Blogging for Business, Not Search

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sharpening pencils with a swordWinning search has long been our main motivation for blog content writing, but, as Social Media Examiner’s Marcus Sheridan so aptly reminds us, it needn’t be. “Blogging unleashes the power of team,” Sheridan says, referring to companies where each and every person is contributing to building the company’s content base, with magic and momentum truly happening as a result.

But what if the magic isn’t happening, because no one has the time or the inclination to keep up the discipline of constantly creating content? And what if the company is just one or two people, both scrambling just to keep the day-to-day stuff going? Is there any “team magic” to be had when you’re using a freelance blog content writer? You bet. Effective blogging for business takes a blend of ideas and talents, and a professional ghost blogger becomes part of your team, working alongside you to articulate and give form to your thoughts and ideas.  

“Blogging sharpens your sword,” Sheridan says. Because you’re generating new content (either on your own or through a freelancer), that forces you to stay up to date with the newest developments in your industry, to remain conscious of the competition, and explaining things in a consumer-friendly way. (The fact  is that your content writer is not working in your industry can be an advantage, forcing you to see things from ‘the other side”.)

“Blogs are qualifiers,” Sheridan notes. There are generally two types of consumers, he points out: price shoppers and value shoppers. Spending sales time with unqualified leads is counter-productive sales effort for any business.  Letting customers self-sort after they read your current,  information-heavy content saves time and aggravation all around, he points out.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I couldn’t agree more.  Blogs, I believe, can help potential client and customers make better decisions without the business owner or practitioner – or salesperson – needing to step into the conversation in the initial stages.  How?

a) by suggesting questions readers can ask themselves while choosing among options.

b) by showing how different choices relate to differing results. Since people don’t like to be sold, you can use the blog to offer them help in making a buying decision.

Marcus Sheridan sums the matter up nicely:  “There is much more to having a company blog than just getting more visitors to your website because Google decided to send them there.”

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10 Blog Posts for 10 Reasons

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HR World’s John Edwards tells his small business owner readers no fewer than ten reasons to outsource their payroll. I must Enter the weekly time sheet concepts of work hours reportingsay, he presents a compelling lineup.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I couldn’t help but think Edwards’ article could actually be turned into ten separate blog posts, with each adding an anecdote or statistic to pack a punch with online readers.

For example, “productivity” is one of Edwards’ 10 reasons, and he elaborates as follows: “Payroll management is a time-consuming activity.  With this burden removed, your employees can focus on doing more productive thins, and you may even be able to trim your staff’ size.”

That statement is the perfect lead in for a story about how a small business owner was able to reduce the size of his workforce and still increase productivity and sales. Blog posts should include stories about how you solved client problems in the past, and lessons you’ve learned through your experience that you’ll be applying for the benefit of new customers and clients.  In other words, rather than listing all ten reasons at once, a blog post might be devoted to only this one aspect of outsourcing the payroll.

The HR World website then goes on to list “accuracy” as one of the 10 reasons to outsource the payroll. “Payroll mistakes can be painful, angering employees and – more ominously – the government.  A good payroll-services provider is far less likely to make a serious error than your in-house staff.  Furthermore, if a big mistake is made, you can seek financial restitution from the provider – something you can’t do with your own employees.”

This paragraph practically begs for a real-life example of a business owner who made a serious payroll mistake, “made the government angry” and paid a big price.

The lesson here is “Elaborate, elaborate, elaborate”.  Put “teeth” in your statements by making the scenario real for potential customers and clients. Those “10 Reasons”?  Turn ‘em into ten blog posts, and for each one, include story along with statistics.

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Help Blog Readers Know the Difference Between Related and Causal

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Man Hand writing Cause and Effect concept with markerIn statistics, variables are considered related if, when the value of one increases or decreases, so does the value of the other (even if it’s in the opposite direction). But does that mean one caused the other?  Not necessarily.  Only after investigating whether one action causes the other, explains the Australian Bureau of Statistics, can we “put in place policies and programs that aim to bring about a desired outcome.”

The article gives three examples of questions about whether the difference between two things is simply incidental versus one causing the other:

  • Is there a relationship between a person’s education level and their health?
  • Is pet ownership associated with living longer?
  • Did a company’s marketing campaign increase their product sales?

In writing blog content, citing causal statistics certainly is one method used to capture readers’ attention.   “Insomnia costs U.S. $63 billion annually in lost productivity“ is a great opener for a furniture store blog about mattresses, for example.  And if the content also contains a human interest story about how Jimmy’s lack of sleep caused him to flub an all-important job interview, that combination packs a real punch with blog readers.

