Six In A Fix For Blogs

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"Five in a Fix", a popular regular feature in the Indianapolis Star, gives homemakers ideas for cranking out quick dinners with just a handful of ingredients. In just fifteen minutes, I learned, I can turn four ingredients and a dash of spice into a chicken-with- tequila-and-lime meal for four (low-calorie, too).

Beginners to business blogging often confide in me they have trouble coming up with new ideas to keep their content fresh. I thought it might help to post "Six In A Fix For Blogs" patterned after the Star‘s quick dinner recipe idea.

On the one hand, each business blog post needs to keep a sharp focus, so that searchers quickly confirm they’ve come to the right spot for the information, products, and solutions they need. On the other hand, you want your blog to stand out, to be unusually interesting, so those searchers will be intrigued and read more.

So here are my Six In A Fix ideas so you don’t break rhythm in your business blog: 

#1 Debunking a myth
 
What’s a false impression people have that relates to your field or your product?

Educating your blog readers gives you chance to demonstrate your expertise.

The Bankruptcy Indiana blog debunks the common bankruptcy myth that if you’re married, both spouses must file bankruptcy.

#2  Tie-in to the news

Is there a front-page news story that has to do with a problem your company knows how to handle?

Recent Indiana headlines about the Environmental Protection Agency checking the indoor air quality in a Pittsboro elementary school gave Airflow Breeze a chance to showcase their attic booster fans and heat register boosters that help circulate the air inside your home.

#3  True life story

Tell the tale of a problem one of your clients or customers faced (names and exact details can be disguised) and how you came to the rescue.

Executive Speech coach Jean Palmer Heck tells a wonderful story about a mid-level manager who attended one of her Real-Impact training sessions "Imagine my surprise," she said, when he stood up to give his first speech and started sweating so badly that it dripped off his forehead like a sprinkler!"  Palmer Heck goes on to tell how that gentleman went on to win the "Most Improved" award!

#4  Startling statistic

Even if it’s not quite on the level of a Ripley’s Believe it or Not, quoting a statistic shows why you’re passionate about helping people in this situation.

Ron Sukenick, a business relationship strategies coach, tells us an important statistic:  Studies have shown that our knowledge and experience in our chosen field (the things Intelligence quotient or IQ measures) account for only 15% of success in the workplace.  The other 85% relates to people skills (measured by Personality Quotient or PQ.  That’s why, Ron points out, we need to reach beyond networking to connection, minding our PQ’s!

#5  Unlikely comparison

To help capture interest, put "ingredients" together that don’t seem to match, kind of like tequila and cumin in the chicken recipe.

 In one Say It For You blog post, I compared riders of segways, (the two-wheeled personal transportation devices that take riders directly where they want to go), to searchers on the web "navigating" to a business’ blog because of its relevancy to the topic they’re asking about.
#6  Famous people

6. Famous People

Relate a celebrity story to show how your service or product might have come in handy to solve the problem. 

A blog about SpeakAssured™, a bioceutical product that helps calm fear of public speaking, told the story of Barbra Streisand.  After forgetting the words to a song at a concert in New York in 1967, Streisand’s presentation phobia prevented her from singing in public until 1994! The blog post goes on to explain that one big component in the fear of public speaking is the worry of forgetting your train of thought. (SpeakAssured™, the blog goes on to say, helps enhance focus and memory.)

Need a "starter" for a business blog post?  Pull out Six In A Fix and you’ll be on your way!

 

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Blogs Invite Surfers To Scratchboard

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We business bloggers love to write, but we sometimes forget an important fact: online searchers don’t (at least not generally) like to read.

Instead, they scan to be sure your blog content:

         – answers their question

         – shows them how to satisfy their need

         – offers them a fresh approach to their problem.

In short, searchers scratchboard.

Scratchboarding, I learned much to my fascination, is an art technique that began back in 1864 in Austria. Indianapolis artist Rod-Man explains that the scratchboard itself is a piece of masonite covered in a thin layer of white clay. The clay is spray-painted with black India ink.  What the artist does is scratch off the ink to expose the clay underneath to create the image. Scratchboard artists tend to use homemade tools to create the art, everything from steel wool to fiberglass brushes to household utensils.

