Smaller Niches are the New Big in Blogging for Business

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target your customersYou have to contract to expand, is the message I’m hearing from quite a number of National Speakers Association star performers. Could these pieces of advice from three speaking leaders apply to us Indiana blog content writers? You bet.

From “social media diva Renee Quinn:
We can either know a little about a lot of things, or a whole lot about a few things, but never both. The more targeted your content is towards specific topics of interest in your field, the more you will be perceived as an expert. Be confident in your knowledge, and stay active to show those who follow you that you’re passionate and well-informed.

In  the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Success as a Professional Speaker,  Dr. Thomas Lisk
uses four questions to help speakers define their niche market:

  • Can you list all markets or industry types that could purchase your kinds of expertise?
  • Which of those markets needs your expertise most?
  • Which markets are most likely to purchase your services?
  • Which organizations in these markets have enough funding to afford your ongoing services?

Ruby Newell-Legner agrees, advising speakers to find their niche market. Learning about the needs of your potential clients, you can solve their problems and become their go-to person, she says.

Newell makes a suggestion that I think is especially suitable for business bloggers: “Mention your services and topics at least eight times,” she suggests.  That doesn’t mean you should keep “selling yourself,” she cautions; just insert yourself into the story line:  “The other day when I was facilitating a workshop…” (business owners can insert whatever activity they would be doing to serve their customers), I found that one of the biggest issues is….”  “In a consulting session the other day…..”

Niche marketing can be extremely cost-effective, observes Kim Gordon of entrepreneur.com, as long as the benefits you offer have special appeal to that market niche.

Blog writing for business is the perfect match for niche writing. In fact, small might be the new big in blogging for business!

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Philosophical Blogging for Business

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The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates

I’d never  heard blog posts referred to as “philosophical” before, but Julie Neidinger‘s description really resonated with me. Philosophical posts are “idea” posts, she says, with the main goal being to further the culture of the brand or team writing the blog.

These posts (and here’s what really hit the spot for me) “are as much for the writer as the reader, helping to clarify the thought process… as the writer is working through the initial idea.” Some philosophical posts, Neidlinger observes, are “as much for the writer as the reader”.

“Philosophical posts are good,” she says, “in that they reveal the writers as real people. They don’t generally come from a place of hierarchy (i.e. teacher-down-to-student), but are instead on the same level. The reader is walking beside the writer and working through the idea.”

I express something of the same sentiment on the Say It For You website. “When you put up a blog with excellent content that engages your potential and current customers, you will typically receive the following four types of benefits: An SEO benefit, a promotional benefit, a credibility benefit, and (this is the one that comes closest to expressing what Julie Neidlinger is saying) a training benefit.

The way I explain the training benefit is this: When you blog, you verbalize the positive aspects of your business in a way that people can understand. You put your recent accomplishments down in words. You review the benefits of your products and services and keep them fresh in your mind. In other words, you are constantly providing yourself with training about how to talk effectively about your business.

Going on to describe how philosophic blog posts are born, Neidlinger talks about content curation: “They often stem from books or other outside influences that have caused the author to think about new things and apply them to a current situation.”

The information in a blog post might have been “curated” from various sources. That’s a good thing, because you’re providing a valuable service to readers by collecting information and presenting it in one easy-to-access form.  On the other hand, “collections” are not nearly of sufficient benefit to readers.  Those facts and statistics need to be thought through and then put into perspective so that readers realize there’s something important here for them.

Ms. Neidlinger, I agree. Blogging for business means being a curator, but also a bit of a philosopher, thinking through the material before presenting it, along with the new thoughts you find going through your head because of others’ insights.

So, go ahead, I’d say to freelance blog content writers and to their business owner and professional practitioner clients – reveal the “real people” side of your blog writing!

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It’s Never Too Late to Remember the “Why” Behind Blogging for Business

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training“Raise your hand if you want more website visitors,” says Corey Eridon of hubspot.com.  Now think about the way people find your website, he continues. They could type your name right in, but that’s an audience you already have. You could pay for traffic by buying an email list (don’t you dare, he adds), but that’s expensive and illegal. You could pay for traffic by placing paid ads, but even though that’s not illegal, it’s expensive.  So, how can you drive traffic? Blogging, social media, and search engines.

As a longtime blog content writer and corporate blogging trainer, I love Eridon’s very simple breakdown of the reason blogging works: “Every time you write a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your website.  It’s also one more cue to Google and other search engines that your website is active and they should be checking in frequently to see what content you’ve published…”.

Blogging also helps keep your social media presence going, Eridon adds.  Instead of having a social media manager come up with brand new original content or creating that content yourself, your blog can serve as that repository of content.

