Indianapolis Blog Writer

Thirty years ago, D. Forbes Ley was teaching sales professionals the advantages of the questioning technique.  While blogs are closer – or at least should be – to advertorials than direct selling mechanisms, this week my Say It For You blog posts are devoted to some of the gems in Ley’s book “The Best Seller”. While blog marketing wasn’t even a gleam in the eye when that book came out, it’s amazing how relevant the ideas are for blog content writers today.

 I tell new Indianapolis blog content writers that, in creating content for SEO marketing blogs, we need to keep in mind that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions for dilemmas they're facing. But even if those searchers haven’t specifically formulated their question, I suggest we can do that for them by presenting a question in the blog post itself!

Ley taught salespeople that asking questions has a number of advantages in the selling process:

• Answering questions satisfies the prospect’s need to “dominate” (control the situation). Online readers DO dominate, using their mouse to “bounce” to another website if they feel their needs are not being addressed.
   
• Questions allow the salesperson to guide the direction of the meeting. For blog writers, then, that means making our point of view clear, making sure it’s relevant to a current conversation or trend, and that the point of view differentiated enough to stand out.
   
• By answering questions, Prospects confirm their needs.
   
• Prospect feels understood
   
• Salesperson can fan an existing desire rather than work to create a new one
   
• The question relieves the pressure that could otherwise become an objection (by stating the prospect’s viewpoint)

“We don’t sell products and markets, we sell people,” says Ley, adding that the good thing about that is that people are more uniform and predictable than “markets”.

 

“The salesperson can no longer ‘wing it’ in a sales interview; you will run out of time reciting boring facts while missing the golden opportunity to get involved with the Prospect and to get the Prospect emotionally involved with your product.”

Amazing.  Author D. Forbes Ley was issuing that piece of sales advice exactly thirty years ago! Yet, can you think of anything more relevant to blog content marketing today???  As a corporate blogging trainer, I know I can’t.

“When interesting and informative are no longer assets, bloggers have to come up with something else: emotional triggers,” observes Mike Alton on socialmediatoday.com. Blog content writing might be high-quality and informative and still not “make it out of the pit of anonymity,” he adds, for the simple fact that it doesn’t engage with readers.” Ín the end it’s not only information that attracts readers, but also emotions,” Alton concludes.

Face-to-face with a prospect, Marty Martin explains in the Journal of Financial Planning, the seller must first be a listener, uncovering both facts and emotions. That step must precede guiding clients to decisions.

In blogging for business, where face-to-screen is the closest blog content writers come to their prospects, what can ignite the kind of personal connection that gets the Prospect emotionally involved?

“Customers don’t want to feel like they are being told a brand story. They want to tell themselves the story. They want to be a part of the story,” is Coopers’ and Gruntzner’s advice to business owners in Tips & Traps for Marketing Your Business.  The authors recommend using blogs to tell a story. “Engage readers of your blog with fascinating story-like entries.”

One question bound to come up in any corporate blogging training session is this: Can emotional blog marketing be effective in B2 situations?

“Don’t be fooled by the misconception that B2B means presenting products and services to a company rather than to a real person,” says the k-ecommerce blogger. “A company is never faceless. Behind every decision there is always a person involved, and that person has feelings.”

Emotional marketing was “in” thirty years ago when the first edition of “D. Forbes Ley’s “The Best Seller” hit the shelves.  Today, I remind Indianapolis freelance blog writers, emotions remain the most powerful tool for moving people to action.
 

Blog readers tend to be curious creatures.  What’s more, that curiosity factor is highest when readers are learning about themselves.  As a longtime Indianapolis blog content writer, I’ve found that “self-tests” tend to engage readers and help them relate in a more personal way to the information presented in an SEO marketing blog. Popular magazine editors appear to agree as well, because current issues are full of tests, games, and quizzes.

Salvatore Didato’s book, “Who Are You? Test Your Personality” offers no fewer than forty quizzes to “reveal the real you”.  It’s not just the variety of quizzes that I found so helpful about this book; it’s the way each is presented that can serve as a model for business blog writing.

“How Daring Are You?” is the header for Didato’s Quiz #1, but rather than diving directly into the series of questions, the author whets his readers’ appetites with an introduction, citing a study done at the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry showing that 1/2 to 2/3 of risk-taking propensity is probably inherited. Blog writers, too, can whet readers’ curiosity with a little-known statistic or fact at the beginning of a post.

