More Say It For You Magazine Challenge Ideas

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Continuing my challenge to myself to find at least one week’s worth of ideas for Say It For You blog posts in a single magazine issue, I continued browsing through the August issue of Self. ( As an Indianapolis blog writer, I offered the magazine challenge to all content writers in Indianapolis as part of giving business blogging assistance.)

SIFY readers – as you read this, be thinking about a magazine you can use to respond to my challenge.  Come up with three different blog post ideas, all out of a single issue of a magazine of your choice. Select articles which trigger ideas for you to blog about your business – what you sell, what you know, what you believe, and what you know how to do.

If you do corporate blogging for business, send me a link to at least one of the blog posts you write which was triggered by a magazine article.  If you are not blogging, email me a blog post, and I will publish it here on blog.sayitforyou.net.

The second article I found was “How Do I Wear That?”  As a ghost blogger who offersstyle training sessions in business blog writing, I found two important qualities in this article that I think blog content writers ought to emulate:

The article was written in question/answer format, first describing a “style dilemma”, then offering a “self-solution”. In other words, the article offered valuable information (in this case from fashion experts) which readers could use without having to buy anything. Nevertheless Self’s style expert was very obviously there to sell stuff, because, under each self-solution, there appears a list of pants, dresses, shoes, and bags that can be purchased in order to implement the solution, along with a listing of stores that carry them!

SEO marketing blog content writers need not apologize for connecting their content to solutions offered by the blog’s sponsoring company, so long as there is information offered that does not entail a purchase.  

The questions are written from the reader’s viewpoint. “I want to try faux fur, but I worry that it will overwhelm me.” The “solutions” are written in first person: “My buying tip: The more subtle the gradations in the color, the more real your fur looks.” Reading the piece, I felt fashion director Metzner was talking just to me!

Effective writing for business is very much a matter of tone. That very personal, conversational, “just between us” tone is exactly the one for which every blog content writer should be trying to incorporate in writing for business!

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Say It For You Issues Magazine Challenge to All Blog Content Writers

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Self magazineSitting in the Minneapolis airport during a two hour layover between flights, I decided to challenge myself to find at least one week’s worth of ideas for Say It For You blog posts in a single magazine issue.  I planned to use this idea for myself as a freelance blog writer, and then for corporate blogging training sessions. After browsing the shelves, I chose the August issue of Self.

Why that choice? Well, one idea-generating technique I like to recommend to novice blog content writers in Indianapolis is lists. Lists are often overused, yet they represent a good way to organize content, and the cover of Self caught my attention with no fewer than five examples of the technique:

  • 1,007 freebies for you inside
  • 1 easy move to slim all over
  • 7 new ways to wear your hair
  • Showy summer cocktails – 97 calories. Yum!
  • 10 tips from The Biggest Loser Show Alison Sweeney

(What series of helpful hints can YOU offer online visitors in your corporate blogging for business?  Think “Ways to…”, “Tips for…”, “New ideas for….”  “Things to avoid…”.)

For example, on Page 114 of the Self magazine, I found an interesting article called “Pretty Your Way”.  “Let’s face it.  What looks gorgeous on the runway doesn’t always work in real life,” the article begins. As a professional ghost blogger offering business blogging assistance, reading that article made me think there’s a parallel to be drawn with traditional websites and blogs. Not every bit of content appropriate for a company’s website is necessarily the kind of content most appropriate for their SEO marketing blog.

Writing for business in blog posts is more conversational and less formal.  Those providing blog writing services need to include more usable advice, with more about the core beliefs of the business owners, more “how to” and less “we do” than the website might include. Of course, the content for both website and blog posts musts be in a style best suited to the target audience and comfort level.

What magazine will you choose as a source of blogging ideas? I challenge you to let me know which and why… Remember: the challenge is to choose at least three articles from the same magazine and use each article as an idea "trigger" for business blog writing.



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“Blue” Great Example of More This, Less That in Corporate Blog Writing

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Immediately after completing my Say It For You blog post based on “More This, Less That” indog food the Readers Digest, I actually found a two-page advertorial by BlUE dog food that illustrates many of the points I made about healthful additions and subtractions in blog writing for business.

One recommendation I’d made to blog content writers in Indianapolis was more care, less scare. (More “we believe”, less “we offer”.) Why does BLUE pet food use only high-quality ingredients? …"because we think of our pets as family members".