In fact, the first international exhibition of scratchboard art just concluded a run at the Dean Johnson Gallery in Indianapolis. Some of the scratchboard creations I saw took up almost the entire area of the board; others had a colorful image in the center surrounded by a sea of black.  So, even though the basic medium was the same, each piece of art seemed to approach the “board” in  unique fashion.

With scratchboarding fresh in my mind, I realized that the art form is an apt metaphor for the way people approach blogs. If our business blog content is fresh and relevant to the inquiry, readers won’t “bounce” quickly away to look elsewhere for the information they need.

But even those searchers who stick around awhile will use our blogs in individualized ways.  Some will follow each link, meandering through pages of related material, then come back to our blog to tie it all together.  Others might read scan straight through our 300+word offering, just “scratching the surface”. 

Wanting more, they might go back and follow some of the links we’ve provided to other sources. Hopefully, some will “etch” deeper, eventually arriving at our website.

Rod-man, a pipe-fitter and custom car painter by trade, says he’s choosing to express who he has become by doing his scratchboard art. “Many of my works end up with items from my day job included in the design.” (And here’s the part of Rod-man’s interview statement that really connects with blogging:) “I’m trying to persuade the viewer to slow down and take a closer look…My hope is that they will see something in a new light, from a different angle.” 

Isn’t that precisely the effect we business bloggers should try to create? We want searchers to get a sense of our unique approach to our business so they’ll know they’ve come to the right place to get answers, satisfy their needs, and find solutions to their problems. We business bloggers, I’ve concluded – we’re all just scratchboard artists in disguise!
 

 

 

 

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Why How You Say It May Mean What You Say In Your Blog

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Of the two types of people who make up the English-speaking world, I find myself among the  minority who believe proper grammar and spelling matter on business websites and in business blogs.

You might certainly attribute my near-obsession on the subject of good language usage to the fact that I’m a former teacher and current college mentor, but you’d be missing the point.  We’re talking about business blogs and websites here.  In discussions at networking meetings, I discovered, the mainstream mindset is that, in our digital world, nobody notices grammar and spelling errors, and if they did, they wouldn’t care about the matter.

However, through the twin miracles of business networking and online search, I was able to locate three grammar-conscious kindred spirits:

Indiana’s governor Mitch Daniels:
In his commencement address at last summer’s Ivy Tech Community College graduation, the governor urged young people to gain command of the English language.  He told them to drop expressions such as "You guys" and to stop inserting the word "like" in every sentence.  "Losing the like" should be a goal, Daniels said.

Robin Thompson, owner of Etiquette Network:
"People will judge you by the way you speak," says Thompson.  "Good grammar is representative of you and your character."

Carl Mattius, blogger:
"People have said that grammar and spelling don’t convey intelligence, but they do convey something.  If you’re not willing to take time to properly type out what you’re trying to say, why should anyone waste time trying to read it?"

In former blog posts, I did my best to impart the idea that when your blog is posted in the name of your business, you’re really "putting yourself out there".  (In fact, the World Wide Web is as far "out there" as you can get!) Here’s the thing: You always want to be sure poor usage and misspelled words aren’t distracting any of your readers, (even if most don’t notice and don’t care) from your business message.

My brother-in-law Joey sent me an email that made me realize there’s an even more important reason to use proper grammar and sentence structure – making your message clear.  The email contained a list of sentences that were actually typed by medical secretaries in Glasgow in reports to physicians:

"Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year."

"On the second day the knee was better and on the third day it disappeared."

"The patient suffers from occasional, constant, infrequent headaches."

"By the time he was admitted, his rapid heart had stopped."

"Discharge status:  Alive, but without my permission."

