Visiting Columbus, Ohio to give a talk about blogging for business (what else?), I picked up an official visitors’ map for the city. Unfolded, the piece had a street map on one side, with information about the city on the other:
 

• Accommodations
• Attractions
• Food and Drink
• Shopping
• Visitor Information

With some time to spare between events, I began to read through the descriptions in the "Attractions" and "Food and Drink" sections of the guide, realizing, as I proceeded, that the set-up had a website "feel" to it.

Many company websites have sections like that, listing categories of product lines or of services the company offers.  The content is relatively static, with its purpose being to show what’s available for purchase. From the visitors’ map, for example, I learned that Schmidt’s Restaurant Und Sausage Haus features "award winning German/American favorites and a full-service bar".

Informative stuff, I thought, but not personal or focused enough to make me want to aim my GPS towards Schmidt’s. Upon further digging, I learned that the restaurant is run by the fifth generation of the Schmidt family.  Now that’s the stuff a good blog would share. Blog posts might include interviews with the oldest and youngest living Schmidts, complete with photos, and let me know Hans Schmidt might just stop to chat, sharing with me and my dinner companions tales of early Columbus days when his German settler ancestors first arrived.  I thought of dozens of ways blog posts could be making that restaurant come alive for searchers by making it more personal.

Further down in the visitors’ guide, I found a listing for Yosick’s Artisan Chocolates.  Besides informing me I could find chocolates, pastries, and espresso at Yosick’s, the listing shared that the establishment is Certified Kosher by the Columbus Vaad Ho-ir. I wasn’t able to locate a blog for Yosick’s, but a blog might have clarified what goes into certifying kosher chocolate, and who the Vaad Ho’ir is. ( As it happens, I know those terms, but would’ve liked to know more about what makes chocolate "artisan"!) 

A blog is the perfect tidbit dispenser. Blog "chats" with potential customers and clients, informal but very informative, make those customers and clients feel welcome.  Remember, too, I was being exposed to Schmidt’s and Yosick’s through a visitors’ map. But, what if I’d been searching online for restaurants in Columbus? Whichever restaurateurs had posted relevant content on the web by bloggin, especially those who’d been blogging more frequently and more recently than their competitors, are precisely those I, as a searcher, would have been most likely to discover!

Another insight I had while glancing through the Columbus, Ohio vistors’ map was that it
had almost too much information to absorb all in one sitting.  The big thing about a corporate blog, in my view, is that it’s made up of lots of little blog posts! In each post, you highlight just one idea, showcase just one of your products, or describe just one special service you provide.  Rather than a resume-like list of all you have to offer, you engage blog readers with several delicious details centered around just one idea. You can get to all the other wonderful things you have to share in future blog posts!

The message your blog conveys, post by post, step by step, is subtle, but that message definitely makes its presence known. 

After all, you and your team are not just "anybodies" – you’re artisans!

Shakespeare’s Juliet questioned the importance of titles when she said,
"What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

When it comes to blogging, however, a name can take on quite a bit of importance. "Father of advertising" David Ogilby often talked about the important of headlines for marketing pieces. In fact, Ogilby had a five-point "acid test" for headlines:
 

• Did it make me gasp?
• Do I wish I’d thought of it?
• Is it unique?
• Does it fit my strategy?
• Can it be used for thirty years?

I’m not sure we need to apply the thirty-year test to blogs, but titles of blog posts are highly important, for some of the reasons Ogilby had in mind as well as some new ones that apply uniquely to Web marketing  For one thing, as I keep emphasizing in my Say It For You blog posts, online searchers tend to be scanners rather than readers, and, even if (through the "miracle" of search engine optimization), you get found, you may not get read unless your headline makes them cry "Bingo!"

Key words and phrases in the title of blog posts help introduce searchers to providers of exactly the kind of information and services they need.  As blog maven Ted Demopoulos puts it, "Search engines assume that if text is in the title, it must be important."

Harking back to Ogilby wisdom, however, you’ve gotta admit SEO-friendly titles are not nearly enough to make you gasp-and-wish-you’d-thought-of-them.  But, at the very least, titles have got to make searchers want to learn more of what you have to say.

It’s interesting that, at the back of Ted Demopoulos’ book What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting, there’s a section on Internet Resources, listing several dozen blogs he’s recommending.

Out of those, I picked out some "ho-hummer" titles (despite the fact that each title quite accurately describes what to expect from that blog post, I wasn’t very excited about reading further).

• "Comments – Essential To Blogs?"
• "Blogging Platforms and Blogging Software"
• "A Blog As a Web Portal"

Then, I picked out three that I thought were real "grabbers":

• "Passion, Profit, and MyYawp"
• "It’s All an Experiment"
• "Friday Squid Blogging"

(You’ll notice that only the third title uses the key words "blog" or "blogging".)

So, would that which we call a blog by any other name smell as sweet?

Somewhere in between optimizing with search terms and causing searchers to gasp in curiosity and amazement lies the answer….