Blogger Relevates to Say It For You Magazine Challenge

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Relevate“Even I get blogger’s block,” admits fellow blogger Serina Kelly of Relevate, who uses “touches” to “turn prospects into clients and clients into raving fans.” Promptly rising to the Say It For You magazine challenge, Serena composed “Blog Topics are Everywhere – Just Pick Up a Magazine and Get to Reading”, helping me prove the point that business owners or freelance blog content writers can find corporate blog writing ideas at the nearest magazine stand.

Serena’s magazine pick was Whole Living. She applied the first article she selected, “Move Into the Fast Lane”, which urged readers to ramp up their exercise routine, to the need for business owners to “get in the fast lane” to make their business grow. Often, in corporate blogging training sessions, I acknowledge that creating business blog content takes sustained effort.  Still, I emphasize, the results can be very rewarding.

Kelly’s second Whole Living article pick, “Get Healthy”, reminded her how important it is for us to avoid getting stuck in our daily routine.  In fact, she resolved to spend 30 minutes every day learning something new. The two specific results Serina expects are very much in line with the side benefits business owners can reap for themselves from the effort of producing an  SEO marketing blog:

  • It keeps things exciting and builds momentum. Putting up fresh posts about new products or recent accomplishments is great reinforcement for YOU as well as for readers!
  • It makes you appear quite “in the know”. In providing business blogging assistance, I explain that verbalizing the positive aspects of your business, you’re constantly providing yourself with training!      

The final article Kelly chose was “Don’t Wait Until Thanksgiving”, discussing gratitude. In Serina’s relationship marketing business, she stresses the importance of letting people know you appreciate them, including not only clients, but vendors, strategic partners, and vendors who are making a difference in your business.

And what better way is there to do that than to include testimonial stories in your business blog?
 


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Screw-ups to Avoid in Blogging for Business

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Tom VanahnI’m sure glad my new Facebook friend Tom Vanahn of Viral Solutions sent me a piece called “12 Ways to Screw Up a Virtual First Impression”.

First off (and I’m not sure Tom even knew this), when I’m not writing Say It For You blog posts or running corporate blogging training sessions, I serve as Executive Career Mentor at Butler College of Business.  I need to show this Viral Solutions piece to my students, who are typically social media savvy, but unsophisticated when it comes to social media etiquette.

Second, business owners and managers, whether they’re doing their own corporate blog writing or working with a freelance blog content writer like me, need to understand the subtle differences between blog “production” and blogging with style and grace.

Of the 12 common “screw-ups” Vanahn lists, the three I think are most relevant to SEO marketing blogs are these:

Linking to inactive social network accounts. Let’s say that on your blog page, remarks Vanahn, you have a Twitter icon, but blog readers click on that icon only to find “the last time you tweeted was back in late 2009. "Please go back and update or report to the principal’s office,” he exclaims.  When giving business blogging assistance, I constantly stress delivering on the promise – blog navigation paths need to lead to expected results rather than to negative surprises.

Too much ME, not enough THEM. “Check out my….  I’m speaking at…  My latest blog post…” are not designed to win raving fans.  “Make others look like rock stars,” Vanahn advises. The WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) is still online searchers’ favorite radio station, and content writers in Indianapolis need to remember – writing for business means writing all about THEM!

Broadcasting instead of interacting… “Let’s make sure that somewhere between all the links, quotes, tips, etc.,, we are thanking, acknowledging, validating,…Show the world that there is indeed a human being behind the tweets,” says Vanahn.  The blog content writers’ version of that principle – our job is to bring across the human factor within the business we’re blogging about.  We get there by being conversational, not bombastic.

Bottom line for anyone involved in writing for business – you invested a lot of effort in “pull marketing”, using your blog content to draw searchers to your site.  Don’t screw up that first impression!


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Making a Mess in Corporate Blog Planning

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Never mind that there’s no room in the lo-carb diet I’m on for the “luscious, yet healthy,Eton Mess dessert summer dessert” with the odd name “Eton Mess”.  As a blog content writer, I loved the story behind it (I read in USA Weekend that the dish was developed in the 1930’s at Eton College outside London as a school snack.)

Looking longingly at the picture of the berry-heavy cream-meringue cookie confection reminded me of the way, in corporate blog writing, each of my Say It For You posts seems to come together out of a mixture of ingredients I’d been assembling:

  • Expressions I hear speakers use
  • Catchy phrases from signs and billboards
  • Verbiage from food  or cosmetic labels
  • TV ad copy
  • Comic strips,

all captured on little pieces of paper or snippets cut out of the paper or magazine, then saved in an “idea folder” for each client for whom I provide business blogging assistance.
In fact, an idea folder is one of the blog content writing ABC’s I introduce in corporate blogging training sessions.