Didato then continues with a ten-question true/false test containing statements such as “When shopping, I usually stick to known brands.” But, for business bloggers and business owners who are conveying information to online readers, what is most important is Didato’s commentary following that risk-propensity self-test.

“Studies of group dynamics confirm that a pattern called ‘risky shift’ occurs when members of a group bolster each other’s daring and shift to more risk taking than when they are alone.”
 
I once heard WIBC Radio”s Denny Smith make a comment that I considered very relevant for business blog content writing: People are looking to their advisors for more than just information, he said. They need perspective.  In providing information to searchers, remember that they need some guidance as to what they can do about those facts, and ways in which the information can make a difference to them.

As a corporate blogging trainer, then, I’d remind bloggers to be “tour guides”. The quiz, test, or survey, engages their curiosity.  The next step is “nudging” readers towards a point of view – or a course of action!
 

An old joke revisited in the Reader’s Digest Humor Collection reminded me of one important lesson for Indianapolis blog content writers:

A lonely woman buys a parrot so she’ll have someone to talk to.  After a week, the parrot hasn’t uttered a word. The woman goes back to the pet store and buys a mirror for the parrot’s cage, thinking that might stimulate a reaction. Nothing.  The woman buys a little ladder for the cage.  Still no communication.  A swing elicits not a peep.  A week later, the parrot, lying on the floor of the cage, dying, whispers, “Don’t they have any food at that pet store?”

When it comes to blog content writing, we’re often advised that we need to create content that’s engaging, different, and unique. And yes, those are qualities to strive for in blog content writing. But offering very basic, usable information is quite OK. After all, first-time readers, (who probably constitute the majority of visitors to anyone’s SEO marketing blog site), came online seeking information about a particular thing.

(At the risk of belaboring the metaphor), the joke reminded me that, while the ladder and the swing and the mirror added interest to the parrot’s cage, the first task the pet owner needed to address was to provide food.

In “Twelve Tips for Writing Better Marketing Brochures”, local marketing maven, Al Trestrail, offers more valuable advice for content creation: “Putting (basic)helpful information in your brochure will encourage the reader to keep it, refer to it often, or pass it on to other people”.

Simplifying your topic makes your blog content reader-friendly. Offering online visitors easy-to-understand, usable information on the subject of their search, helps convert them into customers. In blogging, B is for basics!
 

If ever you’re tempted to become cavalier about the quality of your blog writing, just remember – it’s up to us professional content writers to counterbalance stuff such as this:

“So here’s an contra-growing old additionally anti-itchiness do-it-yourself solution which causes your body robust and as well as minimizes our itchies in icy temperatures, waterless local weather, ensure that it is a component of an article rewrites Christian louboutin men shoes craigs list program for sprouting younger and you wont amount to an prepare such as calf.”

(Can that be for real? Unfortunately, yes.  And a lot more like it is crowding our business blogging air space, too.)

As a corporate blogging trainer in Indianapolis, my favorite recommendation to business owners and to the freelance blog content writers they hire to help bring their message to their customers is something I learned from my sixth grade English teacher: “Autograph your work with excellence.”:

I confess that when I began to come across incomprehensible online content, my first “take” was that it must have been created by non-native speakers of the English language. Business owners or professional practitioners had needed content writing help, I concluded, and had chosen to outsource the work overseas to save on costs.

When I learned about “spinned content”, I realized that the “gibberish” effect in some of the incomprehensible text I was finding could well be the work of a computer program, not of some overseas content writer. (Spinned content is reproduced by replacing words with synonyms, for the purpose of re-using content and repeating keyword phrases many times with an eye to “winning search”.)

I can recall the time that, as a new member of the National Speakers Association, I was first introduced to the phrase, “the privilege of the platform”. Along with the privilege of addressing an audience, taking people’s time and attention, I was being taught, comes the duty to offer quality material and to present it in a quality manner.

Today, decades later, I realize that there’s a privilege to blogging, too.  That privilege comes with a duty we freelance blog content writers have to offer usable, high-quality, well-researched content, presented in quality fashion.  Our online readers have a right to expect no less.
 

“Everybody knows that Goodwill helps people, but what NOT everybody knows is how.” The Goodwill Guy then proceeds to tell TV watchers the Goodwill ABC’s:

1. You give us the stuff you’re not using
2. We sell it to someone who’ll use it.
3. Then, we use the money to educate and employ people.

