Business Blogging Assistance

Super Bowl Ad Tracker calls it “an ode to the significance of manufacturing”, referring to GE’s commercial, set in a New York pub, in which a worker proudly exclaims, “We make the power that makes the beer.”

I liked the piece, too, and for some of the same reasons Ad Tracker mentions. For one thing, as a professional ghost blogger, I can see a number of parallels between creating that kind of engaging TV spot and corporate blog writing.

“The nod”:
Included in the GE “ode”, there’s a “nod”, notes Dale Buss of Ad Tracker, meaning a nod to Bud Light, official beer of the NFL. In similar vein, blog content writing verbalizes the positive aspects of a business.  Unlike traditional advertising copy, though, blogs take a softer, more “advertorial” approach, with just a “nod” towards the business’ recent accomplishment and its products and services.

Heartstring pulling:
Unlike just about every other major Super Bowl advertiser Buss explains, GE didn’t plan to use humor, but “to pull at our heartstrings instead”. That same idea is expressed by mRelevance, who see blog content writing as a chance for business owners to be real humans, not hiding “behind a slick corporate website”.

In fact, before providing business blogging assistance to any new Say It For You client, I always perform a “reality check” in the form of the following question: “If you had only 8-10 words to describe why you’re passionate about what you do, what you know, and what you sell – what would those words be?”

“Our goal with the ads was to show the pride and passion GE employees have for the products they make,” GE’s spokesperson shared with brandchannel. As blog content writers soon learn, one very important reason behind writing for business is to express that pride and passion is real time.

What about SEO marketing through blogs? Unlike giant GE, who could count of millions of Super Bowl viewers being there to discover their message, local business owners depend on blog content writers in Indianapolis to help them win search.

In the TopRank online marketing blog, Lee Olden summarizes the results of a recent survey of business owners for whom blogs are part of their search engine optimization efforts.

• 87% successfully increased SEO as a direct result of blogging.
• 54% began to see SEO benefits from blogging earlier than expected (0-3 months).

Still, as I caution in corporate blogging training sessions, blogs are not magical, guaranteed search engine ranking magnets. In fact, blog content writing should be considered just one element in an overall traditional/online marketing strategy.  In an Indianapolis pub or networking meeting, we corporate blog writers might borrow a boast from that GE worker: 

We make the power that makes the online marketing strategy!
 

A common refrain they hear from their Australian dentist advisees, Dental Web Strategies admits - It’s really hard to find enough time to blog on a regular basis.

At Say It For You, we know. Business blog writing is hard work.  It seems everyone acknowledges the important role SEO marketing blogs play, but in the real world, 80% of business blogs end up neglected or even totally abandoned. 

Actually, most business owners can think of quite a number of things they want to tell the world about their products, their professional services, and their customer service efforts.  Somehow, in the execution stage, though, inspiration appears to run dry;  the need for business blogging assistance becomes all too apparent.

Dental Web’s suggestion is one that business owner bloggers and professionals blogging to promote their practices need to hear: Answer a common question.   This is so easy, says Dental Web, “your dental assistant could do it in her sleep”. The question might be one dental patients really ask on a regular basis, they add, or “something you find yourself explaining anyway”.

Common explanations make for easy-to-access content, Dental Web emphasizes to its dentist members. Since dental assistants hear the doctors using that content all the time with patients, they can repeat it verbatim.

A related suggestion for “solving the content crisis” comes from Compendium Blogware CEO Chris Baggott.  Baggott, however, suggests “mining” emails sent to customers and newsletter material as fodder for blog content writing. Email, he observes, tends to live in a different “silo” from blogs, so that much wonderful content created by company employees goes forever unindexed by search engines.

Over my years as a professional ghost blogger, I’ve found that business owners and professionals have many stories to tell.  They want to – and need to – share the benefits of their products and services, the history of their business and their own journey, news of importance to customers, how-to information, and their own perspective on trends in their field. Lack of running out of content ideas may be their biggest fear, but it’s actually lack of time that sabotages so many business blogging efforts. That’s precisely the point at which freelance content writers can come to the rescue of all that wonderful content “hiding” in emails, newsletters – and owners’ and dental assistants’ minds! 
 

It’s gotten to be a habit of mine - I read signs. We Indianapolis blog content writers can learn a lot from signs, I’m convinced - from how to go about engaging people’s interest, to how to fairly represent a business owner’s or professional’s mission.

