Writing is Creative. Publishing Blogs is Creative Business

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“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.

 

 

 

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Everyday Employee Experience at the Heart of Blogging

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“Narrative gives us a sense of shared experience and humanity,” Hubert Joly (former CEO of Best Buy) writes in The Heart of Business.  “Telling everyday stories – stories of employees, customers, communities, and how they impact each other’s lives – fosters a sense of purpose and connection..” For that very reason, thehartford.com explains, “Your employees need to understand your company, its values, its goals and its priorities.”Surveys show 72% of consumers report feeling closer to a company when employees share information about a brand online.

As I related in an August Say It For You blog post, when I’m working with a company to set up a business blogging strategy, encouraging that company’s employees to post blogs, quite often I hit a wall of resistance, with employees viewing blogging as just one more task to add to their work load. Should employees be required to write blog posts? Marcus Sheridon of SalesLion.com thinks so. Since one goal of content marketing is to produce as much content as possible, the more hands are put to the task, the better. With content that answers consumers’ questions so valuable, it stands toathat employees who deal with consumers every day should be the ones to write about it. Human nature being what it is, he says, if it’s not required, they won’t do it.

Sure, but after fifteen years of providing blog content writing services to dozens of different businesses and professional practices, I’ve come to the same conclusion as Stan Smith of pushingsocial.com: “Blogging is writing, and writing, for most people has a fear factor right up there with public speaking.  You can coach, bribe, threaten all you want but in the end, you’ll be writing most of your blog posts.” That’s precisely why I found Joly’s account of how things worked at Best Buy so inspiring. At every meeting, people would tell their own personal stories and how they personally had been able to make a difference to someone.

At Say It for You, as our team provides content writing services to business owners and practitioners, one way we involve employees is to highlight specific accomplishments in a blog. That brings a two-way benefit: When readers learn about an employee’s enthusiasm and how that person put in extra time and effort in serving customers, that tends to cement the customer’s relationship with the company or practice. As featured employees proudly share those write-ups with friends and family, the blog becomes a gift that keeps on giving.

Far from being a contradiction to concept of authenticity, we help readers “meet” the actual team of employees who are providing the product or service, the ones whose daily activities result in the benefits customers enjoy.

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Guest Post: 10 Reasons to Keep Using Social Media

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Today’s guest post is from Karan Sharma, co-founder & CEO of Kinex Media Inc. Karan  intends to bring a massive transformation in eCommerce web designing & development, and his team of talented IT professionals knows the secret of getting huge conversions…… 

Before mobile phones and the internet came into existence, people had no virtual source to keep them entertained. They used to keep themselves busy by reading newspapers, novels or books; participating in sports; playing outdoor games and community building activities. Gradually mobile phones started to change the route of the era; consequently, people’s involvement in all the above activities began to decline. People started being satisfied in the virtual world. 70% of ‘That’ virtual work consists of social media. In today’s day and age, there won’t be a single person who doesn’t have an account on any social media platform (Exception: People aged 70 to 80 years). The question is, “Why are people going insane over social media?”

1. News Updates & Current Events In Your Pocket!
Earlier, three orthodox sources helped to remain updated with the current events and new updates – Newspaper, Radio & Television. But these sources required us to sit at a place and have focused listening. The knowledge gained through such sources was more of a time-consuming process. Besides, carrying a radio and television on the journey was not possible. One could buy newspapers, but the constant movement of the vehicles can’t let us fix & firm the vision.
But, with the origin of mobile phones and social media, it became easy to stay updated with local, national and international happenings. What you’ve to do is – Glare at the mobile screen for 5 minutes, and you come to know everything happening in the world.

2. No More Chacha Chaudhary & Santa Banta Jokes!
No doubt, it was one of the memorable eras we lived in when we used to chuckle over those sarcastic and ironic jokes. But today, people’s preferences for laughing material have changed. In 2022, people laugh a stomach aching laughter when they see memes & real-life funny videos. More precisely, the people of 2022 find it difficult to laugh at scripted and made-up material. This is the primary reason behind the popularity of these famous Instagram memes pages – @epicfunnypage, @sarcasm_only,@thefatjewish, @funnymemes, @ladbible etc.

3. Fight With Social Anxiety
Social Media has such magical powers that it doesn’t let anybody feel social anxiety. Before we stepped into the era of social media, socially anxious people used to repel social participation, like attending a wedding or any other party or visiting relatives. If their families force them to be socially active, they suffer a mental breakdown, as they find it difficult to mix with people. But social media allows such people to be socially active by not compromising their zone. Besides, people won’t feel any FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) as tagging and mentioning keep them inside the zone.

