Fresh Is Better For Blogs And Beer

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Two advertisements for beer that ran on British TV appear to contradict one another, as related in a NewScientist book on trivia.

Budweiser’s ad claimed the key to good lager is fast shipment from brewery to bottle to drinker, while the ad for Grolsch beer stressed the importance of a long conditioning period to improve flavor. The answer – both are correct.  Lager needs to be matured slowly to get a good flavor, but then it "must get into the drinker as fast as possible before it deteriorates". "Fast", in beer, apparently makes a big difference in "fresh".  NewScientist says a reasonably good taster can distinguish between a week-old and month-old bottle from the same batch."

Freshness is super-important in my field of business blogging as well. Search engine rankings reward recency, a.k.a. new content, which is the key reason traditional websites can’t complete with corporate blogging. "Fresh" in business blogs means content that is up-do-date on the latest trends in your industry, problems that are now getting solved because of updated technology and knowledge.  "Fresh" in blogs, according to WebInkNow,  means content that informs and educates and entertains, adding that (and this can be hard for businessowners to hear) "nobody cares about your products and services except you". 

Did you know (I didn’t, until recently), the U.S. Air Force has created a role called "Chief of Emerging Technology", to develop web applications to engage Airmen and the general public in online conversation? The Air Force has even created a flow chart for assessing blog posts and comments, stressing the following values:

  • Transparency (disclosing your connection with the Air Force)
  • Sourcing (citing your sources)
  • Timeliness (Don’t rush, take time to create  good responses)
  • Tone (Your tone should reflect on the rich heritage of the Air Force
  • Influence (Focus on the most used sites related to the Air Force) 

Each item on this Air Force checklist describes a good practice for business bloggers. In my work as part of a company’s marketing team, it’s important to set just the right tone and methodology for the blog. But, never forget, the Air Force-level discipline is needed as well. Without maintaining a system of consistently posting new, fresh content to the blog, the tactic will not pull its weight as part of the business’ marketing strategy. 

Search engines, like those reasonably good beer tasters, will be able to distinguish freshness!

 

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Belief Comes Before Blog In The Dictionary

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Daniel Finley, advising financial planners on managing their practice, poses the question: "What’s your purpose?"

According to Finley, one thing that holds many advisers back from increasing their business strength is their business belief systems, which he defines as "what you believe about yourself, your abilities, the market, your firm, or anything else that affects your business." The important thing about belief systems, he stresses, is that they affect business activities.

Finley’s words ring very true to me. As a professional ghost blogger, I become part of a business’ marketing team. Too often, I find, business owners are so anxious to embark on blogging, they don’t devote adequate thought to how the blogging will fit into their overall marketing system. 
Blogs are tools, and like other tools, may be used for different purposes.  A company can use blogging to build goodwill, attract new business, improve customer relations, enhance the brand, recruit employees, or weather a crisis. According to blog experts Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos, one kind of blog you should never launch is the "Let’s-launch-a-blog" blog, just because everybody else is doing it!

Fellow blogger Luke Houghton agrees with that idea. In his blog post "Say Exactly What You Want When You Ask For Something", Houghton mentions the "stinging disappointment of loss" you feel when you’ve paid for something that turns out to be different from what you expected. Houghton emphasizes that "the question comes first, then the answer."

When working with business owners to arrive at the right tone and the right emphasis for their business blogs, I begin by challenging the owner of the business or professional practice with the following question: "If you had only eight to ten words to describe why you’re passionate about what you sell, what you know, and what you do, what would those words be?"

In short, when it comes to blogging for business, Luke Houghton’s "spot on" about the question needing to precede the answer.  For eager-beaver business blogger newbies, a reminder:  in the dictionary, the word "belief" comes before "blog", and (significantly, I think), "planning" comes before "posting"!

 

 

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The Four P’s Of Business Blogging

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Fellow blogger Rick Short, Indium Corporation’s Director of Marketing Communications, says that, before beginning a business blog, it’s important to have a goal and then work backwards. When Rick started his corporate blog, he began with no fewer than four goals in mind:

  • Gain market share
  • Improve the company brand
  • Learn from the customer base
  • Let customers talk to the company

Rick Short lists the four P’s of blogging:

Point
If your blog doesn’t have a specific point, don’t even start.

Passion
If you don’t have a burning passion about the topic, don’t even bother.

Personality
A blog needs opinion, likes and dislikes, not just a dry, dull review of the facts.

Perseverance
If you can’t keep up the discipline of posting frequently, find a new hobby!