One day, driving south on Meridian, I noticed a sign out in front of the Indiana Blood Center. Its message was short and sweet:

                        ”Craving cookies?  Come on in!”

Well, I’ll tell you, I’m a professional ghost blogger, and I offer business blogging training, and… for the rest of that day, I just couldn’t get the message from that sign out of my mind.

First off, the way SEO marketing blogs work was perfectly captured in the two very short sentences on the Indiana Blood Bank sign:

Through the search engine optimization process, potential customers search online for a product or service they’re interested in. Because you have a “sign” outside (the keyword phrases you’ve used in your frequently posted blog content), the search engine has “delivered” those potential buyers to your “digital doorstep”.

They’ve got the “craving”; you’ve got the “cookies”.

 You invite those customers to “come on in” by clicking on the link to your blog post.

Another good thing about that sign is the “bonus”, meaning the cookies. Jimmy Brown writes in incomeondemand.org that offering a bonus that’s both desirable to customers and easy to deliver gets prospects excited and increases the likelihood they’ll take action by buying your product or service. The Indiana Blood Bank is doing exactly that – using an incentive to get extra “sales” (blood donations).

But, arresting as the message was, and, as much as I like cookies, there’s something I didn’t at all like about the “deal”. You see, the Indiana Blood Center sign was doing something that I caution freelance blog writers to avoid – pulling a “bait and switch”.

Remember, the first thing online readers will see on your blog is its title, and largely based on that title, those searchers will decide whether to “come on in” and read your blog content. The title carries an implied promise that “what you see is what you’ll get”. In other words, in corporate blogging for business, the post needs to deliver on the promise in its title. Not that donating blood isn’t a noble cause, but no fair inviting me in on the basis of my craving for cookies, leaving out that I will first need to have my blood drawn!

If ever the Indiana Blood Center asks for Say It For You’s business blogging assistance, I plan to suggest the sign be changed to read, “Raise your sleeve if you crave cookies!”

Third on the list of three things you’ve got 118 seconds to accomplish in an elevator speech is  explaining the priorities you will deliver on, says Jeffrey Hayzlett, writing in Success Magazine.

Always on the alert for ways to convey marketing messages through corporate blog content writing, I couldn’t help recalling Hayzlett’s advice the other day.  A sign posted in (of all places) the ladies’ room in Panera Bread exemplified just such an 8-second mission/priority statement:

“Serve classic French bread and you’ll have many good friends.”

Actually, the other two Hayzlett elevator speech requisites apply to blogging for business as well:

Grab the attention of your would-be customer.
Freelance blog writers need to keep that Hayzlett motto firmly in mind.  “Aim for speed and immediate relevance,” Hayzlett cautions.  Of course SEO marketing blogs are all about relevance, because search engines will “introduce” you to potential customers based in large part on the relevance, along with the recency and frequency, of your blog content.

Describe what your business offers.
“Good, successful copy,” says fellow blogger Michel Fortin, tells the reader ‘why’ right up front.”
I teach Indianapolis blog writers to address five “why’s” in that 110 seconds left in the “elevator speech”: why you (the reader), why me (the blogger), why this (the offer), why now (the urgency), and why this price (the value).

Need business blogging assistance? Keep serving up that sort of classic blog content – you’ll have many good readers!

“Companies have to be willing to share their points of view in their digital content,” explains Marketing News, adding that “Your point of view needs to be relevant enough to be part of a conversation that’s taking place, but differentiated enough to stand out.”

So how do we do that? is the question blog content writers in Indianapolis ask.  Think about the problem you’re solving, says Marketing News, and where that problem might take us over the next five to ten years.

To me as a corporate blogging trainer, that translates into business bloggers realizing that blogging is first about thinking, and only secondarily about putting those thoughts into words.  Maybe even more important in the case of SEO marketing blogs is getting readers to think about the issues and problems on which you’re offering information and expertise.

In blogging for business, of course, the content needs to be based on solid research into the needs and interests of the target customer.  In offering business blogging assistance to business owners, though, I explain that market research is not enough to infuse true life into the blog. Customers, I explain, want to know what you think and where you’re “coming from”; they want to know your unique slant on your industry. In short, they want to get to know you.

