Be A Blog Believer, Not A Blog Bardolater

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"Social media must be done well and consistently, and even then it may not work," warns Indianapolis Business Journal columnist Tim Altom, even as he acknowledges that "much of the Web market now arrives from Google searches." The smart money, he explains, is going to search engine optimization to get companies listed as far up the Google ranking as possible.

It doesn’t appear Altom’s trying to turn back the clock.  He’s actually saying something I like to emphasize about blogging – it’s just one piece of the social media spectrum, not the be-all and end-all of business marketing. How successful any one marketing tactic is depends on the nature of the business and its relationship with its customers.

Morning Coach, J.B. Gossinger’s website, has become a part of my morning routine. A Glossinger Word of the Day a couple of weeks ago comes to mind when thinking about blogs as a marketing tool for business. That word, "bardolater", was used by President Obama at the reopening of the Ford Theater in April.  Obama referred to Abraham Lincoln as a lifelong bardolater, meaning Lincoln had been an admirer of "The Bard" (alluding to Shakespeare).

Obama was paying Lincoln a compliment, but the word "bardolater" was actually coined by George Bernard Shaw as a derogatory term. Shaw referred to Shakespeare’s adoring fans as "foolish bardolaters" and "bardolatrous ignoramuses".

There’s a message here that applies to business blogs and to social media in general.  As Chris Baggott, CEO of Compendium Blogware puts it, "Blogging is a fantastic and legitimate marketing tool." But blogs are only one tactic in a business’ overall marketing strategy, not some sort of magic that singlehandedly overcomes all challenges and all challengers.

As a blogger for business, I occupy just one seat at the "table".  The other "seats" are taken up by the web designer, the marketing consultant, business manager, and sometimes an employee or two.  As Velma says in the musical Chicago, "I simply cannot do it alone!"

Real bloggers write blog posts, but they aren’t bardolaters of blogs. Real bloggers are firm believers in the power of their posts to accomplish "pull marketing" and "win search".  But real bloggers aren’t idolaters of any one marketing tactic, not even of blogs.

Real bloggers – just keep blogging!

 

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Blogs And Snowflakes Are One-Of-A-Kind

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The other day, while I was making a presentation about business blogging at a meeting of the Sertoma Club of Carmel, Indiana, I was asked a question that brought me up short:

“So, when blogging for business, do you just keep using the same material and maybe change one or two words each time?”

(Though a bit taken aback, I realized I’d been often been asked this question, just in a different version. Business owners setting out on a blogging strategy are typically concerned they’ll “run out of things to say”.)

It occurs to me that the answer to both these versions of the question might be    
”snowflakes”. 

Yes, snowflakes.  How can it be that no two snowflakes are identical? After all, according to The Book of Totally Useless Information, a rough estimate of the numbers of snowflakes that have fallen on earth is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000!

A snowflake needs a nucleus around which to form, explains author Don Vorhees. Usually that’s a speck of dust, sea salt, or other particle. Water vapor accumulates and freezes on the airborne particles, which are blown about as they fall towards Earth, gathering more water droplets all the way. No two specks of dust are truly identical, and the conditions of temperature and moisture are different each time; those minor changes are enough to make all snowflakes different.

The “nucleus” around which business blog posts are formed is their topic, the expertise and products that business offers. The key words and phrases around that topic are what bring readers to the blog posts. But, even though the overall topic is the same, there is endless variety that can be used to make each blog post special. (The technique I’m demonstrating here is metaphor – making an unusual comparison – in this case between snowflakes and blogs.)

As I brought out in my earlier blog post “Blogs Can Have Split Personalities”, a company’s blog can reflect different aspects of the business and the different personalities of its owners and of selected customers (through testimonials and anecdotes).

So, whether you plan to do your own business blog writing or collaborate with a professional ghost blogger like me, the content will be a way of continually thinking through your own business knowledge and business beliefs.  The blog will reflect your unique view about your industry, about the news, about the country, even about – snowflakes!



 

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Blogging True

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When blog mavens Susanna Gardner and Shane Birley say "Keep it true", they mean bloggers should double-check posts for accuracy before making them live.  "Like a newspaper writer or any other publisher, you should have a process you follow to make sure you’re publishing facts and not fiction," the two authors remind us. "Opinions are okay as long as they’re labeled as just that," they add. 

In my opinion as a professional ghost blogger, using correct spelling and grammar in your blog posts is just the beginning, because "blogging true" means a lot more than tending to basic blog "hygiene".

For one, be chary of copyright infringements. Always attribute material to its author, naming the source in your blog. If you think delving deeper into a subject will be valuable to your readers, provide a link from your blog to that source. Attributing credit where it belongs is not only a show of good online manners, it keeps you on the right side of the law (remember that all material published on the web is copyright by definition, as I brought out in my earlier blog post, "Ties That Tell The truth In Blogging").

Speaking of earlier blog posts, Gardner and Birley encourage recycling "oldies but goodies" from your own blog. To keep it "true", just tell readers you’re bringing back a thought – or even an entire post – from the archives.

