Archive for category: Business writing tips

This week’s Say It For You business blog posting lessons are based on the secrets and shortcuts Geoffrey James shares in his book Business Without the Bullsh*t .

In a way, James’ entire book showcases a point I often stress in corporate blogging training sessions – whether you’re blogging for a business, for a professional practice, or for a nonprofit organization, you’ve gotta have 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.

(Of course, you can do that, just aggregate, I mean, and many sites do. Aggregation may even make your blog site the “go-to” destination for information.  But if you ask me, that’s not going to result in readers coming to your business or practice for service, products, and advice.) 

James’ book has a chapter I love, called “How to Cope With Management Fads”. The author gives readers career-saving tips for when their employers are in the throes of implementing that he calls “faux panaceas”.  Six Sigma? “Expect everything to take 10-20% longer than it otherwise would because of buttinsky experts clogging up the way the organization runs.”  Reengineering? “…one of half a dozen euphemisms that executives use when they’re planning to fire a bunch of people.” Matrix management?  “The result is predictable: an endless, debilitating turf war.”

The book blurb explains that Geoffrey James writes one of the world’s most visited business blogs.  The reason, I firmly believe, is that he’s opinionated, very opinionated. Sure, James’ style may seem far too harsh for you to use anything like that in your own online marketing.. You’re out to nurture the relationships you’ve established and welcome new clients and customers to your business or practice, not “turn them off”.

Still, what I’ve learned over the years of creating blog content for dozens and dozens of clients in different industries and professions is that, in order to turn clients and customers “on”, we must incorporate one important ingredient – opinion. Taking a stance, I’ve found, is what gives a blog post some “zip”.

We must be influencers, I advise clients and blog content writers alike. Whether it’s business-to-business or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.

“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!