The first part is relatively simple. Online searchers have found your blog, and they’ve stayed long enough to assure themselves that the information they find there is a good match for their needs (you offer the products and/or services they came for). But now, those prospects still need to choose whether to become your client/buyer/patient/customer.

The questions I ask Indianapolis blog writers, then, include:

• Is your point of view clear? 
• Is that viewpoint relevant to a current need or conversation or trend? 
• Is your point of view differentiated enough to stand out? 

You might say readers need to “hear” you think!

When things aren’t going right in business, the natural tendency is to point fingers away from oneself – whatever’s wrong, it’s the fault of that guy or gal over there, that other department, or that other manager.” says Bill Jeffries, President & CEO of Executive Strategies International.

That’s why, in working with employees to develop high-performing teams, Jeffries insists the “senders”, (aka the blamers) come along to the sessions with their “send-ees”. Similarly, in the Israeli Defense Forces, an officer is always expected to lead from the front. The famous cry of the officer is "aharai!" (follow me).

Does all this have anything to do with providing business blogging assistance? I really think so. It doesn’t matter, in my book, whether business owners or professional practitioners are doing their own blog posting or hiring professional ghost bloggers like me to help. The blog’s message might be well-thought out, or it might even be unintentional. Either way, wherever there’s a blog, that blog is conveying the values and beliefs of the owners.  You might say blog content writing is one way of inviting online readers to “come on in” and become part of the process of bringing those values to life.

The business owner offering advice through blogging for business is, in a way, the sender. (He or she’s giving advice, issuing Calls to Action, and “driving” traffic to the website, basically assuming a leadership role.  The online reader searching for information, products, and services is the send-ee in the typical corporate blog writing scenario.

Thing is, the cry of the blogger had better be “aharai!” (the cry of leading from the front), not the cry of either salesperson or movie director. In a blog offering information about health products or services, it needs to be obvious the content writer is a believer in and user of those very products and services. What reader can be engaged in advice about stock trading when the advisor has all her money in CD’s? In corporate blogging training sessions, I stress sincerity and passion over facts and figures when it comes to SEO marketing blogs.

Freelance blog writers in Indianapolis – how many ways can you say “Follow me!”?

Stopped at a light on my way to provide business blogging help to a Say It For You client, I had just enough time to read some rather arresting billboard content.  This health service provider’s “ad” was really a mission statement.  IU Health pledged:

• To be driven by excellence
   
• To handle any challenge
   
• To never slow down
   
• To always stay in front

That billboard, I realized, illustrates a truth that everyone doing business blog writing -  and everyone providing business blogging assistance, needs to keep in mind:  The way I state that truth is “Your brand ‘r you in your blog”.

What I mean is that blog content writing is about a whole lot more than what you do, what you know, and the stuff or services you sell. It’s really about who you are, and about what you pledge – to yourself, and to the clients and customers you serve.

In fact, as an important part of my process in clarifying the message that a business owner or professional practitioners wants to convey through blog content writing, I challenge each of them to answer the following question:

If you had only eight to ten words to describe why you’re passionate
about what you do, what would those words be?

Having seen that IU Health billboard, I realize there’s another way to provoke the sort of introspection that gives rise to compelling, highly personal blog content writing – a sort of fill-in-the-pledge exercise:

• By what are you driven?
   
• Why must you never slow down in your quest for excellence in what you do?
   
• Why, in your field, is it important to “stay in front”?

And, whether a business owner or practitioner is doing the blog writing or collaborating with a professional ghost blogger partner such as Say It For You, the blog is an embodiment of a brand – and of a mission!

Long before corporate blog writing became the centerpiece for conveying a business’ message to potential customers, none other than poet Walt Whitman understood the importance of connectivity in SEO marketing blogs.

“To have great poets,” Whitman asserted, “there must be great audiences, too.”

As I consistently stress when offering business blogging assistance, blog are not only for reading, but for acting, reacting, and interacting. In other words, in the world of corporate blog writing, it’s not enough to be a “poet”.  You have to have readers.  “Your personal brand visibility is made up of your search engine ranking and how many eyeballs physically see your content each day,” explains Chad Levitt (quoted on P. 150 of Branding Yourself).

Great audiences, though, must bring more than just their eyeballs to our clients’ websites, as we Indianapolis freelance bloggers know, and being “influential” online means a whole lot more than being found.  Blogging for business has to mean business, which means “having the ability to push your followers and friends to action”, as Levitt explains, and that action needs to be in accordance with the business’ personal branding plan.

