Blogs Can Carry Heavy Weights On Their Heads

By the time they are young women, East African girls can carry up to 25% of their body weight on their heads, according to Don Vorhees, author of The Book of Totally Useless Information. The amazing thing is, those young women do this using no more energy than it would take to wear a straw hat.

I like to use this metaphor to illustrate some points about business blogging.  A small business owner’s or professional practitioner’s blogging efforts can have an effect on marketing results that is disproportionately larger than might seem possible from mere short, informal pieces of writing.

For business owners seeking to leverage their blog marketing efforts, it’s worth noting the secret behind the East African ladies’ carrying power: It’s their remarkable posture control, Vorhees points out.  "They form a rigid straight line between their vertebrae and pelvis."  With very little movement of the head, neck, or shoulders, their power is concentrated.  Westerners, Vorhees adds, tend to bob and dip when they walk, wasting a lot of energy.

Blogging is "leveraged" almost by definition.  Internet commentators David Verklin and Bernice Kanner (Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here) say blogging is part of "marketing to the moment of aperture", offering the right product or service at the right time before the right prospect. Because searchers arrive at the blog seeking information on exactly what you do, what you sell, or what you know, there’s a "rigid straight line" between the potential customer and your business!

At the same time, just as the East Africans maximize carrying power through focusing energy in a straight line, you can enhance the power of blog marketing through focusing each blog post on one central theme, then using key words to help direct traffic your way.

Blogging for business has a creative element to it, no doubt, as interesting, well-written content will engage readers and keep them coming back. Along with the art comes the science of blogging.  The science involves focusing on a theme and using key phrases to create that "pull marketing" power. 

The combination of art and science is the hallmark of East African basket-carrying and the hallmark of successful business blogging as well!


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Multi-Tasking For Blogs

Multi-tasking is the big word around job interviews these days. Most small business owners find themselves wearing many hats and playing many roles in running their business. It’s important for entrepreneurs to use a “multi-tasking” approach when it comes to their marketing efforts as well.

As I work with business owners on their blog marketing strategy, I’m finding at the start of the conversation that most are already fully aware that blogging has become an indispensable part of any business tool kit. The only problem is that their efforts are being devoted to playing all those different  roles just to keep the business running, and so they lack the time and inclination (and sometimes, as my clients readily admit, the talent) to compose blog posts.

I want to share a true marketing story, recounted in Don Voorhees’ The Book of Totally Useless Information, about Blue Bonnet Margarine.  During World War II, butter was in short supply, and the Standard Brands company decided to add margarine to its product list, sponsoring a contest to name the new spread.  A company employee in Texas suggested naming the margarine after his state’s flower, the bluebonnet. That was the winning entry, but, as Vorhees goes on to explain, the company “didn’t use a bluebonnet flower for the logo but opted to use a blond woman wearing a blue bonnet”. They had re-purposed the name!

Remember that blogs can multi-task and re-purpose, too. There’s more than one important way in which small business owners’ or professional practitioners’ business blogging efforts can have a disproportionately large effect on their marketing results.  As professional website copywriter and blogger Matt Rouge puts it, "Blog posts contain valuable information about your business and your industry.  This information may be further used in email and print newsletters, white papers, brochures, and other media."

The blog can reflect different aspects of the business and different personalities. 
Whether you propose to do the blog writing by yourself, have your entire team participate, or collaborate with a professional ghost partner like me, the content in the blog posts will be a way of continually thinking through and reinventing your business brand.

Then, the material in those posts can be used to market your business offline as well as in the blogosphere.

 

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Federal Food Guidelines For Blogs

In the U.S., processed foods are required to list ingredients on their labels, and the ingredients have to be listed in order of their weight in the final product. So, if tomatoes are listed first, that’s the main ingredient; if sugar heads the list of ingredients, that means there’s more sugar than any other substance in that product. It’s quite a simple concept, and one that’s paralleled in the way search engines evaluate and index blog posts.

When a search engine is visiting a website or blog, it reads the information on it, measuring the relevance of the material it finds to what the online searcher appears to be looking for. When the key words (which match what the searcher typed in) appear in the title of the blog post and towards the beginning of the text, it’s assumed that those are the “biggest deal”, indicative of what that blog post is mainly about.

There’s a second parallel I found between blogs and food labels. If a label says “Reduced Calories),that means that food product must contain one third less calories than a comparable, non-reduced-calorie food. By definition, blogs should be “reduced calorie” compared with corporate websites.  Blogs should contain at least a third less content than a promotional brochure or a website page, and should focus on one idea having to do with the business – highlight one product, one service, debunk one myth, one comparison, one testimonial from a customer, one true story, one link to a news story.

