Solve Problems In Your Blog

Solve a problem, own the customer, sales trainers like to say.  Come to think about it, all the inventions that make our modern lives possible grew out of finding solutions to problems. Mental Floss Magazine reminds us of four examples.

Scroll back the 1830’s.  Elias Howe Jr.’s nightmare about cannibals attacking him resulted in his inventing the first automatic sewing machine. Howe not only became rich himself, but his invention played a big role in the Industrial Revolution. (The sewing machine needle was patterned after the cannibals’ spears, which had little holes at the tip.)

Sixty years after that, a traveling salesman named Gilette became annoyed at the inconvenience of sharpening his safety razor after every use.  Creating the first disposable razor made Glilette a millionaire.  Another problem solved.

Fast forward to 1948. As George DeMestral was preparing to take his wife to dinner, the zipper on her dress jammed.  Walking his dog in the woods a couple of weeks later, DeMestral noticed his pants covered with burrs.  Those tiny hooks that stuck to the threads of clothing gave the inventor the idea for Velcro. The millions DeMestral made on his patent meant, for many, never needing to wrestle with zippers again.

On a picnic in 1958, toolmaker Ermal Fraze realized he’d forgotten his "church key" and had no way of opening the canned beverage he’d brought along.  By next morning, Fraze had developed the tear-off ring pull for cans, and seven years later, 75% of American brewers were using nothing else for their beer.

Had business blogging been available to help these four gentlemen spread the word about the solution each had discovered, they might have realized their profits in a much shorter period of time and with much less effort.  That’s because people are online searching for answers to their problems or solutions for dilemmas they’re facing.  If your business has been consistently posting content, those people are going to find you, because your posts provide the solutions they need.

Shawn O’Donaghue of the Central Indiana Women’s Business Center put it nicely:
"Successful business owners understand that the product or service they are selling is the answer to someone’s problem." 

Providing a powerful online "voice" to solutions to searchers’ problems is the essence of my work as a professional ghost blogger for business!