For Business Blog Content Writers, the Practice is in the Doing!

April 16, 2015/0 Comments/in Business writing tips/by Rhoda Israelov

“How much time does it really take to get great?” A lot, according to Mental Floss’ Magazine’s “Genius Guide to Success”, if you judge by the routines of various prodigies.

Mathematician Paul Erdos put in 19-hour days, publishing 1.525 academic papers.
Jonas Salk spent 16 hours a day for seven years researching the polio vaccine.
Tightrope walking Nik Wallenda practice 3-4 hours every day before walking between Chicago skyscrapers.
Stash of Guns ‘N Roses practiced 12 hours a day.
Jerry Seinfeld practiced 200 times before his first comedy set on The Tonight Show.

In contrast to that reality, admit the Mental Floss authors, a 2014 study showed that practice accounts for only 12 percent of mastery.

After almost ten years of blog content writing and training others to write corporate blog content, I’d have to say the old saw about practice makes perfect definitely applies. There’s a difference, though. For content writers, practicing consists of actually writing and posting, not in getting ready to do that at some later time!

Years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them felt they could take the time to compose and post content on a regular basis. I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

Going back to the example of Jerry Seinfeld’s practicing 200 times before his Tonight Show appearance, Seinfeld understood drill sergeant discipline as well. He’d figured out that the way to be a better comic was to write better jokes, and that the way to do that was to write jokes every single day. For every day he writes, Jerry puts a big red X on his wall calendar, and all that matters is not breaking that chain of X’s.

That’s a good model for blog content writers, I’d have to say. Far too many business owners start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. On the other hand, we bloggers get more of a “shot” with readers than we think. In any one post, we have hardly as much “on the line” (pun intended) as a Nik Wallenda. Sure, we strive for high quality in every single post, but there’s always tomorrow or next week to complete the thought, clarify, and bring in more information.

We’re lucky. As content writers, we get to practice AND perform at the same time!

The Way to a Blog Readers’ Heart is Through a Story

April 14, 2015/0 Comments/in blog marketing/by Rhoda Israelov

“Stories can be short quips or quick examples that help customers understand why they should care,” says international communications coach Karen Friedman. Stories are must-haves for speakers, Friedman observes.

As blog content writers, we need to pay attention to the research findings Friedman shares about the power of stories. In a study performed at the University of Pennsylvania, subjects were divided into three groups. Participants were each given $5 and told they would be learning about a certain charitable organization. After the presentation, they would be given the choice of contributing all, some, or none of their $5 to that cause.

Group A was shown lots of data, including how long the charity had been in existence, the size of the organization’s budget and staff, their funding sources, and the like.
Group B heard a story about the plight of a young girl and how she was helped by that organization.
Group C was given both the data and the story.

The results? Those in Group A gave the smallest amount. Group B participants, who’d heard the story, gave the largest amount. And Group C? Apparently the data neutralized the emotional effects of the story, because those in the C Group gave a very small amount.

Friedman reminds her speaker trainees of what Oscar-winning producer Peter Gruber said: “Hits are made in the heart, not in the head.” She urges salespeople to “think of the story you want people to hear”.

As a freelance SEO copywriter, I couldn’t help thinking that if the power of story is to be directed towards the marketing strategy and tactics development of any business, there’s nowhere that power is a better fit than in corporate blog writing. Blog posts must be effective by presenting stories that in themselves are calls to action for readers.

If you are using blogging as a key tool in your marketing strategy, make sure you’re harnessing the emotional power of story.

What’s the First Step to Writing a Blog? Writing!

April 7, 2015/0 Comments/in blog marketing/by Rhoda Israelov

“What’s the first step to writing a joke?” asks Kumail Nanjiani, actor on HBO’s Silicon Valley. “Realizing that writing is work,” he concludes. “You write and you write and you rewrite.” In short, he explains, you develop a work ethic.

Asked whether he emulates Stephen King (who won’t stop until he’s written 2,000 words that day), Nanjiani replies that his own rule is to write first thing in the morning, for at least ten minutes.

That’s a good model for blog content writers, I’d have to say. Far too many business owners start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. Daily blogs become weekly blogs, and pretty soon, months go by between blog posts.

In fact, my company Say It For You was founded to provide professional writing services to business clients, where the owners’ attention was constantly drawn away from content creation because they were putting out fires, making sales, and dealing with personnel issues.

Nanjiani actually has a second content creation job, in that he hosts a podcast for X-Files fans. To prepare, he goes through several steps, all of which could be valuable for business blog content writers (whether those are the business owners or professional practitioners themselves, or freelance content writers they’ve hired).

