The Client May Be King, But He’s Not Blog Director

"The client may be king, but he’s not the art director," is the Von R. Glitschka quip passed along in a recent tweet out of Melbourne-based marketing firm BaselineDesign. Eleven words, but enough to make any provider of client services stop and think, no?

C’mon, admit it. If you make your living offering creative services to clients (in the case of Say It For You, we offer business blogging services and corporate blogging training), you’ve had times when you wanted to tell the client to lay off and let you do what you’re good at.  Sure, (you’d love to say) you’re the client writing the check and running the business, but our little project here is going to work only if you’re open to the expert advice I’m trying to implement.

Wait a minute – isn’t it the client who’s the expert here? In fact, whenever I’m giving a talk or presentation about corporate blogging for business, one very natural question that almost always arises is "How can any professional ghost blogger understand enough to write about a business if the writer is not experienced in that very field?

The answer goes to the heart of the interaction that needs to take place in business blog writing.  Remember, SEO marketing blogs are (or at least should be) just one tactic in any business’ or professional practice’s overall marketing strategy. And what I’ve found is that, in the real world of small to medium-sized business, the owners are so focused on the day to day running of the business, they stop thinking about those eight to ten words I asked them for when we first met:

If you had only 8 – 10 words to describe why you’re passionate about what you sell, what you know, and what you do, what would those words be?

If what freelance blog writers do is help business owners build their brand (whether the employees or the business owners are doing the writing or whether they’re collaborating with outside writers), then the process of deciding what to include in the corporate blog becomes one of self-discovery.

People want to do business with people, people they know, like, and trust (we’ve all heard this expression).  Basically, potential buyers want to know what makes the business owners tick and what "ticks them off".  In blogging for business, therefore, it’s really all about "the king" rather than about the products and services he provides.

And is the king the "blog director" as well? When there’s an expert blog content writer involved, you will never be able to tell!