Blogging From a Top-Floor Hotel Room

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People often assume he shoots his beautiful images with a drone or that he creates them on a computer, but that’s not it at all, says Virtuoso travel photog Gray Malin. What you see in the magazine is the result of him going up in a helicopter and leaning out the side to find timeless imagery. The idea of shooting from above came to Malin, he says, when he was somewhere in a hotel with a birdseye view of a giant swimming pool filled with people and realized he could create tableaus of beachgoers and beaches from a new and different perspective.

Perspective is everything when it comes to business blog content. Whether a business owner is composing his/her own blog posts or collaborating with a professional content writer, it’s simply not enough to provide even very potentially valuable information to online searchers.  Think of the facts – about the business, the services, and the products offered  – as raw ingredients which must be “translated”. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”  

Many business owners and practitioners make use of statistics in their blog posts, and that’s a good thing for a couple of reasons:

  • Numbers help debunk myths and dispel false impressions relating to your field or product.
  • Numbers help demonstrate the extent of the problem your business or practice helps solve.

But statistics, too, need to be put into perspective for readers. Before a reader even has time to ask “So what?” we need to be ready with an answer that makes sense in terms with which readers are familiar. I call it blogging new knowledge on things readers already know.

Photographer Gray Malin understood that content (in his case pictorial) offered to readers must “own” a unique perspective. There’s certainly no lack of content in either print or online media, and no lack of experts (at least purported experts) in the travel field or any other. Malin understood that he needed to go beyond presenting photos and offer a unique perspective.

In fact, what Gray Malin says of his top-floor style of travelogues is a great example for business blog content writing: “It all goes into creating something that’s unique to that location, but still universally appealing.”

 

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Things-You-Can-Buy Business Blogging

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Luxury Cruise Ship in Port

Yes, I admit it – I tried for the $1.5 Powerball jackpot and lost. Have to add, though, that I really couldn’t relate to that big a dollar figure – couldn’t even imagine dollars in the billions. Billions. Until, that is, I read the USA Today list of “5 Things that $1.5 Billion Powerball Jackpot Can Buy”:

  • A fleet of 23 Gulfstream 6650 jets
  • 42,000 nights’ stay at the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah Hotel in Dubai
  • A flotilla of five “super yachts”
  • A parking lot full of Tesla Model S electric cars, one for each of your 21,097 closest friends.

Ah, NOW, I got it!  And, while I’m not sure Dubai would be my destination of choice, just seeing that list made that humongous number come alive for me.

That same concept applies to blogging for business, I’m convinced.  Each claim a content writer puts into a corporate blog needs to be put into context for the reader, so that the claim not only is true, but feels true to online visitors and in such a way that readers can picture themselves using the product or service.

It wouldn’t be exaggerating for me to say, based on my own experience reading all types of marketing blogs, that very few manage to convey to visitors what the information means to them. Imagine those readers asking themselves “How will I use the product?  How much will I use? How often? Where? What will it look like?  How will I feel?”

$1.5 billion wasn’t real to me until that enterprising USAToday journalist Charisse Jones helped make it real by translating the dollars into stuff those dollars could buy.

Try focusing your blog posts on the results your readers can have as a consequence of using your product, your service, or your know-how:

  • things they could buy
  • things they could enjoy
  • things they could accomplish
  • ways they can feel
  • looks they can achieve

Put your readers in that “Gulfstream jet” of anticipation of wonderful results!

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What Do Blog Visitors Want?

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“What do interviewers want?” asks John Kador in “201 Best Questions to Ask on Your Interview”. Ideal qualities for job candidates fall into four main categories, Kador explains:

  • Thinking
  • Planning
  • Interacting
  • Motivation

Business blogs, I’m fond of saying in corporate blogging training classes, are nothing more than extended interviews.  Just as in a face-to-face job interview, searchers who read your blog evaluate the content, judging whether you’re a good fit for them. And those visitors, I’m convinced, are “testing” your company or practice for the same four ideal qualities job interviewers use:

Thinking:
Can you (the “candidate” in this scenario) quickly and effectively solve challenging problems?
Kador advises candidates to be prepared to demonstrate past successes; bloggers should use testimonials and case studies.

Planning:
Can you plan projects without missing deadlines, executing with precision?

