Corporate Blog Writing When You’re Not Centrum

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CentrumIf your business is a household name, well, great for you!  Needless to say, most business owners who hire Say It For You writers to create blog content in Indianapolis, are not quite there yet.

 According to FunTrivia.com, until 1996, Coca-Cola was the best known brand name in the world. It’s disputable whether the current best-known is McDonald’s or Microsoft, but you get the idea of how hard it can be for small businesses to compete against giants like that.

Since as a blog content writer providing business blogging training, I’m all about helping businesses market themselves effectively, I was struck by a commercial I heard the other day on the radio.  The advertiser was a vitamin company called Potency Best, and the gist of the promo was that the product was more effective than Centrum®.

I must say that, at first, I found Potency Best’s approach sort of startling – why bring the name of your biggest competitor to top of mind for your listeners? Would blog content writers ever want to mention their competitors in their SEO marketing blog posts?

M4B Marketing talks about “creative marketing to beat the big guys”. Competing against bigger players in your market can be tough, M4B acknowledges. One secret, they say, is for little guys  to provide extra services.. “Look at opportunities that help both your business and customers instead of focusing on the problems.” Blog content writing is the perfect vehicle for focusing attention on specialty products and on the type of personalized services small business can  deliver best.

Two and a half years ago, I wrote a Say It For You blog post about how Windex ® sales skyrocketed after the product was mentioned in the hit low-budget movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” The eleven short, repeated exposures of the blue bottle were what did it in terms of marketing effectiveness for Windex. In corporate blogging training sessions I teach that one secret to blogging effectiveness is frequency of posting new content.

In corporate blog writing for the small business, then, it’s important to know who the Centrum® is, then to figure out ways in which you can measure up. Can you out-measure your “Centrum”? Spread the word through your small business marketing blog!


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Serving Punch in Business Blog Writing

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“Creating excitement through written words is a lot trickier than doing it throughpunch spoken words,” observes blogussion.com; you need to know the right methods of grabbing an interest.”  As a content writer in Indianapolis offering business blogging assistance to business owners, I appreciated Blogussions’ list of 45 words that can help spice up blog headlines. And, while I have my doubts about the likes of “ultimate”, “phenomenal”, and “mind-blowing” (always warning against hard selling in corporate blog writing), I think throwing in words such as “creative”, “powerful”, and “next-level” might, in fact, add some energy to otherwise repetitive SEO marketing blog posts.

I agree withLinda Ann Nickerson of Helium, who thinks “the best writing contains both fact and flair”. Nickerson recommends writers use both a thesaurus and a dictionary to “add variety and descriptive dimension to writing.”

Blog content writing, as I’m fond of saying during business blogging training sessions, is both science and art, with much of each relating to the words used in each blog post. “Imagine for a moment how dull the world would be if there were only one word to voice a particular thought,” remarks Pam Marshall in K12reader.com. “Luckily, we have synonyms and antonyms to add spice and flavor to our communication skills.” Of course, at Say It For You, where the mission of our business blogging service is to engage the interest of online readers in communicating the company’s message, words and pictures are our only tools. 

Even the simplest examples Marshall provides could, in fact, prove highly useful in corporate blog writing. In blogging on behalf of real estate, home decorating, or home repair businesses, varying the use of house, home, dwelling, residence, and abode might add some variety to the text; bed linen companies might refer to their wares as silky or downy in addition to “soft”.

“Even if a piece is otherwise well written, if it uses a particular word multiple times in a simple sentence or paragraph, it can probably be improved by substitution,” according to Hastley of airarticles.com.

When it comes to the “science” part of wordsmithing in blogs, Linda Nickerson makes the most interesting observation: “Aiming for optimum web readership, modern writers have focused on key word repetition in their published pieces.  In doing so, we may have sacrificed a slew of synonyns.”

No question, Linda. Blog content writers have to achieve two goals – getting found and getting read. In fact, both as a professional ghost blogger and as a trainer offering business blogging assistance, I rather enjoy the challenge of finding just the right mix to put “punch” in blog posts!


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Indianapolis Blog Writers Should Count Flying Elephants

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flying elephantsWhether that’s an accusation or a compliment, my friends tell me that ever since I became a professional ghost blogger and corporate blogging trainer, I’m spending a lot of time reading. I need to, because reading gives me ideas, and, for us blog content writers, ideas are nothing less than the vital fluids that keep SEO marketing blogs alive.

