Another Year, Not Just Another Blog

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2016 Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Everybody, it seems, has advice about how to make your blog better than ever in 2016. John Egan, writing in the Huffington Post, sort of sums it up in two words: “Aim high”, by which he means never sacrificing quality merely to achieve quantity.

BlogTyrant makes some predictions about blogging SEO in 2016 centered around speed, because “even a second or two of lag can cost your business thousands of dollars”. Learning “how to shrink stuff” – photos, images, graphics, etc. can save loading time. Blogtyrant predicts that guest posting will still be one of the “absolute best ways to get your name out there and grow traffic.”

As a checklist for themselves, blog content writers might wish to use the judging criteria for the UK Blog Awards 2016, which include the following five aspects of a blog:

  • Design
  • Style
  • Content
  • Marketing
  • Usability

“Determine why you are blogging,” advises Maisha Walker of Inc.com. Walker outlines the four reasons a website exists to aid a business, and suggests ways to measure success for each goal:

  • build a brand (what awareness studies will you do?)
  • generate leads (How many phone calls or emails to you want to get from your blog?)
  • generate direct sales (How many readers and page views will it take?)
  • generate advertising revenue (How much do you hope to make? How many readers and page views do you need to do that?)

“Your previous years’ outreach can clue you into what balance will work best. Take stock of what you did the past year: What was a home run? What was moderately successful? What underperformed? And what were the reasons for your content’s success or failure?” Amanda Hicken of prnewswire.com advises.

Then, looking towards the coming year, Hicken says, go through the holidays, seasonal events, and conferences that impact not just your industry, but also the industries related to your target audience. Uncover other newsworthy topics and trends by using a monitoring tool. But, she cautions, “don’t fall into the trap of operating on autopilot”.

How will you approach blogging in the new year?

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Being the Type They Can Count On

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In deciding whether to trust someone, we weigh two key characteristics, Adam Galinsky and Maurice Concept of reliability in businessSchweitzer explain in their book Friend and Foe – competence and warmth.

Basically, we ask ourselves two questions:

  • Does this person have the ability to follow through?
  • Do they have my best interest at heart?

Trust is a mightily important element in business blogging. Readers, after all, found your blog because what they needed corresponded with what you sell, what you know, and what you know how to do. They’ve clicked on the link, and now they’re “meeting” you for the first time.
How will you appear to readers in terms of competence? There are two elements at work here:

  • Credibility – It becomes evident, through the content of the blog, that you’re the subject matter expert they’re seeking.
  • Reliability – You’ve helped clients and customers “just like them” many times before; you’re familiar with your readers’ needs and concerns.

Even if you’ve come across as the most competent of providers, you still need to pass the “warmth” test. Does your blog present you as “real people”, with a passion for serving in your field?

The founder of Moth, a nonprofit dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling, believes the success of his organization comes from two elements:

  • There’s no “wall of artistry” or stage curtain between the storyteller and audience.
  • The storytellers share their own human failures and frailty.

As business owners or practitioners in today’s click-it-yourself, do-it-yourself world, our content writing needs to demonstrate to online searchers that, in our fields, we ARE smarter than Google Maps, or eHow, or Wikipedia. 

Even more important, we need to make clear, we’re a lot more caring for our customers – they can count on us!

 

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Blogging to Tell Them What to Think About

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Thinking manHara Estroff Marano, writing in Pyschology Today, says she won’t tell you what to think, but will tell you what to think about.  While in this article the psychologist is offering food for thought in the spheres of dating and self-motivation, I couldn’t help but love that line of hers, realizing how very apropos it is for us business blog content writers.

In fact, a point I often stress in corporate blogging training sessions is this: whether you’re blogging for a business, for a professional practice, or for a nonprofit organization, you need to voice an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers. In other words, blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations; you can’t just “aggregate” other people’s stuff and make that be your entire blog presence.

On the other hand, if you, as a business owner or professional practitioner, try telling people what to think, that’s a surefire way to lose friends and customers in a hurry. Yes, your blog is your “podium”, meaning you get to showcase your business so customers will want you to be the one to provide them with the product or the service they need. But they need to arrive at that point as a result of their own thinking.  Dr. Marano hit the nail on the head – don’t tell readers what to think; give them all the facts they need to think about.

How can blogs help potential clients and customers make better, sometimes complex, decisions?

  • By suggesting questions readers can ask themselves while choosing among many options. (Do they want ease of use? Current functionality? Future capabilities?)
  • By “mapping”, meaning showing how choices are related to consequences.  How much sooner will your mortgage get paid off if you add $100 each month to your payment? How should the prospect feel about the purchase (Relief? Trust? Premier status?)
  • By offering easy ways to make choices, so that the decisions are not pressure-packed.