Statistics can actually serve as mythbusters.  If there’s some false impression people seem to have about your industry or about a product or service you provide, you can bring in statistics to show readers that the numbers they’ve been hearing about may be related, but that one factor is not the cause of the other. From there, you can offer more relevant solutions to their issues.

In everyday life, people routinely make causal claims that would require a counterfactual analysis to confirm, says explorable.com. “Thanks to a new diet, your neighbor lost thirty pounds. But did your neighbor not also take up jogging? To assess the claim that A caused B we need to consider a counterfactual: What would have happened if A had been different? To evaluate whether your neighbor’s dieting caused his weight loss, we need to consider what would have happened had he not dieted, and so on.”

In the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or service often surface in the form of customer questions and comments. Addressing misinformation in a company’s blog shines light on the owner’s special expertise, besides offering information that is valuable to readers. De-mystifying matters can make your blog into a “go-to” source for readers seeking information in your field.

How can you use myths and “counterfacts” to enhance your credibility as a business owner?

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Does Your Blog Use Those Uncouth Bacilli?

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Germans call them “little goose feet”, Hungarians refer to them as “cat claws”, the Danish as “goose eyes”.  In America we call them Cquotation marks, and, as you can see, they’ve been quite useful devices even this short distance into today’s Say It For You blog post. (Quotation marks can be used to denote technical terms, terms used in an unusual way, or other expressions that vary from standard usage.)

It’s interesting that famous author and playwright George Bernard Shaw disliked quotation marks, calling them “uncouth bacilli”. Shaw seems to have been referring to the core use of quotation marks, which is to mark the beginning and the end of a quoted passage (something somebody else said). Since we blog content writers often quote things other have said in order to reinforce our points and add value for readers, it’s important for us to become familiar with this form of punctuation.

Gardner and Shane Birley, authors of Blogging For Dummies, remind us to respect copyrights, cautioning us that “Anything and everything you see on the Internet is protected by copyright. It’s more than OK to quote another person’s blog post if you take only parts of it and don’t take the credit for creating it.”

I always explain to newbie blog content writers how important it is to avoid plagiarism and to properly attribute statements to their authors.  Linking to another blog that was the original source of a point you’re emphasizing in your own blog helps everyone – the readers, the authors, and you, I add.

Nick Schaferhoff of Torque bemoans the fact that “copied content runs rampant online”. Plagiarism, he explains, consists of not merely using the language and thoughts of another author without authorization, but then representing that author’s work as one’s own. Sometimes it’s “lazy plagiarism”, he says, done almost by accident.

Of course George Bernard Shaw didn’t have the vast content stores of the Internet to contend with. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t appreciate the value of those “uncouth bacilli”, the quotation marks that clearly force authors to think about where material originated.

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Blog Simply and Carry a Big Stick

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simple or complex“The canonical rule of thumb for scientists speaking to nonscientists is to talk as if you were speaking to eighth graders, because a lay audience often has a basic, and certainly not specialized, understanding of science,“ advises climate scientist Ilissa Ocko. “If you want the information to resonate with the non-scientist audience, you have to strip down to the essentials, craft a story, provide big-picture context, and consider using analogies,” she adds.

Matching our writing to our intended audience is part of the challenge we business blog content writers face. After all, we’re not in this to entertain ourselves – we’re out to retain the clients and customers we serve and bring in new ones, so we try to use words and sentences to which our target readers can relate. We may even use a readability calculator such as the Flesch-Kinkaid.

But what Ocko argues is that even when we are speaking to (or, in our case, writing to) industry partners or more sophisticated and knowledgeable readers, we will be more effective if we simplify.

She names three reasons why knowledge transfer will be more successful even when there is a “high-level”, knowledgeable audience:

  • Even in a room full of scientists, not everyone has the same background and expertise.
  • The audience (our readers) has only a small chunk of time to digest the information (this is particularly true with blogs).
  • People are distracted by life. The more complex the talk (read “blog post”), the easier it is to mentally check out. Speaker acknowledgement of this audience inadequacy through simpler messaging and slides will be a win-win for all.

Less is more, Ocko teaches scientific speakers.  Use less jargon, less math, less text. Use more graphics, more analogies, more stories. As a corporate blog writing trainer, I couldn’t agree more with every one of those points. Our writing style should be clear and simple, direct, and easily understandable.

Writing simply will add big-stick impact to your business blog content!

 

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