Interacting:
Can you demonstrate genuine support and concern and be persuasive in a low-key manner? Whatever your business or profession, there’s no end to the technical information available to consumers on the Internet. Our job then, as business blog content writers, becomes to help readers absorb, buy into, and use that information.

Motivation:
Will you be flexible and frequently suggest improvements?
The overriding message a successful interviewee will convey to a prospective employer is the same message business owners and professionals must convey to their prospective clients: “I understand the challenges of the job, and I have the experience to take them on. I would very much like to start doing this important work.”

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Getting Personal in Blogging for Business

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Those who tell the stories rule society - Quote by Plato

As someone who helps clients communicate via the internet, I got a thought-provoking kick out of the anecdote Nancy Clark from West Point, Virginia submitted to Readers’ Digest:

      I’ve given up social media for the new year and am trying to make friends outside Facebook     while applying the same principles.  Every day I walk down the street and tell passersby what I’ve eaten, how I feel, what I did the night before, and what I will do tomorrow. I share pictures of my family, my dog and my gardening….I also listen to their conversations and tell them I love them.  And it works. I already have three people following me – two police officers and a psychiatrist.

One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional bloggers is that we are interpreters, translating clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms. In fact, one reason I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting” is that I believe people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

“Getting down and human” in business blogs is so important that it becomes a good idea for a business owner and professional to actually write about past mistakes and struggles. Blogger Beccy Freebody posits that it’s much easier to connect to someone who has been where you are.

So just how personal should your business blog be?” asks mavenlink.com.  Many businesses and business people struggle to find that fine line between adding a personal touch and shocking or boring their readers to death with overly personal, trite information,” the authors observe.

On a business blog, you will be rewarded for having a unique and authentic voice, but that doesn’t mean you have free reign to swear or otherwise be rude. Your unique voice should fit nicely within the brand’s larger personality, mavenlink wisely adds.

Important to the Readers’ Digest dilemma, the authors state that “while business bloggers may benefit from discussing past and current struggles as a tool for connecting emotionally with readers, such stories are best used as a means to an end, with the end being solving readers’ problems.

“Business is personal, so is a blog,” writes Ty Kiisel in Forbes. “Over the years,” Kiisel says, “my readers have gotten to know me because I share with them some of the details of my life.”

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We’ll Say It For You – “Happy New Year!”

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Hard to believe, but my little ghost-blogging and content writing company, Say It For You, is New Year's champagnecelebrating its eighth New Year’s today!

Our content, some 20,0000 unique writing selections by now, may be found in clients’ corporate brochures  and website pages, in press releases, “nurturing emails” and Facebook posts. Primarily, though, our pieces populate the blogosphere.

2015 was certainly a year of learning for me, and ideas for material were everywhere I looked, from magazine and newspaper articles, radio and TV broadcasts, and even billboards and print ads. Networking groups were my classrooms, and our Say It For You clients our best teachers.

More than ever, I realized, our readers need even more from us than expert advice and information.  We need to put all of that information into perspective and become thought leaders. It became more and more evident to me that at least half the time I spend creating a blog post is reading/research/thinking time. That meant continuing to build my collection of books that serve as blog content writing resources.

As 2015 draws to a close, I’m revisiting my Say It For You mission statement:

Say It For You is a premium blogging and marketing service that provides your business with    enhanced potential for improved standing in search engine results and reader engagement. More than just a collection of keywords, our blog posts are strong, thought-filled messages about your business or practice.

Basically, what that means is when you use Say It For You, you receive the following benefits in addition to impeccably written posts:

  • A single writer dedicated to understanding your business and keeping abreast
    of topics in your industry. That writer is ready to interface with your SEO expert, marketing consultant, or web designer.
  • Say It For You works with only one client in each field of business, so that all research and promotional efforts are devoted towards benefiting you and your business.
  • You will have personal contact with your writer, including regular in-person meetings or phone conferences. Your writer is always available to discuss content and strategy.
  • The ideas and input of writers with strong background in business. Our writers have expertise in finance, marketing, operations, event planning, autos, seniors, international commerce, healthcare, and more.

    Eight and a half years and 20,000 pieces of writing later, we find that every day there’s something new to celebrate and to share!  Happy New Year!

 

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