Now, as far as marketing content goes, that’s impressive!  As an Indianapolis blog content writer and corporate blogging trainer, I think that Goodwill commercial model is exactly what every business owner or professional practitioner - and every freelance blog content writer - should aim for in blog content writing.

Step One consists of establsihing common ground.  What is it about your business or practice that “everybody knows”?  Blog opening lines need to be definitive rather than mysterious, making sure readers know they’ve come to the right site for the information, products, and services they’re seeking.

Step Two includes offering unique, less well-known information about your profession or industry. In blogging, whether you’re doing business-to-business writing or writing SEO marketing blogs for a professional practice, retail business, or not-for-profit organization, taking online searchers “behind the scenes” makes for content that is more compelling.

Step Three is the “why?”, the “what’s-your-purpose” question.  What drives the passion?
When working with business owners to arrive at the right tone and the right emphasis for their SEO marketing blogs, I begin by challenging the owner of the business or professional practice with the following question: "If you had only eight to ten words to describe why you're passionate about what you sell, what you know, and what you do, what would those words be?"

Goodwill’s passion is educating and employing people.  Give your online visitors the chance to get caught up in your passion.readers can get caughtknow exactly what your passion. I once wrote a reminder to eager-beaver business blogger newbies: In the dictionary, the word "belief" comes before "blog"!

 

Truth be told, I’m not crazy about slide presentations. But at the AWAH (Art With a Heart) fundraising breakfast a couple of weeks ago, there was one particular slide in Executive Director Andrew Lee’s Power Point that I liked.  I liked it a lot, as a matter of fact.  The slide was titled “What We Do”, and I found myself thinking what a great template it could be for business blog content writing.

The slide had four bullet sections, with an arrow pointing downward from each to the one below:

•  WHEN people give us money…..
   
•  WE send an experienced art teacher to a school
   
• WHERE they give fun, high quality art classes to underserved kids
   
• THAT educate, inspire, provide hope

What did I find to like about that message?

First, as a corporate blogging trainer, I teach new Indianapolis blog content writers to help readers follow their logic to a conclusion. Online searchers rarely read. Instead, they scan. With a minimum of effort on their part, those searchers need to be able to discern what it is you do and that they've come to the right place.

Second, there are many personal pronouns: “People give US money…WE send teachers…THEY give classes...  Blogs are more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces. Your readers want to meet the people behind the blog. The message is “WE will be taking care of YOU!"

That slide makes very clear what we can expect AWAH to do, and the “template” is one that freelance bloggers can easily use in marketing a business, a professional practice, or an organization:

WHEN YOU (the writer is telling readers)…hire a professional realtor/bankruptcy attorney/cleaning service/cosmetic surgeon/house painter/massage therapist….. like (name)
WE….take the following steps
WHERE….we....provide the following products and services
THAT….benefit you in the following ways……

It’s really quite a simple formula, that AWAH template.  Translated into my own business, it means that when we offer business blogging help to Say It For You clients, we’re helping them tell their prospects, “Here are the results you can expect when you give us money!”
 

Remember “streaking”?

To grab attention, streakers ran naked in public places.

For us Indianapolis freelance blog content writers, there’s a lot to learn from Brandon Royal’s The Little Red Writing Book, and I’ve devoted all three of this week’s Say It For You blog posts to some of Royal’s excellent pointers on writing in general. SEO marketing blogs. which multi-task as promo pieces, advertorials, bulletins, tutorials, and mission statements, are, above all, a form of written communication. Sharing the wisdom is part of my own mission to improve the quality of the writing in business owners’ and professionals’ blogs.

One rule that is of business blogging help in particular is keeping sentences short. Short sentences have what I call “pow!”. Short sentences, particularly in titles can easily be shared on social media sites. Focused content, I teach in corporate blogging training sessions, keeps readers’ attention on the message.

That doesn’t mean, though, as Brandon Royal reminds us, that every sentence needs to be short. “That would create a choppy style,” he says. Instead, “the writer must judge how to weave short sentences with longer ones” and use sentence variety.

Brandon calls really, really short sentences "naked", and he suggests that occasionally, these add a dynamic touch to your writing. As an example, he cites a campaign for dark beer. “I like beer.  Beer explains more about me than anything in the world,” it begins. That first 3-word line has “pow!”. In corporate and professional practitioner blogs, two to four word “naked” opening lines can be used to capture attention as well.

Naked sentences stand out in blog content writing!

