Business Blog Readers Need Content Writers to Get One Thing Straight

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“Let’s get this straight: The doctor who prescribes laughter after I’ve been run over by a truck is not one I’m liable to revisit,” begins Chapter One of Reader’s Digest ‘s “Laughter is the Best Medicine”.

I teach Indianapolis freelance blog content writers the same thing: Whether it’s products, services, or advice your client has to sell, there’s one thing you need to get straight in planning the SEO marketing blog: 

“Prescribing” anything before you’ve demonstrated you’ve done your homework and understand the readers’ needs is not likely to have them revisiting the blog or following any of your calls to action.

So much information has been put out there in the form of corporate blogging for business that it’s essential for blog content writers to focus on a target audience, What needs to be loud-and-clear is that you understand them, you serve their specific needs, and that you’re targeting them.

As a professional ghost blogger for business, I realize blog marketing doesn't attempt to create a new market where one doesn't exist. On the contrary, blogging is "pull marketing", designed to attract searchers who have already identified their own need for a particular product or service.

Even so, the fact readers have clicked onto a blog post is not to say they’re ready for a “prescription”. What that click does represent is a chance for the business or practice to introduce its unique approach to satisfying customers' needs.

Bottom line is, you’re writing a blog (or perhaps turning to a professional ghost writer like me for help) in hopes that searchers will not only read what you’ve written, but react favorably by becoming clients or customers.

But, in order to have any hope of achieving that outcome, your knowledge (of your target audience) needs to influence every aspect of your blog – what the page looks like, the style of writing, the length and frequency of posts, and the way you elicit comments and feedback.


In blogging for business, are you jumping to the “prescription” stage too soon?

 

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Business Blogs Showcase 3 Roles

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Retirement planners have three roles, Marty Martin explains in the Journal of Financial Planning:

Listener

Connector

Resolver

Seems to me, keeping those same three roles in mind would help blog content writers plan an editorial calendar for the SEO marketing blog of any business, professional practice, or organization.

Listener

The goal is to uncover the facts and discover the emotions. When your client tells you the source of his or her concern, switch to the facts, and normalize the feelings (“It’s not unusual for people to feel a bit nervous about retirement.”)

Once the basic connection with online searchers  has been established through the blog post title and the keyword phrases, we blog content writers have our real work cut out for us – creating an emotional connection with readers. We need to assure them we ‘re listening.  We understand the issues, and they are hardly “alone” in their need for solutions to their problems.


Connector

The goal is to help the client connect the dots of the different types of data – their pension, their Social Security, their IRA, etc.-  plus connect the clients with other professionals for special planning they need.

As a freelance blog writer, I’ve always known that linking to outside sources is a good tactic for adding breadth and depth to my blog content. Linking to a news source or magazine article, for instance, adds credibility to the ideas I’m expressing on behalf of Say It For You client companies. When you link to another blog content writer’s comments about the subject you’re covering, that’s a way to reinforce your point and also shows you’re staying in touch with others in your industry. By connecting readers to other sources,  Indianapolis bloggers can really enhance and add value to the online consumers’ experience.

Resolver

The goal is to guide clients to decisions.  You strongly suggest your client make a specific decision, yet acknowledge it is the client’s decision, not yours.

A call to action is an image or text that tells your readers what action they should be taking next on your site. In fact, as a professional ghost blogger, I'd say the ultimate challenge blog content writers face is getting readers to "see" themselves using the products and services described in the blog posts. Providing several different options for readers (Read more, Subscribe to blog or newsletter, Download a document, Contact, Take a survey) guides readers to decisions while acknowledging they may not be ready to buy just yet.


Use business blog writing to showcase business owners’ and  practitioners in all three roles – as listeners, as connectors, and as resolvers!

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Evergreen Blogging For Business

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Vegetables and blog content are both best when they’re fresh. When it comes to online marketing, search engines want to provide their customers with fresh blog “produce”.

 

When it comes to freshness, there are a number of factors to be considered, and only one of those is recency, or newness. In any SEO blog marketing effort, adding material often can be important in improving your site’s rankings.

But “fresh” in terms of business blogs means more than just having newly posted content. “Fresh” means:

  • You’re sharing company news and announcements – what’s happening now.
     
  • The content is up-do-date on the latest trends in your industry, problems that are now getting solved because of updated technology and knowledge.
     
  • "Fresh" means blog content is informing and entertaining in a unique way.
     
  • Fresh can also mean content that ties in with news that’s making headlines right then.

