Writing is Creative. Publishing Blogs is Creative Business

“Writing is creative. Publishing is business,” Aaron Gilbreath says in the October issue of Poets & Writers magazine. There are many ways to write for money, Gilbreath says, including content marketing, copywriting, journalism and technical writing. Reality is, he tells “creative” writers of fiction and poetry, there may be good reasons to write free of charge in order to build a reputation…Gilbreath quotes poet Robert Graves’ quip: “There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.”

While content marketing is on Gilbreath’s list of ways to make money (but excluded from his list of creative writing categories), at Say It For You, we consider creativity an absolute building block for success. But is business blog writing supposed to be creative? Yes, indeed. As writerstrasure.com points out, any nonfiction writing can be creative if the purpose is to express something, whether it be feelings, thoughts, or emotions. And, while the purpose of technical writing may be to inform and sometimes to trigger the person reading into making an action beneficial to the one of the writer, Idrees Patel admits, concise and magnetic writing is what will draw the reader in.

The question author Malcolm Gladwell gets asked most often just happens to be the same I’m most often asked when offering corporate blogging training sessions: “Where do you get your ideas?” the trick, Gladwell explains, is to “convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell.”

Marketing seems to go in cycles, remarks Morgan Stewart in a Media Post Publications article. “We bounce back and forth between…left-brain marketing focused on analytics and segmentation, and right-brain marketing focused on the creative.”  Both types of marketing are needed, concludes Steward. “Left-brain marketing narrows target audiences. Creative pulls people into your message.  Creative gets people talking.

In offering business blogging help, I emphasize that in business blog writing, it’s crucial to avoid the urge to directly sell a product or service. Instead, the creative challenge, is continually coming up with fresh content to inform, educate, and entertain readers.