In Blogging, Personal Can Get Away WIth Platitudinous

Whenever I’m working with business owners to plan their blog, I challenge them to think about two important questions.

My first question is, "Would you find you?"

Imagine, I ask each business owner, someone’s navigating the Web from home or perhaps from the corner café, searching for the kind of products and services you offer.  Keep in mind, though, the customer has never heard your business name!

Since a business blog targets organic search, people will get introduced to you by a search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) matching up the words the searcher typed in with the words you used in the title and content of your blog post. 

Skillful marketing through business blogs is a science as well as an art.  The answer to this first question relates to the "science" part of blog marketing, and to the importance of using key phrases for "search engine optimization". Other tactics such as linking and "back-tracking" to other blogs, purchasing analytics for your blog, and which blog software to use all figure into this conversation about "finding".

My second question is longer, and requires some deeper thought on the part of the business owner: "If you had only eight to ten words to describe why you’re passionate about what your sell, what you know, and what you do, what would those words be?"

In other words, as I emphasized in "Your Brand ‘R You In Your Blog", whether you propose to do the blog writing yourself or collaborate with a professional ghost blogger partner like me, the very process of deciding what to put in the blog is one of self-discovery.  The content in the blog posts will be a way to continually think through and reinvent your business brand. This second question relates to the "art" aspect of blogging, the creative and very personal twist that will mark your blog as yours.

Earlier this week I mentioned attending a marketing strategy session with business coach and author Jim Ackerman.  Ackerman told about a highly successful marketing campaign run by a car dealer in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The tag line appearing in all the ads and marketing materials for this dealer was "You know this guy!"  On the surface of it, the slogan was old-hat to the point of being hokey, but, as Ackerman, pointed out, it worked wonderfully! 

Why did "You know this guy!" work well? Because "this guy" was down to earth and a straight shooter. "This guy" was personal and genuine in the way he treated customers, to the point that people seeing the commercials really did feel as if they knew him. According to Ackerman,: even "platitudinous" marketing works if it’s genuine, up close and personal!

Getting started on a business blog is simply a matter, then, of answering my two questions, the first about finding and the second about what they’ll be finding when they get to you!