Indianapolis Business Blogger’s Magazine Challenge – A

“Don’t have time for a Big Year?  Learn how to master a day instead,” writes Ken Keffer in “Big Day of Birding.”  Birding?  What can that have to do with blogging for business?  A lot, I think. 

Last August, in my Say It For You blogs, I gave myself the challenge of finding three ideas for business blog posts in a single issue of any popular magazine, and I composed those three initial challenge posts during an airport layover in Minneapolis on the way home from a family visit.

The whole idea behind the magazine challenge was to combat “writer’s block”.  In my years offering corporate blogging training in Indianapolis, I’d discovered that business owners’ and blog content writers’ two biggest fears are running out of ideas to sustain their blog, and running out of time to write the blog posts.  I wanted to offer the magazine-skimming idea as one solution.

My take on all this is that, whatever magazine we choose, if we’re alert, we can find items that suggest new ways to explain what we sell, what we believe, and what we know how to do.  (Of course, Indianapolis freelance blog content writers like me can use the same technique to explain our clients’ businesses and professional practices to their online visitors.)

Going back to the birding magazine, I found it on the table at the Butler College of Business break room and started leafing through it the other day while enjoying a cup of coffee between student appointments. I saw that “don’t-have-time-for a-big-year-learn-how-to-master-a-day” headline, and I was hooked.

Ghost-blogging, you see, is a concierge service, a task outsourced by business owners and professional practitioners who understand the importance of online marketing, but have the traditional no-time problem. And, when it comes to attracting online visitors to a website, “mastering a day” isn’t going to cut it in terms of having any chance of winning search rankings.

On the surface, it would appear that blogging for business falls under the category of tasks better not delegated to others.  That’s precisely where the “Big Day of Birding” article suggested a perfect compromise that I could share potential Say It For You clients and with other blog content writers.

Think about it: The professional blog writer picks up the information about the business through interviews with the owner, with employees, and with clients, adds some research and scouting other pieces written on the subject, then cleans and polishes the material into finished blog posts.  Every so often, though, either at preset intervals or when the fancy strikes, the owners themselves weigh in with content of their own, and “say it for themselves”! “Last spring I was so busy I opted for a Big Half Hour, instead!” quips Ken Keffer. 

Consistent business blogging content writing may need to fall to professional ghost bloggers, but when owners and employees can find a Big Half Hour to contribute to the mix – all the better!