In Blogging for Business, How Are You Heading Today?

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AborigineAs something of a wordsmith when it comes to corporate blogging for business, I’m always listening to the NPR Radio programs dealing with language.  Tuned in the other day to “RadioLab”, I learned the most interesting thing:

There are 7,000 languages used around the globe , and in fully a third of them, there exist no words for “left”. “right”, “front” or “back”.  Instead, direction is described in those languages as “north, “northeast”, “south”, “southwest”, etc., with the orientation being a birds-eye view above the person being referenced.

In fact, the radio host explained, among Australian tribes, rather than the standard greeting being “How are you today?”, it’s “How are you headed today?”

Since, for all of us blog content writers, words (and, to a lesser extent pictures) are our only tools to tell the business owner’s story, it’s important for us to appreciate how the language we use shapes our own thoughts, and how we can use language to help shape the thoughts of our online readers.

In the 1940’s, I learned, a linguist named Benjamin Whorf claimed that speakers of Hopi (a native American language spoken in parts of Arizona) see the world differently because of differences in language.

All of this, at least in my mind, goes to suggest the importance of what words we select for our business blog writing. Sure, we need to remember to use a lot of the website’s keyword phrases in an SEO marketing blog, but I’m talking a couple of layers deeper than that. After all, blogging is about “heading” our readers in the direction of understanding who we are, our unique fix on our marketplace, and what level and type of service and product we aim to bring to consumers.

In a way, that very concept is what I was trying to express in my own Say It For You website when I referred to the “training benefits” the business owner gets from writing the blog content or (often to an even greater extent), from working with a blog writing service. In continually being involved with talking effectively about your business, putting your accomplishments down in words, verbalizing the benefits of your products and services, the language you use has an influence, not only on visitors to your blog, but on you!


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Do Key Ad Copy Drivers Work in Blogging for Business?

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In theineedhits SEO marketing blog, Courtney Mills names seven key drivers for successful writing to be used in ad copy:

  • Fearfear and greed
  • Greed
  • Guilt
  • Anger
  • Exclusivity
  • Salvation
  • Flattery

Having spent much time and effort and a host of words (in both these Say It For You blog posts and in corporate blogging training sessions) stressing my view that blogs are NOT ads, the question I want to consider with you today is this:  Are any – or are ALL – of those “drivers” for advertising copy appropriate for use in business blog writing?

In the real world, in many SEO marketing blogs, blog content writers focus on appealing to consumers’ fear or greed.  At least one marketing blogger, Michael Masterson, thinks fear appeals don’t work in the long run, and that fear needs to be followed with hope.  Greed promotions, he adds, attract the wrong kind of customer.

Since I’ve provided blog writing services for many different types of companies, I’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on the challenges of finding precisely the right tone for each blog. Corporate blogging for business is just one aspect of any company’s overall marketing strategy.  The entire tone of the blog, therefore, needs to be consistent with the company’s image and corporate identity.  To be sure, blog content, just like TV, radio, or print ads, exists to promote the business and its products and services.

Can and should a single blog post appeal to customers’ anger about the poor service, shoddy workmanship, or exhorbitant charges they’ve experienced in the past? Definitely! Can and should a single blog post emphasize a product or service that’s exclusive to that business?  For sure!

I think it’s a matter of being in good taste.  Before leaving the house for an important engagement, it’s a good idea to look at yourself in a full length mirror to be sure your outfit and grooming will convey the message you’d like it to.  The same is true for the content you’re preparing to put out there in the blogosphere for all to read.   In writing for business, using “drivers” is fine, but does that content represent your company the way you’d like it to?


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The Scoop on Blog Sweeteners

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sweetenerGenerally speaking, it’s a good idea to think “short” when thinking about corporate blogging for business. One very practical reason is that online searchers tend to be scanners rather than readers.  Seeking products, services, and data, those blog visitors want information in usable form, and they want it – yesterday!

The other day, though, while reading an article about artificial sweeteners, I gained a new perspective on the matter that I can shares with Indianapolis blog writers (in fact with all freelance blog writers). 

