Not Always “Aha!” – Blogging Can Rhyme In Time

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In “Creatively Mindful Gifts”, Ellen Michel, outreach manager for Bloomingfoods Market and Deli, had some interesting things to say about gift giving during the upcoming holiday season.


As a professional ghost blogger, I’m always on the alert for “tidbits” that capture big concepts using very few words. In her article, Michel remarked that “We don’t have to make everything new at a time when people take greater pleasure in basking in memories.”  She mentioned the “rhyme in time” effect that gives us a chance to repeat and recall time-honored rituals during the holidays.


In an earlier Say It For You blog (see Aha, Aha! Right Rope For Your Blog) I’d mentioned that your business blog should be designed to elicit an “Aha!” response. I pointed out that your potential customer is searching online for a product, for service, or for information, and that he or she’s moving fast.  You’re hoping that your blog can cause a “light to pop on”, so that the Internet browser will want to stay on the blog long enough find out more about you and your business.


There’s another aspect to gaining a blog following, though.  Often, once searchers find valuable, relevant, and well-written information in a blog on a topic of interest to them (which is how they came to make their way to your blog in the first place!), they’re likely to come back for more.  Even if some visitors are not prepared to make a purchase decision today, they may well come back to visit as regular blog “fans” That’s where your blog’s “rhyme in time” effect can kick in, offering fans a space to feel at home and to enjoy sharing – and, yes, repeating – information about the things that interest you both.

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In Surgery Or Blogging, Outsourcing Can Do Your Clients A Service

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Every so often, the question comes up again: If a business uses a ghost blogger, is that business playing fair?


When I first introduced my Say It For You blog, I traced the long, proud history of ghostwriting.  I explained that celebrities and public figures have always used ghost writers to help them create books, write speeches, produce autobiographies, compose articles, or even format important letters. The reason?  They lacked the time, the discipline, or the writing skills to do it themselves!  In fact, as I pointed out in one of my earliest blog posts, Ghost Blogging In The Tradition Of The Founding Fathers, George Washington used several very famous ghostwriters. Over the generations, world leaders, corporate moguls, and even famous performers  considered the urgency and importance of their message justification enough for hiring talent to get the job done.


I was very interested to read comments in the Journal of Financial Planning about  outsourcing professional services.  Many financial planners around the country work with their clients to create an overall financial plan, but then hire outside money managers to implement that plan by choosing and monitoring the specific stocks and bonds for the clients’ portfolios.  One Certified Financial Planner®  explained why: “If I were spending a lot of time on investment selection, I couldn’t do the premier job that I want to do for my clients,” she said. “There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”


Another planner added, “You’re doing your clients more of a service by hiring expertise for them.,” he remarked, comparing the situation to an internist who wouldn’t perform surgery himself, but brings in specialists as appropriate.


With blogging fast becoming an indispensable customer acquisition tool in our web-based world, ghost blogging becomes an outsourcing solution for busy business owners who dearly want to” win search”, but can’t find time to play in the blogging arena!

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Build Your Blog And They Will Come

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My past is catching up with me, I think. A retired financial planner and investment adviser, I still keep up with the CFP® continuing education requirements and subscribe to several professional journals on finance. So, now, here I am, a professional ghost blogger, and what do I find in the September/October issue of Practice Management Solutions (magazine for financial planners), but an article about social media and the value of —blogging!


“Social media”, the article explains, “is a general term that encompasses a number of interactive broadcast activities and….websites.” Practice Management then goes on to say that the main benefit of adding social media such as blogging to an overall marketing communication strategy is “to attract the attention of your clients and prospects to your products, services, and capabilities.” Resorting to the use of social media doesn’t mean abandoning more traditional communications, the writer assures readers, urging financial planners to add such powerful new web-based tools to their current “suite” of marketing activities.


Stressing that, just as in the real estate game, location is key, Practice Management tells financial planners to “build a presence where your audiences are – on the busiest avenues of the social media infrastructure”.


