Whenever my grandmother was dealing with a situation she thought was ambiguous, she’d remark, “I don’t know whether to use a fork or a spoon for that one!” Sometimes business owners embarking on a blogging strategy for marketing feel that same way. Their ambiguity about their blog seems especially keen when the business involves professional expertise and not just a tangible product. 

First, some business owners are afraid that, if they share too much information about their field, clients won’t need to pay them to provide expertise!  Web designer Mark Carillion, quoted in Employee Benefit Advisor Magazine, has something valuable to say about that concern.  “Many advisers won’t share information with potential clients until they’ve been hired”  “But”, he points out, “.…the guy who gives out the most information freely is the guy who ends up winning the traffic war.”

The opposite concern business owners often express to me is that they don’t want to come off boastful and self-serving in their blog, or be perceived as using hard-sell tactics to promote themselves. That concern is addressed by Steve Wamsley in his book “Stop Selling And Do Something Valuable“, which was reviewed in the Financial Planning Association website. Here’s what Wamsley has to say: “We have to sell ourselves to potential clients so that they choose to work with us rather than the competition…in our role as advocates (he’s speaking to financial planners), we need to persuade people to act.”

Talking with new business owner clients about the ambiguities they sense when planning their blogs (for which I’m to be their “voice”) is undoubtedly the most important part of our work together. As I explained in The Don’t Do It Yourself Trend Hits Clothing And Blogging, I’m part of that business’ marketing team, and we need to find the exact right approach for their blog, their business, their target readers.  Yes, through their blog, they will be giving away valuable information, and it will be “for free”!  Yet their blog will become their way of selling themselves and their services to online searchers.

Once the business owners and I have agreed on the tone and look for the blogs, it won’t matter whether online searchers show up with a fork or a spoon – they’ll know they’ve come to the right place!

 

“Hula Hoop was the granddaddy of all fads,” says the V.P. of marketing for Wham-O, the company that in 1958, its first year in business, sold more than one Hula Hoop for every two Americans alive at the time.  Fad’s the right description  for that early rush of success, because sales of Hula Hoops plummeted so rapidly from there, Wham-O took them completely off the market until 1965.

Chapter Two, The Comeback, began in 1965 and is still happening, and this is the chapter of Hula Hoop’s history most interesting to me as a professional blogger.  Wham-O’s co-founders came up with a new twist, inserting ball bearings into Hoola Hoop cylinders to make a “swoosh” sound.  Interest in the toy revived, and the toy was back in production.  This week, as we ring in the New Year, it will be Hula Hoop’s 51st anniversary.

Blogging for business is enjoying its own heyday just now.  Blogging maven Terry Philpott comments that blogs have evolved into low-cost advertising and marketing platforms that no business can afford to ignore.  Millions of blog posts enter the blogosphere day in, day out, begging the question of whether, one day, blogging will be relegated to the ranks of marketing “fad-dom”.

That’s not likely to happen any time soon, is my take.  But, just as with Hula Hoop, inserting new “ball bearings” will be what keeps business blogging in the “now”.  Search engine rankings reward recency, a.k.a. new content.  That, by the way, is the key reason traditional websites just can’t compete with corporate blogging, according to Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware.  New information, new commentary, new insights, new stories – those are all ball bearings for blogs.

Happy 51st, Hula Hoop!  We bloggers plan to be around quite awhile ourselves!