Stop-And-Go Blogging Slows Traffic

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The other morning, listening to the radio in my car on my way to meet one of my ghost blogging clients, I heard a traffic alert.  The announcer was warning listeners to stay away from the vicinity of Southport Road and Madison Avenue (on the south side of Indianapolis), warning of stop-and-go traffic there. Grateful my route wouldn’t pass anywhere near that intersection, I pictured being in a line of cars moving two or three feet, then having to stop, then moving another couple of feet and again having to stop – you know the drill, where it takes an hour to get to a place ten minutes away.  It’s hard to think of a less productive way to spend time than that.


You need to know that, when a professional ghost blogger like me hears the word “traffic”, another kind of traffic comes to mind.  Remember that business bloggers care about one thing most of all, and that’s increasing traffic – only what we mean is driving traffic to websites.  The more people that click on a business’ blog, the more those searchers become engaged with the content of the blog, the more traffic will flow to the website.


Now, one of the main keys to traffic on the Internet is offering valuable content.  Yaro Starak, “The Blog Traffic King“, says “If you do nothing else for your blog but write quality content, you will get traffic.”  But then blogging expert Ted Demopoulos adds (see What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging And Podcasting) “Keep that posting consistent and even….posting only four or five times a month will cause you to lose readership.”  Demopolulos is referring to frequency, one of the variables Google and other search engines measure in ranking a blog.  Blogging three to five times per week is recommended to keep traffic flow smooth.


Business owners who make blogging part of their routine are able to make blogs pull their weight as part of an overall business marketing strategy.  Professional ghost blogging services can help make blogging work for business owners who lack the time to maintain the schedule of writing and posting blogs.  One thing’s pretty clear – stop-and-go driving slows everything down, but, now frequency – that’s what puts your blog in the express lane!

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In Blogging, Keep The Love, But Lose The “Like”!

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A joke I remember from years ago has a man knocking at the gates of Heaven.  “Who’s there?” asks St. Peter.  “It is I”, comes the response.  In the punch line, St. Peter says, “Go away! We have too many English teachers here already!”  (Okay, I confess; my B.A. degree is in English Education, so, while many people may chuckle at this joke, I “resemble that remark”!)

 

Anyway, the point I want to make in sharing this old chestnut is that, when a blog is posted in the name of your business (or, for that matter, when you put out brochures, design your website, or do print advertising), you’re really “putting yourself out there”. In fact, with blogging, you’re putting yourself out there on the World Wide Web.  Yes, I know I always write about how a blog should be less formal than other marketing pieces, more conversational and more personal.  And granted, it may feel much more natural and conversational to simply say “It’s me!” rather than the stuffy-sounding “It is I.”

 

But, here’s the thing: You always want to be sure that poor usage and misspelled words aren’t distracting the reader and taking away from your business’ message. And, while stilted and over-formal language can be a distraction, poor grammar and misspelled and misused words can be an even worse one. Think about a great after-dinner speaker  delivering a great motivational message. If only you weren’t distracted by that stain on his tie or the popped button on her blouse!

 

Last spring at the Ivy Tech Community College graduation ceremony, I heard Indiana’s Governor Mitch Daniels express the same idea, stressing in his commencement address how important it was going to be to students’ future success for them to gain command of our English language.  He pointed out the unfortunate habit many young people have of inserting the word “like” into every sentence, and admonished graduates, as they embarked on their careers, to “lose the ‘like'”!

 

Good command of language counts in blogging.  In fact, words are a blogger’s only tool to engage readers and drive traffic to the website. Shouldn’t you sound down-to-earth, friendly and approachable, rather than stuffy or stilted or formal? By all means!  You want your customers and clients to l-o-v-e doing business with you. But be very careful not to distract the visitor’s attention with shoddy use of the English language.  The message you want to convey is that every product and service your business has to offer is a thing of quality.  In all your marketing materials, and particularly in your blog, keep the “love”, but, as the Mitch Daniels says, lose the “like”!

 

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“On Blog?” “Blog On!” “Climb?” “Climb On!”

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I’ve said it before in Buildings, Like Blogs, Can Be Interactive: it takes two to blog – the blogger (or ghost blogger) and the searcher.  That’s because the whole purpose of blogging is to establish a communications link between a business and potential customers of that business.  Unlike brochures, billboards, or print ads, blogs are meant to start a conversation, answer questions, and generally get a two-way “thing” going.  After all, the person browsing online arrived at that particular blog because something that business blogger knows or something that business blogger sells matches up with something the searcher came online to find in the first place!

 

I was thinking about that two-way aspect of blogging the other day while watching Butler University College of Business freshmen prepare to navigate the high ropes course as part of their Freshman Business Experience (an all-day orientation exercise to build leadership and team-working skills).  Before each student began climbing the sailors’ rope ladder up to a platform 38 feet above the ground, the belayer offered coaching and safety instructions.  In the sport of climbing, I learned, “belaying” refers to the technique of controlling the rope that is attached to the climber’s harness, so the climber cannot fall very far.

