To Re-Purpose Business Blogs, You’ve Got to Have Content!

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“One way to save time but still get an abundance of content is to learn how to repurpose it,” says Rob Carlson, blogger on contently.com. Carlson explains he’s referring to different distribution channels, including:

  • Blog posts
  • Videos
  • White papers
  • e-books
  • Webinars
  • Case studies
  • Charts
  • Twitter
  • Facebook

I agree, of course.  Generating new content is very time and labor-intensive. When, consequently, business owners and professional practitioners hire professional ghost bloggers to create content for their SEO marketing blogs, they need assurance that the end product will be no single-use deal.

Fellow corporate blogging trainer Brad Smith of Fixcourse assures us “There’s hope.. You can bring in more traffic, leads, and sales by simply repurposing your existing blog content.”

Smith is careful, though, to remind readers of something I teach business blog content writers in Indianapolis:  “You can’t reuse text online because of duplicate content issues, which can negatively affect your SEO.” Still, he hastens to reassure, “If you turn it into another format (like audio, video, or offline), then you can avoid the problem and double your content.”

  • “Of course, you can also flip this around and create new online content from different sources, Smith observes, including:
     
  • Old speeches and presentations
  • Raw data or statistics you’ve gathered
  • Your own past emails, especially answers to people’s questions

A big factor in re-purposing is the joy of the hunt. It’s like shopping for an outfit in your own closet! Of course, a unique challenge presents itself to those of us who provide blog content writing services to businesses and professional practices. Lacking access to our clients’ “closets” of old speeches and emails, at Say It For You, we “mine” that kind of information at periodic face-to-face meetings with the owners and their sales staff.

Talk of re-purposing is trendy in blog marketing circles, prompting me to offer a gentle reminder that to re-purpose content, you’ve got to generate content in the first place! 

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Tie-Back to the Opening Line in Blogging for Business

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A tie-back is a news writing device that allows you to refresh the readers’ memory about past events.” The ending ties back to earlier scenes of the play (or book, or speech, or business blog) to “bring the digressive elements home”, as writer Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew puts it.

I thought about tie-backs and Indianapolis blog writers last week, driving home from Civic theatre’s production of “a Chorus Line”.  The play, one of my all-time favorites, begins with an audition for Broadway dancers.  The would-be stars are learning a routine to the musical number “One”. Two hours later, the magnificent “Chorus Line” grand finale dance routine is done to that same song.

I need to share that concept, I realized, in corporate blogging training sessions.  The reason that the “A Chorus Line” finale, with the dancers now in gold tuxes and top hats, was so very effective and moving is that it tied back to the earliest rehearsals in Scene I. The music made the audience realize the progress and growth that had happened since we heard that music the first time.  It was the repetition that put a point on it all.

As the owner of a professional ghost blogging company, I’m always talking about the “Pow” opening line. You know, that’s the line that contains keyword phrases (important in SEO marketing blogs to reassure search engines they’ve made a good match and readers that they’ve come to the right blog.) The opening line is also the one that presents a question, a problem, a startling statistic, or a gutsy, challenging statement.

So, now, at the end of the post, do a tie-back to that opener, a finishing flourish.  But this tie-backing has to be more than just a flourish.  Business blog writing must have emotional impact if it’s to have impact at all.  The “A Chorus Line” ending number wasn’t a mere scriptwriter’s gimmick – it was absolutely essential to the effect of the entire play on the audience.

Whatever you meant to convey in each SEO marketing blog post, indicate what that’s going to be in the title and the opening lines, then “rub it in” with a tie-back!

 

 

 

 

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Using Incongruity in Corporate Blog Content Writing

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An impeccably-groomed woman who keeps a messy house – that’s the Webster-Merriam Dictionary’s example of incongruity.

But is incongruity a good or bad thing when it comes to blogging for business? (I was pondering that very question the other day when one of my Butler students showed up in a chartreuse green sweatshirt with the motto “Love pink!” emblazoned all over it.)  Is incongruity good or bad for blog writing?  As a corporate blogging trainer, I’d have to answer “both”.

University of Missouri Professor Praggyan Mohanty ponders, too, examining whether incongruity in ads leads to a positive “aha” effect when consumers “get it”.  “The incongruity in the visual attracts attention and one is drawn towards reconciling the incongruity,” the professor concludes.

Putting ingredients together that don’t seem to match, I teach Indianapolis blog writers on the search for fresh blog content ideas, is an excellent tool for engaging readers.

