Continuing the challenge I issued earlier this week to have business owners come up with new blog post content based on song titles, here are four more to fit my own business (which provides blog content to promote corporations’ and professional practitioners’ business). Whether they’re beginners or veterans, business bloggers often confide in me (in my capacity as either their blogging trainer or their professional ghost blogger) that they have trouble coming up with new ideas for posts.)

Since in Monday’s blog post, I selected song titles to illustrate blogging “Do’s”, positive good practices, today I’d like to focus on titles that illustrate some business blogging “don’ts.

• “Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” (B.J. Thomas)

One possible approach to a business blog is to point out deficiencies in competitors’ services or products, showing what “they” do wrong and you, of course, do “right”. As a trainer who is part of each client’s online marketing team, I recommend taking the higher road, using the power of We . At _____ (your company name), we offer….we believe that….we value… we are always careful to…..  Accentuate the positives about YOU, rather than focusing on others’ “mistakes”.

• “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” (Elton John)

Too many business owners shy away from blogging for fear of receiving negative comments
from readers or having customer complaints on the blog site. True, if you don’t blog frequently, you won’t receive negative comments or complaints, but neither will you attract the attention of search engines or of readers! In fact, “getting in front” of complaints by demonstrating how you remedied a negative customer situation is probably the most positive kind of publicity you can ask for!  Don’t be afraid of showing your err-is-human side.  In fact, your blog gives you a chance to turn a “failure” into a success story.

• “Where Do We Go From Here?” (Alicia Keys)

Calls to Action, or CTA’s, are a vital component of blogging for business. A clear, easy-to-execute “next step” enables readers to learn more, ask questions, price products and services, sign up for an RSS feed of your blog, look at your website, or even proceed immediately to your shopping cart. In an attempt to avoid being too “pushy” or too “sales-ey”, many business bloggers make the mistake of being unclear about the “So, how do I…..” readers need to know.

• “Testify to Love” (Wynonna Judd)

Testimonials in your blog can definitely make the different between a visit and a conversion. When surveyed, as Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware often relates, consumers confessed they want to buy from people “just like them”. Stories of satisfied customers speak louder than any ad.  However (and here’s the Don’t in the equation) unlike the usual testimonial  list of sentence fragments (…excellent product, …very high quality …etc.) use your blog post to tell the whole story – what the issue or problem was, how you worked to solve it, and why your solution worked better than what the customer had tried before.

Now, it’s your turn again.  Select song titles that illustrate important facets of your business. Or, find another unifying theme around which you can center several blog posts.  Remember, “The more frequently your content mentions the keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business, the better your chances of your site being found for those keywords or phrases.”
 

Accompanying my college freshmen mentees on a tour of the Fineline Printing Group plant the other day, I noticed a poster on the wall with a two-word headline:
SUSTAIN ABILITY.

The headline related to to the "green" initiatives undertaken by the company. (Fineline executive Phil Mikesell explained that the company offsets 100% of its electricity with wind energy.)

Interestingly, that same week a business blogging client had posed a question: "Is it legal to ‘trick" people to our blog? …Should we use topical phrases to aid our visits?"

The Google Webmasters site has something to say about "tricking users" to gain traffic: DON"T. "Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords."  ‘Keyword stuffing’ refers to the practice of loading a page with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking… "This results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking," warns Google. The recommendation: "Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context."

Reading this, I was reminded of the phrase "sustain ability". Rather than taking the easy way out, the short-term solution, Fineline Printing had opted for the longer view to help sustain their business and support their community. In many ways, the same "long-way-round-is-the-shortest-way-home" approach is true of blogging.

Momentum in the online rankings race comes from frequency of posting blogs and from building up longevity by consistently posting content on the Web over long periods of time. Down time, of course, is rare for a small business; business owners who can maintain the drill-sergeant discipline needed to increase web rankings are rarer still. The task of playing the kind of sustained game that “wins search” might fall, in many cases, to professional ghost bloggers.

Whether we’re talking about a company’s blog rankings or its environmentally "green" initiatives, there’s no quick payoff. The spoils go not to the swift and certainly not to the "tricky", but to those who have the ability to sustain a long-term, honest, effort.