Professional Ghost Blogger

I think Holly Becker might be onto something, especially when it comes to a few of the 15 blogging tips she offers readers of Where Women Create Business magazine.

Of course, as a freelance Indianapolis blog copywriter, her reminders to

• Know your audience
• Set a schedule
• Keep going

have become “old hat”, but as a corporate blogging trainer, I loved Becker’s observation that “perfection is not the goal.  …Bloggers are relatable and that is our competitive edge.”  

One excellent piece of advice Becker offered is simply “Sleep on it. If you write a post but are not sure whether you should post it, don’t water it down or delete it – save it as a draft. Read it the next day and see what you think.” In fact, with quite a number of my professional practitioner Say It For You ghost-blogging clients (doctors, lawyers, accountants in particular), all of the blog content we create needs to be preapproved by the client after checking for accuracy and compliance with the regulations in their field.

“Experiment more”, Becker advises bloggers, trying new layouts and formats.

“Inspire with imagery. On days when you cannot write, post a few photos and let the images speak for you. Form a few coherent, short-but-sweet sentences to accompany the photos.”  Besides offering a text-writing ‘break” for the blogger, photos can have an extra purpose: in SEO marketing blogs, embedding keyword phrases in the tags of photos can help in the overall effort to “get found”.

My very favorite of the Becker tips is the very practical suggestion to “Read your post aloud. Hearing your words may help you to better structure your copy and to edit or even add to what you already have.”
 

"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!
 

There’s something enticing about a title promising to “bare the truth”, especially when it concerns a topic on which we didn’t expect there to be any secrets to speak of.  The “Special Report” about (of all things) bears, in (of all places) Backpacker magazine made me think that Indiana blog content writers might make more frequent use of that truth-about-… technique.

The 12-page magazine article about grizzlies contained enough valuable and little-known ursine information to stock two dozen blog posts. But in corporate blogging training sessions, I stress the importance of keeping each post focused on only one aspect of a business or professional practice – one product or service, one guiding principle, etc.  

Yet the material was organized around three main themes, or, as I refer to them in this Say it For You blog (borrowing a phrase from classical music), leitmotifs. As we continue to write about our industries, our products, and our services, we’ll find ourselves repeating some key concepts. In fact, as I offer business blogging assistance, I’ll tell you that’s what you should be doing to keep your blogs focused and targeted. The variety comes from the details you fill in around those central themes, examples of ways the company’s products can be helpful, or examples of how the company helped solve various problems.

The 3 tactics in Truth About Bears include:

De-mystifying:
“Have the biggest predators in North American managed to survive unseen in North cascades National Park?  Cascades grizzlies barely hang on”, readers learn. “We pushed bears so deep into the wild that they have grim prospects for breeding, or even finding each other.”

Addressing misinformation in a company's blog shines light on the owner's special expertise, besides offering information that is valuable to readers. De-mystifying matters can make your blog into a "go-to" source for readers seeking information in your field.


Myth-busting:
Are bears always afraid of fire? Is it true that bears can’t climb trees? Are bears really unable to run downhill?

Myth debunking is a great use for corporate blog content. That's because in the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or service often surface in the form of customer questions and comments.

Offering actionable information:
Dream of seeing a bruin in the wild? No matter what part of the country you call home, “The Black Bear Finder” details where hikers should go for a bear-spotting hike within a day’s drive.

A Call to Action an image or text that tells your readers what action they should be taking next on your site. In fact, as a professional ghost blogger, I'd say the ultimate challenge blog content writers face is getting readers to "see" themselves using the products and services described in the blog posts and providing them with options for using the information you’ve provided.
 

How can you use "the-truth-abouts" in blogging for business?

“To freshen up blog post content, start with one idea about your product or service, then. try putting a number to it” is one piece of blog content writing advice I’ve been sharing with business owners and professional practitioners ever since an O Magazine cover  three years ago drew my attention with the title “100 Things That Are Actually Getting Better.” 

