“Learning Around” For Your Blog – Part Five

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Idea "hooks" for business blogs can come from the funniest places – and I mean that literally! From interactive buildings to luggage concierges to golf swings – everywhere you stop to look and listen, you can find unique ways to present your own ideas and to explain to online visitors exactly what you sell, what you do, and what you know a lot about.

Awhile back, for example, I used a conversation between characters in a comic strip to explain and defend the process of ghost blogging.  The situation was that Cathy and her boyfriend Irving were opening their mail.  He was reading email on his laptop, while she sorted through piles of envelopes.

He: "What’s all that?"

She: "Mail."

He: "Mail? Who sends paper mail?"

She: "People".

He: "People?"

She: "Yes. Unlike you in your cold electronic bubble, I get mail from people."

He looks through some of her mail. "This is all mail from magazine subscription departments!"

(Here’s where my "third ear" perked up at Cathy’s punch line: "Still way closer to an actual human than you’ll get any time soon with email!"

"See?" I wanted to shout to business owners with no blog (rather than admit their lack of time and discipline needed to consistently post information online, critics would rant about the lack of "transparency" in ghost blogging, totally missing the point Cathy explained so well:)

Blogs, even ghost-written ones, are way closer to an actual human "voice" than you get with brochures, billboards, and traditional websites!

Can you find an idea for conveying your message from a comic strip character?

 

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“Learning Around” For Your Blog – Part Four

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There’s just no end to the "learning around" process for business bloggers. Last week I talked about learning from feature stories in newspapers and magazines, from visits to sports training center, and from current controversies in your field. The whole idea is this:

To keep coming up with fresh ideas and stimulating content for your blog posts, you need to be stimulating your own mind by reading what other people have to say, and then using that material to illustrate the information you want to convey to your blog readers!

In my case, I need to come up with new ways for my blog readers to become better bloggers themselves, or to understand what I, as a professional ghost blogger can do to help. So when I came across a story about the Flylite company, I knew I’d found a good way to explain why ghost blogging is part of a national "don’t-do-it-yourself" trend.

Flylite customers pack their bags – once. The "clothing butlers" take it from there, cleaning and pressing the clothes and polishing the shoes. The clothing is scanned into a virtual online "closet", so that travelers can click and drag to "pack" their bag, which will be delivered to any U.S. destination.

I used this to demonstrate the ghost-blogging "concierge" business model, explaining that your "blog butler" picks up the information, "cleans, presses, and polishes" the material, delivering it directly to the Web.

The point of all this is, bloggers for business complain to me all the time that, after a few months (sometimes sooner), they find themselves out of ideas.  Ideas, though, are all around, all the time – the trick, as the grandparents’ Dick and Jane readers used to say, is Stop, Look, and Listen!

 

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“Learning Around” For Your Blog – Part Three

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You can say only so many things about what you sell, what you know about, and what services you offer customers and clients, right? Wrong. Sustaining an engaging business blog over the course of years is very do-able – so long as you stay engaged.  In fact, as a business blogging trainer, my theme for this week’s blogs is "learning around".  That means staying alert for tidbits and teaching tools (after all, what is a blog if not a teaching tool?) to keep fresh ideas flowing for your business blog posts.

What I’ve found over the years I’ve been a professional blogger is that, as long as I keep learning, I stay excited and readers can sense that in my blog. If you’re a business owner, you’d have to agree with the next statement: What you learn isn’t always peaches and cream.  In every industry there’s controversy. 

People disagree on the best applications for the product you sell.  Some might even say your product does nobody any good at all.  There’s controversy about best business practices, and about different approaches to providing professional services.  There’s controversy on what types of investments are good for retirees, about whether pale or vibrant colors are best for bathroom walls, and about whether club soda is good for stains on shirts. There are always going to be different ways to skin the proverbial cat; while you may be convinced your way is best, not everyone will agree.

