Cleaning Out Your Blog Topic Closet

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Goodwill storeWhile trying on clothes at a couple of new shops in Fishers and Carmel, I couldn’t help thinking about a blog post I’d written almost six years ago about the Goodwill Guy and Clothes You Shouldn’t Wear.

You’ve probably seen those Goodwill ads. The principle is, there are four kinds of clothes, and only one of those kinds should stay in your closet. The other three – the clothes you can’t wear, the clothes you don’t wear, and of course the Clothes You Shouldn’t Wear – should be going to Goodwill (so that someone who should be wearing them, can.

I’d categorized blog post content the same way.  (I’ve thought this whole thing through again and reworked some of my ideas with the benefit of six years of hindsight)…

Posts you don’t blog might include (but perhaps should):

  • Posts that would take some  real time to research
  • Strong opinion pieces
  • How-to instructions (fear readers might go DIY on you)

Posts you really can’t write:

  • Information that is not related to your topic
  • Topics that are too broad and really outside the scope of your expertise

Posts you really shouldn’t present to your readers:

  • Information that is overly technical for the average reader
  • Negative remarks about competitors
  • Posts that are too general, repeating the common wisdom with nothing of your own “slant”

So then, what sort of posts absolutely DO belong in your blog “closet”?

  • Employee posts, created by real people who are actually doing the work and talking to your customers
  • Testimonials from customers and clients
  • True tales of problems you’ve actually helped solve for your customers
  • Wisdom from other sources that can be useful to your readers

Clutter” in blogs is actually a positive. There’s only so much room for clothes in even the most spacious closet, but once I’ve put content on this Say It For You blog, for example, it can remain on the Internet forever.  (This post is actually #1052 for me, yet all my 1,151 past blog posts haven’t disappeared. All that content remains, available to readers in reverse chronological order, a very good thing when it comes to “winning search” online!)

Hate to say this, but it’s perhaps not our blog that needs periodic de-cluttering, it’s us.
As we continue blogging month after month, year after year, we need to be our own Goodwill Guys –

What sort of posts are we writing, but perhaps shouldn’t be (or at least not so often)?

What posts have we been lazy about that absolutely belong in our blog?

 

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The Supreme Irony of Getting Found on the Internet

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Instructions search

In nine years of working with business owners to create content, one thing hasn’t changed. It still happens, when I’m discussing what kind of content to provide for new blogging clients, one fear comes to the fore: If they “teach” in their blog or demonstrate the steps in their process, they’ll lose, rather than gain, customers and clients. Why?

  • If I teach back-strengthening exercise routines, they won’t need to come to my gym.
  • If I reveal the logic behind my system of selecting stocks, the clients won’t need my portfolio management services.
  • If I publish recipes and menus, they won’t need my catering services or come to my restaurant.
  • If I list the steps for insulating pipes, they won’t use my plumbing services.

Fortunately, I’m able to reassure the clients, such concerns are unfounded.  It all has to do with the basic way internet search functions.  The only people who are going to be reading your blog posts, I explain, are those who are searching for precisely the kinds of information, products, and services that relate to what you do, what you have for sale, and what you know how to do.

Offering advice and how-to tips is an excellent way, not only to showcase your expertise and experience, but to demonstrate how passionate you are about your work. The supreme irony is that consumers who feel fairly informed are more, not less, likely to make buying decisions.  

Another thing I’ve observed is that my team members and I are actually part of a big trend towards delegating and relegating. Concierges perform chores from airport pickup to pet-sitting, from meal preparation to travel planning. In the same way, we content writers know, our clients have businesses and professional practices to run.  They need to use their time making and selling products or consulting.  With few exceptions, they have no time left to write about what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and why.

But that’s exactly the kind of information readers seek – how to do things, how to find things, how to keep their things and their bodies in good condition. The supreme irony is that, when it comes to getting found on the internet, “teaching” sells!

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Recommended Reading for Blog Content Writers – Part D

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My “bloggers’ recommended reading list” is something I’ve been putting together for a decade. My most recent three Say It For You blog posts focused on books about writing, about tidbit treasures, and about selling techniques. In this final post of the series, let’s talk about the nitty-gritty of writing content geared towards online readers. I have three books to recommend as resources for blog content writers:

I still go back to one of the early additions (2010) to my resource library, Corporate Blogging for Dummies, by Douglas Karr and Chantelle Flannery, Corporate Blogging for Dummiesfor guidance on best practices. Many of the authors’ “tips and tricks to maximize your impact” will never go out of style.  Here are just three examples:

  • Businesses that serve other businesses tend to see a drop in traffic over weekends and during typical vacation periods and holidays…Take advantage of other companies not publishing content and continue to schedule or publish posts on weekends and holidays.”
  • Use alt tags effectively for image searches and keyword placement.
  • Blogs typically rank well for a keyword if that keyword is in the domain name..

Internet Marketing an Hour a DayUnderstanding what types of searchers your business is likely to attract can be very important in keyword selection, Matt Bailey explains in Internet Marketing an Hour a Day.  “Is your website an ‘impulse’ site, where you can get a quick sale? Or, is it a content-based website where searchers can learn more, leading them gradually to the decision-making point?” he asks. The book offers step-by-step instructions and action plans for website optimization, and integrating social media and blogs.

 

The newest addition to be resource library is the book Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, a collection  Mitch Meyerson has putsuccess secrets together of articles from many different only marketing experts.

