It Isn’t Easy, This Blogging for Business Thing

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notebook and penBlog marketing isn’t easy. (If it were, everyone’d be doing it; they aren’t!) 

As an Indianapolis blog writer myself, I follow the blog of marketing professional Phil Steele. Steele sounds like an ad for a blog writing service when he counts the ways in which it’s so hard to sustain a consistent marketing program of any type…

"Urgent vs. Important:  As ‘urgent’ matters arise in managing customer, vendor, and employee relationships, ‘important’ matters, like marketing, get moved down the list," Steele explains.

Knowing the crucial importance of branding and conveying the corporate message are to the success of any business, Inbound Marketing author Brian Halligan observes, "Your next marketing hire…should be someone with great writing skills."  In fact, as a blog content writer  over the years, offering business blogging help, I’ve thought of myself as a sort of inbound traffic cop.

"Lack of dedicated resources: The sales manager, business owner, or employee has multiple responsibilities, so the chances are that, when marketing is getting done, it’s sporadic and the message content not thoroughly thought out."

In a Financial Planning Magazine article, Steve Bogan explains that, in any business, there are four distinct roles that must be filled in order for the business to succeed.  He names those roles Finder, Binder, Minder, and Grinder.  The Finders search for new business, the Binders consummate the deals, the Minders manage the client relationships and provide client services, and the Grinders handle administrative tasks.  While any of these positions could in theory generate excellent fodder for corporate blog writing, in reality, that rarely happens without consistent business blogging assistance.  Outsourcing the work to a freelance blog writer often proves the most practical solution for the business. 

"Not knowing where to start: Business owners and managers know their businesses very well. But ask them to put their sales message or the benefits of working with their company down on paper, and they don’t know where to start."

In fact, it was to satisfy this very need to put a company’s message to paper that inspired the founding of Say It For You. Often, after months and even years of procrastination, some intense corporate blogging training sessions are enough to give business owners or managers a place to start in creating their own SEO marketing blog.

Business owners who realize they do not have the time or resources for corporate blogging for business invite me to discuss the business blogging service I provide,  They tell me they want to take advantage of every possible marketing angle in order to reach their niche market and help their business to get found online. They know adding even one more item to their already full plate isn’t going to be easy.

Steele’s advice on marketing: "First, be committed to making it happen.  Secondly, put in place either internal or external dedicated marketing resources.  By putting someone in charge of implementing your marketing plan, the odds of it happening go up significantly."

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Where Blog Content Writers Can Get Ideas

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What the Dog SawThe question author Malcolm Gladwell gets asked most often just happens to be the same as I’m most often asked when offering corporate blogging training sessions: "Where do you get your ideas?"

Gladwell’s conclusion, interestingly enough, is very similar to the one I discussed in my Say it For You blog post series, "Learning Around For Your Blog".  The way Gladwell explains it, "The trick is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell."

While the author is referring to making books and articles interesting for the reader, the challenge he pinpoints is precisely the one facing all blog content writers. "Our instinct as humans, after all," he observes, "is to assume that most things are not interesting."  I remind newcomers to corporate blogging for business that online searchers tend to scan rather than read.  That’s because, as Gladwell reminds us, "there’s just so much out there, so readers filter and rank and judge."

However (and here’s where Gladwell makes a point that’s absolutely germane to creators of SEO marketing blogs), "if you want to be a writer" (insert "blog content writer"), "you have to fight that instinct every day.’

Reminds me of something a waggish friend of mine used to say. "If your parents had no children, you won’t, either."  Point being, if you’re not keenly interested in your subject, chances are your readers won’t be, either.

The Gladwell bottom line for writing, as stated in the preface to his new book What the Dog Saw, is simply this: "Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade." (As an Indianapolis blog writer, I can assert that statement is particularly true. In offering business blogging help, I emphasize that in business blog writing, it’s crucial to avoid the urge to directly sell a product or service.)  "It succeeds or fails" continues Gladwell, "on the strength of its ability to engage you and to make you think." 

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Topical Business Blogging For Business’ Sake

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“Each post can be representative of a different type,” I reassured blog content writers in help lineWednesday’s Say It For You blog post, referring to Paul Gillin’s Secrets of Social Media Marketing in which the author outlines six or seven different categories of blogs.

One of Gillin’s categories is the topical blog. (In keeping with the advice I typically offer corporate blogging training session attendees, I kept Wednesday’s blog post to fewer than 350 words, and saved the elaboration for today.)

“It’s a wonder more companies don’t do it,” Gillin remarks about topical blogs, which he defines as one that “connects with customers about topics that are mutually interesting.” The purpose of a topical blog, he says is to “offer practical information that helps readers be more successful and productive, thereby associating the sponsor with that expertise.”

