Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

In How to Write Powerful Press Releases, Judith Welsh shares ten tips for success.  Accounting Today Magazine calls the book" a valuable resource for selling yourself, your product, or your service," Since business blogging is designed to accomplish exactly those three things, I thought, let’s see how the tips apply to the writing of effective business blog posts.  (In keeping with my own advice on Monday about keeping posts short by dividing content into more than one "installment", I’m going to discuss only the first five tips today.)

Make sure the information is newsworthy.
Since online searchers are already in the market for what you have to sell, what you know about, and what you know how to do, simply focus your blog post on providing useful, relevant information on your topic.

Tell the audience the information is intended for them.
By using keyword phrases in the title and in the first sentences of the blog post, you can assure readers they’ve come to the right place to get information related to their online inquiry. 

Ask yourself, "How are people going to relate to this and will they be able to connect?"
One suggestion is to open your blog post with a "grabber" question such as "Have you been concerned about……..? Now, there’s a solution….".   Or, "Have you tried and tried to find…..  At ACB Company, we’ve found a way….."

Make sure the first ten words of your release are effective, as they are the most important.
Since online searchers tend to be scanners rather than readers, you have only a few seconds to engage their interest and attention, so that they do not "bounce" away to other websites or give up their search altogether.

Avoid excessive use of adjectives and fancy language.
Direct, simple, businesslike language is a good idea for most kinds of business writing, and that goes double for blogs. Publicity Insider.com uses a press release for KitchenAid coffee makers as a positive example of this kind of writing:

"Flat brew baskets help maximize flavor extraction from the coffee grinds,while refined shower heads provide optimum steep time."

Business press release or business blog – in a way, the goals as shown in these five tips is the same: 

Demonstrate the particular expertise and history of your company or your professional service and how you differ from the competition in approach, product, expertise, or price.

 

 

There are almost as many different opinions about the best way to write blogs as there are on recipes for "absolutely the best" apple pie. Much of the debate centers around the ideal length for a blog post, with one touted rule of thumb being to keep the post short enough so readers don’t need to scroll down to read it all.

Based solely on my own years of experience as a professional ghost blogger for business and in writing this Say It For You blog on the topic of business blogging, my answer to the length dilemma is simple: Make each post as short as possible (to get your idea across), but no shorter.

Fellow blogger Jameiah Earle, in Literary Kicks, calls pieces of fiction having fewer than 1,000 words "micro" or "flash fiction". When it comes to blogging for business, Inbound Marketing authors Halligan and Shaw stress that "people searching on Google are actually looking for something" and have a specific goal. As you make decisions about your blog posts (including how long each post should be), your goal must be to satisfy theirs, reassuring readers they’ve come to exactly the right place.

Here’s one practical suggestion for keeping your blog copy "tight" and on target:  If you’ve explained the first of several:

• reasons why a certain thing is important…..
• myth-busting facts about your industry…
• customer stories or testimonials you have to share…,

just "push away from the table", as your diet coach might advise.  Leave some of your thoughts on the subject for another blog post, splitting your content into more than one "installment". Each part of the "mini-series" should be able to stand on its own, yet a post might be continuing a thought from an earlier blog post, or promising more on the subject to be expressed in future blog post.

Small business consultant Lorraine Ball, invited to be a guest blogger on Say It For You, explained that using Twitter with its 140-character limit  has made her a better writer overall, training her to look at every word and consider the value it adds to a sentence.

Unlike Twitter, blogs, at least theoretically, are subject to no length limits.  However, when it comes to business blogging, it might be a good idea to slice up the "pie", and that half a slice is better than one!