 

4. Get To Know What Your Friends Are Doing!
Since childhood, we’ve been listening to the phrase – ‘Sharing is Caring’. The Social Media world has taken this thing very seriously. Today, people share any and everything on social media. Whether you’re sick, making up your mind to travel or buying a new dress, everything goes into the social media stories and posts.

5. Who Doesn’t Want ‘My Space’?
Who doesn’t want to enjoy their personal space? Social Media offers such space in the form of individual profiles. Like, Your Instagram provides you opportunities to appear your best in front of people through DPs (display pictures); write something catchy about you so that people come to know who you are and the profile grid, which is solely yours, where you can showcase your way of living life. Isn’t that cool? It is similar to having those childhood albums, which we still use to see with utmost pleasure.

6. Shopping From Social Media Platforms Is Trending!
Many shops and businesses, irrespective of their brick-and-mortar presence, love to put their products on social media to increase brand awareness and trigger online sales. Observing the fast-growing fad of social media shopping, many social media platforms introduced extra shopping space to provide better opportunities for shopkeepers to set up their sales. Not only has social media allowed store owners to display their products, but it has also facilitated users with massive Research-Carrying-Out opportunities.

7. You Can Make New Friends!
In real life, it’s challenging to make new friends. We all feel shy about making new friends face to face. But we feel comfortable when it comes to chatting with friends in that chatbox, where our faces are not visible. Besides, the chat boxes offer many facilities, including stickers, GIFs and photo-video sharing facilities. It also provides you with audio and video calling features.

8. Because Everybody Is Using Social Media
In the 21st century, every person is available on social media. Each one is observed to be spending at least 1 hour on social platforms. So if everybody is doing it, why don’t you? If you are a socially active person, it is quintessentially essential for you to have a social media presence.

9. Express Your Opinion on National or International Happenings!
Gone are the days when only party leaders, MLA’s or MPs had the opportunity to express their opinion on national and international happenings. When people are free to express their opinion, social media has come out as an ideal platform to support such opinion-expressing activities.
Social media polls and likes and dislikes buttons help to express the opinion firmly.

10. Offers Filters to Click Photos!
Who isn’t fond of clicking photos? But when we have excellent filters, the joy of clicking pictures gets doubled! Social Media platforms offer such filters and allow you to click images in the best resolution in fewer sizes. Snapchat filters are taking photography to the next level among all SM platforms. Some filters can enhance your beauty, while there are others as well, which can make you look funny.

Caution: Excessive Usage Is Harmful!
But in 2022, a trend is catching fire on almost all social media platforms – ‘Kill Social Media Addiction’. Social Media is undoubtedly the best medium to stay updated with current events worldwide; it allows you to keep in touch with old friends and express your opinion on political affairs. Spending too much time on social media leads to addiction, and getting rid of such addiction becomes difficult. So it is suggested to use social media for less than 1 hour.

 

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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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Back Matter Blogging

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“Writing the end of a story isn’t always the end of the book,” explains Whitney Hill in Writer’s Digest. “Even if there’s no sequel, there’s more to say, and it goes in the back matter.” The “back matter” offers additional value to those readers who enjoyed and engaged with your work enough to read through to the end. That section  adds content and helps readers look ahead to the next book.

Hill lists some standard things found in back matter:

  • acknowledgement of people who helped in the writing and editing
  • personal information about the author
  • praise – awards won
  • a pitch for the next book
  • commenting on a specific change the narrator undergoes as a result of the experience described in the book

But, in addition to these, the editor suggests, authors might like to “call out” situations or new events that are affecting them and their readers.

The Author Learning Center refers to back matter as epilogues, afterwords, or author’s notes.

Can blog content writers use “back matter”? Definitely.

  1. While, in blogging for business, it’s important to offer enough information in each post to convincingly cover the key theme, in order to cover a topic more comprehensively, the material can be divided into several different blog posts relating to that one issue or problem. The “back matter” would explain that a discussion of other aspect of the issue will be covered in future posts
  2. Certainly personal information about the business owner or practitioner might be included in the back matter as well. In addition, suggestions as to where to find more in-depth information on the topic (perhaps linked to landing pages) represent a perfect use for back matter.
  3. Using the back matter to explain how learning the information conveyed in the post actually changed your own (or your blogging client’s) thinking and how that will be reflected in a change in business procedures or in customer service changes.
  4.  At Say It For You, we particularly like the concept of using the back matter to make “a pitch for the next book”. In the age of the Internet, there’s no end, it seems, to the technical information available to consumers. But it falls to us business blog content writers to break all that information down into chewable tablet form! Serving as a “tour guide” or “librarian” for your readers, giving them the benefit of your own searches and information “sorting” is a valuable use for the back matter of blog posts.

The end of a blog post isn’t always the end of the blog!

 

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