The Journalistic Side of Blogging for Business

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OK, so I’d chosen to buy Time Magazine because the title “Who really decides which flights get canceled?” had intrigued me and made me curious. But, how did reporter Bill Saporito structure the article itself to keep me reading through a four-page, small-print article? And what can we freelance blog content writers learn about keeping online readers engaged?

As a prelude to the article “Mission Impossible”, the magazine served up a giant visual showing the American Airlines Integrated Operations Control Center outside Dallas, with labels for the key players in an flight cancellation decision: the Manager on Duty, the Repair expediter, the Maintenance controller, the Jet specialist, etc. While the picture didn’t live up to the expectation of some inside secret that the word “really” had conjured up, it certainly went a long way towards helping me visualize the enormity and urgency of the flight cancellation process.

Fellow blogger Michael Fortin believes most blogs would be strengthened by a visual representation of the product, the business, the person, the quality, the claims, or more importantly, the benefits of the product or service.

The journalist opens with an anecdote, immediately humanizing the narrative and making it more relatable to readers. “Tim Campbell, senior vice president of air operations for American Airlines, is staring at a diagram of the Charlotte, N.C. airport,” Saporito begins.

Stories of all kinds (“case studies”, customer testimonials, famous incidents from the news, Hollywood, folklore – you name it) help personalize a business blog. Even if a professional ghost blogger is doing most of the writing, employees and customers can provide true-story material.

Now, having set the stage, Saporito gets to the down-and-dirty implied in the “really” title:
“But the weather alone does not explain why on any given day, tens of thousands of passengers may find themselves stranded…” Explaining the vast complexity of the issues surrounding crew scheduling concerns, backup jet scheduling and placement, passenger reimbursements, safety issues, and on and on takes up the remainder of the thousands-of-words-long article.

My question has been answered, though. Who or what is really is in control? It’s the Cancellator, a computer algorithm that “weighs which flights can be shelved while keeping an airline’s schedule as whole as possible.”

As a business blog post, of course “Airport Confidential” would violate some of the rules I teach newbie blog content writers:  It’s much too long, and the primary focus isn’t on the need of the reader..

What this very well-written piece of journalism did accomplish, of course, was getting me, the prospective reader to “click” by buying the magazine and then keeping me interested through the entire article!

 

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Once-They’ve-Come-Inside Business Blog Content Writing

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OK, so I’d chosen to buy Time Magazine because the title “Who really decides which flights get canceled?” had intrigued me and made me curious. But now, was I going to stay interested enough to read through the entire issue?

That’s precisely the sequence of events for businesses and practices that engage in blog marketing. Blog readers are “deposited” at your “doorstep” due to the fact that the keyword phrases you’ve used proved a good match for the words those readers had typed into their browser’s search bar. If they are intrigued with your blog post title, readers click on the link, where they gain access to the blog content itself.

In a way, online readers who arrive at your business blog have already “drunk the the Kool-Aid”. They already have an interest in your topic and are ready to receive the information, the services, and the products you have to offer. Your task is to keep them engaged with valuable, personal, and relevant information. You don’t have a very long “window” to accomplish that task, really just a couple of seconds.

The Neilsen Norman Group make it their business to measure that “window”. “Users often leave Web pages in 10-20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people's attention for much longer,” says Jakob Nielsen. Neilsen Norman uses a reliability engineering concept called a Weibull distribution which measures the probability that a component will fail. Applying that same concept to web readers, Nielsen found that “It’s rare for people to linger on Web pages, but when users do decide that a page is valuable, they may stay for a bit.”

“If you can convince users to stay on your page for half a minute, there’s a fair chance that they’ll stay much longer – often 2 minutes or more, which is an eternity on the Web.,” Neilson concludes.

As a corporate blogging trainer, what that “negative Weibull distribution” says to me is that we content writers should “give out the goodies” early in the post. (Interestingly, that very thought seems to trigger a certain degree of fear in many business owners – if they share too much information about their field, prospects won't need to pay them to provide expertise!). 

Well, they won’t be paying if they aren’t staying, now will they?

 

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The “Really” Factor in Business Blog Content Writing

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There must’ve been eighty of them – which magazine did I want to buy? Even after I’d ruled out knitting, motorsports, men’s health, motorsports and bridal fashion as topics, the choices were overwhelming.  And then I saw it – the one I had to have: TIME, its cover sporting the following absolutely irresistible question:    Who REALLY decides which flights get cancelled?

In training blog content writers, I like to compare searchers browsing the internet to people visiting a trade show.  People are walking around the exhibit hall on the lookout for a product or service that meets their needs. When they pass your "blog booth", you want them to find something that draws their interest.  That "something" is the title, promising fresh, engaging content in your post. Once you’ve caught their interest, you hope, you’ll have the opportunity to invite those customer to “come inside” to your website or to follow one of your Calls to Action.