Two examples Gillin cites are Extended Stay Hotels’ Road Warrior Tips, which offers advice for frequent business travelers, and Clutter Control Freak by organizational accessories retailer Stacks and Stacks.

Serving as a “go-to” source for online readers can be a winning strategy for business owners, showcasing the blog content writer’s own expertise while offering useful, actionable, information to readers. Is this disingenuous? Not really.  As I explain when comparing blog posts to advertorials, when people go online to search for information about a product or service, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to capture business. 

But, if the information is relevant, helpful and useful, and if there’s no hint of a hard-sell, most readers are perfectly OK with the concept that the company offering them information would be happy to have them as customers. Most readers also understand they remain in control.  The choice is theirs to click through to the shopping cart or sign-up page – or click away!

So, go ahead, be helpful in your business blog!

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Isolating One Small Piece Per Post in Writing For Business

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painting of EmmaCelebrated portrait artist Chuck Close has a valuable lesson to teach business blog content writers, I think.  Close, whose story is told by author Kurt Anderson in Spark: How Creativity Works, reveals that as a student with learning disabilities, he would be overwhelmed by big projects. He found it helpful to isolate one small piece to work on “and forget about the rest of the picture.”

In offering corporate blogging training, one rule of thumb I often emphasize is focusing on just one idea in each blog post. Not only does this lend more punch to the post, it helps the blog content writer concentrate all his/her efforts around that one focal point, “forgetting about the rest of the picture”.

Fellow blogger Michael Reynolds, in his guest post on my Say It For You blog, suggests that  business blog writing can be broken down into two basic elements, idea generation and the writing itself. Rather than expecting to “sit down once a week and…magically produce great content out of this air”, Reynolds suggests capturing ideas that occur during a conversation or even in the shower, coming back to write them down later.

Another approach to finding “one small piece to work on” is to decide what “angle” or slant a particular post will have. Paul Gillin, in Secrets of Social Media Marketing, outlines at least six different types of blog. As an Indianapolis blogger offering blog writing services to small to medium-sized companies, though, what I’ve found is that even those who have embraced business blog writing will have just one blog rather than several.

However, I explain, even with just one blog, each post within the SEO marketing blog can be representative of a different type. Today’s blog post might be an advocacy post, “addressing a public policy upon which the company wants to make its position known.” 

Tomorrow’s might be a topical post, offering practical information that helps readers be more successful. Next week, there might be a CEO post, helping the executive connect with customers and shareholders. In fact, as a professional ghost blogger,my goal is to be the “voice” of the CEO or other officer, of the company in general, and sometimes of a customer for a testimonial.

As a freelance blog writer, then, I try to isolate “one small piece of the work”. Then, in corporate blogging training, I encourage blog content writers to focus each of their blog posts on one piece as well. Close discovered the technique by way of dealing with his learning disability. You don’t need to be learning-disabled, though, to realize that the one-topic-at-a-time  technique is excellent for sustained, effective, business  blog writing.


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Use Business Blogs to Give ‘Em Perspective Along With Information

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Driving along the other day with my car radio on but with my mind mainly focused on HOT AIR BALLOONavoiding potholes, I heard WIBC’s Denny Smith make what I thought was a profound comment. As a content writer in Indianapolis, I thought what Smith had said was extraordinarily relevant to anyone writing for business.

Referring to the economy and to the personal finance topic which is his specialty, Smith commented that people are looking to their advisors for more than just information – they need perspective.

That comment is so “spot on”, I thought, when it comes to blog content writing! Here’s why: The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate. The better websites give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers. In other words, it’s the SEO marketing blog that gives readers a deeper perspective with which to process the information. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?” 

Whether a business owner is composing his/her own blog posts or collaborating with a professional ghost blogger, it’s simply not enough to provide even very potentially valuable information to online searchers who’ve landed on a company’s SEO corporate blog. The facts (which are the raw ingredients of corporate blogging for business) need to be “translated” into relational, emotional terms that compel reaction – and action – in readers.
www.xsitemarketing.com agrees that “It’s all about perspective,” retelling a business story I’d heard years earlier.

A man in a hot air balloon, realizing he was lost, calls out to a woman on the ground, saying “I don’t know where I am.”  The woman answers, “You’re in a hot air balloon at 40 degrees north latitude and 60 degrees longitude.” “You must be in Information Technology,” cried the lost man. “I am,” replied the woman, “But how did you know?”  “You gave me technically correct information, but I have no idea what to make of it.”

In offering business blogging assistance, it’s important for me to stress this point. In corporate blog writing, keyword phrases can function like a hot air balloon, helping your corporate blogging content “get found” by readers. But, like the man in the balloon, readers need perspective to know where they ARE amidst all the facts you’ve provided!


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