 

Communication between climbers and belayers, we were told, is absolutely critical.  Climbers were taught to wait for verbal confirmation from their belayer that everything was in place for a safe climb.  The student would call out, “On belay?”, then wait for the belayer to respond with “Belay on!”.  As a second check, the student would then ask, “Climb?”, and then wait for the belayer to answer “Climb on!”.

 

Blogging doesn’t involve such formal exchanges between blogger and reader.  But, as a professional ghost blogger, I’m keenly aware of the parallels between blogging and belaying when it comes to two-way communication.  Business blogging involves another sort of climb, using SEO (search engine optimization) techniques with the goal of having the blog “climb” towards the top of Page One on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or other search engine.  The higher the placement or “ranking”, the closer the blog is to “winning search”.

 

But, just as a rope climber can’t make it to the top without input from the belayer, blogs are indexed based on their relevance to what searchers want to find.  The more visitors click on the blog, the longer those visitors stay around reading the blog itself, the more comments visitors post, the more they move on to the website of the business that posted the blog, the more “feeds” customers request to their email or to their own websites, the more these visitors “belay” the blog “climber” and help it reach a higher internet ranking.  Bloggers can’t climb until readers encourage them by saying, in essence, “Climb on!”.

 

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Some People Want To Blog Because It Works!

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The other day I mentioned author Seth Godin and the names he’s coined for different categories of blogs. Well, the same Seth Godin’s got a blog of his own that I find fascinating.  He blogs about selling, he blogs about raising money for causes, about time management – I mean, Seth Godin’s got advice on a whole host of topics, and I almost always find it advice worth heeding.

 

One of Seth’s recent blogs might have been written with me in mind. You see, as a professional ghost blogger, I not only spend a good deal of time planning, researching, and writing business blogs, I spend a considerable amount of time discussing blogging with folks who’ve heard about blogging, but aren’t 100% sold on this new marketing tool.

 

Just as Seth divides blogs into categories, he divides people into categories, too, remarking there are four kinds of people in the world.  Some people want to do things because they are interesting. Some people want to do things because everyone else is doing them. Some people are satisfied/scared/shy/lazy and don’t do anything. And then, explains Godin (this is the part I really like), some people want to do things because they work!

 

In one of my own earlier blog posts, For Songs Or Blogs, Success Proves The Best Silencer Of Critics, I drew a parallel between ghostwritten songs that brought success to the artists who performed them, and ghostwritten blogs that contribute to the success of a business.  I stressed the idea that, if consistent, targeted blogging honestly speaks a corporation’s message, whether written word-for-word by the business owner or in cooperation with a professional ghost blogger, it can lead to long-term marketing success for that business.

 

Effective blogging takes a lot of effort.  So, what I tell business owners is this:  Don’t blog because you heard about it and it sounds interesting.  Don’t blog because everybody else is doing it.  Blog because – blogging works!

 

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Cat Blogs And Boss Blogs Are Fine, But Viral Blogs Mean Business

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Author and marketing guru Seth Godin says there are three types of blogs: cat blogs, boss blogs, and viral blogs.

 

We’ve all come across cat blogs, which Godin describes as personal and idiosyncratic. From the looks of those blogs, you might say they were written purely out of the need for self expression, or perhaps to gain converts to the writer’s way of thinking on a particular topic. When a couple I know took a cruise to Alaska earlier this year, they created a blog to keep friends and family current on their adventures. That was a cat blog.  Other bloggers comment on everything from the weather to what they had for breakfast that morning.

 

Boss blogs are written by people who work together, and those blogs are used to share ideas with team members.  There needn’t be a boss involved, says Godin, but I imagine bosses might share their ideas with subordinates through a boss blog. I was involved in a textbook writing and editing group, and the group leader used a blog to coordinate the various steps of that project.

 

It’s the viral blog category in which my professional ghost writing business, Say It For You, is involved. Godin explains that viral blogs are used to spread ideas, so I imagine that might include political or religious blogs.  But what each of my business clients is interested in is spreading the word about what they know, what they know how to do, and what they sell.  In other words, I’m a blogger for business, and business blogging is viral blogging.

 

One thing worth mentioning is that effective business blogging has a little bit of “cat” in it. In talking about business blogging, I always come back to the idea that blogs are much more informal and much more personal than brochures, advertisements, commercials, billboards, or websites. In a well-done business blog, even though it’s viral, you can sense the personality of the business owner reaching out to connect with the reader.  There’s often quite a bit of “boss” in a business blog, too, because an effective business blog is sharing valuable information and knowledge.

 

In How Say It For You Was Born, I described the qualities that make for a great ghost blogger.  A ghost, I said, uses her “third ear”, hearing not only what the business owner wants to say, but picking up on that business owner’s unique style and business culture. Armed now with Seth Godin’s blog monikers, I can add that a professional ghost blogger must inject a little “cat” and a little “boss” while spreading the “virus” and bringing in business!

 

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