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How-I-Learned Blogging for Business

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“All authors improve their writing skills the more they write,” Mark Shaw reassures book writers in the Author Learning Center, including learning how to connect with their audiences. Meanwhile, writer Madeline Sharples offers tips on how to choose a different perspective for your story. Terry Doerscher tells new writers to ask themselves “Why am I writing this book?” to gain clarity on length and writing style. Meanwhile, in Writer’s Digest, journalist Alison Hill shares “10 Dos and don’ts of Writing a Piece of Journalism”., including some fundamental rules such as: Be truthful. Be objective. Use multiple sources. Human interest stories, Hill explains, emphasize entertaining, educating, and engaging the audience. “After being an independent poet touring the world the better part of a decade, I’ve decided it’s time to give back to this magical art form and the broader community that has carried me so far. It’s my turn to provide some of the life-changing opportunities that spoken word has gifted to me,” Sierra DeMulder writes at the Jason Taylor Foundation. 

These quotes are all examples of How-I-Learned sharing of information and tips freely offered by “pros” for the benefit of “newbies”. In blogging for business, sharing your experience is a great way to build an audience, the wordpress.com team explains. “If you’re an expert on a subject or know something that others might find useful, you can attract a sizable following.” At Say It For You, we’ve learned, addressing real-world challenges that readers face is a path to success in blog marketing.

One point I’ve consistently stressed in these blog content writing tutorials is how important it is to provide valuable information to readers, while avoiding any hint of “hard sell”.  It’s helpful to collate helpful hints from a variety of experts, offering those as a “gift” from the business owner to blog visitors. Even more impactful, though, is sharing valuable lessons learned by the professional practitioner or business owners based on their own hard-won experience and expertise. In fact, in business blogs, it’s a good idea to actually write about past mistakes and struggles, blogger Beccy Freebody posits, because it’s much easier to connect to someone who has been where you are.

How-I-learned content can be how-you-connect blogging!

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Opening Up Options in Your Blog

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In his business book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that his favorite opening question when meeting a prospect is “Where are you from?” That opener allows the other person to respond in a myriad of ways, the author explains. The prospect might talk about her hometown or country – “I grew up in Berlin”, or about her employer – “I represent Fidelity Bank and Trust”, or reveal that she’s originally from LA, but has been living in the Midwest for most of her adult life. The concept is, as Daniel Pink mentions in his own book To Sell is Human, when talking to prospects, open things up rather than shutting them down by making people think you’re passing judgment on them.

When it comes to converting readers into customers, our job as blog content writers is to present choice, we stress at Say It For You. Given enough “space” to absorb the relevant and truthful information we present over time, consumers are perfectly able to – and far more likely to – decide to take action. Defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. But showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience in providing solutions to very that problem can help drive the marketing process forward.

But what I don’t mean in advising you to present a variety of options is the “Swiss army knife” approach – you don’t want your blog to be an all-in-one marketing tool that forces a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 57 wonderful services your company has to offer!. What you can do with the blog is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts.  I often remind business bloggers to provide several options to readers, including “read more”, “take a survey”, “comment”, or “subscribe”. On websites with no e-commerce options, of course, “Contact” might be  the ultimate reader “compliance” step.

I think the important take-away from Collins’ “Where-are-you-from?” approach is that people are different. Action-oriented readers will want our best recommendations from among the choices. Idea-oriented persons will want to know about the business owners’ core beliefs underlying the way that business is structured. A process-oriented reader will want to know how the process of purchasing and using the product or service works.

To sell what you do and how you do it is human, but be sure to open up a variety of options in your blog!

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Master Chefs and Master Content Writers Stay Up on Current Things

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After winning the “Beat Bobby Flay” cooking competition in 2017, Indianapolis restaurateur Steve Oakley explained that what keeps him inspired after twenty years in the restaurant business is – reading a lot. Looking at a book is inspirational to him, along with “just talking with customers about experiences they have”, Oakley explains. Dean Sample, a former employee of Oakley’s (now a head chef in his own right) had this to say of his former mentor: “To be doing it as long as he has and still have that interest and still trying and experimenting with different things all the time, it’s pretty impressive. He stays up on all kinds of current things in the world of chefs and restaurants.” The other part of being a chef, Oakley now tells IndyStar reporter Cheryl Jackson, is that “if you want to be recognized, you have to get out there in different ways. You can’t just limit yourself to cooking in your restaurants…you’ve got to get out, meet the people, and shake their hands”.

