Interview Format – the Combo Form of Blogging for Hire

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interview
The “brutally honest truth,” says Demian Farnworth of raventools.com, is that, from the writer’s point of view, there are three basic types of ghostwriting:

  • Their ideas and words

You listen to business owners talk about their business or they send you content and you turn it into a book (or blog posts).

  • Their ideas, your words

You’re paid to write from an outline they’ve given you.  You do all the research, they approve the final draft.

  • Your ideas and your words

You’re paid to come up with the ideas yourself, create the outlines, and write the book or articles (or blog posts). Their only involvement is to approve.

As a blog-content-writer-for-hire by business owners and professional practitioners, I’ve found, there’s a fourth way to get the job done: use a combination of the three types of ghostwriting – the interview format.

In a face-to-face (or Skype) interview with a business owner or executive (or professional practitioner), I am able to capture their ideas and some of their words, then add “framing” with my own questions and introductions, to create a blog post more compelling and “real” than the typical narrative text.

What makes for a good blog interview? “Interviews should be broken up into questions and answers, but should lead with informative headers that describe the person you’re interviewing, link to their profile or business, and then get into the nitty gritty of the interview,” says Erin Ollila of buzzfarmers.com.  “A great interview template ends with a list of takeaways,,” she adds.

According to Mi Muba of beamoneyblogger.com, the five most common objectives of publishing an interview blog post are:

  • To help your readers learn from the expertise of interviewee
  • To inspire your readers with the success story of the interviewee
  • To practically guide your readers how to succeed in a given field
  • To provide your readers the chance to interact with interviewee through commenting
  • To add variety to your content after several simply descriptive posts

An interview format is the ultimate combo form of blogging for hire!

 

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Finding the Flossiest Blog Topics

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Downtown St. Paul, MN

Mental Floss Magazine, always masters at making unlikely connections among seemingly unrelated topics, did it again in “25 Flossiest Cities in the World”.  The term “flossy”, the editors explain (lest we envision dental care), means “exhibiting qualities of charm, quirk, and brain-boosting power in equal measure”.

The article is all about places that don’t come to top of mind, steering readers’ minds away from the tried and true and introducing them to new ways of looking for travel destinations.

I explain to newbie content writers in Indianapolis that steering away from the tried and true gives business owners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise. Even more important, the technique of myth busting helps engage interest. A different approach can serve to answer readers’ concerns, as in the following examples:

  • Dentist’s blog:
    Do amalgams used for fillings cause mercury poisoning?
  • Beautician’s blog:
    Does makeup cause acne?
  • Internet security firm blog:
    If you don’t open an infected file, can you get infected?
  • Home décor firm blog:
    Should small rooms be painted in pale neutral colors?

Visitors arrive at your blog to find information on specific topics.  But, once your opening lines have reassured them they’ve come to the right place, it’s a great idea to use some unlikely connections to give them the sense of being ahead of the crowd, having some unusual “inside information”…

  • Giethoorn, Netherlands, Mental Floss advises, is flossier than Venice, with four miles of canals dug in the 13th century.
  • Lavenham, England is flossier than Pisa. Many of its buildings were constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries, are crooked because they used green timber which warped as it aged.
  • Huizhou, China is flossier than Austria.  China’s duplicature craze resulted in Austrian,  English, Swiss, Italian, and Spanish copycat cities.

What flossy topics can you use to unexpectedly engage blog readers’ interest?

 

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Blogs or White Papers – Which Have the Longest Shelf Life?

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supermarket in blurry for background
“White papers may have the longest shelf life of all content,” asserts John Fox in the Huffington Post.  it was interesting to read about Fox’s interview with Gordon Graham, author of White Papers for Dummies.

Some business owners are afraid white papers are too academic and “heavy”. Anything that’s poorly done is going to fatigue people, Graham points out, and most business white papers make the same mistake over and over – too much selling.  What a white paper is supposed to do, he says, is:

  • help people understand some kind of issue
  • solve a problem
  • make a decision

It’s not that John Fox recommends abandoning blog marketing in favor of white papers. In fact, he recommends, a problem-solution white paper can generate three or four blog posts.  “You take every section, boil it down a bit and post it.  Then, at the bottom, say ‘For more discussion, see the full white paper here’.”

“The definition of a whitepaper varies heavily from industry to industry,” observes Lindsay Kolowich of hubspot.com. Basically, though, Kolowich explains, “A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution.” “Whitepapers,” he adds, “are the academic papers of marketing content.  Readers expect a high degree of expertise backed by solid research that is fully documented by references.” In other words, they’re much more serious in tone, less flashy, and more research-based than blog posts or even ebooks.

