Blog Writing Alchemy Can Turn Business Mistakes Into Gold

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In real life, chances for real “do-overs” tend to be few and far between.  Hopefully, we learn enough from our most terrible mistakes to avoid repeating them – at least not repeating them in exactly the same way.

A recent issue of Mental Floss (a never-failing idea source for me as a professional ghost blogger) related the story of one of the biggest corporate bloopers of all time – VISA.

Before 1958, credit cards had to be paid in full each month.  As Bank of America prepared to launch the first-ever revolving-line credit cards, the company asked each of its Los Angeles bank branch managers to prepare a list of customers who should definitely NOT be issued revolving lines of credit.

Uh-oh…the BankAmericards were issued only to that very group of “no-no” customers! The result – in the first few months of the program, there was a 22% delinquency rate on the new cards, and BofA lost a whopping $20 million in its first year.  Meanwhile, a PR fiasco ensued, with clergy and the press criticizing the company for fostering an “immoral” credit-based economy.

As readers of this Say It For You blog already know, the story of revolving-credit cards continues with a spectacular turnaround, with Bank of America straightening out the problems and changing the name of the card to VISA.

So, what’s my point in calling attention to this business tale gone bad, then great, in discussing SEO marketing blogs? One very important function corporate blog posts can serve is damage control.

As a reader, I enjoyed learning the BofA snafu story because that failure has turned into such a success.  I teach freelance blog writers in Indianapolis to include stories of their clients’ past mistakes and failures. Such stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame not only adversity, but the effects of their own mistakes!

What’s more, business blogging help can turn out to help with customer relations.  When customers’ complaints and concerns are recognized and dealt with “in front of other people” (in blog posts), it gives the “apology” or the “remediation measure” more weight. In fact, in corporate blogging training sessions, I remind Indianapolis blog writers to “hunt” for stories of struggle and mistakes made in the early years of a business or practice!

Remember the old alchemists who turned junk metal into gold?  When it comes to blogging for business, mistakes and struggles can be “golden” content for blog posts!

 

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To Have Great Bloggers, You Must Have Great Readers, Too!

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Long before corporate blog writing became the centerpiece for conveying a business’ message to potential customers, none other than poet Walt Whitman understood the importance of connectivity in SEO marketing blogs.

“To have great poets,” Whitman asserted, “there must be great audiences, too.”

As I consistently stress when offering business blogging assistance, blog are not only for reading, but for acting, reacting, and interacting. In other words, in the world of corporate blog writing, it’s not enough to be a “poet”.  You have to have readers.  “Your personal brand visibility is made up of your search engine ranking and how many eyeballs physically see your content each day,” explains Chad Levitt (quoted on P. 150 of Branding Yourself).

Great audiences, though, must bring more than just their eyeballs to our clients’ websites, as we Indianapolis freelance bloggers know, and being “influential” online means a whole lot more than being found.  Blogging for business has to mean business, which means “having the ability to push your followers and friends to action”, as Levitt explains, and that action needs to be in accordance with the business’ personal branding plan.

There’s more than one reason for using the blog writing process to build great readership:

Backlinks – The more links pointing back to a blog, the more importance search engines will attribute to that blog.  “Blogging is about community.  Don’t expect people to read your blog if you aren’t reading and commenting on theirs,” tweets @Justheather.  So right – leaving comments on other people’s blogs and writing about those other people will, sooner or later, Heather suggests, get them to write to and about you.

Richer content – The lesson I try hardest to impart in corporate blogging training sessions is: “The more you know, the more you can blog about”.  Business content writing in blogs is the result of a lots of reading and listening on the part of the blogger.


Decades ago, poet Walt Whitman knew that a key element in effective poetry writing was the cultivation of great audiences to enjoy that poetry.  The right kind of readers – (those with an interest in your topic who value your products and services and are willing to pay for them), are the “great blog audiences” every business owner and professional practitioner wants to attract!

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Small Cap Blogging for Business

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“Not blogging?  You’re in the minority,” asserts Lisa Barone in smallbiztrends.com, with 65% of small business survey respondents in HubSpot’s annual “State of Inbound Marketing” study saying they are using corporate blog writing.

Well, at Say It For You, we are most certainly blogging! The fact that the very post you’re reading is #600 in the series brings to mind the S&P 600 stock index.  The S&P 600 covers only an approximate 3% of total U.S. stocks.  Powerful despite that small size? You bet.  As of February 24, the index was up 10.77% for 2012!

Small but powerful is, as a matter of fact, a perfect description for the tactic of using business blog writing to accomplish three goals all business owners have: building awareness, credibility, and trust.  As a corporate blogging trainer in Indianapolis, I call attention to business content writing in blogs as a natural centerpiece for most small business’ social media marketing.