One little treasure of a book I discovered can be of business blogging assistance is Dance First, Think Later by Kathryn and Ross Petras., a compilation of rather offbeat quotes from famous figures on how to live life. A gem of a quote I found in that book, one that’s inordinately applicable to business blog writing, comes from writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you.  But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty five elephants in the sky, people will probably believe you. 

In blogging training sessions, I often stress, numbers are valuable tools in corporate blogging for business because they add both interest and credibility to any factual material.  So, in order to freshen up blog post content, I teach in corporate blogging training sessions, start with an idea about your product or service, then put a number to it:

          2 Simple Haircuts for Frizzy Hair
          3 Knottiest Problems of Home Repair and the Best Way to Tackle Them
          4 Tips to Add Color to Your Wardrobe

Whatever your business, the real point of the numbers is to offer valuable information, showcase your expertise, and demonstrate ways in which your product or service can help solve those knotty problems, provide color-adding wardrobe items, or coif their problem hair.

To add additional weight to the argument for using numbers as business blogging helpers, at least some Search Engine Optimization experts believe numbered lists are a favorite food for search engines and ought to be part of every SEO marketing blog.

In writing for business, are you remembering to count flying elephants?


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As a Blog Content Writer, What “Wires” Can You Remove?

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Bose music systemThree negatives – no tangle of wires, no dials to adjust, no stack of components – equal one very positive selling point for the Bose Wave® music system, as I was reminded the other day in a magazine ad.  Now there’s an idea I, as a corporate blogging trainer, can embrace – turning negatives into positives in business blog writing!

Apparently, authors Kevin and Shawn Coynes agree, because their new book Brainsteering (a must-read for anyone providing blog writing services) lists, as a key question for marketers to ask themselves, "What’s the biggest (avoidable) hassle that our customers have to put up with?" (That’s a question I can ask each business owner client to whom I’m offering business blogging assistance.)

As an Indianapolis blog writer, then, I need to urge each business owner client to pinpoint avoidable negatives that can turn into positive reasons compelling enough for online readers to respond to Calls the Action in their SEO marketing blog.

The Coynes take note of the fact that "the Gilette Corporation became rich realizing the inconvenience of sharpening a safety razor after each use, and then coming up with a solution to that ‘hassle’."

In writing for business, it’s crucial to help "remove the wires from your music system" and the need to repeatedly sharpen your razor, reminding readers of the annoyances and hassles they’re experiencing with their present providers and products.  Presto!  Your blog posts go on to describe the perfect, hassle-free solution to their problems.

One form of business blogging help would be asking the question, "What wires can you remove for readers of your blog?"

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Don’t Have it Today? Don’t Write it Today in Your Business Blog!

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A funny anecdote I read in Reader’s Digest makes a point blog content writers need to remember.

I’d just sat down at a Manhattan diner when I noticed schav on the menu.  I ordered some.
restaurent menu"We don’t have it today," said the waitress.
"Oh, you have it only on certain days?" I asked.
"No, we never have it."
I was confused.  "Then, why is it on the menu?"
"Well," she said with a shrug.  "Some people like it."

Corporate blogging for business is about what you do have – what you do sell, what you do know, and about what you do well.  Unfortunately, I’ve see blog writers in Indianapolis and elsewhere try to "fatten up" their "menu" of website and blog content by ranging far afield from the core mission of their business.

Promoting a public speaking business, for example?  Better, in your SEO marketing blog, to list two or three main speaking topics than a smorgasbord of twenty topics.

Far be it from me, of course, to imply in Say It For You corporate blog training sessions, that being a generalist in your field is undesirable or less marketable than being a specialist.  It’s simply that the more focused the business blog writing, the more effective it’s likely to be in terms of eliciting response and action from readers.

Jakob Neilson, who offers guidelines for Web content usability, says that the actual information on any web page is the design component with the highest impact of website profitability. A second teacher of good writing,Matt Duffy, guides content writers on a similar track: "Above all," he says, "writing should make sense."  Corporate blog writing will make the most sense to readers if it’s focused around central themes – core beliefs of the business owners, and cor products and services offered by that business.

In blog content writing for business, or on menus in restaurants, don’t talk about schav if you don’t serve schav!

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