Technically speaking, of course, both white papers and old blog posts can “live” indefinitely on your website “shelf”. The trick is to “selectively pick and choose your moments to remind visitors and social media contacts of the valuable information that is available to them, says GuavaBox.

Remember, even if a product remains viable and is still “fresh”, no product can be useful to customers while it is still on the shelf!

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Paving the Cowpath in Blogging for Business

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Cow by the road

 

Using “enhanced electronic aids” for performance management is one of the latest trends in human resource management, but David Arella of Performance Xpress isn’t happy about that. “Does anyone else see the oxymoron here?” Arella asks, referring to “automatically personalized” written employee reviews. “We have paved the cow path and upped the speed limit, but we have not improved the journey or the destination,” he says.

Arella recalls those old meetings managers used to hold with employees to discuss their strengths and weaknesses and to develop targets for the coming year.” The performance review was seen as a way to either justify a salary increase or, in cases where there were problems, to begin a documentation trail to move an employee out of the company without legal ramifications,” he explains.

The new automated tools, in his opinion, have been directed primarily at speeding up the process, not improving it. As a blog content writing trainer, I loved reading  Arella’s reasoning about why speeding up the writing process actually reduces the effectiveness of the communication:

The process of writing requires applying a thinking process. Managers
who take the time to compose their own original paragraphs are likely to be
more specific and grounded in their feedback than those who click on
generalized “coaching tips.”

Blogging requires applying a thinking process. When business owners or professional practitioners blog, they are verbalizing the positive aspects of their enterprises in a way that people can understand, putting recent accomplishments down in words, and reviewing the benefits of their products and services. The very process provides self-training in how to talk effectively about their business or practice.

For those very reasons, company executives and business owners often make great bloggers.  After all, they understand their companies and are passionate about them, two important requisites for great blogging for business. There are three main reasons, though, that almost never happens: no time, no motivation, dislike of writing.

So, are all “training benefits” lost to business owners or professionals who hire freelance blog content writers to be their “voice”? Really, the answer is “no”, at least not if things are done right. “Outsourcing is not the same as abdication,” says John Janistch. “You need to maintain tight control on themes, voice, message, and specific topic needs”. That process of choosing themes, sharing strategies, and planning for content creation requires a thinking process.

Go ahead and pave the blogging “cowpath”, but keep the training benefits of blogging for business!

 

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For Checks and Blog Content, We Need Both Words and Numbers

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Writing a check
When it comes to check writing, business humorist Todd Hunt learned the hard way, words trump numbers. The humiliation will live with him forever, he admits, but he learned something: The bank goes by the amount you write in words (on the line that says “Pay”), not the numerals you write in the box. What actually happened, Hunt explains, is that he miswrote the words, which made his check worth more than he meant it to be…resulting in an overdraft. So, he concludes, words trump numerals.

In fact, to prevent his readers from falling into the same trap, Hunt shares an instructive article about foiling crooks when using checks. The gist of it is, write out the amount using words to avoid fraud and confusion.

“I am a Qualitative Social Scientist,” states Sarah-Louise Quinnell “I believe in that words tell you more than numbers”, she says, She came to that conclusion, she reveals, in researching cognitive processes for her Doctoral thesis.

For example, Quinell discusses a particular statistic:

“85% of students ranked the class a 4 or above”.

That sounds positive, she explains, until you dig a bit deeper and find out that only 30% of the people in the class answered the question!

“Words on the other hand,” she points out, “are harder to manipulate. They also tell you why someone voted a particular way.” To improve customer satisfaction you need to understand the why’s,” she concludes.

Business blog headlines and business blogs themselves are filled to the brim with statistics. In fact, one of the hottest trends in business blogging today is infographics, which is a way of presenting statistics in visually appealing form by combining numbers with graphic images. “Infographics are all over the place nowadays. How do you know which ones to trust?” asks Randy Olson.

In fact, Olson views “data visualizations” or “infographics” with a jaundiced eye. Yes, he admits, they have repeatedly provided us with new and insightful perspectives on the world around us. However, time and time again, he says, “we have seen that data visualizations can easily be manipulated to lie.”

As a corporate blogging trainer, I see a lot of value in the use of numbers in blog posts (assuming, of course, that statistics are presented fairly and honestly).

Using numbers in blog post titles is a great way to set expectations for a post. It tells readers exactly what they’re going to get, and exactly how much of it, says Pamela Vaughan of Hubspot.

But where the words come in, I believe, is that one of the primary functions blogs serve is putting statistics into perspective, so that readers are given the answer to the “So what?” and “So, what’s in-it-for-me” questions.

Payors must fill out their checks with both words and numbers. Business blog post content writers should do the same.

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