I’d recommended as part of business blogging training, using more examples, fewer claims. The BLUE advertorial lists the ingredients dog owners should look for and why:  Real meat to provide proteins for growth and muscle maintenance, whole grains for energy, and fruits and vegetables for antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. Rather than boasting about its own products, BLUE offers a checklist pet owners can use when comparing brands. Blog content writing can be at its best providing practical, usable information to online visitors.

I’d recommended “a liberal sprinkling of testimonials and anecdotes” for use in corporate blog writing. BLUE quotes one of their customers: “I didn’t want my boy eating chicken by-product meal. That’s why I switched him to BLUE.”

I must admit that “my boy” seems a bit overdone for my taste (I’m not a dog owner), but maybe not.  The point is, blogging for business had better be taken personally, and using testimonials and anecdotes are one way to help SEO marketing blogs stay personal, real and down to earth. 
 

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More This, Less That in Corporate Blog Writing

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divvyingWhether in lifestyle choices or blog writing for business, some simple additions and subtractions can make for a healthier result. In “More This, Less That”, Readers’ Digest tells us that adding peppermint, veggies, and yoga to our lives will do us good, while adding long hours at our job can raise our odds for a heart attack.

So, from the point of view as a professional ghost blogger providing corporate blogging training, what do I think are the blog writing “more-this-less-that” parallels to those lifestyle recommendations?

More focus, fewer words.
Eating smaller servings is certainly a favorite recommendation by nutritionists.  Even in meeting planning, says Kristen Arnold, president of the National Speakers Association, “there’s a global trend towards fewer and smaller meeting with more focused content.” When it comes to blog content writing, sticking to one main idea per blog post keeps the content tightly focused.

More examples, fewer claims.
A liberal sprinkling of testimonials and anecdotes in blogging for business gets the point across more poignantly than all the claims you can muster. Careerbuilder.com warns against using words that are “unsupported claims of greatness” instead of accomplishment-based statements. Showing, rather than crowing, will get you’re a lot farther in blog content writing.

More care, less scare. (More “we believe”, less “we offer”.)
Blogging is the perfect vehicle for “being yourself”, expressing the passion business owners have for their work. I teach content writers in Indianapolis to blog in answer to the question, “If you had only 10-12 words to express what value you want to bring to clients and customers, what would those words be?” 

Less SEO, more flow.
One of the obvious business motivations for maintaining an SEO marketing blog is to draw traffic and meet “strangers” who need what you know and what you have but don’t know you. Still one of guidelines I stress in offering business blogging assistance is that the content isn’t likely to get read unless it’s readable.  The sentences must flow naturally and conversationally, (Strings of keyword phrases tied together with prepositions are unlikely to win you friendsl).

“Real” and “fresh” may be qualities as important in corporate blog writing as they are in nutrition and lifestyle!

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Business Blog Writing to Tell Readers How it Should Feel

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steak on barbecueOne key element in successful corporate blogging for business is usable information, and one thing that makes for that usability is helping users know how results might “feel”.
 
Business owners often share with me how frustrated they become when they’ve done top-notch work for a client, but the client doesn’t realize just how top-notch it was! That’s because customers lack the expertise or background knowledge for comparison.

 “People rarely think of your actual brand first.  They think about what they want,” emphasizes blogger Ryan Karpeles. Now that your SEO marketing blog has been successful in helping those people find you, your blog content writing needs to convey the fact that you can fulfill their need. But there’s more that must be accomplished, as I explain to freelance blog writers and to business owners.  Your business blog writing must give online searchers a “feel” for the desired outcomes of using your products and services.

In “FAQ About Your BBQ,” Readers’ Digest gets the “feeling” part of information right. “A rare steak feels ‘squishy,” a medium steak feels ‘springy’, and a well-done one feels ‘taut’, Lauren Giazdowski explains. Blog content writers in Indianapolis can use that sentence about steaks  as a model for giving information in blog posts to help shape readers’ expectations.

There’s hardly a selling guideline with more potential to be of  business blogging help than the one repeated by Carmine Gallo in Businessweek.com: Don’t sell products; sell an experience.  Gallo quotes entrepreneur Richard Branson of the Virgin corporate empire.  Asked what the Virgin brand was, Branson did not say “a great airline”, but “fun”.  Asked what Zappos stands for, CEO Tony Hsieh answered “happiness.”

One of the most important functions served by a freelance blog writer may not lie in the task of keeping up the frequency and recency needed for the business to “win search”. Far more crucial is the process of working with the business owner as part of the marketing team, drilling down to the essence of the brand, so that online readers get a sense of how it should feel!

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