Some People Want To Blog Because It Works!

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The other day I mentioned author Seth Godin and the names he’s coined for different categories of blogs. Well, the same Seth Godin’s got a blog of his own that I find fascinating.  He blogs about selling, he blogs about raising money for causes, about time management – I mean, Seth Godin’s got advice on a whole host of topics, and I almost always find it advice worth heeding.

 

One of Seth’s recent blogs might have been written with me in mind. You see, as a professional ghost blogger, I not only spend a good deal of time planning, researching, and writing business blogs, I spend a considerable amount of time discussing blogging with folks who’ve heard about blogging, but aren’t 100% sold on this new marketing tool.

 

Just as Seth divides blogs into categories, he divides people into categories, too, remarking there are four kinds of people in the world.  Some people want to do things because they are interesting. Some people want to do things because everyone else is doing them. Some people are satisfied/scared/shy/lazy and don’t do anything. And then, explains Godin (this is the part I really like), some people want to do things because they work!

 

In one of my own earlier blog posts, For Songs Or Blogs, Success Proves The Best Silencer Of Critics, I drew a parallel between ghostwritten songs that brought success to the artists who performed them, and ghostwritten blogs that contribute to the success of a business.  I stressed the idea that, if consistent, targeted blogging honestly speaks a corporation’s message, whether written word-for-word by the business owner or in cooperation with a professional ghost blogger, it can lead to long-term marketing success for that business.

 

Effective blogging takes a lot of effort.  So, what I tell business owners is this:  Don’t blog because you heard about it and it sounds interesting.  Don’t blog because everybody else is doing it.  Blog because – blogging works!

 

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Cat Blogs And Boss Blogs Are Fine, But Viral Blogs Mean Business

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Author and marketing guru Seth Godin says there are three types of blogs: cat blogs, boss blogs, and viral blogs.

 

We’ve all come across cat blogs, which Godin describes as personal and idiosyncratic. From the looks of those blogs, you might say they were written purely out of the need for self expression, or perhaps to gain converts to the writer’s way of thinking on a particular topic. When a couple I know took a cruise to Alaska earlier this year, they created a blog to keep friends and family current on their adventures. That was a cat blog.  Other bloggers comment on everything from the weather to what they had for breakfast that morning.

 

Boss blogs are written by people who work together, and those blogs are used to share ideas with team members.  There needn’t be a boss involved, says Godin, but I imagine bosses might share their ideas with subordinates through a boss blog. I was involved in a textbook writing and editing group, and the group leader used a blog to coordinate the various steps of that project.

 

It’s the viral blog category in which my professional ghost writing business, Say It For You, is involved. Godin explains that viral blogs are used to spread ideas, so I imagine that might include political or religious blogs.  But what each of my business clients is interested in is spreading the word about what they know, what they know how to do, and what they sell.  In other words, I’m a blogger for business, and business blogging is viral blogging.

 

One thing worth mentioning is that effective business blogging has a little bit of “cat” in it. In talking about business blogging, I always come back to the idea that blogs are much more informal and much more personal than brochures, advertisements, commercials, billboards, or websites. In a well-done business blog, even though it’s viral, you can sense the personality of the business owner reaching out to connect with the reader.  There’s often quite a bit of “boss” in a business blog, too, because an effective business blog is sharing valuable information and knowledge.

 

In How Say It For You Was Born, I described the qualities that make for a great ghost blogger.  A ghost, I said, uses her “third ear”, hearing not only what the business owner wants to say, but picking up on that business owner’s unique style and business culture. Armed now with Seth Godin’s blog monikers, I can add that a professional ghost blogger must inject a little “cat” and a little “boss” while spreading the “virus” and bringing in business!

 

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Blogs – Sound Bites On The Internet

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Ari Hest gets it – blogging, I mean.  Unlike me, though, Hest doesn’t blog for a living; he’s  a singer and songwriter (see www.arihest.com) who’s taken on the discipline of releasing a new tune every seven days. Apparently Ari understands one of the cardinal rules for successful business blogging, namely frequency.  He explains why, in his former position with Columbia Records, he couldn’t have done this “52” project.  “At Columbia”, he relates, “everything needs to filter through a lot of different hands. Now I just finish the song in my apartment and get it online.  It’s a lot simpler, and I’m the boss.” 

 

As a professional ghost blogger, I couldn’t have come up with a better description of the advantages of communicating with your clients and customers through business blogs.  In Blogs – Between Crafted And Cranked Out, I explained that blogs, unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, are short and concise, more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces.  That’s what makes it so feasible to use blogs to achieve the frequency that’s needed to win online search engine rankings – there aren’t a whole lot of steps to the process.  In fact, once my business owner clients and I have spent some upfront time working out the best tone and format for the blog posts, the process is –  well, it’s a song to carry out!