There’s more than one reason for using the blog writing process to build great readership:

Backlinks – The more links pointing back to a blog, the more importance search engines will attribute to that blog.  “Blogging is about community.  Don’t expect people to read your blog if you aren’t reading and commenting on theirs,” tweets @Justheather.  So right – leaving comments on other people’s blogs and writing about those other people will, sooner or later, Heather suggests, get them to write to and about you.

Richer content – The lesson I try hardest to impart in corporate blogging training sessions is: “The more you know, the more you can blog about”.  Business content writing in blogs is the result of a lots of reading and listening on the part of the blogger.

Decades ago, poet Walt Whitman knew that a key element in effective poetry writing was the cultivation of great audiences to enjoy that poetry.  The right kind of readers – (those with an interest in your topic who value your products and services and are willing to pay for them), are the “great blog audiences” every business owner and professional practitioner wants to attract!

 “Boosting voter turnout could be as simple as making individuals see voting as part of who they are rather than as something they do,” writes Janelle Weaver in Scientific American Mind.

 

As a corporate blog marketing trainer, I was very interested to learn that this statement came as a result of a 2008 survey. Of registered voters asked the question, “How important is it to you to vote?" there was an actual 82% turnout at the polls.  Of those asked “How important is it to you to be a voter?” by contrast, there was a 96% turnout.

We freelance blog writers in Indianapolis need to pay attention to the conclusion published by Christopher Bryan of Stanford University about that 96%:

“We offered people the prospect of claiming a desirable
 identity,” he said. “That’s a very powerful thing.”

In offering business blogging assistance to business owners over the past five years, I’ve had many express hesitancy about being too “sales-y” or about appearing too self-serving in their SEO marketing blog. At the same time, of course, business owners require a return on their marketing investment dollars..

The sweet spot may lie in the creation of just the kind of “desirable identity” for customers to which researcher Bryan was alluding. First, I tell business owners, the blog content writing effort should aim to offer readers a feeling of what it would be like to have you working alongside them to help with their challenges and issues.

Even more important, though, is leading potential customers and clients to view themselves as part of the bigger picture your company is working to create – better health, more convenience, greater safety, financial security, or increased energy savings.

Writing for business should help you, as my friend and fellow marketing blogwriter Tony Fannin likes to say, “BE somebody to your clients!”
 

Zits isn’t the only comic strip with lessons to teach Indianapolis blog content writers. Three years ago, I coined a tongue-in-cheek phrase, “accidental organic blog donors” to describe the way organic search sometimes rewards us for the wrong reasons.

In offering business blogging assistance to different companies and organizations, I sometimes need to remind owners that online search is not the most precise of processes.  Every once in a while, there’s a “disconnect” between what a searcher wants and what he or she actually finds.  And, every once in a while, that “mistaken” visit to your SEO marketing blog can result in converting a searcher-gone-astray into an actual buyer.

I was reminded of this not-really-so-rare and sometimes fortuitous source of business blogging help the other day by the comic strip Mother Goose and Grimm.
 

- “What are you reading, Ralph?
- “Learning how to care for the newt.  This manual says that newt hates onions.”
- “No, Ralph, the book says ‘unions’.  Newt (Gingrich) hates unions.”

On the surface, as I point out to business owners and Say It For You freelance blog writers, this is nothing more than a laughable situation: Ralph was searching for information about pets and instead reaches a political “site”.

But, who knows?  Isn’t it possible that the political blog will divert Ralph’s attention to the campaign? And, isn’t it possible that a dad trying to help his kid with a homework assignment on Hawaii happens upon a travel agent’s website about vacations in Hawaii and bookmarks that site to use in planning a vacation?

I think the lesson to be gained from Mother Goose and Grimm is that accidental matchings will happen.  And, at least occasionally, you’ll have reason to be thankful to the search engines for the mistaken identity!!

“I don’t do companies that don’t have a story,” states brand consultant Lynda Resnick. “If they don’t have a story, they don’t have a business.” Executive consultant Bill Jeffries agrees.  “Leaders,” he observes, are effective storytellers.”

In corporate blogging training, I’ve found, a big, big part of providing business blogging assistance is helping business owners formulate stories.  Every story, Bill Jeffries explains, contains certain elements:

Central characters: The history of the company and the value of its leaders are story elements that create ties between corporate leaders and blog readers.

