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????

Smaller Targets, Better Hits in Blogging for Business

March 4, 2015/0 Comments/in Business writing tips/by Rhoda Israelov

“No business can be all things to all people. The more narrowly you can define your target
market, the better,” according to Entrepreneur. com. “Rather than creating a niche, many
entrepreneurs make the mistake of falling into the ‘all over the map’ trap”, ” the authors continue.
In fact, they advise, these days the trend is toward smaller niches.

In a way, business blogs are the perfect marketing tool for niche markets. Remember that you, the business owner, are not going out to find customer through your blog content. Blogs
work the other way around, through “pull marketing”. The people who find your blog are those who are already online looking for information, products, or services that relate to what you
know, what you have, and what you do!

The other day I came across an excellent example of targeting a niche within a niche. AARP
Magazine had a full page article called “In Your 50s: 3 Supplements to Take Now”. Just think
about that for a moment. AARP is an organization for seniors, and today their magazine is
enjoyed by readers in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, not just their 50s. But in that issue, the focus
was on one niche within their readership.

Do you suppose the AARP editors worried about “turning off” the other 4/5 of their reader
demographic? Not at all. Those readers will expect to have their needs discussed in another
issue of the magazine.

In fact, that’s what I love most about blogging as a communications channel. Each post
can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business.
Other important things you want to discuss? Other segments of your market you want to
address? There will always be later blog posts!

Blogs are smaller, shorter and more centered around just one idea than e-zines or newsletters
or even web page content. And blog posts will stick around forever. Blogs can link to other blogs
and web sites, turning mini-power into maxi-power, and increasing exposure to the search
engines.

In darts, narrowing the target would make it harder to hit. In blogging for business, smaller targets can make for better “hits”!

Who’s Who Blogging for Business

March 2, 2015/0 Comments/in blog marketing/by Rhoda Israelov

I think the article “Who’s Who in Your Doctor’s Office” in AARP Magazine is
onto a good thing, using a concept that could be useful for us blog content writers.

“Back in the day, there were doctors and nurses,” AARP authors Sarah Barchus and Cady
Sagon explain. “Now a plethora of health care professionals may be caring for you. Here’s how
to keep them straight. .. ”

There follows a detailed description of what each professional wears (the length of the white
coat differentiates a physician’s assistant from a medical student, while technicians wear
scrubs), the level of education required for each position, and what each professional actually
does.

The tone of this article – well, I found it quite reassuring. As a consumer, I must say, it made me
feel “armed” with understanding.

That’s precisely the feeling tone I think every professional practice or business would like to
communicate to customers and clients, and one way to do that might be through writing “Who’s
Who in our business/our office/our industry” blog posts. Apart from the typical “Our Team”
landing page on your website, which introduces people by name with a brief bio, the “Who’s
Who” would focus on the function each position serves.

“Analytics and data give us all sorts of insiqhts into what our customers want from our business. But
sometimes … don’t you wish you could get an answer straight from your customers?” asks
KISSmetrics .. Why are people using one feature three times as often as another? What causes
customers to use your product less frequently (and eventually stop altogether)? When we match
customer feedback to what we’re seeing in our analytics, we get a much clearer picture of what’s
going on. Then we’ll know how to fix problems and go after the right opportunities, KISSmetrics
observes.

After dealing with Say It For You client companies representing dozens of different industries and
categories, I discovered that the feedback “loop” begins with customers knowing what to expect from each
department or each professional in the companies or practices with whom they’re doing business.

Helping your customers understand “Who’s Who”, I explain to blogging clients, will go a long, long way towards putting people at ease with your products and services. Over time, you’ll be arming your readers with information!

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