(Scary, isn’t it?  Our own doctors might be reading reports such as these…)

The bottom line for blogging is this: Words, along with the way they are used, are a blogger’s only tools for engaging readers.  If the message you want to convey (and I’m sure it is) is that every product and service you offer is a thing of excellence – use your own language with excellence!
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“Go”, “Slow”, And “Whoa” Tools For Blogs

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At Glen Cove Elementary School near El Paso, Texas, U.S.News.com reports, students learn about healthy eating by identifying "go", "slow", and "whoa" foods.  Rather than warning, cajoling, or teasing to motivate children to lose weight, (all of which have proven to be nonproductive tactics), the school is instead teaching "best practices" for health.

There are best practices in business blogging, too, and the  "go"-slow-whoa" grid is useful for new corporate and small business bloggers to use as a guide.
 

"GO"S FOR BLOGS:

Relevancy – Don’t waste searchers’ time.  Offer valuable, timely, usable information in your blog. Jennifer Benz in Employee Benefit Adviser Magazine warns: "In a world of information overload, the worst offense is being irrelevant."

Links – Read other bloggers’ posts and comment on them.  You can agree with the post, disagree, or just get an online conversation going on a topic. Make sure you’re writing a legitimate comment that adds value, not just promoting yourself, explain Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos in their book Blogging For Business.

"SLOW"S FOR BLOGS

Self-promotion – Talk sparingly about your products and services, always remembering your blog is not your advertisement or brochure.  "If you want to sell something, provide knowledge about the product", advises ProBlog Service. "If you’re a house painter, teach people how to paint a house."

Jargon and technical terms – Readers came to your blog to find information they can understand and use.  While you want to show that you know what you’re talking about, don’t make your text too "heavy" to absorb.

"WHOA"S FOR BLOGS

Disallowing comments – As Employee Benefit Adviser‘s Jennifer Benz puts it, "The days of simply broadcasting information…are over. You must engage in two-way conversation for communication to be truly effective."  Ironically, even critical comments are good for your blog by search engines’ standards.

Overusing key words –  Key words are your "traffic magnets", but your blog text needs to flow naturally, so the key words must be a natural part of the sentence.  If you overdo the key words, your blog will sound "spammy" and artificial instead of conversational.

Educators at Glen Cove are still working on winning the weight battle through best health practices and building good habits. Savvy blog marketing takes habit-building as well, working on a long term strategy in the "battle" to win search.

 

 

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Birds Do It, Bees Do It – Hire A Ghost Blogger, I Mean!

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If you decide to hire a professional ghost blogger or ghost Twitterer, you’ll be in prestigious company.  A recent New York Times piece informed readers that Britney Spears is advertising for someone to create content for her Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Politician Ron Paul’s way ahead of Britney, with staffers Tweeting and blogging away.    Rappers Kanye West and 50 Cent each use ghostwriters to keep up their blogs and Tweets, and no less a personage than President Obama employs a social networking team. Ghosts are in vogue!

"In its short history," relates the Times, "micro-blogging Twitter has become an important marketing tool for celebrities, politicians, and businesses."  However, explains reporter Noam Cohen, "Someone has to do all that writing."

A professional ghost blogger myself, I’m always on the alert for what others in my field are blogging – and for whom.  Guy Kawasaki, a new media consultant with a big following, has this to say about the two employees who post updates for him while he’s onstage addressing conference audiences: "For 99.9% of people on Twitter, it is about updating friends and colleagues about how the cat rolled over.  For a tenth of a percent, it is a marketing tool."

By contrast, for every one of my Say It For You business clients, blogs are marketing tools, and, believe me, "cats rolling over" have no place in the content of their blog posts…

The simple fact is, very few business owners can take the time to post relevant, new material on their business blogs with enough consistency to improve search engine rankings.  Recruiting  the right professional ghost blogger to join their marketing team is business owners’ way to reach potential customers and clients. To be sure, 140-character "Tweets" might be easier to manage, but search remains the fastest growing marketing tool of all social media, according to Chris Baggott’s Guide To Blogging, and Twitter is not designed to drive traffic to corporate websites.

A year ago, when debate was raging about whether Kanye West was writing his own blogs or whether a ghost blogger was the power behind the blogs, I commented: "It’s a matter of ‘So there you have it!’  Blogging works to drive traffic. Period."

Got ghosts?

 

 

 

 

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