Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

I thought “Chief Potential Officer” Kevin Eikenberry hit the jackpot with his latest leadership tip about consistency. Eikenberry calls it the “Seinfeld Strategy”.

The reason I was so taken with Eikenberry’s post was that six and a half years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them felt they could take the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that, while my own considerable experience in writing newspaper columns was going to be an asset for blogging, that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

Eikenberry had picked up on a Forbes Magazine article about Jerry Seinfeld, who consistently earned tens of millions of dollars a year for more than a decade.  Seinfeld was successful because of consistency.  He’d figured out that the way to be a better comic was to write better jokes, and that the way to do that was to write jokes every single day.  Then, for every day he writes, Jerry puts a big red X on his wall calendar, and all that matters is not breaking that chain of X’s.

Novelist  Steven King employs a similar discipline, writing ten pages a day.  Every day, with no exceptions.  Jack Nicklaus went over every possible way to approach each shot.  Until he could visualize the perfect shot, he wouldn’t swing.  Sales and marketing great Dan Kennedy doesn’t go to sleep without completing at least one task that connects him to a customer or moves the sales process along.

Consistency. Discipline.  The Seinfeld Strategy.  No, I’ll probably never make even the tiniest fraction of the money that Seinfeld has raked in, but one thing I do know:  Successful blog content writing is about “getting your frequency on”, as fellow blogger Pat Flynn puts it.  If  a business owner throws in the towel before success has a chance to develop in an SEO marketing blog, she’ll have fallen prey to the biggest single reason most people fail at content marketing.
 

Now there’s an arresting article title if ever I’ve read one, I thought: “Why do there seem to be more baby boys available to adopt?" it read. "Since everyone knows women live long and represent more of the population at large, most clients assume that means that more girls are born. “ Unfortunately, what ‘everyone knows’ often leads to misunderstandings of what is really happening,.” the authors go on to explain.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I'm a firm believer that myth debunking is an important function of blog content writing, simply because, in every business or profession, misunderstandings about a product or service surface in the form of customer questions and complaints. Addressing misinformation in a company's blog shines light on the owner's special expertise, besides offering information that is valuable to readers. De-mystifying matters can make your corporate or professional office’s blog into a "go-to" source for readers seeking information in your field.

In a way, I’ve found, blog readers tend to be engaged, rather than miffed, when your content “proves them wrong”.  Of course, you soften the effect when you acknowledge that their misunderstandings are shared by many other people.  What’s more, the new (to them) “take” on the situation must seem relevant and helpful in solving whatever need or problem motivated those readers’ online search to begin with

The authors acknowledge that several of the reasons more girls are adopted than boys have nothing to do with the U.S. birth rates.  

• Women, particularly single women, express a preference for adopting girls.
• The majority of children available for adoption from other countries that are leading sources for adoptive children (think China) are girls.

A justharvest blog  I found does a great job formatting a  mythbusting post about food stamps:  

“I'm going to ask you to do something a little weird. Ready? Ok, close your eyes and try to picture someone on food stamps.” Was the person an adult? Because at most half of food stamp recipients are children. Was it a white person? Most people on food stamps are white. Were they spending the day sitting around unemployed, on welfare? Only 8% of food stamp recipients receive cash welfare benefits."

Ask yourself: How could I, as an Indianapolis blog content writer, adapt this mythbusting template to my own business or profession?