Business Blog Writers’ Challenge – Creating Interest Through Stories

The trick to business blog writing is telling stories.  The trick to finding story ideas for writing business blog posts month after month, year after year may be, as Malcolm Gladwell says in What the Dog Saw, “to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell.”

Gladwell discusses the biggest challenge any SEO marketing blog writer faces – the human instinct to assume that most things are not interesting 

Gladwell reminds us that we:

• flip through the channels on the TV
• go to a bookstore and look at 20 novels before picking one to buy

We have to be choosy, he explains; there’s just so much out there. And, in fact, during every corporate blogging training session, I have to remind would-be blog writers of that very challenge.  To counteract the fear of reader ennui, I add Gladwell’s words of inspiration: “If you want to be a writer, you have to fight that instinct (to assume most things are not interesting) every day.”

Clicking on – or away from – any one web site or blog post is much easier than browsing through 20 novels and even easier than flipping TV channels, I caution Indianapolis blog writers.  In fact, online searchers tend to be scanners rather than readers, making any SEO marketing blog writer’s task even more of a challenge.

So, is it a challenge that can be overcome?  Is it a challenge worth overcoming? Make that a resounding “Yes!”. Apparently, business owners agree. According to HubSpot.com, corporate budgets for blogs and social media are up more than any other aspect of marketing expenditures.  

“Call it noise, call it the next big thing, or just call it stupid….Blogging has become a huge thing in today’s world,”, says blogger Ryan Farley, stating that nothing gives him more confidence in a company than to see the knowledge of its employees via their blogs. “Corporate blogging gives you the opportunity to communicate with your customers and potential customers in an entirely new way… You will establish your company or yourself as a voice of authority and expertise in your industry and your customers will be there to witness it first hand.”

Blogging has  become so strong that the word “blog” made Merriam-Webster’s 2004 Top 10 Words of the Year list, Farley emphasizes. That fact alone should be enough to spark interest on the part of business owners.  The blog writers’ challenge is to engage the interest of online searchers with recent, relevant, and story-based content!