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What-Are-We-About Blogging for Business

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blog mission statement
Painted on a wall at the Cleveland airport, I discovered what could serve as the perfect model for introducing a blog. After all, when the owners of a business or professional practice have made the decision to include blogging as a key factor in their marketing plan, they need to tell their online visitors why. 

   Rock & roll is not an instrument. Rock & roll is not even a style of music; rock & roll is a spirit.   It’s been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul R&B, rock & roll, heavy metal, punk rock and yes, hip hop. And what connects us all is that spirit…rock & roll is not conforming to the people that came before you, but creating your own path in music and in life. That is rock & roll. And that is us.
                                                                              Ice Cube, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, 2016

At Say It For You, I provide business blogging assistance to business owners and their employees, and the Ice Cube piece reinforced my idea that blog content writers need to “introduce” themselves. Think about it – in business blogs, readers are often asked to subscribe to the blog, pose a question or comment, sign up for a mailing list or newsletter, or buy products or services. But readers need to be given a reason to do those things, and the “because” needs to explain what the principles are which will be reflected in the content of the blog.

Fellow blogger Rick Short, Indium Corporation’s Director of Marketing Communications, says that, before beginning a business blog, it’s important to have a goal and then work backwards. Short lists the four P’s of blogging:

Point
If your blog doesn’t have a specific point, don’t even start.
Passion
If you don’t have a burning passion about the topic, don’t even bother.
Personality
A blog needs opinion, likes and dislikes, not just a dry, dull review of the facts.
Perseverance
If you can’t keep up the discipline of posting frequently, find a new hobby!

The Ice Cube piece, while not a blog post, certainly covers the first three of those basics.  The writer’s passion is obvious, and Ice Cube’s clearly giving readers a taste for the animating “spirit” of Rock & roll. Now a blog would fill in different details and pieces of information, but all of that content would flow from the original “what-are-we-about” piece.

A personal injury attorney explains what his practice is “about:
“In my line of work, which includes helping victims of sexual assault and abuse, I’ve learned that life can be brutal, but the process of seeking legal remedy need not be. Being a guy who still values old-fashioned, face-to-face client service, but who still tries to keep up with modern technology, I decided a blog would be just one more way to get our message out to the people who need to hear it. I want the sexual abuse portion of our blog to reach folks who know they need to speak out about what happened to them or to someone they love. They need to know that victims may be entitled to financial compensation, which can help them rebuild their lives…”.

A tree trimming company explains why they are offering a blog:
Our goal here is to keep you informed about tree health, tree safety, tree trimming, tree and stump removal, other tree services, and Indiana Strong’s dedicated team of tree service professionals. But most of all, this blog will be about you, because we want to help you make informed choices for your home and family.

Before showing them what your business blog posts are going to be about, tell ‘em what you’re all about!

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Do-You-Know-the-Difference Blogging for Business

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White tea is made from young leaves, green tea from more mature leaves, with the white  named after the silvery-white hairs on immature buds on the tea plant.

Does the difference matter? According to the Beverage Guidance Panel, which includes the chair of the nutrition department at Harvard University School of Public Health, white tea blocks more than 100% of DNA damage in vitro against cooked-meat carcinogens, while green tea blocks only about half.

Enhanced meat is fresh meat that has been injected with a solution of water and other ingredients such as salt, phosphates, and flavorings. According to the USDA, about 60% of all raw meat and poultry products have been injected with or soaked in a salty solution. If you’re trying to control the levels of sodium in your diet in order to reduce blood pressure, opt for labels such as “contains up to 4% retained water”

Helping online readers know the difference is certainly a core function of blog content writing. Exactly what factors distinguish your products and services from everyone else’s?  Even more important, why should those readers care?

Sometimes, to add variety to an informative blog post, you can “season it” with an interesting tidbit. Speaking of salt levels in meat, for example, you might mention that the number one use of salt in the United States isn’t related to food at all!  According to the U.S. Geological Survey, almost half of our salt goes towards de-icing roads.

In fact, corporate blogging training sessions, I often recommend including interesting information on topics only loosely related to the business or practice. If it’s information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, so much the better, because that tidbit can help engage online readers’ interest.

The word salary, for example, comes from the word “salt”, because in ancient Rome, soldiers had to purchase their own food, including salt. We’ve all heard individuals described as “not worth their salt”.

“The toughest job selling value to customers is getting them to picture the full depth and breadth of everything your company has to offer,” Tim Donnelly writes in Inc. magazine. In other words, customers need to “know the difference” and then understand why that difference matters!

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Monikers and Sobriquets in Business Blog Content Writing

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“The key trait of nicknames is that they are bestowed upon a person by others,” Richard Lederer points out in The Joy of Names, and for three main motivations:

  • affection
    ridicule
    group identity

Nicknames may be related to:

  • physical characteristics (Blondie, Red)
  • mental characteristics (Brainak, Noodlehead)
  • personality (Grumpy, Nerd, Nervous Nellie)
  • shortening of a proper name (Dave, Fran, Rich)

It can be important to us as business blog content writers, for variety’s sake, to use different monikers for both products and people (whenever the connotation is flattering, of course!). “Learn to love your thesaurus,” advises Tracy Gold of the Content Marketing Institute, especially when it comes to composing titles. There aren’t many words in blog titles, she says, so it’s important to choose exactly the right words.