What’s keeping the other 35% of small businesses from using blogs as a business-building tool?  The two biggest fears, I’ve found, are:

  • “Giving away” information and know-how that might prompt potential users to become do-it-yourselfers instead.  In reality, informational blogs have the opposite effect, demonstrating to prospects how knowledgeable the business owner or professional practitioner is!
     
  • Running out of content ideas. At #600, as you can see, this small business is still going strong; creative content generation is what I teach!  Collaborating with a freelance blog writer can be the answer to owners’ lack of time to devote to creative writing.

Only those who put money into the S&P 600 stocks saw their investment grow by that amazing 11% in two months.  Likewise, only those business owners and professional practitioners who put frequent, recent, and relevant content into the blogsphere on a consistent basis will be able to realize all the benefits blogging for business can bring.

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Those First Five Seconds in Business Blog Writing

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“If they’re in your session, they’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid,” explained well-known humor speaker and coach Bill Stainton at our most recent National Speakers Association of Indiana meeting.  Stainton was offering a tip to conference “breakout session” speakers, but he might well have been coaching content writers in Indianapolis.

Conference attendees who choose to attend sessions titled “Better Employee Relations”, “Applying the New Federal Regs on Manufacturing”, or “Orange Growing in Your Own Back Yard”, for example, already have an interest in one of those topics. The point Stainton was emphasizing to us speakers is that in such a situation, long introductory remarks are superfluous;  the session leader needs to get to the heart of the matter straight away.

As a professional ghost blogger for business owners and professional practitioners, I realized that breakout sessions at a conference are an almost exact parallel with corporate blogs. If readers have arrived at your business blog, it’s because they already have an interest in your topic – they’ve already “drunk the Kool-Aid”, and are ready to receive the information, the services, and the products you have to offer. It’s now up to you to assure those visitors, through the words and pictures in your business blog content, that they’ve come to precisely the right place to get what they’re after.

In any talk, not only a breakout session but even a keynote address, Stainton explained, the first five minutes must be indicative of what the audience can expect. What will be the format and presentation style (humorous/ serious, questions welcomed/questions held to the end?) and “stance” (problem-solving/ informational/motivational?). The audience will go along with any number of different approaches, but they want to know “the deal”, meaning what they should expect.

When I’m offering corporate blogging training sessions to business owners and their employees, or talking to freelance blog writers, I’m telling them the same thing.  It’s just that a couple of seconds, not five minutes, describes the “window” of time blog content writers have to “get indicative” and capture readers’ attention.

Yes, online readers who arrive at your business blog may have already tasted the Kool-Aid and apparently are interested in more of it.  Your task is to keep them engaged with valuable, personal, and relevant information, beginning with the “downbeat”,(which is my term for the first sentence of each post).

Yes, those visitors are drinking Kool-Aid, and the only question remaining is – will they be drinking your brand?

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Blog Writing Arithmetic: Add Curb Appeal, Subtract Distractions

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Realtors quoted in the Indianapolis Star and New York Times reporter Matt Richtel each offer advice to consumers that I think all Indianapolis blog content writers should heed:

“Curb appeal,” report the realtors, “is critical to attracting the public.  If prospective buyers don’t love it from the curb, they won’t even schedule an appointment.”

In blogging for business, curb appeal starts with the title of your blog. Even if the search engines have delivered readers to your link (on page 1 of Google, for instance) the title must be appealing to readers, and, ideally, short enough to be shared on social media sites. In fact, having engaging titles in SEO marketing blogs is the equivalent of applying fresh paint and new handles to the front doors of a house you want to sell.

The New York Times article, on the other hand, is reporting on cars.  The increasingly complicated “infotainment” systems on the dashboards in cars distract drivers and cause accidents, federal traffic agencies are beginning to realize. .

For business owners, distractions are plentiful, and many a blog, begun with the best of intentions, ends up neglected or with the effort totally abandoned. With SEO marketing blogging on the rise, more and more business owners and professional practitioners are running out of time and hiring freelance blog content writers to take up the slack.

Those providing business blogging services, on the other hand, need to avoid distractions on the blog page itself.  Anything that takes readers’ attention “off the road”, away from the message and the Call to Action is distracting.  Overdoing the visuals with complex charts, graphs, and diagrams, even too much Flash technology on a blog page can divert attention away from the core message of the blog.

Focused blog content writing for any business or practice adds curb appeal and avoids distractions.  Remember, business owners want online visitors coming past the “curb” and into their website.  We writers want those readers keeping their eyes on the road to all the valuable information, products, and services business owners and practitioners are eager to provide!

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