Corporate blog writing must tell the story of the central characters in that business or professional practice. 

Plot: What do we do? How? Why? What does “success” look like to us?

Online visitors to your blog want to feel you understand them and their needs, but they want to understand you as well. The stories content writers in Indianapolis tell in their SEO marketing blog have the power to forge that emotional connection between company and potential customer.

Setting:  Each business story takes place in a physical setting (Where is the plant, the distribution area, the practice located?) The setting also includes the backdrop of the markets in which that business operates and the complex of problems for which they offer solutions.

Internet organic search is all about settings. Consumers are looking for places where they can feel comfortable and be assured of locating the products, the services, and information they need. The keyword phrases blog content writers use help draw visitors to the site, but the stories they find when they arrive provides the setting for the birth of a relationship of trust..

Learning to tell one’s business story carries special benefits for business owners. That’s true, I’ve learned, whether owners are doing their own blog content writing or working with a freelance blog writer like me.

I’ve called that the training benefit, because in the process of verbalizing positive aspects of a business or practice in a way that people can understand, leaders are constantly providing themselves with training about how to tell their story!

The obituary section of the news is not a place freelance blog content writers would normally go for ideas. Still, there’s something worth noting in articles such as “10 Notable Deaths” by Associated Press – the reporters manage to drill down to the essence of each person’s accomplishments.

As a ghost blogger in Indianapolis, when I offer business blogging assistance, I often refer to blogs as the sound bites of the Internet. In short segments, business owners convey to readers the essence of their accomplishments.  Corporate blog writing means telling readers about the essence of your special knowledge, insights, and beliefs, as well as about the products or services you offer.

In using “10 Notable Deaths” as a model of condensed writing for business, I’d point out that the AP reporter used only 16 words to describe Andy Rooney, 26 for Betty Ford, and 19 for Jack Kevorkian. Still, I found, the obits were hardly impersonal or dispassionate; each managed to evoke a larger portrait, with a taste of the “style” of each notable person.

Elizabeth Taylor is described as “the violet-eyed American film goddess whose sultry screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her one of the last of the classic movie starts and a template for modern celebrity.”

Kim Jong IL’s obit lists him as “North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader, whose iron rule and nuclear ambitions dominated world security fears for more than a decade.”

In corporate blogging training sessions I explain that it’s not enough in business blog writing to offer information about the subject.  The information needs to be put into a framework, into context, so that readers can see why it’s relevant to them and to the subject.

Elizabeth Taylor “became a template or model of film celebrity. Jong IL’s nuclear efforts “dominated world fears”. Kevorkian was the “defiant proponent of doctor-assisted suicide”.

Indianapolis bloggers, take a tip from the 10 Notable Deaths.  Online searchers know what they need, but they lack expertise in your industry.  They need your help drilling down to the essence of what you know, what you do, and how you can be of benefit to them.

“The bunt isn’t a game changer, like a homer or a triple.  Instead, it nudges things along – keeping the ball as far as possible from where your opponent wants it to be,” is just one of many of the lessons from her Dad that Sandy Hingston recalls in FamilyDigest.


When I offer business blogging assistance to Say It For You clients, I often need to remind business owners new to blogging that it isn’t the sort of marketing tactic likely to “hit it out of the park”.  On the other hand, consistent business blog writing, very much like bunting in a ball game, will almost certainly nudge things along.

Sandy Hingston’s dad taught all his kids that bunts are things of beauty, “means to an end, a strategy, brains over brawn.” As a professional ghost blogger offering corporate blogging training, I think Mr. Hingston’s teachings are quite fitting when it comes to writing for business in the form of blogs.

“Remember: control.”
A blog can give a business the ability to exercise journalistic control.  Blog content writers have the ability to put out news about the business with the business owner’s own slant on it! If there’s ever any negative news about the industry or the company, I teach Indianapolis blog writers, the blog is the perfect place to field questions and comments head-on.

“He makes me do it again and again and again.”
Material that is recent and frequently posted is more likely to be indexed by search engines. Like bunting practice with Sandy’s dad, SEO marketing blogs succeed in large part based on continuing to post new content every few days.

“Brains over brawn.”
Blogging for business is one way small business owners with small marketing budgets can compete, using “pull marketing” to meet strangers and increase their customer base without mounting expensive advertising campaigns. According to Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware, because blogs are specific, relevant, and personal, they tend to be more successful than traditional websites in targeting and attracting the right kind of visitors, those who need and want what you have to offer.

