Go-To Business Blogging

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Serving as a "go-to" source for online readers can be a great formula of success for business bloggers, which is one of the reasons I regularly follow columnist Erika D. Smith’s pieces in the Indianapolis Star.

In "Keep your eyes on the skies – and the trees", Erika sets a great example for blogging by pointing her readers to seven websites, each of which contains useful information at least loosely related to ways of saving data and saving the planet at the same time.

As I’m fond of pointing out in business blogging training sessions, readers could, in theory, have sought information from sources more authoritative than your blog. Yet those same readers will be sure to appreciate that:
 

  • You’ve gone to the trouble of culling valuable nuggets from a variety of sources
     
  • You’ve helped them make sense of the information and added your own "spin".
     
  • You knew how to do that because of your own specialized knowledge and experience in your field

    This particular Erika Smith article is a tad less razor-sharp focused than I think business blog posts need to be.     The theme of this particular article is autumn leaves, so Smith refers readers to Indiana’s Department of Tourism Development’s Leaf.Com network to keep track of how leaves are changing, then to Foursquare to find discounts on shopping and dining in those areas, and to umbrellatoday.com to learn if it’s likely to rain during their visit.

The last four of Smith’s Seven Sites list, though, digress a bit, ranging from entering contests to propose solutions for environmental problems, to finishing the sentence "Now that I am dead…", to emailing from one computer to the next. So, while I applaud the concept of business bloggers sifting through a lot of information and then presenting to readers only what is relevant, blog posts still work best when tightly focused on one central concept.

None of this takes away from the central concept of this Say It For You  blog post: Playing the "guru" and the "go-to guy/gal" is a superb tactic for business bloggers!

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Business Bloggers Should Use Novelists’ Synopsis Checklist

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Are business blog post titles “spoilers”? Maybe, but at least according to the Guardian Books blog, spoilers are good things:  “Readers who know how a story will end will get greater pleasure from it.”

As novelists know, agents and publishers often require them to furnish a synopsis along with their manuscript.  The synopsis, explains Chuck Sambuchino of Writer’s Digest, “supplies key information about your novel (plot, theme, characterization, setting), while also showing how these coalesce to form the big picture.”  The agent or publisher, the implication is, will not take the time to read the manuscript without knowing up front if it’s going to be a good match for the publisher’s target audience.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I can’t help but see a strong parallel here for business blog content writers.  Readers come online searching for information, products, or services, and they are not going to take the time to read your “manuscript” (the full text of your blog post) without assurance that they’ve come to the right place.

In writing any SEO marketing blog, using something on the line of that novelist’s synopsis is essential to doing what I call “blogging downhill”.  In corporate blogging training sessions I teach new freelance bloggers in Indianapolis to address readers’ “What’s-In-It-For-Me?” question at the beginning, rather than later on in each blog post.

Sambuchino explains that, as agents have become “busier and busier”, today “they want to hear your story now-now-now.” That is certainly the case with the online readers of today. Two pieces of advice he offers novel synopsis writers are especially apropos for business blog writers:

 

  • Establish a “hook” at the beginning.
  • Make it a short, fast, and exciting read.

The University of California’s psychology department gave subjects 12 short stories to read.  Some were presented with “spoiler paragraphs” that told readers how the stories would end, others had no spoilers.  “Subjects significantly preferred the spoiled versions.  Knowing ahead of time how the story would end not only didn’t hurt enjoyment, but actually improved it,” the researchers found.

The lesson for blog writers?  Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em. Do it in the title and in the opening sentences of each blog post. Use a “hook”, but let readers know whether it’s for fishing or knitting. Will you be teaching them to fish or knit, or do you sell books on the subject?

We’ve always known that optimizing our online content writing means letting the search engines know what we’re about. Now, we learn, we’d best “spoil” the “suspense” for our readers as well!

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Ghost Writers In The Sky

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I can’t believe how far back ghostwriting goes – who knew?  We’re all used to today’s celebrities, CEO’s, and public figures who can’t spare the time to write their own books or speeches, and who hire ghostwriters.  (In fact, publishing companies sometimes purposely associate a book with a well known person to make it more marketable.)  As a professional ghost blogger, I am an avid reader about all forms and styles of ghost writing.  The more I read, the more interesting material I uncover.