 

Like all trainers, I’ve tended to develop “hobby horses”, points I find myself emphasizing over and over when offering corporate blogging help. Using word tidbits is one of those “hobby horse” things for me. A good word tidbit is any particular combination of everyday words that helps readers have an “aha!” moment, where they’re able to unify things they maybe already knew, but either hadn’t really understood or hadn’t translated into action.

If you’ve ever wondered where the phrase “baker’s dozen” comes from, here’s the “skinny”:

In the 1200’s British bread makers were notorious for cheating customers by giving them very skimpy loaves. Finally King Henry III decreed that loaf “shorting” would be punished with beatings or jail sentences. To stay on the good side of that law, bakers would actually give 13 loaves to any customer ordering a dozen.

When it comes to keywords in blog posts, it seems, content writers tend to err on both sides of the “dozen”, either neglecting keyword phrases or over-stuffing. By using keywords in the title and in the first sentences of the blog post, we assure our readers that the information they’re seeing is intended for them. If we “short” keywords, we’re also not letting search engines know which topics we’re targeting.

As I caution newbies to corporate blogging, though, it’s not effective to target too many keywords. “Stuffing blog posts with keywords makes the text unnatural-sounding, which, as bloggingpro.com explains, “provides a negative user experience and will probably get you penalized by search engines.”

The Google Webmasters site has something to say about keyword use as well: "Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords. Google’s recommendation: "Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context."

 

If you’re into Egyptology, it’s easy to find books on the subject. One tells you how to “Run Like an Egyptian”,  others how to “Walk Like an Egyptian”, “Think Like an Egyptian”, “Treat Your Lady Like an Egyptian Goddess”, or even ”Shop Like an Egyptian” .

None of these seemed to have any usefulness in terms of blogging for business. I did find a number of interesting ideas I can use in corporate blogging training sessions in a Mental Floss Magazine article entitled “Gift Like an Egyptian”.

“Want to make your presents felt while globe-trotting? Author Laura Turner Garrison begins.

• "In Egypt, a gift recipient will generally wait until after the gift giver has left to unwrap his or her treasure.”

It’s possible that some readers of your SEO marketing blog won’t be ready to take action just yet. They may want to wait until later to “unwrap the gift”.   In offering business blogging help, I remind writers to offer different options. Visitors ready to buy should be able to do that right away, but others may want to watch a video or download a white paper to learn more, or merely “favorite” your url and “unwrap” it later.

•  In Japan, Garrison explains, “your gift may be declined numerous times before it’s accepted.”

In blogging for business, you want to be perceived as a subject matter expert offering usable information and insights. Once readers feel assured that you know your stuff and that you care about offering good information and good service, they might be ready to take action.
 

•  “Brazilians are somewhat superstitious about the color of their gifts, including the wrapping; black is an obvious no-no.” In Russia, I learned, “sending a birthday present late isn’t rude.  In fact, sending one early is considered incredibly bad luck.”

Knowing our target readers’ culture is crucial for freelance blog content writers in Indianapolis when composing content for business owners’ and professional practitioners’ blogs. There are many subsets of every group targeted, and not every message will work for every person. At Say It For You, we realize online searchers need to know we’re thinking of them as individuals and that we understand their problems and wishes, not merely their stats.

Running like, walking like, thinking like, and shopping like Egyptians – that’s all well and good for general cultural knowledge and sensitivity. But blogging like an Egyptian? That means learning about our target readers and then writing business blog content with them in mind!
 

No, I didn’t say we Indianapolis blog content writers should be compared to a mooch, (you know, that parasite-like person who’s always asking you for favors and never reciprocating).

I was referring to MOOC’s, those Massive Open Online Courses) offered by universities and organizations. Always on the alert as I read my Indianapolis Star for interesting material that can be of business blogging help, I was fascinated to read about Ball State University instructor Christina Blanch, who’s teaching 5,000 students from around the world about, of all topics, Gender Through Comic Books.

I was also fascinated to learn that not every university has as positive an outlook on MOOC-ing as BSU. Purdue’s Chief Information Officer Gerry McCartney characterizes MOOC’s as marketing devices.  “They are not an educational device,” says McCartney, “not in their current form.”