Getting personal is a huge element in the success of any marketing blog, fellow blogger Michael Fortin reminds us. Sharing anecdotes about the guy or gal on your team who is the “codemaster”, computer genius, the “energizer,” the “fashionista, or the “financial wizard” helps humanize promotional content…

“Hollywood’s star-makers capitalize on the fact that people react emotionally to names,” Lederer explains. A name with box-office appeal projects the kind of image a star wants to radiate.

Stories about names and nicknames make for very engaging content, whether for history books or business blogs.  Harry S Truman decided his middle initial would have no period, because it wasn’t an initial for a particular name, but a compromise between the names of his two grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator, Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Rider, and Ronald Reagan the Gipper. Mark Twain became such a well-known nickname that few remember the real name, Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

What stories of nicknames, monikers, and sobriquets are just waiting to be told in your business blog?

 

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Top Ten How-To Titles in Blogging for Business

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There’s a reason “how-to” blog post titles work, marketing gurus Guy Kawaski and Peg Fitzpatrick show in their user guide on social media. How-to titles might start out with those very words, or take forms such as:

  • Quick Guide to…..
  • Complete Guide to….
  • Questions to Ask Before…
  • Rules for….
  • Essential Steps to….
  • Most Popular Ways to…..
  • Tips for Busy……..
  • Tactics to….
  • What No One Tells You About……..

There’s a “biology” to selecting effective business blog post titles, I wrote in a blog post some five years ago. (Since, as blog content writers, one big challenge we face is selecting the best title for each post, I had found an exercise in an Ivy Tech Community College textbook in which students were to select the best out of four possible titles for an article about humpback whales.)

In composing business blogs, I reminded my Say It For You readers, we need to keep several goals in mind:

  • write engaging titles
  • include keyword phrases to help with search
  • be short and to the point
  • use power words

The overriding goal, though, in composing a title, I pointed out, has to be making promises we are going to be able to keep in the body of the blog post itself.

The correct answer in that student textbook was #3: “The Digestive System of the Humpback Whale”. That’s the one, the writer explained, that includes the writer’s focus in the paragraph.  The other titles were either too broad, too specific, or limited to only a portion of the paragraph’s content.

The best “How-to”s are neither too broad nor too limited. They have a “news-you-can-use” feel. The response you’re after from readers is, “Aha! “I have found the right place to get the information I need.

There are lots more How-to titles where those Top Ten came from, Kawaski promises. In fact, he’s got a chart of no fewer than “74 Compelling Fill-in-the-Blank Blog Post Titles” on a Twitter infographic. Try these on for size:

  • Key benefits of….
  • Essential things for….
  • Examples of things to inspire you…
  • Key benefits of….

How-to titles are the perfect tool in blogging for business!

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Steps to Light Up Your Place in the Blogosphere

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blogging with intention
In coaching financial advisors, John Bowen Jr. writes in Financial Planning, he found that the most successful individuals had a secret weapon at their disposal: the power of their presence. Bowen names steps advisors can take to “light up a room when they enter”.  Blog content writers, I believe, can use every one of those steps to “light up the blogosphere” with their posts:

Know your story. “By opening up to others about what’s important to you, they will be more inclined to trust you with what’s important to them.”

Customers don’t want to feel like they are being told a brand story, the authors of “Tips & Traps for Marketing Your Business” caution. In your blog content writing, engage readers with storylike entries about existing customers and about you, they advise.  The idea is to create an emotional – and personal – attachment with your company or practice.

Build your dream team. “Leading financial advisors surround themselves with top people, in the form of strategic alliances.”

When things don’t work well in blogging, I’ve come to realize, it almost always has to do with lack of coordination among the team. The webmaster has to work together with the blog writer to provide the optimization and analysis that make the content “work”. Not only should there be periodic team meetings to discuss content, the blog writing must be coordinated with email and social media.

Live with intention. When you define your vision, your tasks become crystal clear.

One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that focusing on main themes helps blog posts stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website. The posts fit together into an overall business blog marketing strategy through “leitmotifs”, or recurring themes. These themes tie together different product or service descriptions, different statistics, and different opinion pieces. Once five or six over-arching themes have been chosen, the tasks of creating individual blog posts become crystal clear.

Amplify your influence.  Communicate your vision in a clear and lively manner. Make your vision come alive to others by using metaphors, examples, and anecdotes.

Most business owners and professionals can think of quite a number of things they want to convey about their products, their professional services, their industry, and their customer service standards. The problem is those ideas need to be developed into fresh, interesting, and engaging content marketing material. Metaphors help readers “appreciate the information picturesquely”.

Inspire those around you by providing leadership.

When it comes to blogging for business, positioning ourselves (or our business owner/professional practitioner clients) as SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) is obviously a worthy goal. Being a thought leader is even better. Our readers need even more from us than expertise, I’m convinced. Yes, we’re giving them subject matter, but they need help processing that subject matter. They need thought leadership!

Take steps to light up your place in the blogosphere! 

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