Business Branding Tips For Business Blogging

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“If you are starting a new business or revitalizing an old one, the visual brand is an important part of the process,” writes my friend and local small business maven Lorraine Ball.  Just about all of the Roundpeg visual branding tips, I believe, are good rules to follow when creating business blog content.

Opt for simple (no more than two colors, no more than two fonts, avoid intricate details).

Opting for simple is a good idea when it comes to the design of the design of both the blog page itself and of individual posts, but perhaps most important, when it comes to the content.  As a business blogging trainer, I always advise that each blog post needs to emphasize and illustrate one – and, ideally, only one – key concept.

Be consistent across platforms.

Your logo should look good in black and white and in color, be recognizable when inverted or resized, explains Ball. To me, the blog content rule parallel to these cautions concerns themes.  Each blog post can deal with a concept or topic, but the best blogs have central themes running throughout all posts.  The themes represent the beliefs and the unique “slant” of the business owner or professional practitioner, and they are the “leitmotifs” that help the separate blog posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy.

Commit to the design.

Once you choose a logo, advises Roundpeg, use it everywhere – on letterhead, websites, invoices, business cards, t-shirts and coffee mugs. As a professional blogger, I think I understand why people loved Fred Astaire. – his singing had authenticity.  Commit to your own “themes”, the ideas that make you passionate about your business – and your very own way of doing business. Your ongoing blogging allows people to hear your distinct voice, and the concepts to which you’ve committed your business career!


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How To Curl Up and Dye in Your Business Blog

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On a recent jaunt to Shelbyville, Indiana, I saw a storefront sign that caught my blogging trainer’s eye: “Curl Up and Dye Salon”. Cute name, I thought. More important, the play on words engaged my interest because it presented a familiar phrase with a new twist.

Reinforcing the familiar, then progressing to new information is an effective tactic for business blogging as well. Starting with the “known” helps online searchers conclude they’ve come to the right place for the data, products, and services they need.  The new elements you introduce – specialized knowledge, expert “how-to” tips, unusual case studies – help distinguish you and your business from those of your competitors’.

Puns can add an element of humor in blog posts as well as reinforcing the familiar.
A sign at Ivy Tech Community College quotes Groucho Marx: “Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like bananas.” This one’s funny because it forces the reader to consider the two words “like” and “flies” in a new way. And, while a pun in itself doesn’t constitute a Call to Action, it can keep visitors engaged for the several additional seconds needed for them to reach the CTA in your blog.

Yahoo! News’ fashion comments on Michelle Obama’s skillful recycling of outfits can serve as a guide for business bloggers struggling to keep content fresh over periods of months and even years. Michelle’s “Reuse, Renew, Reverse” has style watchers fascinated by her ingenuity.  Wearing a navy sweater with the lace-up in the back one day, then laced in front over a blouse the next earned her the title “fashionista-in-chief” from reporter Claudine Zap.

In similar vein, bloggers for business need to learn to reuse and renew blog content in order to keep blog post #386 (which this post is for Say It For You) as interesting to readers as blog post #3!  Maintaining consistently high rankings on search engines depends in large part on longevity.  That translates into the discipline to post content on the web over and over again, over long periods of time. Reusing and especially renewing content is the secret.  As veteran country singing star Mel Tillis puts it, “Every time I walk out there, it’s a different audience.”

Business owners who can learn from the First Lady to “reuse, renew, and reverse” with style (all the while maintaining a Mel Tillis-like discipline) are rare. The task of long-term business blogging blogs might fall, in many cases, to professional ghost bloggers.



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Facts That Pay Interest in Your Business Blog

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My brother-in-law Joey passed along an interesting fact about the month of October 2010 that ended yesterday:

This October had five Fridays, five Saturdays, and five Sundays, all in one month.

(Joey then proceeded to explain the significance of that set of facts):

That happens only once in every 823 years.

(While I’m certain Joey hadn’t read my blog post about how important it is to explain to online readers why they should care about the information you’re presenting in your blog, he obviously understood the concept. In supplying facts, it’s important to put those facts in context.  As a business blogging trainer, I urge bloggers to demonstrate why the facts they’re offering might matter to readers, and to suggest ways that readers can use that information for their own benefit.)

