Sustain Ability in Business Blogs

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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.

 

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Business Blogs Take a Lesson From Elementary School

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Remember Show and Tell back in grade school?  There was pedagogic science behind the practice, but it all boiled down to the fact that we absorb information better when it comes to us in more than one form.

While business blogging is usually not meant purely to educate readers, bloggers can take a lesson from those old show-and-tell sessions.

"Better headlines have been proven to increase readership and response by as much as 700%," advertising and marketing commentator Michel Fortin points out, adding that photos and graphics near the headline are even better.

Adding video to blog posts is a powerful way to engage readers’ attention, but simple clip art and photos can also serve to focus on a key points in each post  Just the other day, leafing through the October issue of Health.com magazine, I came across an intriguing title: "The 5 Germiest Places in Your Life".  The five include phones, soap dispensers, computer keyboards and mouse pads, lobby-level elevator buttons, and lastly, shopping cart handles.  Thinking about it now, I realize that as a visual learner, it was the line drawing of a shopping cart that focused my attention on the title of the article.

Fortin suggests livening up business copy with before-and-after shots, photos of products, and even photos of the business team. The picture makes the words come alive for the reader. But, as a business blogging trainer, I would hasten to add that the words can pull their own weight when it comes to making friends and influencing people. Perhaps the best words come from satisfied customer "friends", so, wherever possible, include case studies and testimonials in your business blog posts.

You might say it’s good to go back to the future, taking a lesson from elementary school show-and-tell strategy!


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How-Did-It-Get-Its-Shape Business Blogging

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The title “How the NFL Football Got Its Shape” has two qualities I think bloggers for business ought to consider imitating: It’s engaging, and it doesn’t try to sell you anything.

Life’s Little Mysteries contributor Dan Peterson offers seven paragraphs on the history of American-style football, with links to two other football-related stories, so the content of the article fulfills the implied promise in the title, which engages readers’ interest and offers an overview of what the article will cover.

There’s certainly a lot of talk in blogging circles about creating “engaging” content, but as a business blogging trainer, my “fix” on “engaging” is that, however relevant the factual content you provide in your blog, at least some of your online visitors will have heard at least some of that information before.

What can make the critical difference between “ho-hum” and “engaging” in blog content is showcasing the unique slant or approach your business takes. Your blog should reveal how your products – or at least the products you’ve chosen to offer to customers – “took shape”. How did your business model – the unique way you’ve selected to offer services to your clients and customers – evolve?

For readers looking for facts and statistics about football equipment, Dan Peterson provides plenty, from the standardized dimensions and weight of NFL and NCAA balls, to the different ways white lines are painted on high school footballs compared to those used by college players.

For readers seeking insight into the “why” of football shape, Peterson traces the early rugby balls made of pigs’ bladders, explaining the improved grip that the laces provide, even though they’re not needed for closure on the now-rubber balls. Providing valuable information to readers without being too sales-ey is one way to positively differentiate your business blog and cultivate potential buyers.

Effective blog posts will move readers along a path:

  • verifying that they’ve come to the right place
     
  • you’re on the “same page” as them because you understand their interest and their needs

Your content leads readers from

  1.  “Never thought of it that way!”, to
     
  2.  “I didn’t know that!”, and finally to
     
  3.  “I’ve got to take advantage of that!”

 

 

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Business Branding Tips For Business Blogging

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“If you are starting a new business or revitalizing an old one, the visual brand is an important part of the process,” writes my friend and local small business maven Lorraine Ball.  Just about all of the Roundpeg visual branding tips, I believe, are good rules to follow when creating business blog content.

Opt for simple (no more than two colors, no more than two fonts, avoid intricate details).

Opting for simple is a good idea when it comes to the design of the design of both the blog page itself and of individual posts, but perhaps most important, when it comes to the content.  As a business blogging trainer, I always advise that each blog post needs to emphasize and illustrate one – and, ideally, only one – key concept.

Be consistent across platforms.

Your logo should look good in black and white and in color, be recognizable when inverted or resized, explains Ball. To me, the blog content rule parallel to these cautions concerns themes.  Each blog post can deal with a concept or topic, but the best blogs have central themes running throughout all posts.  The themes represent the beliefs and the unique “slant” of the business owner or professional practitioner, and they are the “leitmotifs” that help the separate blog posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy.

Commit to the design.

Once you choose a logo, advises Roundpeg, use it everywhere – on letterhead, websites, invoices, business cards, t-shirts and coffee mugs. As a professional blogger, I think I understand why people loved Fred Astaire. – his singing had authenticity.  Commit to your own “themes”, the ideas that make you passionate about your business – and your very own way of doing business. Your ongoing blogging allows people to hear your distinct voice, and the concepts to which you’ve committed your business career!


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How To Curl Up and Dye in Your Business Blog

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On a recent jaunt to Shelbyville, Indiana, I saw a storefront sign that caught my blogging trainer’s eye: “Curl Up and Dye Salon”. Cute name, I thought. More important, the play on words engaged my interest because it presented a familiar phrase with a new twist.

Reinforcing the familiar, then progressing to new information is an effective tactic for business blogging as well. Starting with the “known” helps online searchers conclude they’ve come to the right place for the data, products, and services they need.  The new elements you introduce – specialized knowledge, expert “how-to” tips, unusual case studies – help distinguish you and your business from those of your competitors’.

Puns can add an element of humor in blog posts as well as reinforcing the familiar.
A sign at Ivy Tech Community College quotes Groucho Marx: “Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like bananas.” This one’s funny because it forces the reader to consider the two words “like” and “flies” in a new way. And, while a pun in itself doesn’t constitute a Call to Action, it can keep visitors engaged for the several additional seconds needed for them to reach the CTA in your blog.

Yahoo! News’ fashion comments on Michelle Obama’s skillful recycling of outfits can serve as a guide for business bloggers struggling to keep content fresh over periods of months and even years. Michelle’s “Reuse, Renew, Reverse” has style watchers fascinated by her ingenuity.  Wearing a navy sweater with the lace-up in the back one day, then laced in front over a blouse the next earned her the title “fashionista-in-chief” from reporter Claudine Zap.

In similar vein, bloggers for business need to learn to reuse and renew blog content in order to keep blog post #386 (which this post is for Say It For You) as interesting to readers as blog post #3!  Maintaining consistently high rankings on search engines depends in large part on longevity.  That translates into the discipline to post content on the web over and over again, over long periods of time. Reusing and especially renewing content is the secret.  As veteran country singing star Mel Tillis puts it, “Every time I walk out there, it’s a different audience.”

Business owners who can learn from the First Lady to “reuse, renew, and reverse” with style (all the while maintaining a Mel Tillis-like discipline) are rare. The task of long-term business blogging blogs might fall, in many cases, to professional ghost bloggers.



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