Indianapolis Business Blogger’s Magazine Challenge – A

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“Don’t have time for a Big Year?  Learn how to master a day instead,” writes Ken Keffer in “Big Day of Birding.”  Birding?  What can that have to do with blogging for business?  A lot, I think. 

Last August, in my Say It For You blogs, I gave myself the challenge of finding three ideas for business blog posts in a single issue of any popular magazine, and I composed those three initial challenge posts during an airport layover in Minneapolis on the way home from a family visit.

The whole idea behind the magazine challenge was to combat “writer’s block”.  In my years offering corporate blogging training in Indianapolis, I’d discovered that business owners’ and blog content writers’ two biggest fears are running out of ideas to sustain their blog, and running out of time to write the blog posts.  I wanted to offer the magazine-skimming idea as one solution.

My take on all this is that, whatever magazine we choose, if we’re alert, we can find items that suggest new ways to explain what we sell, what we believe, and what we know how to do.  (Of course, Indianapolis freelance blog content writers like me can use the same technique to explain our clients’ businesses and professional practices to their online visitors.)

Going back to the birding magazine, I found it on the table at the Butler College of Business break room and started leafing through it the other day while enjoying a cup of coffee between student appointments. I saw that “don’t-have-time-for a-big-year-learn-how-to-master-a-day” headline, and I was hooked.

Ghost-blogging, you see, is a concierge service, a task outsourced by business owners and professional practitioners who understand the importance of online marketing, but have the traditional no-time problem. And, when it comes to attracting online visitors to a website, “mastering a day” isn’t going to cut it in terms of having any chance of winning search rankings.

On the surface, it would appear that blogging for business falls under the category of tasks better not delegated to others.  That’s precisely where the “Big Day of Birding” article suggested a perfect compromise that I could share potential Say It For You clients and with other blog content writers.

Think about it: The professional blog writer picks up the information about the business through interviews with the owner, with employees, and with clients, adds some research and scouting other pieces written on the subject, then cleans and polishes the material into finished blog posts.  Every so often, though, either at preset intervals or when the fancy strikes, the owners themselves weigh in with content of their own, and “say it for themselves”! “Last spring I was so busy I opted for a Big Half Hour, instead!” quips Ken Keffer. 

Consistent business blogging content writing may need to fall to professional ghost bloggers, but when owners and employees can find a Big Half Hour to contribute to the mix – all the better!

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Business Bloggers – The Ancient Mariner Was Wrong – Part Three

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Just as the Ancient Mariner saw “Water, water, everywhere,” Indianapolis blog content writers can find ideas everywhere.  The secret, of course, is staying on the alert. What I've found over the five years I've been a professional blogger and business blogging trainer, is that as long as we bloggers keep listening and learning, we stay excited.  Then, when people read our SEO marketing blogs, they can sense that excitement.

"Reading around" and "learning around", in fact, are my prescriptions for keeping blog post content fresh and engaging. You learn snippets of O.P.W. (Other people's wisdom). You put your own slant and insight on those thoughts and relate that information to what you do, what you sell, and what you know about. That way, you never run out of “water” (fresh content to satisfy both search engines and searchers.

Some companies get blog readers excited by offering a bonus. The idea is to get prospects to take action (buying the product or service).  I think that’s fine to do, but the other day, I had one of these blog content writer “Aha” moments while watching, of all things, a hot sauce  commercial. Now, I don’t like hot, spicy foods, but I did like this commercial, and I learned something that I think is important to share with freelance blog content writers:

As the Brand Ascension Group puts it, “Advocates for your brand feel inspired because they have connected to it on an emotional level….Your brand makes them feel special and a part of something…” Guy Kawasaki calls the process of delighting people with a product, a service, organization, or idea “enchantment”.  “If you have few resources and big competition, you’ll need to delight people.

For years, I’ve been enchanted with the power good blog content writing has to engage readers and convert once-strangers into raving fans. And, in keeping with this week’s theme of “learning around”, I gained some new insight into the real job blogging for business can do, all based on this simple advertising slogan:

 
Show your love for TABASCO® sauce and say you’re one of us!

“Giving customers the feel of being part of your organization is a great way to build loyalty,” writes online marketer Arjun Kumar.  All of us freelance blog content writers need to work on giving readers an anticipation of that “feel”. 
 

The Ancient Mariner was definitely off-base.  Good “drinking water” in the form of blog marketing ideas is everywhere to be found.  Our job is to use those ideas to say to online customers “Come on in and be one of us!”

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Business Bloggers – The Ancient Mariner Was Wrong – Part Two

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This week’s three Say It For You blog posts are dedicated to the idea of “learning around”. The blog sustainability “secret’ I teach in corporate blogging training sessions is that, if you gather ideas from everything you see, read, and hear, relating each “lesson” to your own business brand, the “water” will never run dry.

The second half of that famous line “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” (from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), doesn’t ever need to concern business owners or their freelance blog content writers. That’s because everything we observe can be a source of usable content ideas for our business blog!

 

 

 

In the Butler University “Guide to Professional Success”, for example, I found several pieces of advice that can be of business blogging help:
 

  • Keep sentences short; begin with varied action words.
    Varying your action words is a perfect technique in corporate blogging for business, because you can cover the same themes, but make it sound new.  Shoot for “just right” in length – offer enough information in each post to   convincingly cover the one key theme.
     
