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Horseback Riding Lessons for Blog Content Writers

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“Like any sport or dedicated hobby, there are bigger life lessons to take away than simply the information or skills necessary to participate,” writes horseback riding fan Sarah Faulkner in bizjournals.com. Faulkner lists four lessons leaders can take from equestrians, each of which I believe can be valuable to us blog content writing professionals:
Look where you want to go.
As a leader you must have a well-defined vision and be able to clearly communicate it.
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., but there should be little doubt of the main direction in which you “want to go”.
Communicate clearly, consistently, and confidently.
Reinforce verbal with physical commands, but do not give mixed messages.
Even while letting readers see your own “humanity”, keep your blog content well-organized and well-written to convey a feeling of being in control. Maintaining a consistent schedule of posting sends a reassuring message to readers.

Sense and respond to cues.
As a leader, you need to sense and respond to market forces such as trends and competition.
As I teach at Say It For You, blog content writers must develop “peripheral vision”, being aware of what competitors are doing and working to stay just one step ahead of them.
Tack up your own mount. 
Be willing to get into the details, keeping informed on the numbers and fundamentals of your business.
Successful blogging for business is all about detail.  Corporate websites provide basic information about a company’s products or a professional’s services, but the business blog content is there to attach a “face” and lend a “voice” to that information by filling in the finer details.  In horse shows, I learned, there are two aspects to winning medals – equitation and pleasure. Equitation refers to the skill and posture of the rider; pleasure refers to the horse’s looks and control.  To succeed in blog marketing, content writers must be willing to get into the details – navigation, search engine optimization, visuals, vocabulary.

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Business Blogging May Not Take a Village, But it Does Take a Team

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teamwork
Even after playing together for more than fifty years (I learned from Steve & Jack’s Home News), the Rolling Stones musicians still understand the value of practicing together, committing to two months of rehearsal before every tour. Why? Practicing together helps them reconnect with each other’s rhythm and understand each member’s distinctive roles.

Running a business blog takes commitment and teamwork as well. In fact, as we Say It For You blog content writers embark on our 13th year, one thing continues to become clear: Whenever things do not work out as planned, it almost always has to do with lack of coordination among the team members:

  • the blog writer
  • the webmaster
  • the business owner or practitioner
  • the staff of the client’s business or practice

As blog content writers, we are interpreters. Effective blog posts must go from information-dispensing to offering the business owner’s (or the professional’s, or the organizational executive’s) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic.

What that means is that owners and professional practitioners have got to be involved in the process of producing content, even after they’ve engaged our services; they can’t “go to sleep” and cede control of the creative process to us. The webmaster has to work together with the blog writer to provide the optimization and analysis that make the content “work”. The front-line employees who deal with the customers daily must be involved.

Hiring professional bloggers is not a “wake me up when it’s over” proposition – just as is true of the Rolling Stones, reconnecting with each other’s knowledge and rhythm is what makes the material come to life. Not only should there be periodic team meetings to discuss content, it is not a good idea for me and my team to take on writing assignments without insisting the business also invest in properly designed landing pages and website optimization. When blog writing is not coordinated with email and social media the results are simply not likely to be what the business owner expects.

Business blogging may not take a village, but it certainly does take a team!

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Business Blogging With Round-Up Posts – Part 1 of 2

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Authorunlimited editor Cathy Presland calls them Best-of-the-Web Round-Ups, referring to blog posts consisting of “lists of the best websites, You Tube clips, or any other kind of web content that relates to your topic”, and round-up posts are great way, she advises, for business blog content writers to demonstrate the breadth of your own knowledge and your perspective on a topic.

Round-ups needn’t be confined to websites, Presland adds.  They might consist of:

  • Favorite Facebook pages to follow
  • Best software or apps
  • Best blogs you’ve read in the past month
  • Favorite personalities in your area of expertise
  • Top tips from around the Internet  (this very Say It For You post is an example of that.)

This week, I’m doing a round-up of noteworthy observations about blogging:

“Video continues to be a growth market, as well. But, let’s not forget about the words. Not just our tweets and status updates, but our thoughts… the longer pieces of content.”

– Mitch Joel in “The End of Blogging”

 

“Not promoting your blog is like renting a theater to stage your one-man show and then refusing to put up flyers because you don’t want anyone to show up.”

– Michelle Weber in “Should Your Blog Be on Facebook?”

 

“Do you like me? I mean, you know, in a platonic, Facebook sort of way. Well, you should. Moreover, if you’re a blogger, you should have a Facebook page — it’s a great way to get your content out to a larger audience and engage with new people.”