The “once-in-823-years” part of Joey’s email, though, got me thinking about business blogs from an entirely new angle. I realized that, even had I known back in August or September that October 2010 would have five full sets of weekend days, the information would have had no practical application for me.  (Now, were I a party planner, a jazz band leader looking for weekend gigs, or a minister planning sermons, the data would have been highly significant.)

But (and this is the new insight I gained), it doesn’t matter that I can’t use the facts Joey provided about October, because the information is undeniably interesting!

In other words, engaging readers’ interest by including in your blog posts facts that are even loosely related to your industry is a fine tactic. That information, though, doesn’t always need to be actionable.  If the facts you present in your blog are intrinsically interesting, it’s worth including them. Why?  To add variety.  To make reading your blog posts fun. To demonstrate your own interest and knowledge in your field. 

Interesting facts pay “interest” in your blog.  Just because!

 

 

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Promising More or Less in Business Blog Titles

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In the top five on Father of Advertising David Ogilby‘s "to-do" list is "Promise a benefit".  While business blogs should resemble advertorials more than ads, blog marketers need to follow that rule religiously. A blog post can serve as a Call to Action only to the extent it promises readers a benefit in exchange for their progressing to some sort of next step. When you think about it, you’ll realize the blog post title in itself constitutes a set of implied promises:

If you click on this title…

  • …it will lead you to a blog post that in fact discusses the topic mentioned in the title (nothing worse than a bait-and-switch for turning away potential fans and customers)
     
  • …it will lead you to a blog post that explains how to obtain more of something desirable: More savings, more actionable knowledge, more confidence, more beauty, more health, more job security, more safety, more peer approval, more wealth.
     
  • …it will lead you to a blog post that explains how to obtain less of or reduce an undesirable effect:  Less pain, less illness, less hassle, less dirt, less germs, less risk, less fear, less itching, less harassment, less debt.
     
  • One popular misconception I run into as a business blogging trainer is that blog titles need to be what I would call "cutesy", meaning they have an enticing "ring" to them that arouses curiosity.

Cute is good, engaging curiosity even better.  Yet, above all, the click needs to end up (as Jerry Seinfeld’s only request is of airline pilots) where it says on the ticket! In the case of blog posts, when a reader clicks on the link on the results page, she needs to find material that is congruent with what the title promised would be there!

Leadership blogger Norm Smallwood explains that in the world of finance, value is based on a the market’s perception of whether a company is likely to keep its promises about future growth, cautioning that "a Level I (basic essential) for any company is to keep promises and deliver predictable and consistent results".

On perhaps a smaller but no less basic level, maintaining consistency – beginning with blog post titles, then to blog post content, and ultimately to delivering quality products and services to customers – is the only way for any business to become, and remain, valued in its marketplace.

It all starts with the implied promises in a blog post title (more or less…)!

 

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“Cut That Out!” Business Blogging

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“If it takes too many words to express a thought, perhaps you need to re-think,” a wise wag remarked. There’s more than a nugget of truth in that advice when it comes to choosing titles for business blog posts.

For one thing, as local small business consultant Lorraine Ball discovered, long titles don’t work well for promoting a blog on Twitter, with its 140-character limit. 

For another, while beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, length is in the eye of the searcher, who is far more likely to scan than to read.  Online searchers become impatient with long-text-heavy blog posts.

The dilemma, of course, concerns SEO, as Ball points out.  Content-rich headlines (especially keyword-rich headlines) work well for internet search if not for Tweeting and re-Tweeting.

As a business blogging trainer, my advice has been to make blog posts as long as they need to be, but not a word longer. In general, I’d say the same for blog post titles.

In fact, musing on this very topic while cutting Halloween pumpkin shapes out of cookie dough, I couldn’t help thinking that the shaping of blog posts – and blog post titles – works the same way.  Like cookies, they’re best when all the nonessential “dough” is cut away!  

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