  • From John Janitch of Duct Tape marketing:  “Your blog is the absolute starting point for your content strategy because it makes content production, syndication, and sharing so easy.”
  • From Ian Cleary of Razor Social: “Use Ahrefs (www.ahrefs.com) or similar tools to find out which on their (your competitor’s) website have the most links pointing to them.”
  • From Bob Barker (Guerilla Music Marketing Handbook): The three E’s of communication are to educate, to entertain, and to enlighten.

Hiring the extra “brain” relieves the “drain” on the business owner’s (or the professional practitioner’s) resources of times and energy. And what relieves the drain on the blog content writer?  A constant supply of ideas. But where do you get ideas – day after day, month after month, year after year – for blog posts? My answer is – everywhere! One aspect of the “everywhere” is books. In these last four Say It For You blog posts, I’ve provided links so that you can take a look for yourself at some of the wonderful books I’ve been collecting.

I don’t know about the ‘rithmetic part, but reading and blog ’riting definitely go together!.

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Recommended Reading for Blog Content Writers – Part C

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My “bloggers’ recommended reading list” is something I’ve been putting together for almost ten years. Last week’s Say It For You blog posts focused on books about writing and books about tidbit treasures. but in today’s post, I’ll share links to books about selling.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I use the word “selling” in a very specialized sense.  That’s because, in today’s world, whatever your business or profession, there’s almost no end to the information available to consumers on the Internet.  Our job then, as business blog content writers, isn’t really to “sell” anything, but rather to help readers absorb, buy into, and use all that information.

Stop Selling and Do Something Valuable“Tell and sell tradition marketing is dead,” according to Stan Phelps of Yahoo! Small Business Advisor. If marketing is about anything, it’s about differentiating what you do and how you do it.

As a business blog writing trainer, I’d go a step further. Marketing is about differentiating what you think about what you do and why you think that way. Taking a stance on issues relevant to your business or profession will give your blog post more “pow” every time.

That’s precisely why I chose the book Stop Selling & Do Something Valuable, by Steve Walmsley for my bloggers’ resource book list. “We have to sell ourselves to potential clients so that they choose to work with us rather than the competition… , he says, which is not the same as selling our product or service. “In our role as advocates, we need to persuade people to act.”

“Our challenge is to make customers fully aware of their situation without insulting them,” says Jeff Thull, strategist for executive teams worldwide and author of Exceptional Selling. “The more you sweat, the less you sell,” he observes. “Your ability to constructively attract and engage a customer in a relevant dialogue requires a conversation style as well as substantive content.” In selling done right, says Thull, “We don’t need to manipulate or Exceptional Sellingpush customers, nor do they have to protect themselves from us.”

Both these books about selling are relevant to business blog content writing. When it comes to Calls to Action in blog posts, I find myself issuing the following caution during corporate blogging training sessions: Blogs are not ads. When people go online to search for  information and click on different blogs or websites, they want to

  • Find out where
  • Find out how
  • Find out why

What they don’t want is to “be sold.”

So far in this Say It For You series, I’ve shared reading resources on writing, tidbit treasures, and selling.  Stay tuned for Part D this Thursday, a review of some of my favorite books on blogging and internet marketing…

 

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Recommended Reading for Blog Content Writers – Part B

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Blog content writers relieve the drain on business owners’ time, and so what relieves the drain on the blog content writers?  Since at least half the time that goes into creating a blog post is reading/research/thinking time, I’ve found that collecting books that serve as blog writing resources is, as Martha Stewart, might put is, “a good thing”.

Some of the books in my “blogger’s library” are about writing itself (see Part A of this series), but in today’s Say It For You post, I’ll share links to books about what I call “tidbit treasures”.

Tidbit Treasure books:
What I dub a “triggering tidbit” is nothing more than a piece of unusual or little-known piece of information which bloggers for business can use in their posts, tying that information to explanations of their own company’s products, services, and culture in order to capture online readers’ interest.

Book of Totally Useless InformationTidbits from The Book of Totally Useless Information, by Don Voorhees include:

  • U.S. President James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other – at the same time!
    You can earn a good living as a banana gasser.
  • During the Victorian era, wealthy British travelers would go to Indiana on luxury cruise ships.  It became trendy to pay extra for the privilege of staying in a portside cabin on the way to Indiana and a starboard on the way home.(Before air conditioning was invented,
    staterooms facing land tended to be cooler.) A POSH (port out, starboard home) label on one’s luggage signified this privilege.  That’s why we use “posh” to describe something elegant.

The Book of Incredible Information: A World of Not-So-Common Knowledge, by J.K. Kelly & Louis Weber book of incredible informationcovers hundreds of fascinating, funning, and unfamiliar facts. For instance:

  • French fries were first cooked up in Belgium, where the verb “to French” refers to the technique of cutting something into long, thin strips.
  • French dressing doesn’t come from France, either.  In fact, the wife if Lucius French, who founded Hazleton, Indiana, created the recipe.

Why do I refer to tidbits of information such as these as “treasure” for Indiana blog content writers?  Common myths surround every business and profession.  Offering little-known explanations exploding myths engage readers’ interest, and we can use them to lead into some little-known fact about our own (or our clients’) products, services, and company history.

Keep tuned…next week in my Say It For You blog, I’ll offer reading resources for bloggers about selling and about online marketing…

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