In the summer issue of Indianapolis Tennis Magazine, coach Spencer Fields writes, “It has always been interesting for me to see the player who picks up a racket right before season begins, and then to see how they perform for the next three months” (Here’s the part that really grabbed my attention): “Often, they start out strong, but fizzle toward the end.”

Funny, I don’t know very much about the game of tennis, but blogging is something I do know about. Fields might have been referring to the many business owners who start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. Daily blogs become weekly blogs, and pretty soon, months go by between blog posts.

Fields lists the eight major strokes of tennis that great high school players must master, then goes on to say that’s not enough. Players, he adds, need a good sense of athleticism.  But what really separates the successes from the fizzlers, he points out, is that winners must know how to play the game of tennis.  They must have ways to win, as well as ways to play defensively. They must possess knowledge of momentum and be able to alter tactics and strategy in order to gain an advantage.

Business bloggers need ways to win, too.  Momentum comes from frequency of posting blogs and from building up longevity by consistently posting content on the Web over sustained periods of time.  As I explained in an earlier blog, The Blog Is Your Introduction Roof, a business can build equity through the steady and repeated use of search terms relevant to that business.

When it comes to blogs, altering tactics takes reading news, other websites, other blogs and commenting on current issues, relating what’s going on out there to the owner’s expertise and experience.  Effective tactics include linking to other blogs, posting comments, and responding to comments posted on your blog, in short, getting a two-way thing going.

Spencer Fields advises high school players to use the nine-month tennis off-season to advantage by practicing and strategizing.  That may be where the parallel between high school tennis and most small businesses ends. Down time is rare for a small business; business owners who can maintain the drill-sergeant discipline needed to increase web rankings are rarer still. The task of playing the kind of sustained game that wins search might fall, in many cases, to professional ghost bloggers.

Bloggers and burritos – it doesn’t seem as if the two have anything in common other than sharing the same first letter. Of course I could make the observation that blogs, like burritos, “wrap up” ideas in nice, tasty packages that deliver just enough information to searchers on the Web – you catch my metaphor.  Always on the alert (since I’m a professional ghost blogger, after all) for special word tidbits, I heard one the other day that made me realize there’s another way in which blogging and burritos might be connected. This tidbit came in the form of a radio commercial for steak-in-a-wrap, telling listeners to “think outside the bun”.

This is a great slogan, I think, for business bloggers (or their ghosts) just as much as for workers selecting lunch. In the U.S., and increasingly around the globe, our first association about fast food is that it comes in buns. This “outside the bun” radio message, in just four little words, effectively nudges us to broaden our tastes and explore new options.  I know that tag line got my attention!

So, how is this all connected with blogging?  With the big goal of business blogging being to “win search”, bloggers fall into the trap of thinking that every word they write has to be directly about their business’ products and services. Remember, search engines award high rankings based on frequency and longevity; the only problem with that is, if you keep a very narrow focus in your blog, it won’t be long before you run out of new things to say.  What this burrito commercial shows is that, by relating what we do to other things, especially when the link is an unexpected one, we engage readers’ curiosity.  That, in turn, gives them an “Aha! moment” that holds their attention and keeps them hanging around our blog for longer times.

Sure, generously seasoning each blog post with key words that searchers use to find you is smart strategy, as Ted Demopoulos brings out in his book about blogging.  And, sure, those key words relate directly to your business, not to other things.  But, the insight I had about the “Think outside the bun” tag line was that we bloggers should draw in information from everywhere to make our points, and to make those points in a sit-up-and-take-notice way that differentiates our blog from the thousands upon thousands of others.  In short, the best bloggers may turn out to be the ones who can “think outside the blog”!