The point of using numbered lists, I explained to blog content writers, is to demonstrate ways in which your product or service is different, and to provide valuable information that engages readers, helping them see you as a go-to guy or gal to solve their problem or fill their need. Truth is, that numbering technique had been a staple for women’s magazine covers for as long as I could remember, and in corporate blogging training sessions, it was easy for newbie bloggers to emulate the technique of using numbers to entice.

14 home remedies

17 room décor tips

 6 knottiest marital problems

 2 discipline problems to fix first…

Just name an issue, I posited -  some women’s magazine editor will be serving it up with a number attached! 
 

Just the other day, though, I found out we women aren’t the only ones onto the numbers game. Browsing the local CVS magazine rack (As a professional “ghost blogger”, I’m constantly on the hunt for content idea triggers), I focused this time on the MEN'S magazine section.  To my surprise, I found no fewer than seven magazine covers sporting list-based titles:

Robb Report:  50 Great Escapes

Men’s Health: 15 Foods That Fight Fat

Muscle Mag:    5 Reasons Your Arms Stopped Growing

Men’s Journal:  Eight New Discoveries

Golf Magazine: 6 Longest new Drivers

Sporting News: 300 Top Prospects

GQ: The 100 Sexiest Women of the 21st Century

“64% of sophisticated blog readers believe that using a number in a post title is so pathetically obvious that it couldn’t possibly still work,” says Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communication. Fact is, Simone explains, posts with numbers consistently bring in more traffic and more referrals than posts without.


Do you really need any more statistics than those to try business blog writing by the numbers?
 

“Adventuress” Leslie Bailey finds “bucket lists” irksome. Rather than focus on things to do before you die, she recommends trying new things right now.

Whether I end up (or whether she does, for that matter!) going indoor skydiving or flying a helicopter during the coming year, I must say Bailey’s Indianapolis Star article “13 Adventures to Try in 2013” contains many of the elements that make for great blog content writing.

A number in the title
To freshen up blog post content, start with one idea about your product or service. Then try putting a number to it:

• 2 Best Ways To Eliminate……
• 3 Problem Fixes to Try ….
• 4 Home Remedies…
• 5 Tips…
• 6 Knottiest Issues in…

Convenient navigation path to follow calls to action
Each one of Bailey’s suggestions ends with a phone number and website address readers can use to get it done. In other words, if I’m moved to actually try scuba diving, Bailey’s told me where to go to actually sign up. Ease of navigation (as I stress when offering business blogging help) is absolutely crucial to the success of any SEO marketing blog.

Varied sentence structure
Each one of Leslie Bailey’s paragraphs begins a different way. “Try fencing” begins: “Admittedly, it’s a chance to shout ‘Engarde!” at someone…  “”Go to the Kentucky Derby” begins: “I want the whole deal: big bets, bigger hats and lots of mint juleps.” “Ride a motorcycle” begins “Mostly to impress my Harley-Davidson-loving uncle.” Blog content writing, as I’m fond of saying during business blogging training sessions, is both science and art, with much of each relating to the words used in each blog post. And, the greater the variety in the parts of speech used and the sentence structure, the more interesting the writing will be.

“Pow” opening line to set the stage and grab attention
“At the risk of sounding too hipster about the whole thing, I have to tell you, the phrase ‘Bucket List’ irks me,” Bailey offers as her opener. A big part of content writing for blogs, I’ve found, involves getting the opening line” right. In fact, had Bailey been blogging rather than writing a feature article, an even  shorter and more direct opener might be (in bold letters)t “I have to tell you, the phrase ’Bucket List’ irks me.”

First-person writing
Leslie Bailey’s article is a grabber because she’s describing activities she’s either already experienced or which she’s challenging herself to try soon. I teach Indianapolis blog writers they’ll be at their most effective when they are at their most personal. Even professional ghost bloggers, I explain, can write in “I” format when sharing a personal experience that brings out some important aspect of the client company’s products, services, or corporate culture.

Many thanks, Leslie Bailey. I must admit it’s highly unlikely I’ll either try escargot or drive a NASCAR car in 2013 - or ever. What I can do, however, is use this wonderful 13 Adventures list as an example of engaging content writing!
 