“I look up reviews to see if there are aspects I’ve missed.”
“I look up interviews with the writers.”
“I look at Google message boards to see what people were saying at the time each episode aired.”
“I look for discourse on the Internet” that happened later on.”

That’s precisely the depth of preparation that it takes to sustain a marketing blog over long periods of time. Reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to your business field goes a long way towards keeping the blog “quiver” stocked with content ideas.

Nanjiani knows he needs to look for ongoing “discourse” – to find out what’s being said online, NOW, about his topic (in his case, the X-Files)?

Blogging for business means knowing what’s being said by competitors, what’s trending, what aspects of your field are being discussed. It’s much more than just studying analytics reports – it’s asking the questions so as to become part of the answer.

What’s the first step in writing a blog? Blogging!

De-cluttering a Business Blog Post

March 31, 2015/0 Comments/in Business writing tips/by Rhoda Israelov

When my latest issue of the Tucker Talks Real Estate newsletter arrived in the mail, it was a wakeup call. “At the end of the workday,” the lead article read, “you’re ready to leave behind the endless barrage of emails, conference calls, and meetings.” There are steps I could follow, the author reminded me, to make my home a more tranquil place, starting with reducing clutter.

It occurs to me that business blogs could use some de-cluttering as well, and I wanted to share my ideas on that with my business owner and professional practitioner readers, as well as with other freelance content writers.

The concept is that, once you’ve built up a nice collection of posts in your business blog (congrats to you – most bloggers abandon ship after a few months), it’s time to make a commitment to keeping the blog organized, clean, and easy on the eyes.

“Get rid of things you don’t need or use,” is Tucker’s advice, “and find a place for everything else.” One form of “cleaning house” for us blog content writers is to re-categorize. Hopefully, using the blogging platform software, every blog writer has “filed” each post in a “category drawer”. But, just as happens at home, where somehow spare toothbrushes get put in the sock drawer, posts were “misfiled”. It’s a great idea to systematically re-read each of your past posts to see what main theme or “leitmotif” each one actually emphasizes. That, in turn, allows you to reduce the number of categories, which not only makes the blog more useful to readers, abut more “tranquil” for you as you create and file new material.
Minimizing “clutter” in blog content itself doesn’t necessary mean chopping the number of words (although Meryl K Evans advises bloggers to “shoot for 500 words or less, because “Readers want to get to the heart of the matter and get out.”) It’s more about making the posts readable and easier to look at, with shorter paragraphs, photos, bullet points and bolding.
Does that Tucker advice to “get rid of those things you don’t need or use” apply to your blog posts? Yes and no. No, you don’t want to send old posts to the trash heap, because they are part of the “equity” you’ve built up in using your keyword phrases. But, yes, you need to revisit your strategy – are you promoting the blog on the “right” social media platforms (the ones where your target customers “hang out”)? Are you establishing a clear navigation path from the blog post to the right landing page on your website? Has your target readership changed?

No way around it – from the cabinets under our kitchen sink to our business blog content writing (including both past and future posts) – it’s time we spent time de-cluttering!

Did That Business Blogger Know What They Were Doing???

March 23, 2015/0 Comments/in Business writing tips/by Rhoda Israelov

Adam Davis of Buzz Feed shows video clips, in each of which a famous movie actor is committing some sort of grammar “crime”. For example, we see Meryl Streep remarking, “That person knew what they were doing.”

“’They’ is plural, so unless you’re talking about more than one person, you need to say ‘he’ or ‘she’”, explains Davis.

Y’know, that he/she/you/one thing seems to come up a lot in blog content writing. I hate to think I’m one of those people Lauren Davis of i09.com says is not being helpful, who are just asserting their perceived linguistic superiority, and I’d hate for business blog content writers I’d helped train to write stuff that packs the punch of a very boring textbook.

Of the two Davis bloggers (Adam and Lauren), I tend to side with Adam, who apparently realizes that grammar mistakes in content writing for business are very much like wardrobe mishaps, in that they call attention away from the kind of impression we intend to make on behalf of our businesses or professional practices.

Women’s Lib turned out to have created some new problems for writers. “When I was growing up,” observes Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, “the automatic choice would have been the male pronoun.” Streep would’ve said “That person knew what HE WAS doing.” “They” is an awkward choice when Streep is talking about one person, and using “she” no matter what gender “that person” actually was is even more awkward, I suppose.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s CliffsNotes agrees that remedying the problem of gender bias in pronouns isn’t easy. “When possible, rewrite sentences using third-person plural forms,” they advise. “Diplomatic people keep their opinions to themselves.”

Did THOSE business bloggers know what THEY were doing????

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