 

Hest’s using audience online voting to select the songs that’ll make up his next studio album.  With business blogs, online browsers can provide feedback, too.  They post comments, ask questions, and request regular “feeds” to their own websites or email.  The most important form of feedback for a business blog, of course, is when the potential customers vote with their dollars, clicking through from the blog to the business’ website and becoming buyers of the product or service.

 

In an interview with Indianapolis Star ,Ari  Hest gave readers an insight into his new way of handling those songs that don’t end up in his album.  When he worked for Columbia, he said, he’d keep those songs on his hard drive and never use them.  “This year”, he said, “I didn’t really want to be in the position of holding things back.”  Exactly the same logic applies to blogging.  Because blogs are short and conversational, over a period of months, the business owners can express everything they want to tell their audiences about their special knowledge, insights, products, and services. There’s no need to hold anything back – it just doesn’t all go in the same piece!  Instead, the blog posts provide a steady stream of “sound bites” – little bits of different, interesting, and informative content for searchers to read, little clues that they’ve come to the right place to find what they need.

 

 

 

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Ghost Bloggers And Tribute Bands: The New Real Things

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The Indianapolis Star calls tribute bands “a bunch of fakers”, but adds, “They’re just giving the people what they want.”  Copycat acts are making a big comeback these days, it seems.  Here in Indianapolis where I live, there are dozens of tribute acts, imitating big names from Michael Jackson to Kiss and Guns and Roses. No, you’ll never find me waving my arms in the front row at a rock or hip hop concert, but, as a professional ghost blogger, I’m getting a big kick out of this manifestation of substitution stardom.  Interesting – just a month ago I was weighing in online, along with what seemed like hundreds of others, on the topic of whether Kanye West uses a ghost blogger, and if so, whether and how that matters.

 

It gets more interesting.  The Star article points to a potential legal issue:  What happens if the tribute acts become so successful they infringe on the business of the original act?  The Star follows up (I love this part!) by explaining that, so far, the famous bands aren’t griping.  “They want us out there,” comments Posin’ (think Poison) guitarist Loki Johanssen. “It keeps their music alive.”  In other words, seats are selling, music is selling – everyone’s happy.

 

So, if there’s a parallel between tribute bands and professional ghost bloggers, who wants us out there?  Well, Google and friends, for one thing.  Since most business owners do not have both the time to run their business and the time to blog about them, we ghosts are the ones feeding content to the search engines, and content’s exactly what search engines need and love.  Our business owner clients hire us to be out there on their behalf, bringing their message to potential clients and customers. Most of all, the online searchers want us out there, to lead them to the answers, the products, and the services they went online to find.

 

Right up there with the tribute bands as they continue to fill seats, professional ghost bloggers are driving traffic to websites.  Yeah, tribute bands and professional business bloggers – not just fakin’ it, man – I mean, makin’ it!

 

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Your Brand ‘R You In Your Blog

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“Branding” – we hear a lot of this popular marketing term, don’t we?  Business owners put a whole lot of their time and money into creating a brand name, complete with a logo and other graphics, sometimes adding a motto or slogan.  As a professional ghost blogger, I’m considered part of a company’s marketing team, and so I’m always looking for ways to help reinforce each business client’s brand.

The other day, though, in Speaker magazine, I read an article about branding that put things into a whole new perspective.  The writer was telling professional speakers that a brand is really much more than a name and graphics.  The brand, she was saying, is the business owner (the professional speaker, in this case).  A brand, she added, is not something you create; it’s something you discover! You live your brand by discovering your core values and skills, was the main idea of the article.

The thought occurred to me that, if building a brand for a speaker is done through the process of thinking through the message in each speech, the same process is true for a business owner who’s blogging.  It’s the old idea of not really knowing a subject well until you’ve gone through the process of teaching it to someone else. In Use Blogs To Capture Concepts, I explained how I work with business owners to arrive at the right tone and the right emphasis for the blogs I’m going to ghostwrite.  I start 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 other words, whether the business owner him or herself is doing the writing, or whether they’re collaborating with a professional ghost blogger partner like me, the very process of deciding what to put in the blog is one of self-discovery.  A business blog, then, doesn’t just keep repeating and emphasizing a brand; the creating of each blog post is part of the process of inventing and reinventing the business brand.  The Speaker Magazine article was “spot on” – your brand ‘R You in your blog.

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