Mike Gegelman, a financial planner in Florida, couldn’t agree more.  In Advisor Today, another of the journals I read, Gegelman reminds colleagues that “Successful prospecting comes down to three things: the right message to the right market at the right time”. Truth is, Gegelman is highly unusual  in that he spends time studying writing and marketing, and composes and tests all his own marketing materials, from brochures to blogs. Most small business owners and professional practitioners, as I brought out in my earlier blog You May Be A Finder, Binder, Minder, or Grinder – Are You A Writer? devote their efforts to finding and minding business, with no time or inclination to compose to write even the most informal of blogs.


However, since most of these busy entrepreneurs are becoming aware that blogging belongs in every business tool kit, a ghost blogger is often invited to enter the picture (or, as I like to say, behind the picture!)

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Why Buy A Segway For Your Blog

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Back in August, I used an advertising supplement to the Indianapolis Star named “Why 2 Buy Now” to illustrate the point that blogs are not advertisements, but more akin to “advertorials” (see “Why To Buy A Piano” Is Good Advice For Blogs).  I had cut out and saved another page from that Star supplement, this one about Segways.  These lawnmower-looking, two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transportation devices seem to be the all-the-rage way for getting around Indianapolis these days.


The article about Segways begins “Getting around more efficiently seems to be on everyone’s mind these days,” and concludes by pointing out that  “A Segway is more than a travel alternative.  It’s a new way of thinking.”


The same kind of innovative technology that produced the Segway has also revolutionized the way in which businesses market themselves.  And, just as with Segways, whose “early adopters” you can see touring White River State Park on wheels or speeding through the mall, early adopters of business blogging are each staking out their own little corners on the Web, helping customers navigate with ease to their blogs and on to their company websites.


The Segway/Blog parallel is less labored than might at first appear.  A Segway takes one rider at a time, taking her exactly where she wants to go. In Won’t You Please Come Into My Blog? I likened the Internet to a big trade show.  (Now, imagine each person at the show is not walking around, but driving around on a Segway!)  These potential customers are navigating around the Web, looking for information, a product, or a service.  If you have a “booth” at the show (your blog), customers stop their Segways there. It’s not by accident they’ve found your blog, but precisely because they are seeking information about something you know about, a product you sell, or a service you provide! As Yentl said in Fiddler on the Roof, “It’s a perfect match!”


Segways are still a novelty in the Circle City, and, although more and more people are catching on to the Segway advantage every day, the jury is still out on whether they will turn out to have been a passing fad.  Blogging, on the other hand, is no fad.  Bloggers post millions of items per day, a dozen every second.  Business owners that can “hop on board”, providing relevant, recent, and frequently updated blog content, will be positioned to “win search”, and, even more important, win business!


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With Blogging, A Small Business Can Have A Long Tail

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Can a small business, serving a niche market, benefit from having its own blog?  You betcha. According to Chris Anderson, Internet marketing is absolutely different from anything that came before it.  Anderson coined a phrase for blogging and other forms of digital marketing – The Long Tail.  Originally the idea applied to the selling of music.  A traditional music retailer, he explained, has only limited space to stock CDs and DVDs, so a store would probably choose to carry only the blockbuster hits it knows will move quickly off the shelf.  But a digital music store, he explains (think i-Tunes or Napster) can keep all  the tunes in the catalog, even obscure songs no one’s asked for in years  What Anderson found was that digital music stores were actually selling as much of these less widely known songs than the “blockbusters”!  (Anderson’s term The Long Tail refers to a chart showing sales figures for each song.  The chart “tails off” as the list gets down to the less popular numbers.)

The whole idea, says Anderson, is that, in the digital world, you don’t need big numbers to make a big impact.  When I thought about it, I realized that, if your business is targeting a certain niche, there probably aren’t a whole lot of other blogs being regularly posted about your subject.  The competition for those top spots on Page One of Google, Yahoo. or MSN isn’t likely to be very fierce.  And remember, the people who find your blog are exactly those people who are looking for your kind of product or service in the first place!

Regular, high quality content, posted consistently on your blog, can have a huge effect in a small market.  As Chris Anderson might put it, your short blog posts can give your business a very long and powerful tail!

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