There’s one big difference, though, between keeping blog material fresh and keeping herbs or vegetables fresh. Even if I put my mint in a special container, I can keep it fresh for only so long. Once I’ve posted content on this Say It For You blog, on the other hand, it can remain on the Internet forever.  This one’s #727, yet all my seven hundred and twenty six past blog posts haven’t disappeared – that content remains there in reverse chronological order.

In fact, when someone searches for information on my topic, it’s quite possible they’ll be matched up with content I wrote a long time ago.  That means I need to think of presenting material that’s more than fresh – it has to be evergreen, so that it can continue to have relevance even months and years later.

Evergreen blogging isn’t difficult, it just means that, even if you’re tying your blog to today’s headlines or announcing an event you’re holding this week, make sure you include some basic information that you think readers will still find useful months and even years from now. After all, good information never gets stale!

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Not Every Business Blog Post Needs to be About Purple Cows

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“Something remarkable is worth talking about.  It’s a purple cow…  Boring stuff’s invisible.  It’s a brown cow,” posits Seth Godin in his marketing book, Purple Cow.

My freelance blog content writers and I consider ourselves part of each Say It For You client’s marketing team, and Seth Godin, of course, has been one of my marketing idols ever since I began blogging for business. Godin, by the way, introduces his book by saying it’s about “the why, the what, and the how of remarkable.” 

Godin’s expanding on something late advertising guru Eugene Schwartz said: As the market for a certain type of product or service matures, “even unique claims begin to lose potency with buyers”.  Even purple cows, admits Godin, are interesting only for a while.

Business blog writers face exactly that challenge of “keeping the cow purple”. When I’m offering business blogging assistance, business owners, professional practitioners, and bloggers all confide they have trouble continually coming up with fresh ideas for their blog posts and finding new ways to talk about the products and services they offer.

My answer to that has been that, no matter what business, what professional practice, or what organization you’re blogging about, ideas for blog content writing are everywhere, so long as you’re alert. On the other hand, (begging guru Godin’s pardon), I wonder if, given the way the search process itself works, plus the proven very short attention span of online readers, purple-cow remarkable should always be the goal..

After all, first-time readers, (who probably constitute the majority of visitors to anyone’s SEO marketing blog site), came online seeking information about a particular thing.

What happened next, I tell business owners and professional practitioners, precisely because what those searchers were looking for had something to do with what you have, what you know about, and what you know how to do, those readers were matched with you.

Think about it – readers already interested in your topic are ready to receive the information, the services, and the products you have to offer. Now, I explain in corporate blogging training sessions, the very first task your blog post must accomplish is assuring them they’ve come to precisely the right place to get what they’re after.

Engaging? Fresh? Relevant? Unique?  Idea-centered approach? Yes, those are all qualities to strive for in blog content writing. But I think offering basic, brown-cow, usable information is quite OK in blogging for business.

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Idea-Specific Blogging For Business

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Here’s what NOT to say when asking for a sales appointment, consultant Mel Schlesinger cautions salespeople:

My name is Joe Agent and I would like to schedule a time to get together so that I can introduce myself to you and learn a little bit about what you do in order to see if I might be able to help you.

In training newbie corporate blog content writers, I stress the same WIIFM Radio (What’s In It For Me) principle Mel Schlesinger teaches agents.  When you’re calling a potential prospect, he says, the only thing that person wants to know is how you can improve his current situation.

“You already know many of the common challenges facing your clients,” Schlesinger says. So, instead of a generic opening, he suggests to agents, switch to an idea-specific one:

  • “I have an idea that can help you reduce employees’ pressure for increased wages.”
  • “I have an idea that can help you get control of insurance premiums.”

When offering business blogging assistance, I stress that blog posts tend to be more effective when they focus on a single, powerful idea. Yet, when he narrows down his approach to one idea, admits Schlesinger, it’s possible that the prospect will have zero interest in that idea.  However, during that particular round of calls, he explains, he looks for only those prospects that want to know more about that very idea.

In blogging for business, the same holds true, I explain to business owners and Say It For You
freelance content writers. Before employing any marketing tactic, you need to know what the common challenges are facing the target customers and clients. Choose one of those challenges, then decide what one important point concerning that one challenge you want to make in each 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”. The one-topic-at-a-time technique is excellent for sustained, effective, business blog writing. 
 
Sure, just as Schlesinger tells his agents, it’s possible that some of the searchers who find that particular blog post will have zero interest in the “idea of the day”. The beauty of SEO marketing blogs, though, is that the separate posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy through are the blog’s "leitmotifs", or central themes.  While each blog post  is focused on one idea, that "nests" inside an ongoing discussion or explanation continued in other posts.

Whether you’re selling employee benefits or blogging for business, it’s good to get idea specific!

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