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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What Makes for High Quality in Business Blogs?

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Quality Flow Chart Blue MarkerEveryone seems to agree that providing high quality online content in the form of blogs matters. But just what makes for “high quality” when it comes to blogging for business?

“A good blog requires persistence and a high frequency,” says Marcus Taylor in socialmediatoday. “Those things aren’t created by tools,” he reminds us. “They’re created by you.  Your levels of energy, willpower, and determination are huge factors in the overall success of your blog.”

While Taylor promises “I won’t go all basketball coach on you,” he wants readers to bear in mind that “if you want to be a decent blogger, work on yourself, especially on learning effective copywriting skills.

Jay Sodemers of Forbes weighs in as well on the topic of quality. “High quality content is aesthetically attractive, easy to read, and suitable for scanning and skimming (which is how the majority of your website visitors will consume your content.”

Formatting is very, very important, Sodemers cautions. Optimal formatting, he explains, includes the appropriate use of:

  • bolds and italics
  • short, concise sentences and paragraphs
  • bullet points and numbered lists
  • appropriate use of white space
  • headers and sub-headers to break up long chunks of text.And, Sodemer adds, “While it’s difficult for search engines to determine whether content provides value, it is, ultimately, the only thing that matters for human readers. Value can be derived in a number of different ways, but the most common include:
  • Does this content solve a problem?
  • Does it answer a question?
  • Does it provide entertainment?
  • Does it make people laugh?
  • Does it provide unique, expert insight?As a corporate blogging trainer, what do I teach constitutes quality? All of the above, plus above-average commitment to the cause of getting the word out!.
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Tracking Changes in Blogging for Business

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Blogs changed everything – if not in the way we expected, is the UK newsman Daniel Hannan’s intriguing observation.future and past

But for us freelance Indiana blog content writers, have things really changed that much over, say the seven and a half years that I’ve been on the business blogging scene? Yes and no, would be my honest answer.

There are more of us, a lot more, for starters. The sheer quantity of content offered to online readers by businesses, practitioners, and organizations is staggering.  Readers have reacted by become less patient and more discriminating.  Fact is, low-quality, over-general, and advertising-like content just doesn’t keep eyeballs.

So, does blogging still work? Oh, yeah. In fact, Hubspot cites the fact that B2B companies that blog only once or twice a month generate 70% more leads than those that don’t blog at all! Still, Hubspot cautions, “You need to focus on publishing something that will attract the right people.”

What I’m telling newbie Indianapolis content writers is that while, seven and a half years ago it was possible to build up a real head of steam just by blogging frequently, in today’s market, we have to promote our clients’ blog via social media and email.  In other words, everybody has to work harder to stay in the game.

On the good news side, the mechanics of setting up and running a blog are easier, far, far easier. Back seven years ago, it was pretty difficult and expensive for a small business owner to create even a basic website, whereas today the actual posting of content is s..oooo.. much simpler.

But while blogs are technically websites, what I believe hasn’t changed is that there is a basic difference in function between a company’s or practice’s main website and its blog. (The website is publishing a definitive message, with the blog’s function being to keep publishing fresh content. A website is organized hierarchically, meant for reading top to bottom.  A blog, by contract is organized in reverse chronological order and can be searched by readers for specific content.)

Have things really changed that much for us freelance blog content writers? Mostly, no. Publishing frequent, relevant, engaging content is still our job and our joy.

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The Ghosts of Business Blogging Past and Present

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ghostChanges are happening, have been happening, and will be happening. This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the changes that have taken place in the world of business blog content writing.  Google has been changing its algorithms as frequently as we change underwear, it seems, and that has meant we’re learning to write with readers, rather than spiders, in mind.

Attitudes about ghost-blogging have been changing, too. (As long as the writer doesn’t pretend to actually be the business owner or professional, I’m not sure “ghost blogging” is the correct term to use). In any event, a growing number of businesses and practices are hiring professional writers.  That’s not what’s changed. It’s just that no one’s hiding it any more.

Ghostwriting itself has a long, proud history, and people hired writers for the same reasons back then as they do now. Celebrities or public figures didn’t have the time, discipline, or writing skill to create a book, a speech, an autobiography, an article, or even an important letter, so they hired writers to do these things for them.

As a professional blog and website page content writer, I am an avid reader on the topic of all forms and styles of ghost writing. The more I read, the more interesting material I uncover.

  • Our first president, George Washington, used several very famous ghostwriters, including Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, to compose his political speeches and writings.
  • The movie “Amadeus” brought out the fact that composer Wolfgang Mozart was paid to ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons.
  • Romance novelist V.C. Andrews actually hired writers to compose content that would appear after his death!
  • Around the Nashville country music scene, I learned, it’s called co-writing, because most of the artists whom you hear performing the songs didn’t actually write the words..

These are all fun facts from the past, but blogging is much more in the here and now.  The mission of a ghost blogger like me is to market your business or practice, helping clients and customers find your business. While reasons for using ghostwriters (both then and now) include lack of time and lack of discipline, many simply aren’t confident in their own writing abilities.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Ghost blogging can help “say it for you”, win the search, and get the business!

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