Intro, Please! Why-A-Blog-About…

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Most often, I’m so anxious to get into a book that I skip over the introduction.  I’m awfully glad I took the time to read Rolf Dobelli’s introduction to “The Art of Thinking Clearly”. Not only did that intro section help me put into perspective all the information I was going to be reading, it helped me realize how important our opening blog posts are when it comes to content writing for business blogs.

In fact, I thought Dobelli’s introduction section accomplished many of the things we need to include in opening blog posts.

  • The author shares reasons he felt compelled to write the book.
    When we Indianapolis freelance blog content writers are beginning to create content for a marketing blog, we need to share with readers why we’re doing that.  WHY a blog about   (accounting, sinus conditions, long term care insurance, mattresses, divorce counseling, furniture…whatever the industry or profession or product or service)?  
     
  • The author shares his own struggle to accept his findings and the process by which he arrived at his unique perspective. 
    “This is not a how-to book,” cautions Dobelli. “I think of myself as a translator whose job is to interpret and synthesize what I’ve learned.” Sharing the “why” helps personalize the blog, so that readers can feel a connection with a real person.(In Why a Blog About Juliana?, another author, Juliana Playwright reveals how seeking the answers to simple questions about the time periods she was writing about ended up becoming more complex than she might ever have imagined.)
     
  • The author clarifies his end goal for the book.
    “Indeed, my wish is quite simple. If we could learn to recognize and evade the biggest errors in thinking – in our private lives, at work, or in government – we might experience a leap in prosperity. “When setting out to blog, it is important that you first set goals,” explains bonsaimediagroup.


“I'm hoping that I'll be able to get across some of my ideas about how clients who need debt help should expect to be treated, and how important I know it is to just listen to people when they need to talk about their business or their family or their health problems. So, I'm going to be here blogging, debunking, explaining, and helping. I hope you'll be here, too…”
(This is an example of the opening blog for a debt consolidation lawyer.)

Mack Collier sums it up nicely in “How to write your first blog post”: Tell them who you are, he advises, why you are blogging, what you will be blogging about, and how to leave feedback.

Whatever you do in blogging for business, don’t skip over the introduction.  Over my years of reading blogs and providing corporate blogging training, I’ve learned one thing – there’s absolutely no substitute for figuring out and then translating into words – the Why-a-Blog-About……
 

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Indiana Business Bloggers Wanted for Translating and Interpreting

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“I don’t have my own lab,” writes Rolf Dobelli in the forward to his book The Art of Thinking Clearly.  In fact, in writing the book, he explains, he thought of himself as a translator.
 

How very apropos, I thought, coming upon the author’s self-description. All of us Indianapolis freelance business blog content writers, after all, are doing a job that is exactly what Dobelli says his job is – to interpret and synthesize what he’d read and learned and to put it in terms others can understand.

On a resume, I realize in retrospect, my years of experience crafting messages for different businesses and professional practices might very well have fallen under the job descriptor “translator/iinterpreter”.

And, while I hadn’t thought of content writing for business as “interpreting” per se, I think that bloggers for business now need to go beyond providing information and become “thought drivers". Whether it's business-to-business blog writing or business-to-consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers. In other words, blog posts will go from information-dispensing to offering the business owner's (or the professional's, or the organizational executive's) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic.

One other important aspect of using blog content writing as an interpretation mechanism has to do with curation. When I link to outside sources, that allows me to add breadth, depth, and credibility to the ideas I’m expressing on behalf of Say It For You client companies. In what way?  Introducing  another blog content writer’s comments about the subject of my client's blog is a way to reinforce my points and show those owners and professionals are staying in touch with others in their respective fields.

 Naturally, the more technical the subject, the greater the importance the “translation and interpretation” function of the blogger . As content writers, we understand that online readers have access to more technical sources than our blog posts.  Our job, though, is to help those readers (and that includes B&B prospects of our SEO marketing blogs) make sense out of the ocean of available information.

Like author Rolf Dobelli, at Say It For You, we “don’t have our own lab” or a staff of researchers. And like him, our job on behalf of our business owners, practitioners, and organizations is to interpret and synthesize what we’ve read and learned and put those understandings in terms that will help readers understand and be moved to action.

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For Each Reader of Your Business Blog, the Microclimate is Different

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The Book of Totally Useless Information, I’ve concluded, has lots of very useful information that I can share with Indianapolis blog content writers.

In discussing the improbable fact that no two snowflakes are exactly alike, author Don Vorhees indirectly offers some reassurance to bloggers. “No snowflake is born in exactly the same space or travels exactly the same path in its development,” he explains, mentioning that the microclimate that each flake passes through in the cloud is slightly different than that for others.

In SEO marketing blogs, the key is differentiation, says Malleck Design, “There are a million firms out there that basically do the same thing as you.”  So how can blogs help differentiate any one business over the “noise”? “As a company, answers automotive social media coach Kathi Kruse, your brand has DNA.  It’s the story of how you got to where you are:  Your team, your intent, your struggles, your triumphs.  Every single day there’s a story to be told, and stories told the right way can increase revenue.” Kruse adds.