“Let’s get this straight: The doctor who prescribes laughter after I’ve been run over by a truck is not one I’m liable to revisit,” begins Chapter One of Reader’s Digest ‘s “Laughter is the Best Medicine”.

I teach Indianapolis freelance blog content writers the same thing: Whether it’s products, services, or advice your client has to sell, there’s one thing you need to get straight in planning the SEO marketing blog: 

“Prescribing” anything before you’ve demonstrated you’ve done your homework and understand the readers’ needs is not likely to have them revisiting the blog or following any of your calls to action.

So much information has been put out there in the form of corporate blogging for business that it’s essential for blog content writers to focus on a target audience, What needs to be loud-and-clear is that you understand them, you serve their specific needs, and that you’re targeting them.

As a professional ghost blogger for business, I realize blog marketing doesn't attempt to create a new market where one doesn't exist. On the contrary, blogging is "pull marketing", designed to attract searchers who have already identified their own need for a particular product or service.

Even so, the fact readers have clicked onto a blog post is not to say they’re ready for a “prescription”. What that click does represent is a chance for the business or practice to introduce its unique approach to satisfying customers' needs.

Bottom line is, you’re writing a blog (or perhaps turning to a professional ghost writer like me for help) in hopes that searchers will not only read what you’ve written, but react favorably by becoming clients or customers.

But, in order to have any hope of achieving that outcome, your knowledge (of your target audience) needs to influence every aspect of your blog – what the page looks like, the style of writing, the length and frequency of posts, and the way you elicit comments and feedback.

In blogging for business, are you jumping to the “prescription” stage too soon?

Retirement planners have three roles, Marty Martin explains in the Journal of Financial Planning:

Listener

Connector

Resolver

Seems to me, keeping those same three roles in mind would help blog content writers plan an editorial calendar for the SEO marketing blog of any business, professional practice, or organization.

Listener

The goal is to uncover the facts and discover the emotions. When your client tells you the source of his or her concern, switch to the facts, and normalize the feelings (“It’s not unusual for people to feel a bit nervous about retirement.”)

Once the basic connection with online searchers  has been established through the blog post title and the keyword phrases, we blog content writers have our real work cut out for us – creating an emotional connection with readers. We need to assure them we ‘re listening.  We understand the issues, and they are hardly “alone” in their need for solutions to their problems.

Connector

The goal is to help the client connect the dots of the different types of data – their pension, their Social Security, their IRA, etc.-  plus connect the clients with other professionals for special planning they need.

As a freelance blog writer, I’ve always known that linking to outside sources is a good tactic for adding breadth and depth to my blog content. Linking to a news source or magazine article, for instance, adds credibility to the ideas I’m expressing on behalf of Say It For You client companies. When you link to another blog content writer’s comments about the subject you’re covering, that’s a way to reinforce your point and also shows you’re staying in touch with others in your industry. By connecting readers to other sources,  Indianapolis bloggers can really enhance and add value to the online consumers’ experience.

Resolver

The goal is to guide clients to decisions.  You strongly suggest your client make a specific decision, yet acknowledge it is the client’s decision, not yours.

A call to action is an image or text that tells your readers what action they should be taking next on your site. In fact, as a professional ghost blogger, I'd say the ultimate challenge blog content writers face is getting readers to "see" themselves using the products and services described in the blog posts. Providing several different options for readers (Read more, Subscribe to blog or newsletter, Download a document, Contact, Take a survey) guides readers to decisions while acknowledging they may not be ready to buy just yet.

Use business blog writing to showcase business owners’ and  practitioners in all three roles – as listeners, as connectors, and as resolvers!

Scientists Becker and Geer define culture as “a set of common understandings around which action is organized” (quoted in Culture & High Performance by William C. Jeffries). Successful blogging for business may have a lot in common with anthropology. 

I came to that conclusion because what I’ve found with Say It For You business owners and professional practitioners is that they want their SEO marketing blogs to do just that – help them market.  They hope the blog content writing they’re doing (or the writing they’ve hired professional ghost bloggers like me to do for them) will spur action.

