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Recommended Reading for Blog Content Writers – Part D

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My “bloggers’ recommended reading list” is something I’ve been putting together for a decade. My most recent three Say It For You blog posts focused on books about writing, about tidbit treasures, and about selling techniques. In this final post of the series, let’s talk about the nitty-gritty of writing content geared towards online readers. I have three books to recommend as resources for blog content writers:

I still go back to one of the early additions (2010) to my resource library, Corporate Blogging for Dummies, by Douglas Karr and Chantelle Flannery, Corporate Blogging for Dummiesfor guidance on best practices. Many of the authors’ “tips and tricks to maximize your impact” will never go out of style.  Here are just three examples:

  • Businesses that serve other businesses tend to see a drop in traffic over weekends and during typical vacation periods and holidays…Take advantage of other companies not publishing content and continue to schedule or publish posts on weekends and holidays.”
  • Use alt tags effectively for image searches and keyword placement.
  • Blogs typically rank well for a keyword if that keyword is in the domain name..

Internet Marketing an Hour a DayUnderstanding what types of searchers your business is likely to attract can be very important in keyword selection, Matt Bailey explains in Internet Marketing an Hour a Day.  “Is your website an ‘impulse’ site, where you can get a quick sale? Or, is it a content-based website where searchers can learn more, leading them gradually to the decision-making point?” he asks. The book offers step-by-step instructions and action plans for website optimization, and integrating social media and blogs.

 

The newest addition to be resource library is the book Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, a collection  Mitch Meyerson has putsuccess secrets together of articles from many different only marketing experts.

  • From John Janitch of Duct Tape marketing:  “Your blog is the absolute starting point for your content strategy because it makes content production, syndication, and sharing so easy.”
  • From Ian Cleary of Razor Social: “Use Ahrefs (www.ahrefs.com) or similar tools to find out which on their (your competitor’s) website have the most links pointing to them.”
  • From Bob Barker (Guerilla Music Marketing Handbook): The three E’s of communication are to educate, to entertain, and to enlighten.

Hiring the extra “brain” relieves the “drain” on the business owner’s (or the professional practitioner’s) resources of times and energy. And what relieves the drain on the blog content writer?  A constant supply of ideas. But where do you get ideas – day after day, month after month, year after year – for blog posts? My answer is – everywhere! One aspect of the “everywhere” is books. In these last four Say It For You blog posts, I’ve provided links so that you can take a look for yourself at some of the wonderful books I’ve been collecting.

I don’t know about the ‘rithmetic part, but reading and blog ’riting definitely go together!.

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Recommended Reading for Blog Content Writers – Part C

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My “bloggers’ recommended reading list” is something I’ve been putting together for almost ten years. Last week’s Say It For You blog posts focused on books about writing and books about tidbit treasures. but in today’s post, I’ll share links to books about selling.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I use the word “selling” in a very specialized sense.  That’s because, in today’s world, whatever your business or profession, there’s almost no end to the information available to consumers on the Internet.  Our job then, as business blog content writers, isn’t really to “sell” anything, but rather to help readers absorb, buy into, and use all that information.

Stop Selling and Do Something Valuable“Tell and sell tradition marketing is dead,” according to Stan Phelps of Yahoo! Small Business Advisor. If marketing is about anything, it’s about differentiating what you do and how you do it.

As a business blog writing trainer, I’d go a step further. Marketing is about differentiating what you think about what you do and why you think that way. Taking a stance on issues relevant to your business or profession will give your blog post more “pow” every time.

That’s precisely why I chose the book Stop Selling & Do Something Valuable, by Steve Walmsley for my bloggers’ resource book list. “We have to sell ourselves to potential clients so that they choose to work with us rather than the competition… , he says, which is not the same as selling our product or service. “In our role as advocates, we need to persuade people to act.”

“Our challenge is to make customers fully aware of their situation without insulting them,” says Jeff Thull, strategist for executive teams worldwide and author of Exceptional Selling. “The more you sweat, the less you sell,” he observes. “Your ability to constructively attract and engage a customer in a relevant dialogue requires a conversation style as well as substantive content.” In selling done right, says Thull, “We don’t need to manipulate or Exceptional Sellingpush customers, nor do they have to protect themselves from us.”

Both these books about selling are relevant to business blog content writing. When it comes to Calls to Action in blog posts, I find myself issuing the following caution during corporate blogging training sessions: Blogs are not ads. When people go online to search for  information and click on different blogs or websites, they want to

  • Find out where
  • Find out how
  • Find out why

What they don’t want is to “be sold.”

So far in this Say It For You series, I’ve shared reading resources on writing, tidbit treasures, and selling.  Stay tuned for Part D this Thursday, a review of some of my favorite books on blogging and internet marketing…

 

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