No, as I remind freelance blog writers and their business owner clients who are in a rush to make the cash register ring, blogging for business is rarely a game changer. But as a means to an end, part of an overall, long-term marketing strategy, it can be a thing of beauty!

These days, when company owners express doubt about their ability to keep generating new content for their corporate blog posts, I talk to them about leitmotifs and about Steve Jobs. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late CEO of Apple Computer, Jobs owned some one hundred Issey Miyaki black turtlenecks. Jobs, by all accounts, liked the idea of having a “uniform”, not only for convenience’s sake, but because of its ability to convey a signature style.

In corporate blogging training sessions I teach that effective blog posts are centered around key themes, just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony.  As you continue to write about your industry, your products, and your services, you’ll naturally find yourself repeating some key ideas - in fact, that's exactly what professionals offering business blogging assistance will say you should  be doing to keep your blogs focused and targeted.

In writing for business, as blog content writers soon learn, the variety comes from the e.g.’s and the i.e's, meaning all the details you fill in around these central leitmotifs.  Indianapolis blog writers might use different examples of ways the company’s products can be helpful, or examples of how the company helped solved various problems.  It’s these stories and examples that lend variety to the blog, even though all the anecdotes reinforce the same few core ideas.

Like the Jobs turtlenecks, freelance blog writers will find, leitmotifs in blogs help develop a company’s signature style, which is part of any company’s branding. Focus (just as in building an entire wardrobe around one type of garment) helps corporate blog posts stay smaller, lighter in scale, and more flexible than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website.

You might say leitmotifs are the turtlenecks of corporate blog writing!

The pointy-headed boss wants Dilbert to show him how to download apps on his new phone. “How often do you expect to download apps?” asks Dilbert.  “It’s hard to say.  I just know I want all of them.  How many are there?” To which Dilbert replies: “Four”.

Comic strip writer Scott Adams is using dry humor to convey a message about non-productive effort.  (Dilbert knows perfectly well that the number of phone apps is closer to fifty thousand than four, but he isn’t interested in spending time teaching phone apps to a man who’s failed to catch on to Excel after Dilbert spent eight sessions teaching him).

There are a couple of messages here for corporate bloggers, too.  As I explain to freelance blog writers and business owners, trying to engage potential customers, anyone with a computer has access to the largest repository of information in human history, namely the Internet. Online readers, though, can absorb only so much in a sitting. Still, the statements in SEO marketing blogs must be correct and truthful - four in place of fifty thousand just won’t do.

What I’ve found in my work as professional ghost blogger is that both sides may need some business blogging assistance.  Blog content writers, on the one hand, need to keep each blog post focused on one main idea, one “app”, if you will, out of all the products and services and expert advice the company has to offer.

Blog content readers, on the other hand need to gain perspective about the information they’re being given. Is that different than what I’ll find with your competitor?  In what way?  What makes your company so special? How will the information you’ve offered benefit me? Assuming the reader understands that you’ve offered technically correct information, that reader may still not know what to make of that information.

Like the pointy-headed boss, readers want an answer to the question “How many are there?”  Effective writing for business serves to reassure those searchers that you can, over time, offer help with all of the “apps”.  But, for today’s corporate blog post, teach just one.

“Formula-fed” SEO marketing blogs might make life easier for blog content writers and online visitors alike. 

As a longtime freelance blog writer, I was delighted to learn that writing coach Ali Luke thinks what she calls formulaic writing can be a very good thing.  In corporate blogging training sessions, I tell newbie Indianapolis blog writers the same thing – stick to a formula: 

• Choose one main idea as the focus for each blog post.  I call that the Power of One. (More to add? Save it for future posts.)
  
• Compose an opening sentence that’s a “grabber”, so that readers just have to find out what you meant.
  
• Explain, clarify, illustrate, discuss your one main point, using a few short paragraphs.
  
• Issue your parting “shot”, a snappy exit line that sums up the thought you want your readers to remember. This one tip, I’ve found, can be of enormous business blogging help.

Novels follow specific formulas, says Luke.  Readers expect a showdown between the hero and the villain at the end of an adventure story or thriller, and romantic comedies should have the expected happy endings.  Formulas are popular, Luke explains, because they work.