  • Concentrate on “transferable” skills you have acquired.
    In corporate blogging for business, you want to be perceived as a subject matter expert offering usable information and insights. Focus on information the readers can use, rather than on your claims of success. Once readers feel assured that you know your stuff and that you care about offering good information and good service, they might be ready to take action.
     
  • It’s better to list experiences by order of importance (not in reverse chronological order). If an employer is skimming a resume, you want him or her to see the most relevant experiences first.

 

In writing any SEO marketing blog, use a technique I call “blogging downhill”. I teach new business bloggers in Indianapolis to address readers’ “What’s-In-It-For-Me?” question at the beginning, rather than later on in each blog post.

(Remember, I did not go looking for blog ideas in the Butler Guide.  As an Executive Career Mentor at Butler College of Business (the other professional “hat” I wear), I was given this material to help students create their first resumes.  By staying on the alert for blog writing ideas, I was able to make use of this “water” in my environment to illustrate my business of creating SEO marketing blogs.)

Where can you go today “learn around” for your blog writing and discover “water” ?

 

 


 

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Business Bloggers, the Ancient Mariner Was Wrong – Part One

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Remember "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?  (Do they still teach that poem in high school?) The stranded seaman laments, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

Just two years ago, I wrote a series of six Say It For You blog posts called “Learning Around for Your Blog”. The point I was trying to get across to Indianapolis business blog content writers was this:  The secret of sustained blogging for business is learning from everything you see, read, and hear. “Ideas, ideas are everywhere,” my professional ghost blogger verse might begin, and all we need to do is add our own slant – and “drink”, meaning use those ideas to keep blog post content fresh and engaging.

To prove that the best kind of business blogging help is all around us if we’re just alert to it, I used those six 2010 posts to offer examples of blog content “triggers” ranging from a golf training facility to a delivery truck for exercise equipment, to soup can labels and family filing cabinets.

There are two reasons all of this came to my mind today:

a) Even after all these years offering corporate blogging training, the most frequent excuse I hear from business owners and professional practitioners for not starting a blog goes like this: I’ll run out of ideas after the first few posts.  After all, there can’t be that many different things to say about a business/practice, right? In other words, they’re saying, there’s only so much “water” in their “jug”, not nearly enough to sustain their business blog content creation over weeks and months and years.

b) The more immediate reason I decided to resurrect the “learning around” concept: I tuned in to a QVC show on TV. Think about it: QVC has a website with pages and pages of online catalogues of women’s clothing.  In a fraction of the time it took me to watch that hour-long show, I could have checked out all the basic information about each of the QVC holiday sweaters – color, size, price, fabric, availability – you name it, online. So, why does QVC bother to run a entire hour’s programming with the host taking five to seven minutes to talk about the details of each garment?

That’s when I had my “learning around” QVC blog content writing epiphany: Letting a human being point out features and benefits of the product works. Giving potential customers ideas about different ways they can use the product (with the sash that comes with the blouse worn as a neck scarf, with the blouse paired with slacks or a pencil skirt, with it worn open over a  camisole or buttoned, with jewelry or without, throwing that animal print top on over a pair of jeans to run the kids to piano lessons or wearing it over a velvet skirt for Thanksgiving) – works!

Websites present the big picture – the different services and products the company offers, who the principal players are, the mission statement, the geographic areas the company deals with, the “unique selling proposition”. What each blog post does, then, is focus on just one aspect of your business, so that online searchers can feel at ease and not be distracted with all the other information you have to offer. Just like the QVC host, each single blog post helps the reader visualize how this one product or this one service you provide, how this one piece of special wisdom you’re imparting can be used by this one reader.
 

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Keeping Business Blogging Au Fait

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Are you “au fait” in your field?  Your business blog content will help readers decide if you are or not. Another of those “loanwords” that came into the English language from the French, the expression “au fait” means “informed”, “up-to-date”, and “abreast of”, according to Chloe Rhodes in her book “A Certain ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’”.

With more than five years of providing blog writing services for businesses and professional practices, I know that information (as opposed to promotion), is what successful business blog content writing is all about.

The Small Business Administration apparently agrees. Here are three answers the SBA offers to the question “Do you really need a small business blog?”

  • “Search engines love to provide customers with relevant, helpful, and up-to-date content.”
     
  • “An up-to-date and informative blog is also an essential tool in your social media arsenal.”
     
  • “Use your blog articles to share you expertise and answer the questions you get every day.”
     

Being “au fait”, though, takes work, and, inevitably, time.  Every one of the three excellent suggestions offered by the SBA illustrates the fact that blog content writing requires dedication and discipline..

  1. “Take the time to follow and read other blogs that relate to your field.”
     
  2. Keep up with “What’s going on in the news.”
     
  3. “Is there a new industry development that’s worth writing about?”

“The blogging format lives and dies on current information,” emphasizes Susannah Gardner in “Writing a Good Business Blog”. “Current”, she goes on to say, “means posting often, even multiple times daily if you can swing it.”

Even if they enjoy writing blogs, our Say It For You clients realize they lack the time to keep up enough “frequency and recency” to win Internet search. For most, having freelance blog content writers post new content every three days constitutes a reasonable compromise between the Gardner “multiple times daily” standard and the budgetary and time realities of their business or professional practice.

In every business or profession, there’s no lack of technical information available to consumers on the Internet. But it falls to us business blog content writers to explain it, simplify it, and put it into context for readers.  Your blog needs to leave your online readers feeling quite “au fait”!


 

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