On the other hand, given the very short attention span of the average online reader, it’s important to use incongruity with caution.  Remember, first-time readers (who probably constitute the majority of visitors to your blog site) went online in the first place needing information about a particular thing.  Because their search had something to do with what you have, what you know about, and what you know how to do, they arrived at your blog.

You might say that precisely because of the congruity between their queries and your content, the search engine delivered those eyeballs to your site.

In using the tools of surprise and incongruity in order to make your blog content writing more engaging, be careful that readers won’t perceive you as a bait-and-switch artist.  The “aha” effect will be positive only when it helps readers locate, understand, and acquire the information, products, and services they came for.

 Incongruity may make readers think, but it’s the congruity that will make them buy!

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Clinching Your Closer in Business Blog Content Writing

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To close out the series of Writer’s Digest lessons I’ve been sharing with Say It For You blog readers, here are some valuable writing tips about “closing” business blog posts that I found in “Clinch Your Closer”, by James V. Smith, Jr..
 

Whether in a mystery novel or a business blog post, nothing fails writers more than a fizzle, a weak ending that leaves readers trailing off in disappointed mood. “What readers say after they put your book down matters more for your sales than what they say when they pick it up,” Smith sagely advises, and the same thing holds true in blogging for business.

Smith offers some dos and don’ts for a powerful close, all of which make good guidelines for anyone providing business blogging services:

Do resolve the central conflict.  Readers want to be uplifted.
Even if you as the business owner or professional practitioner want to show you understand readers’ problems, empathize, don’t over-emphasize. In your blog content writing, don’t dwell on the problem – stress the solution. Leave readers with a path to action and positive expectations.
 

Do tie up loose ends of significance.  Every question you planted in a readers’ mind should be addressed.
But then what? In any SEO marketing blog strategy, something needs to happen next. After we Indianapolis blog content writers have told them the “what” and the “so what”, our job is to answer the question, “Now what?”

Do mirror your final words to events in your opener. It’s the tie-back tactic.
In corporate blogging training sessions, I’m always talking about the “Pow” opening line.  You know, that’s the line that contains keyword phrases (important in SEO marketing blogs to reassure search engines they’ve made a good match and readers that they’ve come to the right blog.  The opening line is also the one that presents a question, a problem, a startling statistic, or a gutsy, challenging statement.

So, now, at the end of the post, do a tie-back to that opener, a finishing florish. Remember the 3-step rule from high school speech class?

  • Tell them what you’re going to tell them
  • Tell them
  • Tell them what you told them.


In business blog content writing, it’s important to clinch your closer!

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Business Bloggers Put things Readers Care About in Jeopardy

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Freelance blog content writers can find a wealth of business blogging assistance in Writer’s Digest, so this week I’ve been sharing some favorite parts of the Digest with Say It For You readers.
 

Author Steven James teaches budding novelists to maintain suspense in their writing. “Thriller? Mystery? Literary fiction? It’s all the same,” he says.  “Building apprehension in the minds of your readers is one of the most effective keys to engaging them early in your novel and keeping them flipping pages late into the night.”

Of the six techniques James suggests writers use to create suspense, the one that appealed to me most as a corporate blogging trainer was this:

“Put characters that readers care about in jeopardy.”

“We create reader empathy by giving the character a desire, wound, or internal struggle that readers can identify with.  The more they empathize, the closer their connection with the story will be.”

Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware  stresses that people want to do business with people they like and trust. Readers need to see how much you care even more than how much you know. If readers empathize with the business owner of practitioner, that creates empathy. And blog writing, more personal than traditional website content, is ideal for showing how much you believe – in your industry, your cause, your products – and the way you believe a business or practice should serve clients and customers/

While Indianapolis blog content writers may not be able to put characters readers care about in jeopardy, we can show how certain things readers care about can be put in jeopardy –  our health, our self-confidence, our safety, our careers, our appearance, our property, the proper education of our children. “The threat,” James remarks, may involve the character’s physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, or relational well-being.”

On the other hand, I’ve found, in too many SEO marketing blogs, the content is meant to scare consumers, with the message geared towards creating enough fear about a particular problem that readers will be moved to do something about that fear – now!

As a professional ghost blogger, I advise taking a middle ground. Go ahead and identify ways in which something customers value could be in jeopardy.  Assure searchers they’re not alone in this dilemma or need.  In fact, as you hasten to assure them, you've solved these precise problems for customers and clients many times before.
 

In blogging for business, go ahead and build up the suspense, but   quickly follow with enough information so that the solution is more compelling than they ever bargained for!

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