In my own profession of ghost blogging, there’s lots of controversy – everything from "transparency" issues to how many keyword phrases belong in any one blog post.  In 2008, for three long weeks, my blog was "knocked down" from its spot at the top of Page One of Google by all the back-and-forth speculation about whether rapper Kanye West was using a ghost blogger.  Rather than ignoring the controversy, I needed to "weigh in", which I did. 

From my point of view, I wrote, all the excitement was "proof" that blogging works to drive traffic and interest (no matter who writes the blogs)!

"Read around" – read other people’s blogs and articles, so you can be aware of controversies in your field.  Then – blog, so readers know where you stand and why. Controversy can be a blogger’s best friend!

 

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“Learning Around” For Your Blog – Part Two

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This week, my Say It For You blog posts are all about picking up ideas from everywhere and everything to keep your business blog full of fresh, interesting content.

Visiting an indoor golf training center, I learned about a teaching system called "Straight Line Golf".  (Traditional golf instruction focuses on correcting players’ individual weaknesses; Straight Line takes all players through the same teaching track, and focuses on getting the ball straight to its target.)

No, I hadn’t come to the golf center to blog or to do business, but (listening with my "third ear") I picked up a "signal" that this straight line training holds a valuable lesson for business bloggers. For us, the "line" begins when someone browses the Web searching for information about a product or service related to what our company offers.  The search engine brings the visitor in a straight line to our blog.  The blog, in turn, leads in a straight line to the website, and then to our "Contact Us" page or shopping cart.

That means everything about your online marketing needs to be consistent with everything else, with your blog’s engaging content and keyword phrases being the conduit for the "match".

I got another "third ear" idea from an unlikely source that resulted in What’s on Your Blog Bumper?.. Stopped in traffic one day, I saw a personalized license plate on the car ahead of me saying "Celebrate the Arts.". Now, there’s not much room on a license plate for a lot of words, and the driver of the car behind doesn’t have much time to read the plate.  The "lesson" here, though, is that, for just a moment, that plate was bringing the topic of the arts to the top of my mind.

Blog posts, I realized, need to do just that.  Your potential customer is scanning various websites and blogs and yours comes up.  If something in your blog post is "right on" for that reader, your company will be, at least for a little while, "top of mind" for that reader.

Can a license plate help you explain what you sell, what you know, or what services you provide?  Point being, you don’t ever have to run out of ideas for blog posts if you keep on , looking, listening, and "learning around"!

 

 

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“Learning Around” For Your Blog – Part 1

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One quality that make for a great ghost blogger is a "third ear", I always say.  That’s because a ghost uses that extra "ear" to hear not only what the business owner client wants to say, but to pick up on that owner’s unique style and business beliefs (the things that often aren’t expressed in words).

When I think more about it, though, all bloggers need to do more of that third-ear type listening.  Time to write is scarce for business owners.  We know that.  Many lack the discipline to keep up the blogging frequency needed to win search.  There’s something else, though, that I hear from many business owners and managers – they’ve run out of ideas!  A month or two into blogging for their business, the glaring question is, "So, what else is there to blog about?" 

Read around, learn around, is my advice as a blogging trainer.  Ideas are all over the place, all of the time, in fact, but you’ve got to "hear" and make the connection. This week, I’m going to devote my Say It For You blog posts to "signals" you can pick up of Other People’s Wisdom (O.P.W.).  You can share OPW to help visitors to your blog understand what it is that you do, what you sell, and what your business is really all about.

Take feature stories, for example.  You know, those interesting spots you hear on radio or TV or read about in magazines. Ask yourself: "Could I use that story to explain…..?":

Back in 2008, I read in Newsweek about a New York City building that was being turned into an interactive keyboard by wiring an antique organ to various spots around the place. Rock singer/artist David Byrne said he was tired of people going to concerts as passive consumers "waiting to be filled with music" emanating from a stage.  "Playing the Building", by contrast, he explained, would come to life only when the public participated.

I "heard" that story with my "third ear", and realized I could use it to demonstrate the interactive nature of blogs, which are available for acting and interacting between businesses and their customers. 

Could this story make a point about the way YOU do business?



 

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