 


Composer Wolfgang Mozart, I learned, was paid to ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons.  Come to think about it, that fact was brought out in the movie “Amadeus”.


 


An absolutely fascinating tidbit I just learned is that romance novelist V.C. Andrews’ estate hired a ghostwriter.  The assignment: to continue writing novels in Andrews’ style after her death!  The readers just didn’t want there to ever be a final chapter, I guess…


 


It’s fun to learn about all these things, but blogging is much more in the here and now.  The mission of a ghost blogger like me is to market your business.  Your business blog performs a very practical and very important function:  it helps customers find your business.  And they find it, not in the sky, but right here on the Web. 

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Great Headlines Drive Traffic – guest post

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Lorraine Ball of RoundPeg and I are exchanging guest blog posts. RoundPeg is devoted to “helping small businesses become big businesses”. I asked Lorrain to blog about her approach to Twitter…..

http://www.roundpeg.biz/2009/08/internet-mistake/

http://www.roundpeg.biz/2009/03/discount-tire-gets-my-vote/

http://www.roundpeg.biz/2009/05/twitter-is-not-broccoli/

I have been actively using Twitter as my primary Social Media connection for almost a year, and I can’t imagine my daily routine without it. I have learned how to be funny, sarcastic and somewhat smart in 140 characters or less. I have made friends around the globe, and feel more connected to a number of local folks as well.
 
As I explored Twitter I expected those things would occur, but I have discovered an interesting side benefit. I am becoming a better writer overall. The restrictions of the 140 character limit have trained me to look at every word and consider the value each word adds to a sentence.  This new habit has drifted over to my blog and business writing as well.
 
I am even looking at headlines differently.  While content rich headlines work well for Google search they don’t work when I try to promote a new post on Twitter.  Commenting on this dilemma, it was clear Louis Gray  wasn’t sure which strategy was a better choice when he said:
 
“As Twitter’s impact on immediate traffic expands, it should be interesting to see how many blogs change their approach to headlines and to see if they are in any way reducing longer-term traffic benefits from SEO for instant returns.”

For me, the small business marketing space in Google is very crowded. It is hard to get noticed or rise to the top. I have had more success promoting my blog through Twitter, so I am likely to continue to down that path, working to make my headlines more Twitter-friendly.
 
I use Twitter feed to send my new posts to twitter.  The shorter headlines have helped catch the attention of friends and followers who visit, read, and ReTweet. Some of my most well trafficked posts have catchy titles which are short enough to Tweet, ReTweet and even Re, ReTweet. For example:
 
Mistakes are like Sandcastles
Discount Tire Gets My Vote
Twitter is Not Broccoli
 
In some ways this is simply a return to better writing.  Advertising copy writers and journalists have for years relied on catchy titles to entice the reader.  For awhile Google, and SEO strategies  in general distracted us. Today Twitter and other social media which focus on the human interaction are challenging us to become better writers once again.
.

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Leitmotifs For Blogs

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Blog posts tend to be more effective when they focus on just one idea, I’ve found.  That idea might be:

  • Busting one myth common among consumers
  • One testimonial from a user of your product or service
  • On special application for your product
  • One common problem your service helps solve
  • One new development in your industry

Focus is what helps blog posts stay smaller and lighter in scale, and much more flexible than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website.

What helps the separate posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy are the blog "leitmotifs".

Leitmotif means "leading theme" in German.  In music, "the leitmotif is heard whenever the composer wants the idea of a certain character, place, or concept to come across," explains Chloe Rhodes in A Certain "Je Ne Sais Quoi".

Whenever I’m sitting down with business owners as they’re preparing to launch a blog for their company, I find that one important step is to select 1-5 recurring themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts.  The themes may be reflected in the keyword phrases they use to help drive search, but themes are broader in scope than keyword phrases.

A residential air conditioning firm, for example, might blog using keywords such as "air conditioning", "air conditioning repair", "air conditioning service in Peoria".  A theme, by contrast, might be "Room comfort".

What leitmotifs will unify your blog posts?
 

 

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