In Blogging for Business, “B” is for Basics

“My work is most exhilarating when I help coach speakers on topics about which I know nothing at all,” asserts executive speech coach Patrica Fripp. Precisely because she’s new to the subject at hand, she explains, she is able to force executive speakers to simplify and demystify their subject.

Many of the lessons Fripp teaches corporate executives can be applied in corporate blogging training. In speaking to be remembered and repeated, she emphasizes, it’s important to use:

• Shorter sentences
• Visual words
• Stories

In former Say It For You blog posts I wrote about how writing for business can be used to demonstrate your
(or, in the case of those, who like myself, offer business blogging help, your client’s) special expertise.  All well and good, but as Patrica Fripp stressed again and again in her presentation to my National Speakers Association chapter meeting the other day, it must be about them, not about you. Simplifying your topic makes your blog content reader-friendly. Offering online visitors easy-to-understand, usable information on the subject of their search, helps convert them into customers.

Content maven Meryl K. Evans advice is to shoot for 500 words or less in each blog post; as an Indianapolis blog writer, I like to keep post length between 300 and 400 words. It stands to reason that, the more “visual” the words you select, the greater the impact each will have. The more direct your opening gambit, the fewer introductory words will be needed.

In blogging for business, I think, stories are the equivalent of “staging” in real estate sales. "The buyer must be able to visualize living in this room,” realtors on HGTV reality shows painstakingly explain to house sellers. Each blog anecdote must help online visitors see themselves using your product or service.

My work as a professional ghost blogger is most exhilarating, I realized as I listened to Patricia Fripp, is when I help business owners choose words to express the basics of businesses I’d known very little about. Helping entrepreneurs use their SEO marketing blogs to simplify and demystify their business is rewarding for us both!