Still, they quickly learn, it’s rare for online searchers to spring into immediate action, navigating straight from blog to shopping cart. Why?  Because that Becker-Geer set of common understandings must be established first. What are some of those common understandings?

• Right here is the right place.
  Translated into blog writing for business, while readers arrive at your business blog because they already have an interest in your topic and are ready to receive the information, the services, and the products you have to offer, the content must assure them that they’ve come to precisely the right place to get what they’re after.
   
• We’re the right size for each other.
  One of the most important functions of a business blog, I explain to Say It For You clients and to newbie freelance content writers, is assuring readers they’ve come to a company or professional who fits their “size” and their needs. Are you “too big” to care about a smaller client? Are you accustomed and equipped to take on larger assignments? Just where do you “fit” within your industry or profession?
   
• I care/ I can tell you care.
  Business blog posts convey the values and beliefs of the owners. Remember that old sales mantra – “They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!”
   
• It’s apparent you’ve made it comfortable for me to proceed to the next step – or to do that later.
  When giving business blogging assistance, I constantly stress delivering on the promise – blog navigation paths need to lead to expected results rather than to negative surprises.
   

Once business blog content has created those common understandings with readers, it will be easy to organize the action!

This week’s Say It For You blog posts are devoted to sharing ideas from my “reading around”; The Little Red Writing Book, by Brandon Royal is a great example of how sharing content, or “curating” material from other people’s blogs and articles, magazine content - and books is one sure-fire strategy for idea generation.

Part of learning how to write a blog, I explain in business blogging training sessions, is learning how to sustain your blog content writing over long periods of time without losing reader excitement and engagemen. Erin McHugh’s answer in The 5 W’s: Why?  is offering lesser-known information to add interest and to demonstrate the business owner’s or professional practitioner’s special expertise.

Royal offers another idea for anyone providing blog writing services - using similes and metaphors to enliven the writing itself.

In presenting SEO-friendly information to establish common ground, confirming to readers they’ve come to the right place to find the products, services, and information they need, you can add metaphors. That way, you’re helping readers “appreciate the information picturesquely”, as Joseph Pulitzer used to describe it. And, even though literary techniques such as similes and metaphors touch on creative writing, Royal suggests, there are still uses for them in everyday writing.

As a professional ghost blogger and corporate blogging trainer, I couldn’t agree more. Most business owners and professionals can think of quite a number of things they want to convey about their products, their professional services, their industry, and their customer service standards. Still, I’ve found over the years, the problem is those ideas need to be developed into fresh, interesting, and engaging content marketing material.

Metaphors and freelance blog writers go together like a horse and carriage (Oops! That was a simile!)  Joseph Pulitzer had three suggestions for his journalists on how to present information to the public. All three are relevant for Indianapolis blog content writers:

“Put it before them briefly so they will read it,
“clearly so they will appreciate it,
“picturesquely so they will remember it (Here’s where the metaphors are so effective),
“accurately, so they will be guided by its light.”

This week, I’m using my Say It For You blog posts to share ideas I got from “reading around” in a few of my favorite tidbit-type books. That’s because one sure-fire strategy for idea generation, I’ve found, consists of scouring other people’s blogs and articles, magazine content - and books. That strategy seems to work no matter what business, what professional practice, or what organization you’re blogging about.

Part of learning how to write a blog, I explain in business blogging training sessions, is offering usable, interesting information. On the one hand, the information needs to be highly relevant to the reader’s search.  On the other hand, how can you sustain blog content writing over long periods of time, yet avoid dishing up the same-old, same-old stuff?  The trick, I think, in corporate blogging for business, is to find lesser-known information that can add interest and demonstrate the business owner’s or professional practitioner’s special expertise.

One of the chapters in The 5 W’s: Why? by Erin McHugh offers an answer: use the famous and the less-famous.  Mchugh lists inventors with whom all of us are familiar, such as Isaac Newton, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Alva Edison. But in addition to listing the invention for which each man is best-known, the author lists the less well-known accomplishments of each..