Interestingly, there’s a video showing chef Pam Anderson and her daughters demonstrating how to prepare the Eton Mess.  The name of that mother-daughter trio is itself a juicy language tidbit – Three Many Cooks (think about it for a minute!).

That is not to say that an effective blog post can be a hodgepodge – quite the contrary.  Each post should focus on one central idea. But in order to keep coming up with engaging content over weeks, months, and years that it takes to implement a successful blog marketing strategy, you need to stock your “pantry” with diverse ingredients.

In providing blog writing services, the skill, of course, lies in the writers’ ability to make tasty finished products out of the “mess” of diverse ingredients!

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Corporate Blogging for Business Begins with Inspiration

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inspiration bulbFellow blogger Steve Guise divides bloggers into no fewer than 23 “breeds”, pointing out the pros and cons of each type.

I decided to risk falling into Guise’s “Name Dropper” category because, as a professional ghost blogger offering business blogging assistance to corporations, I found several pieces of excellent Guise advice worth sharing….

“Inspiration comes to us in different forms.  Sometimes the people inspire us, other times the content inspires us,” he says.

There’s a lot of talk in blogging circles, (at least among the Indianapolis blog writers with whom I converse all the time), about incorporating testimonials from satisfied customers in corporate blogging for business. But, what Guise’s article reminded me is that customer testimonials don’t typically ooze inspiration.  Business blog writers need to find stories illustrating how someone’s life was truly improved through using the company’s products or services, rather than collecting the usual “I’d-certainly-recommend-ABC-roofing-to-my-neighbors” type testimonial.

What about having the content itself of business blog writing be inspirational? Obviously, one of the purposes of any SEO marketing blog is to “inspire” action (read “buying”!). After reading Guise’s piece, I concluded that corporate blog writing needs to aim for copy that proves the writer understands the problems customers have.  In other words, “you” copy.  The online searcher should get a sense of relief that she’s found a business with people who “get it” –ultimately, that relief is what inspires customers to act.

When Guise sees bloggers who “refuse to write about anything they wouldn’t lose a kidney for”, he names them Passion Purists, pointing out that “passion is contagious and humans are attracted to it.”

Without a doubt, conveying business owners’ passion for what they know how to do and for what they sell is the big challenge for any freelance corporate blog writer.  There’s a reason counselors teach long-time marrieds techniques for “keeping passion alive”. Like success in marriage, success in blog marketing depends on sustaining the discipline of content creation over long periods of time, keeping the spark of passion going all the while.

In describing the “SEO Fanatic” breed, Guise warns that “stuffing an article with key words has a chance of sounding contrived.” As I caution Indianapolis blog writers, it all comes down to the need for inspiration in blogging!


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In Blogging for Business, End Up Where it Says on the Ticket!

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Don’t Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health was Dr. Aaron Carroll’s and Dr. Rachel Vreeman’s first book. Their newest title is Don’t Cross Your Eyes…They’ll Get Stuck That Way! 

Don't Cross Your EyesReading Shari Rudavsky’s review of both books in the Indianapolis Star, I couldn’t help thinking about the way titles are used in business blog writing. For example, both books are about medical myths. 

In an actual Google search I performed using “medical myths” as my search term, neither one of the Carroll-Vreeman books showed up on Page One. When I searched using “myths and truths about health”, once again I was not matched up with either of the two books. For this very reason, in Say It For You  corporate blogging training sessions, I emphasize using keyword phrases in the first part of the title of each blog post.

A second factor to consider is that the main category of any SEO marketing blog post needs to appear first in the title. Rather than. Don’t Swallow Your Gum: Myths Truths and Outright Lies, a blog post title should reverse the order, reading Medical Myths, Truths, and Outright Lies – Don’t Swallow Your Gum.  That helps search engines match the category (medical myths and truths) with the inquiry.

A third concept that’s important for blog content writers to keep in mind is keeping the title and the actual blog post content congruent. I own a very funny Jerry Seinfeld CD, on which Jerry finds humor in various aspects of the air travel experience. He thinks having the captain come on the PA system to detail the flight plan is ridiculous. “Just end up where it says on the ticket!” says Jerry. Come to think of it, that’s a very good rule for business blog writing.

Friend and fellow blogger Michael Reynolds found out that sometimes speakers need to ‘course correct” when the talk fails to match up with the promise in the title. “In my effort to create a catchy, demand-creating title,” Reynolds confesses, he became upset when he realized his title was out of sync with his content, and that he had incorrectly set expectations. Well, as every freelance blog writer needs to remember, it’s the blog title that sets the online reader’s expectations, and that title needs to be in sync with the content to follow.

Turns out, the experiences of both Michael Reynolds and Jerry Seinfeld can be of business blogging assistance.  In writing for business, be sure to end up where the ticket says!

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