A Checklist for Corporate Blogging for Business

Number 8 of "20 Ways to Amp Up Your Business Today", a marketing article in the Financial Planning Association’s Practice Management Solutions Magazine, is using a social media checklist.

As a retired financial planner and financial journalist, now providing business blogging assistance, I found much in this article that can apply to any blog content writer in Indianapolis.

Authors Carly Shulaka and Melanie Stafford warn financial planning practitioners to censor their own writing. "Before you hit ‘submit’, ‘send’, or ‘publish’, they caution, "ask yourself:

What’s my objective?  Does this fulfill it?

In order to have both relevance to the reader and help the company get found, any SEO marketing blog must strategically employ keyword phrases in blog posts.  The blog content writer must have a laser-sharp focus on the company’s objective for the blogging initiative.

Does this support my unique value proposition?

The best business blogging help I can offer any business owner about corporate blog writing is this: :Online searchers need to get a very clear sense, from the content of your blog, of your unique approach to your business and your special insights into the issues those potential clients face.

Who is the audience?  Is this voice appropriate for this group?

Rick Short, Indium Corporation’s Director of Marketing Communications, says that, in starting his business blog, he defined his goals: gaining market share, improving the company brand, and learning from the customer base. As a professional providing a blog writing service, I must be crystal clear about the target audience for each company’s blog. Only then ca I be the "voice" of that company’s brand.

Is everything spelled correctly?

One big debate among Indianapolis blog writers whether correct spelling and proper grammar matter in blogs. (After all, isn’t the whole point of blogging to be conversational and natural?) I was happy to find spelling on the amping-up checklist, for I’m in the camp of making quality impressions when presenting one’s business to the world.

As a freelance blog writer, I was fascinated to read what Shulaka and Stafford have to say about blogging in general:

"One of the most effective and unused tools in social media is writing a blog.  White one; comment on other people’s blogs; get your name, your site, your business out there.  If you don’t think you’re a good writer, hire a writer…."

(Couldn’t have said it better myself!)