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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Blogging for Business Map: Every…Subject…How/Why…Wisdom Points

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impact“If you had only one sentence to get your message across, rather than 45 minutes,” executive speech coach Patricia Fripp asks each executive struggling to put together a powerful presentation, “What would you say?” There’s one “big idea” or premise that drives every book, every speech, every movie, Fripp explains.

As a ghost blogger and business blogging trainer, I ask business owners a similar question before planning their blog content: “If you had only 10-12 words to describe why you’re passionate about what you do and what you sell, what would those words be?”

At a recent meeting of the National Speakers Association of Indiana, Fripp suggested speakers create a map for each presentation.  I realized that creating just such a map could be a perfect strategy for blog content writers as well.

Start with a strong opening.  Fripp suggests beginning with the word “Every”, making a bold statement that the speech will go on to defend.

An  “Every” statement in a blog post might lead to useful information or to a refutation of that opening statement.

  • Every time you choose a hairstyle out of a magazine…
  • Every homeowner should use salt to soften the water.
  • Every investment adviser is subject to state and federal regulation…

Next, says Fripp, comes the subject of the speech, that ‘big idea” or premise you’ll be presenting. Will you be reinforcing that opening line or showing why it represents a widely held misconception?  In the SEO marketing blog of one beauty salon, for example, the blog content writer explains the dangers of choosing a hairstyle that’s impractical for your hair’s texture, length, and health.

Third is the “how” or the “why”, making your position clear and enlisting readers’ buy-in.

A powerful ending rounds out an effective speech – or an effective blog post. “Remember,” cautions Fripp, “The first 30 seconds and the last 30 seconds will have the most impact on listeners.”

In offering business blogging help, I find that business owners are so tied up in manufacturing  and selling product and in serving customers’ needs, they forget how much help the right words can be.  When it comes to web-based communications, words, along with pictures, are a business’ only tools. With the help of a map, those word “tools” can have quite an impact!.

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In Blogging for Business, “B” is for Basics

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Patricia Fripp“My work is most exhilarating when I help coach speakers on topics about which I know nothing at all,” asserts executive speech coach Patrica Fripp. Precisely because she’s new to the subject at hand, she explains, she is able to force executive speakers to simplify and demystify their subject.

Many of the lessons Fripp teaches corporate executives can be applied in corporate blogging training. In speaking to be remembered and repeated, she emphasizes, it’s important to use:

  • Shorter sentences
  • Visual words
  • Stories

In former Say It For You blog posts I wrote about how writing for business can be used to demonstrate your
(or, in the case of those, who like myself, offer business blogging help, your client’s) special expertise.  All well and good, but as Patrica Fripp stressed again and again in her presentation to my National Speakers Association chapter meeting the other day, it must be about them, not about you. Simplifying your topic makes your blog content reader-friendly. Offering online visitors easy-to-understand, usable information on the subject of their search, helps convert them into customers.

Content maven Meryl K. Evans advice is to shoot for 500 words or less in each blog post; as an Indianapolis blog writer, I like to keep post length between 300 and 400 words. It stands to reason that, the more “visual” the words you select, the greater the impact each will have. The more direct your opening gambit, the fewer introductory words will be needed.

In blogging for business, I think, stories are the equivalent of “staging” in real estate sales. "The buyer must be able to visualize living in this room,” realtors on HGTV reality shows painstakingly explain to house sellers. Each blog anecdote must help online visitors see themselves using your product or service.

My work as a professional ghost blogger is most exhilarating, I realized as I listened to Patricia Fripp, is when I help business owners choose words to express the basics of businesses I’d known very little about. Helping entrepreneurs use their SEO marketing blogs to simplify and demystify their business is rewarding for us both!


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Blue Lobsters Prove Three Points for Blog Content Writers and Consultants

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blue lobsterBy blogging about blue lobsters’ failures, my productivity consultant friend Robby Slaughter bolstered the two premises behind the Say It For You blog tidbit challenge, while rather ingeniously proving the premise behind his own book, Failure: the Secret to Success.

The whole idea behind the Tidbit Challenge was that any unusual or little-known piece of information can be used by blog content writers to explain the company’s products, services, and special expertise.  Since, as a corporate blogging trainer, I find that the biggest fear business owners have when it comes to maintaining a company blog is the fear of running out of ideas. I was out to prove that ideas are all around us, ripe for the blogging.

As a ghost blogger offering business blogging assistance, I had a second premise behind the Tidbit Challenge.  Experience has taught me that business owners and professional practitioners are often too close to their own business to see things from their customers’ and clients’ point of view. “Teaching” the topic by relating it to an interesting, seemingly unrelated fact, actually helps owners gain new insights into their own business model and into their own clients’ needs. This “learning by teaching” effect happens whether it’s the owner doing the blog content writing him/herself, or whether it happens in the process of planning blog content with a professional writer being employed to provide content for an SEO marketing blog.

In “Blue Lobster Fail”, Robby Slaughter offers a fine example of both my premises, using the little-known fact that one in every four million lobsters is born with a rare genetic disease which turns  it blue, making it easier for predators to spot. That tidbit became the “trigger” for a blog post based on the premise behind Slaughter’s own productivity consulting work, namely that failure often turns out to be the secret of success.

Slaughter writes from the point of view of his readers (a tip everyone providing blog writing services should heed). “It may seem like a tough break to be totally different than everyone else,” Robby writes in emphathetic vein. “Your uniqueness may make it harder to hide from your enemies.” But since fisherman sell rarities like blue lobsters to aquariums, he concludes, it’s actually likely that a blue lobster will have a longer life than its more “normal” friends. 

Your corporate blogging for business will have a longer life if you’re constantly looking for tidbits of information to explain what you have to offer in new and different ways!

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