As a professional ghost writer of blogs, to me a “sugar free blog” is one that goes light on the hard-sell, and one that offers valuable free advice.

As blogging consultant Mack Collier points out, most companies spend too much time blogging about themselves.  The way to make blogs exciting, Collier advises, is by finding your "bigger idea".  In other words, rather than touting your company’s pet grooming product, blog about the proper way to groom pets. In business blogging, best to keep things lean and syrup-free!

There are no federal guidelines, I learned, for the use of the word “natural” on food labels. Many foods whose labels say “natural” contain artificial preservatives, artificial coloring, or artificial flavors. To me, "natural" in business blogging means to keep the tone informal, yet informative, giving your readers a “taste” of your personality, as well as the special personality and culture you’ve created in your culture.

In fact, the special challenge I love about my profession of ghost blogging is to capture the special flavor of each business in their blog posts!  In fact, one of my clients described it as follows: "I cook my own stew, and my ghost blogger adds the condiments, spices, and flavoring!" 
 

 

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Ghost Bakers And Ghost Bloggers Keep Legends Alive

Ghosts inhabit the kitchen as well as the blogosphere.  I don’t mean to burst anybody’s bubble, but Betty Crocker, whose face has adorned cake mix and flour packages for ninety years, never lived. She is, and always has been, a sales promotion, one of the most successful ever.

Things all started in 1921, when the Washburn Crosby Company, a forerunner of General Mills, was running a contest to complete a jigsaw puzzle of a flour milling scene. Thousands of entries came in, many with questions about baking problems. The company’s advertising manager thought it would be appropriate to have a woman answer those letters.  He chose the last name of a recently retired executive of the company, William Crocker, with Betty as a fictitious, friendly-sounding first name. A woman employee with a nice handwriting was chosen to sign “Betty Crocker.” Pretty soon “Betty Crocker was doing the nation’s first cooking show over the radio.  That show, the “Betty Crocker School of the Air”, ran for twenty four years!

By 1936, the company needed a face to go with the name. A portrait was commissioned blending the facial characteristics of several of the women employees (they didn’t have PhotoShop back then!). Over the years, “Betty” changed, becoming younger in 1955, more professional in 1980, and multicultural in 1996.

The point is, through the personality of Betty Crocker, Washburn Crosby Company and its successor General Foods Company were able to bring to millions of women a trusted kitchen friend.

As a ghost writer and ghost blogger, I’m sometimes asked how we do it.  How can we ghost bloggers write for business owners and professional clients without being trained in those fields ourselves?  A ghost blogger uses a “third ear” to understand what the client wants to say and to pick up on the client’s unique slant on his/her business or profession.

I’m the “Betty” for my business owner clients, answering their customers’ questions, and helping create a more personalized marketing conversation online. Often business owners and professionals, even if they enjoy writing blogs, lack the time to keep up enough “frequency and recency” to win the Internet search.

As I said in an earlier blog post, while I may not be a doctor, a lawyer, an auto mechanic, a telephone technology expert, a travel guide, a gourmet chef, or a tax expert – as a ghost blogger, I can still play one!  Just ask my ghostly colleagues Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemima!
 

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In Business Blogging, Which Counts Most – Content Or Couture?

PR consultant Mikal Belicove, writing in May’s Entrepreneur Magazine, encourages readers to "Start a blog for your business". Belicove runs through a list of blogging platforms, including:
 

Free hosted platforms:

  • Blogger
  • Live Journal
  • Vox


Premium hosted platforms:

  • WordPress
  • TypePad


Stand-alone platforms:

  • WordPress.org
  • Movable Type
  • (My Say It For You blogs are hosted by Compendium Blogware.)

Bellicove concludes his mini-tutorial by saying "As you blog, keep in mind that content is king.  Always post fresh, original, and relevant content, and your blog will soon build a loyal following."

(I was taught at a sales seminar to replace "Yes, but.." with Yes, and…), so here’s my "Yes, and.." on the subject of blog content:)
 
There’s a thing called "bounce rate", which is a metric search engines use in ranking blogsites.  Once having found your site, how long do readers stay there before "bouncing" away to someone else’s site?

With thousands of blog posts under my belt, one lesson I’ve learned is that if the typeface in your blog is too small, if the lines are too closely packed, if paragraphs are overly lengthy, those things are off-putting to blog visitors.   Illustrations, bolding, italics, bullet points – all the "couturier" touches are important in holding readers’ attention.

So, when all is said and done, which counts more – content or couture?  A great blog post will incorporate BOTH!

 

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