You might say the art of blogging consists of supplying facts, and then putting those facts in context.  As bloggers, we’re giving them the raw materials to think about, but we need to go one step further, demonstrating why those facts matter, suggesting ways readers can use the information for their own benefit.

To the woman concerned that the man she’s been dating has been legally separated for the past twenty years, Marano suggests, “Could it be that your online friend values clinging to the comfort of the status quo?”

Are you giving your readers something to think about?

 

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We’ll Say It For You – “Happy New Year!”

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Hard to believe, but my little ghost-blogging and content writing company, Say It For You, is New Year's champagnecelebrating its eighth New Year’s today!

Our content, some 20,0000 unique writing selections by now, may be found in clients’ corporate brochures  and website pages, in press releases, “nurturing emails” and Facebook posts. Primarily, though, our pieces populate the blogosphere.

2015 was certainly a year of learning for me, and ideas for material were everywhere I looked, from magazine and newspaper articles, radio and TV broadcasts, and even billboards and print ads. Networking groups were my classrooms, and our Say It For You clients our best teachers.

More than ever, I realized, our readers need even more from us than expert advice and information.  We need to put all of that information into perspective and become thought leaders. It became more and more evident to me that at least half the time I spend creating a blog post is reading/research/thinking time. That meant continuing to build my collection of books that serve as blog content writing resources.

As 2015 draws to a close, I’m revisiting my Say It For You mission statement:

Say It For You is a premium blogging and marketing service that provides your business with    enhanced potential for improved standing in search engine results and reader engagement. More than just a collection of keywords, our blog posts are strong, thought-filled messages about your business or practice.

Basically, what that means is when you use Say It For You, you receive the following benefits in addition to impeccably written posts:

  • A single writer dedicated to understanding your business and keeping abreast
    of topics in your industry. That writer is ready to interface with your SEO expert, marketing consultant, or web designer.
  • Say It For You works with only one client in each field of business, so that all research and promotional efforts are devoted towards benefiting you and your business.
  • You will have personal contact with your writer, including regular in-person meetings or phone conferences. Your writer is always available to discuss content and strategy.
  • The ideas and input of writers with strong background in business. Our writers have expertise in finance, marketing, operations, event planning, autos, seniors, international commerce, healthcare, and more.

    Eight and a half years and 20,000 pieces of writing later, we find that every day there’s something new to celebrate and to share!  Happy New Year!

 

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Blogging Almost to the Finish Line

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A group of runners in a cross country race.“You can’t open a magazine or newspaper without seeing a recap,” motivational speaker Mark Sanborn wrote. Sanborn isn’t sure, though, how useful recaps are, and quickly concludes he had nothing to do with major events and nothing he could do about them now that they were over.  “The best I can hope to do is learn vicariously from these people and events,” he writes, “and find some ways to apply the lessons in my own life.”

Look first at your successes, Sanford says.  High achievers go too quickly on to the next goal, missing the pleasure and optimism that comes from reflected on success. Next, says Sanborn, look at the setbacks.  What were the lessons you learned?  Have you made changes in your behavior to lessen future setbacks? If there’s nothing you could have done to avoid whatever difficulties occurred, FIDO (Forget it, drive on). Third, advises Sanborn, project into the year ahead to form ideas, goals and plans.

Now that the end of 2015 is coming close, I try to follow that self evaluation process Sanborn wrote about back in 2011, looking back at the past year spent as content writer and corporate blogging trainer. It was useful to go back and read Eric Wagner’s “Five Reasons 8 Out of 10 Business Fail”, which appeared in Forbes two years ago.

Failure reason #1 for small businesses is not being really in touch with customers.  On this one, I give my Say It For You team high marks.  Since our business model involves taking on only one client in each field of business, then assigning a dedicated writer to interface with the owner or practitioner, I put staying in touch in our Success column.

When things didn’t work this year, I realize, it almost always had to do with lack of coordination among the blog writer, the webmaster, the business owner, and the staff of the client’s business or practice. We business bloggers are nothing if not interpreters. Effective blog posts must go from information-dispensing to offering the business owner’s (or the professional’s, or the organizational executive’s) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic.

That means owners and professional practitioners have got to be involved in the process of producing content, even after they’ve engaged the services of our professional content writers. The webmaster has to work together with the blog writer to provide the optimization and analysis that make the content “work”. Hiring professional bloggers is not a “wake me up when it’s over” proposition. I think my biggest mistakes happened when I compromised on this principle. Not only should there be periodic team meetings to discuss content, it is not a good idea for me and my team to take on writing assignments without insisting the business also invest in properly designed landing pages and website optimization. When blog writing is not coordinated with email and social media the results are simply not likely to be what the business owner expects.

I have to say, we on the Say It For You team have more than enough reasons for pleasure and optimism. On the other hand, we’ve already begun to make certain changes to our business model, with an eye to learning from our failures.

2016? Bring it on!

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