The question author Malcolm Gladwell gets asked most often just happens to be the same as I’m most often asked when offering corporate blogging training sessions: "Where do you get your ideas?"

Gladwell’s conclusion, interestingly enough, is very similar to the one I discussed in my Say it For You blog post series, "Learning Around For Your Blog".  The way Gladwell explains it, "The trick is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell."

While the author is referring to making books and articles interesting for the reader, the challenge he pinpoints is precisely the one facing all blog content writers. "Our instinct as humans, after all," he observes, "is to assume that most things are not interesting."  I remind newcomers to corporate blogging for business that online searchers tend to scan rather than read.  That’s because, as Gladwell reminds us, "there’s just so much out there, so readers filter and rank and judge."

However (and here’s where Gladwell makes a point that’s absolutely germane to creators of SEO marketing blogs), "if you want to be a writer" (insert "blog content writer"), "you have to fight that instinct every day.’

Reminds me of something a waggish friend of mine used to say. "If your parents had no children, you won’t, either."  Point being, if you’re not keenly interested in your subject, chances are your readers won’t be, either.

The Gladwell bottom line for writing, as stated in the preface to his new book What the Dog Saw, is simply this: "Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade." (As an Indianapolis blog writer, I can assert that statement is particularly true. In offering business blogging help, I emphasize that in business blog writing, it’s crucial to avoid the urge to directly sell a product or service.)  "It succeeds or fails" continues Gladwell, "on the strength of its ability to engage you and to make you think." 

Celebrated portrait artist Chuck Close has a valuable lesson to teach business blog content writers, I think.  Close, whose story is told by author Kurt Anderson in Spark: How Creativity Works, reveals that as a student with learning disabilities, he would be overwhelmed by big projects. He found it helpful to isolate one small piece to work on “and forget about the rest of the picture.”

In offering corporate blogging training, one rule of thumb I often emphasize is focusing on just one idea in each blog post. Not only does this lend more punch to the post, it helps the blog content writer concentrate all his/her efforts around that one focal point, “forgetting about the rest of the picture”.

Fellow blogger Michael Reynolds, in his guest post on my Say It For You blog, suggests that  business blog writing can be broken down into two basic elements, idea generation and the writing itself. Rather than expecting to “sit down once a week and…magically produce great content out of this air”, Reynolds suggests capturing ideas that occur during a conversation or even in the shower, coming back to write them down later.

Another approach to finding “one small piece to work on” is to decide what “angle” or slant a particular post will have. Paul Gillin, in Secrets of Social Media Marketing, outlines at least six different types of blog. As an Indianapolis blogger offering blog writing services to small to medium-sized companies, though, what I’ve found is that even those who have embraced business blog writing will have just one blog rather than several.

However, I explain, even with just one blog, each post within the SEO marketing blog can be representative of a different type. Today’s blog post might be an advocacy post, “addressing a public policy upon which the company wants to make its position known.” 

Tomorrow’s might be a topical post, offering practical information that helps readers be more successful. Next week, there might be a CEO post, helping the executive connect with customers and shareholders. In fact, as a professional ghost blogger,my goal is to be the “voice” of the CEO or other officer, of the company in general, and sometimes of a customer for a testimonial.

As a freelance blog writer, then, I try to isolate “one small piece of the work”. Then, in corporate blogging training, I encourage blog content writers to focus each of their blog posts on one piece as well. Close discovered the technique by way of dealing with his learning disability. You don’t need to be learning-disabled, though, to realize that the one-topic-at-a-time  technique is excellent for sustained, effective, business  blog writing.