Readers all know that Isaac Newton discovered the laws of gravity.  Few know, however, that Newton invented the reflecting telescope.  Readers already associate Eli Whitney with the cotton gin, but seldom associate Whitney with the inventing of mass production principles.  Stories of Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with lightning are legendary, but did you know he invented bifocals? Were you aware Edison invented the mimeograph machine?

For anyone providing blog writing services, the ability to accomplish two goals in each blog post can make the difference between engaged readers and those who bounce quickly away, having found nothing new and exciting.

• Establish common ground, confirming to readers they’ve come to the right place to find the products, services, and information they need, and that the people in this company or practice are knowledgeable and passionate.
   
• Offer lesser-known information, adding a layer of “new” to themes you covered in former posts, or perhaps a new insight you’ve gained about that existing information.

As a professional ghost blogger, I continue to use reading around to help me illustrate points about my topic.  How can you put your own reading around to use, combining the old with the new  to tell the story of your company, your practice, or your organization?

No matter what business, what professional practice, or what organization you’re blogging about, ideas for blog content writing are everywhere, but you’ve got to be alert.  One sure-fire strategy for idea-generation is what I call “reading around”, scouring other people’s blogs and articles, magazine content - and books.

All this week, my Say It For You blog posts will share ideas I got from “reading around” in a few of my favorite tidbit-type books. “Do you have a keen curiosity?  Do you like to read books that enrich, reward, and entertain? If so,” the book jacket tells us, “you’ll delight in the 5 W’s: WHO? By Erin McHugh.

For business blogging training purposes, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more suitable piece than “Who’s Up There?” in the 5 W’s: Why. The chapter is about the Ohio State University professor, who, in 1972, categorized UFO sightings, ranging from the First Kind (a UFO is within 500 feet of an experiencer) to the Fifth Kind, where communication actually takes place between alien and human.

From my point of view as a freelance blog writer, I imagine readers of business blogs in Indianapolis might be categorized the same way.

Close encounter of the First Kind: The frequent, recent, and relevant use of keyword phrases in the SEO marketing blog caused the search engine to make a match, and the reader found the blogsite on Page One.

Close Encounter of the Second Kind (UFO leaves marks on the ground, interferes with car engines and radio reception).  When it comes to blog writing services, achieving a Second-Kind encounter might mean the reader actually clicked on the link and was transported to the company’s (or the practice’s or charity’s) website. However, the encounter goes no further, since the content failed, for whatever reason, to demonstrate to the reader that he/she had come to the right place for the information, products and services needed.

Close Encounter of the Third Kind (human is able to view alien occupants in the UFO.)
Often corporate blogging clients get too hung up on company branding and corporate identity, when in fact, corporate blog writing needs to let the readers “meet” the owners (Why did they choose to do what you do? What are they most passionate about in delivering your service to customers and clients? What are they trying to add to their industry?

Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind (abduction). Part of learning how to write a blog is learning how to “optimize a marketing outreach from the driving point to the landing page, and on through to conversion." In a fourth-kind encounter, lookers become buyers.

In the best-of-all-possible-worlds Fifth Kind UFO Encounter, communication actually takes place between alien and human. Content writers in Indianapolis aim for “raving fans’ who provide testimonials, post questions, Tweet about the business, and keep coming back for more.

As a professional ghost blogger, I used my read-arounds to illustrate points about blogging.  How can you put your own reading around to best use to tell the story of your company, your practice, or your organization?

Bo Mattsson of CintAB, was initially surprised by just how many customers think it worthwhile to participate in market research. It’s because, he learned, brands listen more today to what customers want.

Mattsson’s OpinionHub survey found that:

• 62% of consumers are more likely to buy a brand’s product if that brand has sought out their feedback
• 56% of respondents feel more loyal to a brand if it makes the effort to solicit their insights.

Nobody likes people who can speak of nothing but themselves. And business owners and practitioners whose blog content writers appear to be consumed with the products and services they’re ” serving up” (regardless of how those are being received on the consumers’ end!).

