Expertise By Any Other Name is Sweet When Shared in Business Blogs

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“An expert is someone that knows their stuff better than anyone else in their field,” says Jorgen Sunberg of undercoverrecruiter.com. “Everyone wants to buy from or work with the person who has the reputation, credibility, and knowledge of an expert.

While that’s exactly the perception Indianapolis blog content writers aim for on behalf of our business owner and professional practitioner clients, that’s a cause for concern to some business owner and professional practitioner clients of Say It For You – they don’t want to come off boastful and self-serving in their blog, or be perceived as using hard-sell tactics to promote themselves.

A highly satisfactory compromise, as I teach in corporate blogging training classes, is gathering and then sharing others’ expertise in your own business blog. One of my favorite “reading around” books is A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi, in which author Chloe Rhodes says that the term “maven”  refers to someone who gathers information and passes his knowledge to others.

Taking the idea even further, web designer Mark Carillion, quoted in Employee Benefit Advisor Magazine, says that “The guy who gives out the most information freely is the guy who ends up winning the traffic war.”

Remember, browsers on the Web stopped at your business blog because they were searching for something you know how to do or for something you sell.  Present yourself and your business as expert, experienced, and professional. Whether what you’re presenting is based on your own actual experience or gathered from others in your field, share with readers something they may not have known before.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Shakespeare reminds us.  Well, expertise by any other name is sweet when shared in business blogs!

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Enuf Is Enuf In Blogs

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When it comes to spelling, we Americans appear to fall into four camps.  First we have the functionally illiterate (around 30 million of us) who lack basic writing skills, with spelling being the least of the problems.  At the opposite end we have the reformers, the ones lobbying Congress to simplify English spelling.  (At spelling bee sites, you’ll see reformers carrying signs with slogans such as ‘I’m thru with through”, or “Enuf is Enuf, but ‘enough is too much!”   A third group just doesn’t care, devoting no thought to spelling issues.  The last, and apparently the largest group, may not be spelling experts, but they admire and celebrate spelling mastery (if producing and attending movies, plays, and TV programs about spelling bee heroes is any indication). As a ghost blogger whose stock in trade is words, I was fascinated to learn that a Broadway musical I’d attended last year, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”,  ran for more than 1100 performances around the country.

Whatever your position on spelling, that reformer sign motto is worth remembering when it comes to your company blogs.  Blog audiences are scanners, not readers, by and large.  As your ghost blogger, I need to make your blog serve as your invitation to come on in (to your website) and join the party.  The blog offers just enough information to entice the searcher to visit the website to find out more.  I’m nono spelling reformer, but I know a great line when I see one.  When it comes to corporate blogging, enuf is enuf!

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Ghost Writers In The Sky

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I can’t believe how far back ghostwriting goes – who knew?  We’re all used to today’s celebrities, CEO’s, and public figures who can’t spare the time to write their own books or speeches, and who hire ghostwriters.  (In fact, publishing companies sometimes purposely associate a book with a well known person to make it more marketable.)  As a professional ghost blogger, I am an avid reader about all forms and styles of ghost writing.  The more I read, the more interesting material I uncover.

Composer Wolfgang Mozart, I learned, was paid to ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons.  Come to think about it, that fact was brought out in the movie “Amadeus”.

An absolutely fascinating tidbit I just learned is that romance novelist V.C. Andrews’ estate hired a ghostwriter.  The assignment: to continue writing novels in Andrews’ style after her death!  The readers just didn’t want there to ever be a final chapter, I guess…

It’s fun to learn about all these things, but blogging is much more in the here and now.  The mission of a ghost blogger like me is to market your business.  Your business blog performs a very practical and very important function:  it helps customers find your business.  And they find it, not in the sky, but right here on the Web.

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Ask Not What Your Business Blog Can Do For You

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We ghost bloggers are fairly new to the business scene, but, as I’ve mentioned in earlier “Say It For You” pieces, ghostwriting has a very, very long history.  U.S. presidential speechwriters are one of the better-known examples, starting with the story I told about George Washington using Jefferson and Hamilton to craft his speeches.  I learned recently that Calvin Coolidge was the first president to hire an official, full time speechwriter.  Since then, of course, every president has had an Office of Speechwriting.  There’s even an interesting book called White House Ghosts, written by Washington reporter Robert Schlesinger, on the topic of presidential speechwriters.

I can find quite a number of interesting parallels here.  All of us remember famous lines from presidential speeches.  How about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall!” and, perhaps best-known, Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”?  Ghost writers had a hand in creating all of these speeches. So, does that mean U.S. presidents have no influence on the speeches they deliver? Far from it!  Michael Gerson, talking about one of the speeches he and his team wrote for Bush, said “Our concern is not to write a good speech, but to write a good speech that is also his speech.” Richard Goodwin, speechwriter for LBJ, said his job was to “illuminate the president’s inward beliefs”.

I’ve said this before:  Your ghost blogger needs to pick up on your unique corporate style in order to speak your message in your voice to your customers. Your blog helps drive business to your website.  When your customers arrive, they find – YOU!  Now you have a chance to shine.  No longer is it a matter of what your blog did for you – it’s what can you do for your new customers! Meanwhile, behind the scenes, your ghost blogger will be basking in unseen and unheard glory, having Said It For You.

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