Blog content writers can do no better than follow the Oakley “playbook”. In fact, “reading around”, we often stress at Say It For You, is a crucial habit. You need to keep up with what others are saying on your topic. What’s in the news? What problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to your industry or profession (or that of your client?). Not only do you need a constant flow of ideas, but you can improve your own writing skills by reading books about writing. And, in the business of blog marketing, books about selling and marketing help keep your skills sharp.

Notice that Steve Oakley’s “content” is refreshed by more than reading. Getting out and meeting the people, talking with customers about experiences they have is crucial when it comes to keeping blog content relevant. In Journalism 101, I was taught to “put a face on the issue” by beginning articles with a human example . A case study takes that personalization even further, chronicling a customer or client who had a certain problem or need, taking readers through the various stages of how the product or service was used to solve that problem. What were some of the issues that arose along the way? What new insights were gained through that experience, on the part of both the business and the customer?

Master chefs and master content writers stay up on current things!

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Blogging What You Are Not

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“I photograph weddings, but I am not a wedding photographer.,” asserts Marty Moran, owner of Whitehot Headshot. “I photograph headshots, but I am not in the headshot business,” he adds. “I am a relationship builder, strengthening my tribe as I help others strengthen theirs. Give them quality and support, and they will make return visits,” Moran believes.

My networking colleague Ron Mannon often needs to explain that his company, Combustion & Systems, Inc., an industry leader in powder coating systems, does not actually do powder coating or paint finishing. Instead, they provide the equipment and training so that their customers can do their own finishing rather than farming out that part of the manufacturing process.

At Say It For You, we create SEO-conscious content, but do not focus on the science of Search Engine Optimization, believing that blogging is about much more than back-links and “authority”. What do you want to say to your customers today? What will get them excited enough to choose you over the competition? How will you keep them coming back for more information in the future?

In the Harvard Business Review, Madelaine Rauch and Sarah Stanske write about “the power of defining what your company isn’t”. There are times when having an “anti-identity” can be useful in communicating with customers, employees, and investors,” they explain. “We suspect,” the authors say, that companies might experiment with an anti-identity approach, analyzing who they really are and what that implies about what they are not. “No business – particularly a small one – can be all things to all people. The more narrowly you can define your target market, the better,” the staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. say.

Of the top 10 mistakes new business owners make, Gene Marks of the Hartford says, #1 is trying to do things you’re not good at. Translating that very sage advice into the field of blog content creation, that means defining in your blog not only the successes and strengths of the business or practice, but defining precisely which products and services you provide – and which you don’t. After all, Since exceeding customer expectations is such a worthy goal, clarifying those expectations and aligning them with reality is a key part of the marketing process. “It is vital,” smartkarrot.com advises, “to put parameters upfront, so that you can honor them time and again.”

Blogging, in short, clarifies what you are, but it is equally important to clarify what you are not!

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Different Strokes for Different Folks in Blogging for Business

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Is your business blog reader’s tummy rumbling?

In this month’s Writers Digest, ten winners were announced. Contestants had been given a photo prompt showing a grocery store aisle and asked to write the opening line of a story based on that prompt. My personal two favorites were these:

  • “My tummy rumbles as I walk past all the things I cannot buy with the seven dollars in my pocket, the seven dollars for her cigarettes.
  • “We fell in love reaching for the same tea and fell apart picking different ice cream.”

I think this exercise illustrated two concepts related to business blog content writing:

The importance of your opening line

  • The first sentence of a blog post functions as “a hook:” and, next to the title, it’s the most important set of words in the post, creative-copywriter.net explains, advising writers to “say it fast, strong, and well”, right into the action and addressing their deepest problem instantly.
  • Readers are looking for connections. The challenge is to get the reader to nod his or her head, thinking “Yeah, that’s me.” Ann Hanley says in orbitmedia.com.

  • Writer’s Digest wasn’t talking about online content, but for blogs, the opening lines are where it’s important to incorporate keyword phrases to help with Search Engine Optimization.

The same general topic can be approached in a myriad of ways.

  • In order to add variety, I teach blog content writers to experiment with different formats, including how-to posts, list posts, opinion pieces, and interviews.
  • Different posts can present the same business from different vantage points, “featuring” different employees and different departments within the company.
  • Individual blog posts – or series of posts – can be tailored to different segments of the customer base.
  • Remember that, even within your target market, each reader’s need for information, products or services was born in a slightly different space and has traveled a different path. Not every message will work on every person.

From the very opening line and continuing throughout the blog post, remember – there are different strokes for different folks in blogging for business!

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