True, as a corporate blogging trainer, I stress the importance of first person business blog writing because it reveals the personality of the business owner or of the team standing ready to serve customers. But, without readers’ feedback, SEO marketing blog writers are “driving blind”. Using testimonials in blog posts, capturing customer success stories, and welcoming comments to your blog are all ways to get feedback.

During corporate blogging training, business owners new to corporate blogging for business marketing often express a fear that, if they allow comments on their blog, some of those comments might be negative. Corporate Blogging for Dummies authors Doug Karr and Chantelle Flannery put that fear to rest, explaining that negative criticism is an incredible opportunity for any company. " There’s probably no topic more powerful in business blog content writing than a detailed story of how company owners took a customer complaint to heart and made things right.
 
“Listening to your customers’ feedback can be invaluable to your business, especially if you take the time to consider their input and put their ideas into practice,” is what the National Federation of Independent Business has to say on the matter. NFIB lists online tools for soliciting that feedback, including Get Satisfaction, SurveyMonkey, PollDaddy, and Search.Twitter.com.

 As a longtime corporate blogging trainer, and professional ghost blogger, I find this “truth” to be self-evident: One crucial element in the care and feeding of an effective business blog is – feedback!

“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!

Remember "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?  (Do they still teach that poem in high school?) The stranded seaman laments, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

Just two years ago, I wrote a series of six Say It For You blog posts called “Learning Around for Your Blog”. The point I was trying to get across to Indianapolis business blog content writers was this:  The secret of sustained blogging for business is learning from everything you see, read, and hear. “Ideas, ideas are everywhere,” my professional ghost blogger verse might begin, and all we need to do is add our own slant – and “drink”, meaning use those ideas to keep blog post content fresh and engaging.

To prove that the best kind of business blogging help is all around us if we’re just alert to it, I used those six 2010 posts to offer examples of blog content “triggers” ranging from a golf training facility to a delivery truck for exercise equipment, to soup can labels and family filing cabinets.

There are two reasons all of this came to my mind today:

a) Even after all these years offering corporate blogging training, the most frequent excuse I hear from business owners and professional practitioners for not starting a blog goes like this: I’ll run out of ideas after the first few posts.  After all, there can’t be that many different things to say about a business/practice, right? In other words, they’re saying, there’s only so much “water” in their “jug”, not nearly enough to sustain their business blog content creation over weeks and months and years.

b) The more immediate reason I decided to resurrect the “learning around” concept: I tuned in to a QVC show on TV. Think about it: QVC has a website with pages and pages of online catalogues of women’s clothing.  In a fraction of the time it took me to watch that hour-long show, I could have checked out all the basic information about each of the QVC holiday sweaters - color, size, price, fabric, availability – you name it, online. So, why does QVC bother to run a entire hour’s programming with the host taking five to seven minutes to talk about the details of each garment?

That’s when I had my “learning around” QVC blog content writing epiphany: Letting a human being point out features and benefits of the product works. Giving potential customers ideas about different ways they can use the product (with the sash that comes with the blouse worn as a neck scarf, with the blouse paired with slacks or a pencil skirt, with it worn open over a  camisole or buttoned, with jewelry or without, throwing that animal print top on over a pair of jeans to run the kids to piano lessons or wearing it over a velvet skirt for Thanksgiving) – works!

Websites present the big picture – the different services and products the company offers, who the principal players are, the mission statement, the geographic areas the company deals with, the “unique selling proposition”. What each blog post does, then, is focus on just one aspect of your business, so that online searchers can feel at ease and not be distracted with all the other information you have to offer. Just like the QVC host, each single blog post helps the reader visualize how this one product or this one service you provide, how this one piece of special wisdom you’re imparting can be used by this one reader.
 

Quoting others in your SEO marketing blog – good thing or bad? As I’m fond of saying in corporate blogging training sessions – it depends!

On the positive side, when you link to someone else’s remarks on a subject you’re covering, that can:

• Reinforce your point
• Show you’re in touch with trends in your field
• Add value for readers (by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog)

On the other hand, as is true of all tools and tactics, “re-gifting” content needs to be handled with some restraint and using proper protocol (attributing content to its source).