What’s more, since the best business blogs answer common questions, consistently creating content that’s helpful to the target customers, Eridon explains, blogging helps establish the business owner or professional as an authority on the subject.

It was very interesting to me to read a comment posted on Corey Erison’s blog by a Scott de Long.  At Say It For You, I’m always talking about the “training benefit” of blogging, and while de Long doesn’t call it that, he “gets” my concept. “The purpose is to present our people as experts, or at least well informed, but the real benefit comes from the research they do to become better informed,” de Long says.

In fact, there are four unique benefits that come from blogging:

  • The SEO benefit – The more relevant content you have up about your business, the greater the chance that people will find you via search engines.
  • The promotional benefit – The content in the blog exists to promote your business, your products and services, and you as the business owner.
  • The credibility benefit – Your blog says a lot of positive things about you and your business. It says that you are in the 21st century and interested in using the latest tools to communicate with your customers.
  • The training benefit – When you blog, you are constantly providing yourself with training about how to talk effectively about your business.

It’s never too late to remind yourself just why it’s worth blogging for business!

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Business Blogs Can Be Sporks or Foons

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SporksThere’s more than one important way in which small business owners’ or professional practitioners’ business blogging efforts can have a disproportionately large effect on their marketing results. Blogs, in other words, can be sporks.

A spork, you remember (sporks can also be called “foons”) is an eating utensil that combines the scoop of a spoon with the tines of a fork. Actually (when I train corporate blog writers, I advise being alert for tidbits like this to help explain products and services), sporks are not a new invention.  Patents for fork-spoon combinations have been registered since 1874, and the term “spork” appeared in a dictionary in 1909.

As applied to blog content writing, “sporkiness” is expressed by the ability of business blogs to serve multiple marketing purposes. If you’re a business owner or professional practitioner, that “sporky” quality is there whether you do the blog writing by yourself, have your entire team participate, or collaborate with a professional ghost partner. The content in the blog posts will be one way of continually forcing yourself to think through and reinvent your business brand.

For example, as shortcutblogging explains, blogging can focus on gaining new customers or on deepening the relationship with your current customers.  There are four reasons, authors Dave Young and Paul Boomer say, any business should be blogging:

1. To create authority and credibility
“A blog provides a platform to stand on and show the world you know what you’re talking about.”

2. Relate-ability
“Blog readers are human and like to do business with people who have a personality.”

3. Search engine results
“The search engines love content. Period.”

4. Repurposing content
“A smart business never duplicates work and will turn past blog posts into books, white papers, presentations, etc.”

Make no mistake – all business and practices are generating content and doing it all the time. Letters? Content.  Email to customers and suppliers (and from customers and suppliers)? Content.  Brochures and flyers? Content. Instructions for product use? Content.  Power Point presentations and DVD/s? Content.  Radio and TV advertising copy? Content.  You get the idea…All that content can be re-purposed into blog posts. And, even more important for our discussion today) – all those blog posts from months and years ago (all still residing on the Internet) can be repurposed into emails, ads, letters, and videos.

Are you sporking and fooning with business blog content? You should be!

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A Hopeful Note on the Future of Business Blogs

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Many Pushing Up Green Arrow“What’s the future of blogging?” is the intriguing question posed by Scott Yates of Hubspot. Yates admits he doesn’t know about blogging a hundred years or even twenty years from now, but he’s pretty confident that in the near future, blogging will be more important than ever for businesses.  (“Whew! Glad you said that, was our reaction here at Say It For You.)

On just what is Yates basing all this near-term confidence? What do people read? he asks. Good stories and useful information.  That’s what people have been reading for centuries and that’s what they will be demanding for centuries to come, he believes. The format can change, but as long as content continues to be valuable and entertaining, no worry needed on the part of us freelance blog content writers.

The caveats?  Yates offers a few of those:

  • You don’t just need to have a blog.  You have to update it – often. Hire someone to do it for you. You can still have some input as well as the final say about what goes on your blog. The quality does matter more than the quantity, but if the quantity is small, nobody will ever find you, so the quality won’t matter.
  • Keep your blog posts concise and to the point – it’s not a novel!
  • Give people what they want, which is value. Provide good stories and helpful information on a regular basis.

Since, at Say It For You, we’re involved not only in marketing to consumers, but also in B2B marketing through blog writing, I was very interested in what KISSmetrics had to say about the future of content marketing business to business. Most content marketing, says KISSmetrics, focuses on industry trends, and company details, but that is going to radically change, because the focus will need to be on the target audience’s needs.

KISSmetrics has a very interesting take on blog SEO: “Blogging SEO is changing, but only in some ways.  It’s almost like a car in that the design, colors, and minor features change each year but the core remains the same.”

Seems the future vision for business blogging should engender more confidence than concern!

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