Speaking of Calls to Action, it was essentially the word “really” on the TIME cover that “called” me to buy that very magazine as opposed to any of its 79+ neighbors on the display. Made me think about how we marketing blog writers could accomplish the same sort of results using the Really Factor.

The implied promise in the word “really” is that readers can expect to be given some “inside scoop”, stuff not everybody else is privy to. And if that information can be related to a recent news story, all the better. As a professional ghost blogger for business, I know that one way to ensure blog content is fresh is tying that content to current events. I also know that Indianapolis res

Like garlic or hot pepper in food, the Really Factor should be added to SEO marketing blogs  with a really light hand.  After all, we wouldn’t want to be accused of “crying ‘wolf’” in our every post. On the other hand, entering conversations that are “trending” at the time , tying our blog content to current events, now that’s a good habit to develop.  Really! 

 

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Why You Might Want to Blog About What You Don’t Know

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WHY YOU MIGHT WANT TO BLOG ABOUT WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
“I’m not sure who started encouraging writers to ‘write about what you know’”, observes novelist and literature professor Elan Barnehama. At first glance it makes sense, he admits. The problem is, he says, the story is always better served by the narrative that could happen when you don’t have constraints. That doesn’t mean he can’t use what he knows, Barnehama hastens to assure his readers, but when he allows himself to discover new aspects of the world, his novels end up being about his readers, not about himself.
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/why-you-should-write-about-what-you-dont-know

Blogging about what you don’t know? That seems to fly in the face of all the corporate blogging training I’ve ever received or given to others. After all, isn’t the whole idea in blogging for business to showcase the expertise you have and the problems you KNOW how to solve?

Fellow blogger Ivan Widjaya of Biz Penguin might have tapped into the Barnehama’s mentality. “Off-beat posts regarding your company can bring people closer to you. They can lower the fence, so prospects and customers can have a peek on what’s going on inside your company and brands.” Widjava advises being not only passionate, interesting, but unusual and even quirky.  Sometimes, he thinks, being quirky can “help you establish a unique audience that will take whatever you offer them.”
http://www.bizpenguin.com/give-me-5-minutes-and-ill-give-you-the-secret-to-blogging-for-your-company-566/

There’s another aspect of this “what-you-don’t-know” aspect of blog content writing. To sustain our blog content writing over long periods of time without losing reader excitement and engagement, we’ve need to constantly add to our own body of knowledge – in our industry or professional field, and about what’s going on around us in our culture. Ironically, business blogging can serve as a form of market research in itself, as smallbiztrends.com points out.
Reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to your business field goes a long way towards keeping the quiver stocked with content ideas.
http://www.smallbiztrends.com

At Butler College of Business (where I’m an Executive Career Mentor”, “experiential learning” is a hallmark of the teaching method, with the idea being “learning by doing”. In creating content for SEO marketing blogs, it could be a case of “doing by learning”. As we “read around” and “curate” materials from other thought leaders, we’re becoming better ‘teachers” by becoming better learners. Now that Barnehama has got me thinking about it, I realize that, for Indianapolis bloggers, “what we don’t know can HELP us!”

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Learning to Bunt in Your Business Blog Writing

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Bunt“The bunt isn’t a game changer, like a homer or a triple.  Instead, it nudges things along – keeping the ball as far as possible from where your opponent wants it to be,” is just one of many of the lessons from her Dad that Sandy Hingston recalls in FamilyDigest..

When I offer business blogging assistance or corporate blogging training to Say It For You clients, I often need to remind business owners new to blogging that it isn’t the sort of marketing tactic likely to “hit it out of the park”.  On the other hand, consistent business blog writing, very much like bunting in a ball game, will almost certainly nudge things along.

Sandy Hingston’s dad taught all his kids that bunts are things of beauty, “means to an end, a strategy, brains over brawn.” As a professional ghost blogger , I think Mr. Hingston’s teachings are quite fitting when it comes to writing for business in the form of blogs.

“Remember: control.”
A blog can give a business the ability to exercise journalistic control. Blog content writers have the ability to put out news about the business with the business owner’s own slant on it! If there’s ever any negative news about the industry or the company, I teach Indianapolis blog writers, the blog is the perfect place to field questions and comments head-on.

“He makes me do it again and again and again.”
Material that is recent and frequently posted is more likely to be indexed by search engines. Like bunting practice with Sandy’s dad, SEO marketing blogs succeed in large part based on continuing to post new content every few days.

“Brains over brawn.”
Blogging for business is one way small business owners with small marketing budgets can compete, using “pull marketing” to meet strangers and increase their customer base without mounting expensive advertising campaigns. According to Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware, because blogs are specific, relevant, and personal, they tend to be more successful than traditional websites in targeting and attracting the right kind of visitors, those who need and want what you have to offer.

No, as I remind freelance blog writers and their business owner clients who are in a rush to make the cash register ring, blogging for business is rarely a game changer. But as a means to an end, part of an overall, long-term marketing strategy, it can be a thing of beauty!

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