Formulas work in blog writing, too, Luke adds.  When a post is titled “10 Ways to be More Creative”, readers know just what to expect, she explains, and if they’re interested in the topic, they’ll read on,

In fact, readers finding just what they expect is the principle behind online search, and the “matching” of searchers’ needs with the right information that is a goal in corporate blogging for business.

Internet traffic solutions firm FullTraffic.com, summarizing Google’s guide to writing quality web content, says the acid test for content writing is this: Would internet users complain if this website turned up in their search results? After years of offering business blogging assistance to companies of all types, I’d have to agree.  Formulas provide framework.  They don’t stop writers from being creative and engaging.

Formula-fed corporate blogging for business can assure first-time blog visitors they’ve come to just the right place to get what they need!

“…growth has been remarkable,” says Fortune Magazine, referring to Chipotle Mexican Grill., observing that profit margins in Chipotle restaurants are among the highest in the fast food industry. “That’s all the more notable since Chipotle says it spends more on food and more time preparing it,” Fortune adds.

Although I’m not a real fan of Mexican food, as a business owner myself (offering business blogging services), I found that Fortune article about Chipotle’s fascinating. While we’ve hardly achieved the status of a Chipotle’s at Say It For You, we Indianapolis blog writers do pride ourselves on spending more time preparing and devoting more care to business blog writing.

Chipotle’s high margins can be explained by other efficiencies, explains the feature article writer. “Throughput” refers to the rate of customer service, a Chipotle obsession, moving 300 customers an hour through the system. Their stated goal is to offer “Slow food fast”.

So, in what way can the Chipotle’s example be of business blogging assistance?

“Chipotle is a niche in a huge market dominated by burger joints”, points out Fortune. In corporate blogging training sessions, I stress, the first step is to define your business niche and then focus blog content writing on the needs of that niche target market.

Chipotle emphasizes efficiency in customer service, but not by rushing through the preparation and sacrificing quality. Precisely because they’ve put the needed time and care into the preparation, there are fewer customer service issues. “Blogs have informative and business-relevant content that increase traffic…” says Internet Marketing @ Harvard Extension 2011.  When online readers feel their needs are being addressed, versus sites containing purely promotional material, blog posts are able to achieve better conversion rates, is the lesson here.

Like Chipotle’s customers, I tell  business owners and Indianapolis blog content writers alike, your blog may be posted – and your online visitors may arrive - just one at a time. On the other hand, corporate blog writing is the perfect tool for achieving “throughput”.  While even the most unwieldy websites contain only a finite space for text, blogging doesn’t have such constraints. While individual posts are short, the content stays around forever, helping you build equity in those all-important keyword phrases and categories.

You might say the secret of successful corporate blogging for business is serving up slow content, fast!

The words of 50-kilometer running champion Josh Cox, “Remember, your worst run is always 100 percent better than the person who never tries,” are words I wish everyone blogging for business would tack up on their computer. As Runners’ World Magazine points out, “You’ll never regret going for a run, but you’ll always regret not going."

One of the most satisfying aspects of corporate blog writing is that the content you post remains online, continuing to build your presence as each new batch of content is added. While, according to Compendium Blogware CEO Chris Baggott, 95% of corporate blog readers will be first-time visitors to your blog, the odds of those online first-timers’ finding you increase with each new blog you post.

In essence the way the “matching” process works on the Web, blog content writing means never having to say you’re sorry about the time and effort you put in. I can honestly assure newbie Indianapolis blog writers, “Each time you post and your competition doesn’t, it’s a win!”

Sometimes, in corporate blogging training sessions, I recall the “Cathy” comic strip I used to enjoy so much in the Indianapolis Star. One strip in particular helps me explain why, out of all the different online communication tools we use on behalf of our clients at Say it For You, I am personally so “into” blog content writing.

Cathy and her boyfriend Irving are opening mail – she’s sorting through envelopes, he’s reading email.  “Who sends paper mail any more?” Irving jeers.  “People,” answers Cathy defiantly. When Irving rather tactlessly points out that most of her mail consists of ads and magazine subscription mailings, Cathy’s retort says it all for me: “Yes - people!  My mail is way closer to an actually human than you’ll get any time soon!”

“Way closer?” Not the most perfect syntax, but so “on the money” about blogging for business! Business blogs are where you meet the humans, the people running the business, the professionals providing the service, “way more” than brochures, billboards, or even corporate websites. Blogs are where you have people telling you not only what they have to offer but who they are.