An important aspect of "truth in blogging" is delivering copy that is worth your readers’ time and attention. Enriching blog posts with famous, correctly quoted, sayings is a great idea; Bartlett’s Quotations is one good source for those. Varying your vocabulary adds quality and interest to your blog posts; Roget’s Thesaurus is a good source for synonyms.

John Bartlett himself commented on the practice of "linking" to others’ writing.  While the great man left this earth more than a century ago, in 1905 B.B. (before blogging), his words are very apropos to the concept of "blogging true":

"I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own."

Needless to say, you’ll want more than just a thread of your own thoughts in each blog post, but Bartlett’s concept of tying others’ ideas into your posts is very apropos for business bloggers who want to enrich blog content.

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Blog Civility

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Mom taught us to mind our manners, so that other people would enjoy being around us.  Business blogging, I’ve come to realize, has its own set of "manners".

I don’t mean just what management mavens like to call "best practices", but simple courtesies you wish every blogger would make part of his or her routine. After all, social networking is a form of conversation, and, if for no other reason than we want to do business, we need to make it pleasant for people to stay in the conversation with us. When I say "people", I’m talking about potential customers who arrive at our blog through the search process, fellow bloggers, and business colleagues.

Keeping blog content relevant to the topic and up to date with what’s happening in the field – and in the news – is one courtesy we can extend to our readers. Having a simple navigation path on the blog site is another, so viewers don’t have to play hide-and-seek to connect to your website, contact you, or get more information. Going light on jargon and technical terms without "dumbing down" the material shows respect for the readers’ intellect – and for their time.

Answer comments others post to your blog.  There’s nothing ruder, in my opinion, than ignoring someone’s message. If the comment is derogatory (but not crass, off-topic or using inappropriate language), see that as a chance to "turn away wrath" with a soft, expert, answer. If you don’t want to publish a comment, the least you can do is answer the person via direct email. (Do you like it when someone doesn’t return your phone call?)

Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley, authors of Blogging For Dummies, remind us to respect copyrights, cautioning us that "Anything and everything you see on the Internet is protected by copyright. It’s more than OK to quote another person’s blog post if you take only parts of it and don’t take the credit for creating it. In an earlier blog post (see "Ties That Tell The Truth In Blogging"), I explained the importance of avoiding plagiarism by properly attributing statements to their authors.  Just as I’ve done in this blog post, you can link to another blog that was the original source of a point you’re emphasizing in your own blog.

In fact, linking to other blogs has a built-in reward system. Beside the psychic reward that comes from doing the right thing, it’s nice to know electronic links actually earn "Brownie points" in terms of search engine rankings for your own blog!

Just as Mom always said, "Play nice, and you’ll get asked back."

 

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Myth-Bust In Your Blogs, But Give The Camel A Coat

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Discovery Channel knows "it’s a tough job separating truth from urban legend", but that’s exactly the job they took on in Mythbusters , their science TV program. The show is popular in large part because of its unusual special effects, which it uses to disprove certain popular beliefs, Internet rumors, and other myths.

Mythbusting is used in many fields to disprove what researchers suspect might be counterproductive thinking. The University of Cambridge, for example, conducted a study on stickleback fish, in order to disprove the theory that leaders are born. "Our study shows that the process by which leaders and followers emerge is a dynamic one…Individuals aren’t simply born leaders or followers, but their role in a pair….is the result of social feedback where everyone plays a role," concluded Cambridge researcher Andrea Manica.

I’m a firm believer that myth debunking is a great use for corporate blogs.  That’s because in the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or service often surface in the form of customer questions and comments. Addressing misinformation in a company’s blog shines light on the owner’s special expertise, besides offering information that is valuable to readers. De-mystifying matters can make your blog into a "go-to" source for readers seeking information in your field.

There’s a "rub", as Shakespeare would say, and it lies in the danger of rubbing readers the wrong way! People generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they come to your blog seeking information on what you sell, what you do, and what you know about!

It’s kind of like camels.  In Zoo Vet, David Taylor observed that "Camels may build up a pressure cooker of resentment towards human beings. A camel handler can calm the animal by handing over his coat to the beast, who "gives the garment hell – jumping on it, biting it, tearing it to pieces… then, man and animal can live together in harmony again."

John Lloyd and John MItchenson offer this fascinating camel psychology insight right after busting a widely held myth about camels storing water in their humps. (Part of me resented being told that something I’d taken as true for all of my life was in fact a lie – camels store fat , not water in their humps, I learned from reading "The Book of General Ignorance".)

Lloyd and Mitchenson promptly handled my resentment by "throwing me a coat" in the form of interesting new information about how trainers handle camel "snits". My anger at having my beliefs challenged swiftly disarmed, I vowed to employ similar strategies in my blog posts: When debunking myths, follow by throwing readers a "coat" – offer some intriguing, little-known information on the company’s products or services. 



 

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