Maybe MOOC’s are all about marketing rather than about university-standard education. Since at Say It For You, we’re all about content marketing strategy, we’re more than OK with freelance blog writers being thought of as the MOOC-ers of the Internet. Still, I’d have to point out, business blogs are massive educational instruments in their own right. Anyone providing business blogging services should be able to state “Wow! I learned something today!” and those writing for business should aim for the target readers being able to make that same statement about the informative material they’ve been offered. In fact, information (as opposed to promotion), is what successful business blog content writing is all about.

In the world of academia, MOOC advocates consider those online courses a “disruptive innovation” that will transform higher education for the better. Critics compare MOOCs to trucks that deliver groceries but can’t influence changes in nutrition. It’s certainly true that blogging for business has its own advocates and critics (when blog content writing is compared with more traditional websites and even with alternative marketing strategies).

I found what Karen Head, Director of Georgia Tech’s Communication Center, had to say especially interesting:

“As instructors test the new pedagogical environment, college may not be able to meet the growing need for sophisticated support system.  In our case, we cannot wait, so we continue to make adjustments day by day.”  

Blogging is growing by leaps and bounds, both as an online marketing strategy and as an  educational and  opinion forum. The lesson for me as a freelance blog content writer serving my business and professional practitioner clients is both complex and simple:

We business bloggers will need to continue to make adjustments day by day!


 

“I’m not sure who started encouraging writers to ‘write about what you know’”, observes novelist and literature professor Elan Barnehama. At first glance it makes sense, he admits. The problem is, he says, the story is always better served by the narrative that could happen when you don’t have constraints. That doesn’t mean he can’t use what he knows, Barnehama hastens to assure his readers, but when he allows himself to discover new aspects of the world, his novels end up being about his readers, not about himself.

Blogging about what you don’t know? That seems to fly in the face of all the corporate blogging training I’ve ever received or given to others. After all, isn’t the whole idea in blogging for business to showcase the expertise you have and the problems you KNOW how to solve?

Fellow blogger Ivan Widjaya of Biz Penguin might have tapped into the Barnehama’s mentality. “Off-beat posts regarding your company can bring people closer to you. They can lower the fence, so prospects and customers can have a peek on what’s going on inside your company and brands.” Widjava advises being not only passionate, interesting, but unusual and even quirky.  Sometimes, he thinks, being quirky can “help you establish a unique audience that will take whatever you offer them.”

There’s another aspect of this “what-you-don’t-know” aspect of blog content writing. To sustain our blog content writing over long periods of time without losing reader excitement and engagement, we’ve need to constantly add to our own body of knowledge – in our industry or professional field, and about what’s going on around us in our culture. Ironically, business blogging can serve as a form of market research in itself, as smallbiztrends.com points out.
Reading, bookmarking, clipping - and even just noticing - new trends and information relating to your business field goes a long way towards keeping the quiver stocked with content ideas.

At Butler College of Business (where I’m an Executive Career Mentor), “experiential learning” is a hallmark of the teaching method, with the idea being “learning by doing”. In creating content for SEO marketing blogs, it could be a case of “doing by learning”. As we “read around” and “curate” materials from other thought leaders, we’re becoming better ‘teachers” by becoming better learners. Now that Barnehama has got me thinking about it, I realize that, for Indianapolis bloggers, “what we don’t know can HELP us!”
 

"As a writer, you spend much of your writing time alone," says Mary McCauley Smith of Absolute Write. "You may have thought this peculiarity went hand-in-hand with the writer's life, but perhaps it runs deeper than that.  Maybe you are an 'innie'," she suggests, referring to the Myers-Briggs preference for introversion.

Sorry, Ms. Smith, but no; actually,  my Meyers-Briggs "errs" strongly on the extrovert side. You made me think, though: Are there more "introverted" and more "extroverted" styles in blog content writing?

Introverts and extroverts differ from each other in three ways, Smith explains, and each of these traits affects your writing life.
 

• Energy usage - Introverts are energy conservers.  Extroverts are energy users.
   
• Response to stimulation -  The noise and hustle of the world can overwhelm an introvert, while extroverts are thrilled by a variety of stimuli.
   
• Approach to knowledge - Introverts like a narrow, in-depth focus.  Extroverts prefer to collect a wider base of data.

In my profession of corporate blogging trainer, I work with business  owners and professionals, with their employees, and with Indianapolis freelance copywriters to create blog content, often for SEO marketing blogs.  While I confess I hadn't been viewing any of these writers in terms of their Myers-Briggs preferences, now that I think about it, I agree with Byron Walsh, author of "The Upside of Being an Introvert". After studying introverted leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi, Hillary Clinton, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Mother teresa, and extroverts Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs, Marie Antoinette, and Winston Churchill, Walsh concluded "it takes both kinds to make history".