As a professional ghost blogger with “way more” than 6,000 blog posts online (these Say It For You posts plus the corporate blogs we produce for clients), not to mention the thousands more posted by business owners and practitioners to whom I’ve offered business blogging assistance over the years, I can tell you this:

Josh Cox was absolutely right about the worst run.  The worst blog post writing is way better, in fact 100% better, than all the companies that never tried!

A favorite fellow blogger, David Meerman Scott of WebInkNow.com reminds readers how important it is to “make your writing easy to understand”.

Now, when I’m engaged in corporate blogging training, I sometimes critique newbie blog content writers’ attempts, always trying to keep my words positive and encouraging.

With my mother’s admonitions about tact firmly implanted in my mind. I don’t know that I could ever rise to the level of ruthless honesty Meerman-Scott showed in picking apart the content on the website of a company called ITA Software.


 "Founded in the mid-nineties by MIT computer science graduates, ITA Software has pioneered a new generation of travel technology. Our world-class engineers and travel industry experts are solving the industry's most complex computing challenges, and in doing so reshaping its very foundations."


Meerman-Scott has one word for that text: Gobbledygook. The problem, he points out, with using language like game changer, innovative solutions, next generation, world-class, customer-centric, and the like is that “these words and phrases are so overused as to have become meaningless”.

As a professional ghost writer, I can see another fault in the ITA material. In offering content writing assistance, I’d advise ITA not only to avoid trite adjectives, but to find a more effective way to impart information without “showing off”, coming across as pompous, or simply selling too hard.

It can be far more compelling, in business blog writing, to have customers do the bragging in the form of testimonials. What’s more, the ITA website paragraph offered no usable information to readers relating to either the travel industry or the software field. Rather than positioning their business as the “go to” source for things readers want to know, ITA kept patting its own back!

There are several reasons, I’d point out to freelance blog writers, that David Meerman Scott’s rewrite of the ITA paragraph is a big improvement:

"ITA Software by Google helps air passengers, airlines, and online travel agencies by making it easier for people to comparison shop for flights. Because of the huge volume of real-time transactions in airline pricing, the ITA Software engine is central in the travel industry’s most complex computing application."

•  It shows they understand their customers’ (the travel agencies’) problems and needs.
•  It offers a taste of how the end customer will benefit (“making it easier for people to comparison shop for flights..”).

1. Stay away from gobbledegook, from big words, and from boasting.
   
2. Above all, make your business blog writing easy to understand!

For the third in this week’s Say It For You blog series sharing writing tips from different books, let’s tackle an old dilemma – pronoun gender. The Little Red Writing Book advises “Keep your writing gender neutral.” The question is: How can we blog content writers stay grammatically and yet politically “correct”?

For starters, corporate blogging for business is a pretty new, modern method of communicating with potential customers, so the last thing business bloggers want is to sound old-fashioned, using “he” and “him” when referring to a person who might be either a “he” or a “she”.

You remember that old joke where a person knocks at the gates of Heaven and St. Peter asks “who’s there?”.  The reply, “It is I. “Go away!” says St. Peter.  “We have enough English teachers here.”

In corporate blogging training, I continually stress how important it is to know your target readers.  If you’re writing blog content targeted at new mothers, for example, using “she” and “her” is appropriate. Otherwise, advise the authors, use “they” and “them”. (“One” goes back to the English teacher-trying-to-get-into-heaven problem.)

If you’re providing business blogging assistance to companies with clients of both sexes, The Little Red Writing Book has some good advice about acceptable ways to approach certain “politically sensitive” terms:

Instead of “TV anchorman”, write “TV anchor”, “fire fighter”, not “fireman”, “police officer”, not “policeman”, and “spokesperson” rather than “spokesman”. On the other side of things, it’s better to use “homemaker” than “housewife” and “flight attendant” rather than “stewardess”.

When it comes right down to it, people aren’t concerned about remembering your web address or even your brand, says Chris Baggott, CEO of Compendium Blogware." With whom do consumers want to do business? As market research overwhelmingly demonstrates, "People like me", Baggott points out.

As a professional ghost blogger for so many different kinds of companies, I’ve found that it’s best to use “you” and “your”, conversing directly with those online visitors, who are, after all, asking themselves “What’s in it for ME?”