reader to arrive at the obvious answer I’ve been touting all along.

The “style” – layout, font, punctuation, grammar, vocabulary, tone – all those things matter.  All are part and parcel of the “substance” you want to convey in your business blog writing!



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Advice for Blog Content Writers: Hard on the Grammar, Easy on the Links

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Social media and blog marketing maven Douglas Karr has some on-the-mark remarksspinach in the teeth about “The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page”. 

With this week’s Say It For You blog posts devoted to using other bloggers’ pearls of wisdom as a jumping-off point for me to offer business blogging help to owners and freelance blog content writers, I found two of Karr’s recommendations to be particularly valuable for writing blogs.

Everyone who knows me at all well is familiar with my near-maniacal preoccupation with proper language usage. Informal and conversational as business blog writing might be, I constantly stress to anyone blogging for business – or anyone providing business blogging services – how important it is to check for “spinach-in-the-teeth” bloopers in their SEO marketing blog content.

“Impeccable grammar” in the world-according- to-Karr, ensures “the trust of the customer will not be risked.” One very common error Doug and I discussed is the misuse of “it’s” and “its”. The apostrophe, I stress to blog content writers in Indianapolis (for some reason, this particular error seems to occur more commonly with Hoosier writers), is there to replace the letter “i” as in “it is”, whereas “its” means “belonging to it”. 

#7 on the Karr web page Anatomy Cautions is “Go easy on the links”.  In business blog writing, I teach, links can be useful in a number of ways:

  • Linking to news sources lends credibility to your company’s point of view
  • Linking to someone else’s writing on your subject as part of business blog writing shows you’re in touch with what’s going on in your industry
  • Linking can be a form of networking through exchanging ideas.  Anyone providing business blogging help should advise clients to use their blogs as networking tools.

I think, though, that Karr would agree that hyperlinking to other sources belongs in the “slow” category in the system of “Go”, “Slow”, and “Whoa” elements in corporate blog writing, a tool that can easily be overused and become distracting rather than helpful to the reader.

In summary, blog content writers – go hard on the grammar, easy on the links!

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Blogging for Business is Like Five Minutes on Air

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microphone radio speechGood ideas, along with the good people who came up with those ideas, abound, I teach in corporate blogging training sessions; synergy can be generated through spreading those ideas around.

Let me hasten to assure Say It For You blog readers that I would never advocate  becoming what blogging maven Stephen Guise, in a guest blog for Problgger.net, dubs “copy bloggers” who “rip content” word-for-word from other blogs’ RSS feeds.  Nor do I want blog content writers to be what Guise calls “name-droppers,” who give rise to the question “Okay, so what do you bring to the table?”

I guess when it comes to business blog writing, my recommendation would be for you to read materials of every ilk and on diverse topics – billboards, magazines, newsletters, flyers, brochures, along with blog posts, deciding which presentations “speak to” your own ideas on your own topic.

The Real-Impact blog, for example, is written by my longtime friend and fellow National Speakers Association of Indiana member Jean Palmer Heck.  I found Jean’s recent post on “Why Media Training Takes Time” very relevant to my work as a ghost blogger and corporate blogging trainer. You see, in offering business blogging assistance to entrepreneurs, practitioners, and employees, I found, their biggest concern is the lack of time to devote to regular corporate blog writing.  That’s why I was blown away by Jean’s estimate of the time needed to properly prepare for a five minute interview on national radio or TV:

  • An hour deciding what message to deliver
  • An hour refining the message
  • An hour practicing delivering the message
  • An hour considering the worst questions
  • An hour doing a series of practice interviews

Take comfort, you who are hovering at the pool’s edge, hesitant to dive into business blog writing. You probably won’t need anywhere near five hours per blog post (although Stephen Guise claims “Some of my posts take me 15 hours to write!”). On the other hand, you want to be sure you’re doing what my high school English teacher used to call “autographing your work with excellence”.

Corporate blogging for business demands discipline and time, no doubt about that.  Using a freelance SEO copywriter is one solution to that problem.

“Your five minutes of airtime is a golden opportunity to deliver a simple, effective, relevant message,” says Jean Palmer-Heck.  Certainly you should think of whatever the number of seconds of your online readers’ attention you can engage as your golden opportunity to introduce them to your company’s message!


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