I think effective blog writing takes both kinds, too.  Consider research, for example.  You could make phone calls, talk to experts, visit different stores and facilities, interview customers for testimonials, or...you could rely on Internet research to glean most of the information you need.

With the practice of writing blog pposts for others becoming increasingly common in the corporate and professional worlds, whose Myers-Briggs preference is reflected in the content?  It depends...on the target audience, and on the business owner or professional practitioner who's being "introduced" through the blog.
 

Five years ago, in crafting the mission statement for Say It For You, I wrote the following:

"A ghost must use her 'third ear',  not only hearing what you want to say, but picking up on your unique style of saying it.  That way, the ghost can speak your message in your 'voice', to your customers.  A good ghost blogger should not, herself, be seen OR heard!"

The Book of Times includes facts on how long things take, how long they last, and how often they happen.

Always on the lookout for interesting insights about corporate blogging for business, I first learned of author Lesley Alderman’s fixation with counting stuff through my favorite magazine, Mental Floss, and of course couldn’t resist the temptation to parse time-related data on what I do as an Indianapolis freelance copy writer and professional ghost blogger.  After all, I reasoned, if a day may be thought of as made up of 28,000 hugs (3 seconds apiece), how might I measure the activities I teach in blog marketing training sessions?

"Creativity is a process", explains Vicky Earley of Artichoke Design, "and you need to give it the time necessary." Creativity often "meanders, considers, ponders, and only then delivers". According to ProBlogger, “researching and composing an excellent blog post for a business "can use up the better part of a day".

Early calls it “meandering”, but I teach writers of SEO marketing blogs the importance of “reading around”, and then “curating” others’ material. Finding and reading what other writers are saying and what the latest thought trends are in your field is a big part of successfully keeping up a corporate or professional practitioner blog. Say you’re posting new blog content every three days. Say you’ve allotted two hours of your time for each blog post, or 40 minutes per day, with one fourth of that time devoted to finding, reading, and processing that content. Using Alderman’s method of measuring time, each day of a blogger’s life is worth 144 “reading around”s!

By the same token, finding just the right photo or clip art to capture the theme of a blog post might take 10 minutes, say 3.33 minutes per day.  Since, in blogging for business, words and pictures are my only tools, I spend at least that much time “illustrating” posts. Measuring time the Alderman way, a day in a blog content writer’s life is made up of 432 “illustrations”.

Of course formatting the text to make it more readable, actually writing the copy, researching, editing, strategically employing keyword phrases, and just plain “thinking” about the topic - all these elements figure into the gestation of a  blog post.

Blog content writers – start measuring your time!
 

"If you plan to stay anywhere within your home remodeling budget," cautioned the interveiwee on a Destination DIY radio episode I heard just the other day, "stay away from 'so-long-as' extras."  "So-long-as-we're-fixing-up-the-kitchen-we-might-as-well-add-...." can turn out to be a very expensive train of thought, she explained.

"So-long-as" add-ons in blog content writing tend to get "expensive" in a different way.  Attempting to cover too much ground in a single blog post, we lose focus, straining our readers' attention span.
 

"One message per post" is the mantra I pass on to newbie Indianapolis blog writers.  In fact, because blog posts are updated so much more frequently, they have a distinct advantage over more "static" general website copy.  Each post, I teach in corporate blogging training sessions, should contain a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of  your business.  Other important things you want to discuss?  Save those for later blog posts, I tell them.

Still, I like the idea employee benefits professional Mel Schlesinger teaches salespeople - adding an "Oh, by the way..." to describe an add-on service or product feature.  In SEO blog marketing, you can lead to your "so-long-as" information with a link to another page, an offer of a down-loadable while paper, or by simply telling readers to watch for information on that other product or service in your next blog post.

Keeping the primary focus is crucial in business blog writing, though, because online searchers tend to be scanners rather than readers.  Truth is, many will not ever get far enough into your post to even notice the "so long as" part!

In Do-It-Yourself projects, "so-long-as" add-ons may not be a very smart idea from a budget standpoint.  In business blog writing, lack of focus can get uncomfortable costly as well.  But for readers who stick with you, you can use "so-long-as" add-ons to let them know you have lots more helpful information, products, and services to fill their needs.