– Jeff Goins in “Why You Need a Facebook Page”

“Highly effective bloggers have an established writing and publishing schedule that they adhere to with fervor. They don’t write and post when they feel like it. They write and publish according to a schedule that helps them to both remain on track and accountable and build anticipation among their audience.”

– Dwaynia Wilkerson in “7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers”
Blog writers are very much like museum curators, I often explain. We “gather” pieces of art and then help the visitors understand what they are seeing.  On behalf of our business owner of professional practitioner clients, we add “spin” to the curated material, showcasing the wisdom and expertise of our clients’ business or practice!

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Ohio River Lessons About Business Blogging

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My two-day get-away with friends to historic Madison, Indiana wasn’t supposed to be about business, and it wasn’t. Later, though, recalling the different guided tours we’d taken, I realized I’d had blog content writing on my mind after all. While learning interesting facts about how a telegram saved Madison from demolition and how Kentucky “owns” the river up to Indiana shoreline, I’d learned a lot of dos and don’ts about presenting information to a group.

Tour guides, remember, have the benefit of addressing audiences that have demonstrated they are already interested in the subject matter. In the same way, online searchers arrive at your blog precisely because they have a need for the very kinds of information, products, and services you provide!  But in both cases, now that the searchers/tourists have arrived, it’s up to the guide/blog content writers to keep them engaged, taking them to someplace new in their knowledge and thinking!

Our Lanier Mansion tour guide understood the “one-message-per-post” rule I teach when training blog content writers: in each post, have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business. In each room of the mansion, our guide would point out just one interesting item – the parlor had “windows you could walk through”, while the winding staircase had the signature medallion of the architect embedded in it.

The guide, who told us he works for the Indiana History Center, spoke with personal pride, using first person pronouns – “we” will be finishing the renovation of this wing, “we” had to find…. I stress the importance of first person business blog writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the business owner or of the team standing ready to serve customers.

Our Rockin’ Thunder jet boat tour guide, Captain Paul, was likewise knowledgeable and passionate. Because the noise of the engine made it impossible to hear while the boat was moving, Paul needed to stop periodically, cut the engine, and then point out interesting facts about Ohio River and Kentucky River history. In effect, in his presentation, the Captain was forced to obey one of the cardinal rules for successful business blogging, namely frequency.  Blog posts provide a steady stream of “sound bites” – little bits of different, interesting, and informative content.

One tidbit of information we learned on that tour was this: Bridges over the Kentucky River are painted blue.  Why? The land donor was a University of Kentucky football fan!

As a business blogging trainer, I urge bloggers to demonstrate why the facts they’re offering might matter to readers, suggesting ways readers might use that information for their own benefit. Sometimes, though, tidbits of information can be so intrinsically interesting, it’s worth including them even if they are not actionable.  Why? To add variety and fun to your content, and to demonstrate your own knowledge in your field.

As blog content writers, we’re the “tour guides” for our readers.  Sure, before they arrived, they were already interested in what we know and what we know how to do. Now that they’ve arrived, it’s up to us to take them to new “places”.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Logic and Logistics of Blogging for Business

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Logic on Multicolor Puzzle.
“Writing is very much about the order of ideas presented and the emphasis given to them,” Brandon Royal explains in The Little Red Writing Book. There are two general things readers expect:

  1. to see ideas unfold logically
  2. to have writers give the most important ideas the most coverage

There are different “floor plans” for pieces of writing, including a chronological structure, where you discuss the earliest events first, then move forward in time, and an evaluative structure, in which you discuss the pros and cons of a concept. Different blog posts might use different “floor plans.” But no matter which approach, readers will expect to see those two things – logical presentation, and emphasis on the most important ideas.

“If your presentation is clear and structured, it will be useful and entertaining; if it is disorganized, your work will be confusing and of little value,” is the caution Lanterna Education offers its International Baccalaureate students. Laterna recommends the following sequence for students giving oral presentations:

  • Introduce the overall theme
  • Explain how each key idea will relate back to that overall theme
  • Explain what your audience should know by the end of the class
  • Review each idea, explaining how it taught something new to the class

In answer to the question “How long do users stay on Web pages?” Jakob Nielson of the Nielsen Norman Group says the following:  Users often leave Web pages in 10-20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer.

“As users rush through Web pages, they have time to read only a quarter of the text on the pages they actually visit (let alone all those they don’t). So, unless your writing is extraordinarily clear and focused, little of what you say on your website will get through to customers,” Nielson warns, offering sobering stats that bear out the importance of the two items on Brandon Royal’s reader expectation list.

Is it all about logic and logistics! What about emotional appeal? Isn’t that what makes readers take action? Certainly, but first fulfill reader expectations of order and emphasis, then give heart to the writing with anecdotes, metaphors, stories, and humor!

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