Rick Short’s company, Indium Corporation, provides materials to the electronics assembly materials industry.  He explains that the executives have many opportunities to speak and to present good content.  Since sometimes the events don’t draw a big enough crowd to justify a personal appearance, he says, blogging has become an alternative method for Indium to stay in touch with its customers. 

One unique factor about the Indium blogs has to do with the fact that the electronics industry uses lead in its soldering products. There is constant discussion from customers on legislation having to do with lead. The customers typically don’t want to let their competitors know what they’re doing, so rather than posting comments on the Indium blog site, they send direct emails to the blog authors.

A professional ghost blogger must epitomize all four of Rick Short’s P’s.  Before becoming the "voice" of the business, I must be crystal clear on the business purpose to be expressed in the blog posts (the point).

A ghost, I’m fond of saying, must use her "third ear’ hearing not only what the business owners want to say (their passion),

but picking up on their unique style of expressing the corporate "personality".

Since frequency of posting new content is important in web rankings, perseverance comes into play through the ghost blogger’s "drill sergeant discipline".

Point + passion + personality + perseverance = profit!

 

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Your Blog – Not Somewhere In Time, But There At The Right Time!

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A little more than a week after “springing ahead” for Daylight Saving Time, I’m still trying to catch up on all the social networking I could have accomplished in that lost hour… 

Wondering why we had to set our clocks ahead this month?  Daylight Saving Time was invented by none other than the ever-thrifty Benjamin Franklin; his idea was for folks to work more during daylight hours and save on candle wax! DST as we know it today was formally introduced in 1917 in the United Kingdom.

I imagine most people would identify their longest moments as those spent tied up in traffic on the way home from work. In fact, according to Discover Magazine, the average U.S. city commuter loses 38 hours a year to traffic delays. To me, though, the most interminable moments are those between my keying in a query on a search engine and finding the results I need.

That’s exactly the reason it’s so important it is to include one or more of your primary key phrases in the title of each blog post.  As I remarked in “Staging Your Business Blog”, searchers who’ve found your blog site won’t linger longer than a couple of seconds if what they see doesn’t reassure them they’ve come to the right place for the information they need.

Something Albert Einstein discovered about time is that gravity makes it run more slowly.  “Airplane passengers”, Discover Magazine relates, “age a few extra nanoseconds each flight.” Interesting thing about time as it relates to blogs, though. The whole point of online marketing through blogs is to get our business "found", and quickly. (That’s why blogging for business is a form of “pull marketing”).  Once our site has been found, however, the goal is to engage readers so that, rather than ‘bouncing” away from us and continuing to search, they’ll stick around for a conversation, and, better yet, do business. It’s kind of like the admittedly quaint adage about courtship, where a guy pursues a gal “until she catches him”!   
 

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In Blogging For Business, Keep Current To Keep Relevant

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David Markowitz blogs about food and drug laws, aiming to “provide timely and useful information to people working in FDA-regulated industries”. In fact, Markowitz refers to his site not as a blog, but as a “web portal”.  Whatever you call it, in blogging for business, Markowitz has hit on a valuable strategy for drawing readers to his blog and then to his training company’s corporate website.

Working with my ghost blogging corporate clients, whatever the nature of their business or professional practice, I always advise that we use the blog to provide information – especially new information – related to their field.

Couldn’t online searchers go directly to more complete and authoritative sources?  Markowitz has the answer to that question down pat, although, by his own admission, most of the information in his posts comes from the FDA website itself.

“Going to the FDA website is like visiting the Library of Congress,” he points out.  “We sift through the information and present what is most relevant to our readers.” Sure, I explain to clients, searchers can go to government or academic sites to find data, but they need you as an expert in your field, to help them make sense of the information, which you do by highlighting and explaining just one important concept in each blog post.

Blog maven Ted Demopoulos compliments Markowitz’ technique, explaining that each of David’s posts includes a link to a page of his website, where his training products and services can be purchased.

The Markowitz strategy of using your business blog as a sort of “Reader’s Digest” is especially appropriate for businesses in industries undergoing changes – new legislation, new discoveries,  new technological advances.  Real estate, mortgages, and life sciences are three areas that spring to mind, but keeping blog material relevant depends on staying current, no matter what the industry.

Blogging about what’s new – and why it matters – may go a long way in making your blog the “go-to” site for information in your area of expertise.  In other words, keeping up may be the secret to moving up (in search engine rankings, that is), while offering real value to your existing clients and all those soon-to-be’s!
 

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