In “The Scoop on Sweeteners,” Dr. Samual Grief explains that artificial sweeteners have many times the “sweetness” of sugar.  That means much smaller amounts are required to enjoy the taste of foods, so in turn the calorie intake from a given food is much smaller when compared with that same food with sugar added to it.  NutriSweet®, for example, has 180 times the sweetnesds of sugar, while Splenda® has 600x the sweetness.

For all the four years ofSay It For You blog writing service’s existence, one big debate among freelance blog writers has centered around “Above-the-fold” corporate blog writing. The argument centers around how important it is – or isn’t – to keep business blog writing short enough so readers have no need to scroll down the page to read the content.

My own response, when asked that very question in corporate blogging training sessions, has been this: If a visitor has come to your blog site for a reason, and you blog is in fact a good match for that reason, he/she isn’t going to mind scrolling to finish reading what you have to say.

On the other side of the question, if blog content writers will focus on just one main idea in each post, conveying the “sweetness” of that idea in condensed form, less can indeed turn out to be more!

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Blog New Knowledge on Things They Already Know

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brain cogsIf you place a ripe banana next to a green tomato, the tomato will ripen, too, explains Brian McMahon in Mental Floss Magazine.

Interesting facts such as this can always be of business blogging help, but that advice comes with two provisos: 

  1. Your reason for including the fact in your post must be apparent early on in your SEO marketing blog post.
  2. The new information should relate to something with which readers are already familiar.

Of course, as I’m careful to explain in corporate blogging training sessions, freelance blog writers can help clients achieve goals other than search engine optimization. The Say It for You website explains the promotional benefits, credibility benefits, and even training benefits that derive from blogging for business.

If you’ve stuck with me this far into the metaphor about the green tomatoes, you’re a very unusual example of a blog reader; most visitors to a blog are unlikely to keep reading, and the answer to “So what?” must come earlier in the post.

As a professional providing blog writing services, I should have used the very first paragraph of this post to explain that the ethylene gas released by the banana’s ripening affects the tomato.  And the “so what?” In similar fashion, the very fact that a company even has a well-kept blog with lots of fresh content tells people they’re “in the game” and that they care about all aspects of their business.

It’s worth noting that there seems to be a “spillover effect” on the business owners themselves.  The process of planning the blog content (whether you’re doing your own blog content writing or using a blog writing service, is a form of training on talking effectively about your business.

“Green” in terms of online marketing?  Stick around those blogging “bananas”!

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PRWeb Ups the Ante on Say It For You Tidbit Challenge

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This is one time having been one-upped feels ONEderful!

Stacey Acevero of PRWeb not only rose to my Say It For You blog content writers’ tidbitbaked goods challenge, she expanded the original four tidbits by another four, in each case detailing who might use each one for business blogging help.

As part of corporate blogging training, I’d suggested to other Indianapolis blog content writers – in fact any feelance blog writers – that they need never run out of ideas if they keep a collection of interesting tidbits of general information on hand. I challenged providers of business blog content to use at least one of four interesting tidbits I’d found in Mental Floss Magazine as a jumping-off point to explain some unique aspect of their own products or services.

After four years of business blog writing, what I continually find is that business owners lack the time and discipline to keep providing fresh content on their SEO marketing blogs over sustained periods of time. In fact, you wouldn’t believe how many blogs end up being abandoned within months, even weeks of being started. But for anyone either writing their own content or hiring professionals like me for business blogging assistance, the big fear is running out of ideas. The tidbit challenge was just one way, I’d suggested, to get the creative juices flowing again.

Rather than choosing one of the four tidbits I’d mentioned in my blog post, Stacey Acevero went back to Mental Floss to find additional tidbits. For example, it’s true that most supermarkets place their bakery areas near the entrance to the store; studies have shown the aroma of fresh-baked goods makes customers spend more money.

Ingeniously, Stacey suggests that non-food service businesses can use this technique by putting their most tantalizing product in front of prospects sooner rather than later. A music artist, she points out, might put his best single on the front page of his website, while a retail store might put their most colorful clothes in the windowl

Thanks, Stacey and PRWeb for helping me prove my point.  “…and voila!” she exclaimed. “That blog post pretty much wrote itself.”

Well… I don’t know if as a longtime professional ghost blogger I’d go quite that far.  Good blog posts hardly ever “pretty much write themselves”.  But a great tidbit is certainly great business blogging help!

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