Every business blogger, whether that’s the business owner or professional practitioner,  needs to know that helping readers relate to the business or practice depends on that snowflake premise:  Like snowflakes, no business is born in exactly the same space or travels exactly the same path in its development.  

There’s a second way in which the snowflake analogy is appropriate when it comes to sustained blogging for business. As a  blogging trainer, one concern I hear a lot from business owners or professional practitioners is that sooner or later, they’ll deplete their supply of ideas for blog posts. “I’ve already covered my products and services on my website – what else is left to say?” is the common thread in the questions I’m so often asked.

That’s when it’s important to remember the readers. Like snowflakes, each reader’s need for information, products or services was born in a slightly different space and has traveled a different path. Smart blog marketers know there are many subsets of every target market group, and that not every message will work on every person. At Say It For You, we realize online searchers need to know we’re thinking of them as individuals..

To a certain extent, though, the blog content readers who end up as clients and customers action have self-selected. Their snowflake trajectory, on that very day, was in sync with the blog content they found. We blog content writers need to keep on telling the story in its infinite variations.
 

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Does Your Corporate Blog Leave a Contrail?

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This week, in my Say It For You blog posts, I’m making good use of The Book of Totally Useless Information. “Why do jets traveling at high altitudes leave those long cloudlike trails in the sky?” asks author Don Vorhees, explaining that the trails are called “contrails” because they’re formed from CONdensed water vapor.

The point I want to emphasize to Indianapolis blog content writers is that the high-flying jet aircraft are often hard to see, as Vorhees points out, “but the trails they leave behind can be readily spotted.”

The effects of corporate blogging are cumulative, not immediate. Like contrails, blogs are important in the “trails they leave behind”. Fellow blog writer Lee Odden of TopRank describes the effect as “the compounding equity that grows with long term blogging and SEO efforts”.

Every time you make a mortgage payment, part of that payment is building equity in the home. In an SEO marketing blog, with every use of a keyword phrase, you’re building “equity” in that category. Optimally, as Motherlandforum.com explains, keyword phrases are incorporated into several different aspects of a blog, not only in the text itself.  It’s particularly important to use keyword phrases in two places:
 

  1. In the domain name.. Even if the name will be longer that way, using exact keywords is more beneficial than having a short, easy-to-remember name.
  2. In the meta tag description that appears in the browser tab (at the top of the page when you print it out).  Next to the domain name, this is most important.  


Two other ways to use keyword phrases, according to Motherland Forum, include:

  1. In images. Name the image file using keywords.
  2. In embedded links, referring to previous posts in new posts


Over time, your business blog writing builds up its own keyword “contrail” that helps your blogsite stay “visible” to online searcher long after the content itself was written!
 

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Getting Close Enough to ESSO in Blogging for Business

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After World War I, when Standard Oil wanted to unify all its marketing activities under one easily identifiable trademark, the name ESSO was chosen because it was short and memorable and suggested the initials of the company. But due to trademark disputes in different territories, (Standard Oil in the Midwest insisted the marketing symbol was their exclusive property),  explains Don Voorhees in The Book of Totally Useless Information, the world famous company had to do something drastic.

“After exhaustive consumer and legal research studies, the name EXXON was decided upon (in 1972). It was essentially a new word, but close enough to ESSO to make consumer recognition a little easier.”

To me, as a corporate blogging trainer, I must say, I found this information about the origins of the name EXXON far from totally useless. (I’d found the information in the first place as part of the “reading around” process I think plays such a big part in successfully keeping up a corporate or professional practitioner blog.)

The tie-in with blog content writing stems from the fact that consumers turn to search engines for help finding specific kinds of information, services, products, and expertise. Using the mechanism of key words and phrases, the search engine "makes a match" and delivers results to the viewer.  
Every once in a while, though, there's a "disconnect" between what the searcher wanted and what he or she actually finds. If this happens with your blog, even though it's not one of your target customers who clicks on the blog link, it's not necessarily bad news. That kind of "mistake" can even result in you converting a searcher-gone-astray into a buyer. I call this "accidental organic donating".

An example might be that a mom, in the process of helping her child with homework, goes on Google to find information about the state of Hawaii. The search engine uses the key word "Hawaii" and brings up a blog about Hawaii presented by a travel company. The blog so enticingly portrays Hawaii as a destination, the mom bookmarks the site, and later uses that travel agency to plan a surprise anniversary trip with her husband!

Just as EXXON was a new word, but close enough to the familiar ESSO name, including topics in the blog that are “trending” makes it makes it a little easier for business blog content writers to establish familiarity with customers.

When an "accident" turns out to bring a new reader to your blog, and if your content engages that reader's interest, the mistake can result in your converting a mistake into a customer!
 

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