Why Your Next Hire Might Be A Blog Writer

As a professional ghost blogger, I’m very conscious of the fact that the "For sale: baby shoes, never used" story I talked about earlier this week exemplifies just one of Ernest Hemingway’s many tips on effective writing. Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com points out another valuable Hemingway lesson for bloggers – being positive, not negative. 

Clark interprets this to mean that, in our blog posts, it’s important to say what is rather than what isn’t. In other words, if you say your service is "error-free" or your product "pain-free" and "inexpensive", readers are likely to focus on the words "error", "pain", and "expensive": Instead, focus on the positive qualities of what you have to offer.

A second fellow blogger, Jameiah Earle, in Literary Kicks, had the most interesting things to add about the Hemingway baby shoes story: she calls that style "flash fiction", AKA "micro", "short-short", or "skinny", meaning under 1,000 or even 500 words in length. As Earle went on to explain why she likes "flash" so much, I kept thinking of blog posts, which, like flash, are short, concise, focused on one main point or idea.

If the "baby shoes, never worn" legend hasn’t been embroidered in the retelling, Hemingway may have dashed off that piece in a matter of seconds.  Well-researched and constructed business blog posts, on the other hand, take a bit more (truly a lot more) time and effort.

That accounts for Brian Halligan’s (Inbound Marketing) observation that "your next marketing hire…should be someone will great writing skills", rather than either a technical writer of manuals or a traditional career marketer.

With business blogging becoming such an indispensable customer acquisition and marketing tool, ghost blogging becomes an outsourcing solution for busy business owners who have long-long business goals but who are short-short on time.