As a longtime member of the National Speakers Association, I read many columns offering advice for speakers, and the other day, I came across one article that is worth sharing with Indianapolis blog content writers. The piece is called “How to Use Quotes in Your Speech”, and it’s written by Andrew Dlugan.  Using quotes in your material, says Dlugan, can reinforce your ideas (“A quotation is more powerful than simply repeating yourself in different words”), and add variety to your logical arguments (“Audiences get bored if you offer a one-dimensional shring of arguments of the same type.”).

Dlugan offers a caution I want to emphasize to business bloggers: Avoid closing your speech with a quote. “Your final words should be your own.” I agree.  Curating others’ work – bloggers, authors, speakers – is a wonderful technique for adding variety and reinforcement to your own content.  Remember, though, when it comes to writing SEO marketing blogs, you’re trying to make your own cash register ring.  It’s your voice that has to be strong throughout the post, so readers will click through to your website or shopping cart. (In the case of Say It For You ghost blogging clients, the blog writer must become the voice of each business owner or professional practitioner.)

And speaking of search engine optimization, Dave Smith of realestatebloglab.com issues a different sort of caution about quotations: Don’t use double quote marks in blog post titles, he says.  Double quote marks at the beginning and end of a phrase tells the search engine to look only for those exact words in that exact order, severely limiting your ability to “get found” through category or organic search.

In corporate blogging training, I compare quotations to seasonings, warning blog content writers to avoid “over-salting” the meal!

I’ve always been able to see a parallel between billboards and blogs. Of course, both billboards and blogs are about promoting products, services, and ideas.

A marketing study I read about several years ago highlights one particular aspect common to both blogs and billboards. The study showed that, if what a billboard was advertising wasn’t relevant to a person’s life at that time, that person’s brain would “brush off” the information immediately and the billboard’s message would be ignored. The moment consumers were in the market for that kind of product or service, they would notice the billboard and the message would “register”.

In the same way, SEO marketing blog posts are out there on the “highway” of the Internet, but the only people that are going to find that blog are the ones seeking information on exactly that kind of advice, product, or service!

As both a professional ghost blogger and corporate blogging trainer, I’m always thinking about ways blog content writers can engage the interest of online searchers. At the same time, of course, I’m a consumer along with everybody else. And true to the billboard study I mentioned, lately I’ve begun noticing all these SENSA® weight loss advertisements on signs and bulletin boards (I’m trying to take off ten pounds, so the messages “register” in my brain).
 

Once I started looking at the SENSA® ads, though, (and there are 160 different versions), I realized they’re all based on a technique my freelance blog content writers in Indianapolis could be using to help Say It For You clients capture online readers’ attention: What I found is that every single one of those SENSA® ads is focused on a result, an outcome, on the What’s-In-It-For-Them, and not on the product!

• “Drop 30 pounds”
• "Eat yourself skinny”
• “Hello size 8”
• “Discover a thinner, happier You!”
• “Lose weight without dieting”
• “Sprinkle. Eat. Lose.”
• And the absolute topper – “Look good naked.”

One key element in successful corporate blogging for business is usable information, and one thing that makes for that usability is helping users know how results might “feel”. I ask you, who doesn’t want to look good naked?
 

I sat in the audience at the Financial Planning Association meeting the other day wearing two “hats”. I reflected on the fact that my present career as professional ghost blogger grew out of my years of language teaching followed by a second career as financial planner and financial writer.  What that meant was that while I was attuned the information about taxes, health care, estate planning, and real estate that was offered, as a corporate blogging trainer, I was analyzing the techniques used by each of the four speakers to engage the audience’s interest.
(Today, I’ll talk about the first two speakers, leaving the other two for a future Say It For You blog post .)

“Chunking refers to the strategy of breaking down information into bite-sized pieces so the brain can more easily digest new information,” explains e-learning coach Connie Malamed. “The reason the brain needs this assistance is because working memory, which is where we manipulate information, holds a limited amount of information at one time.”

The first FPA meeting speaker, CPA William R. Owen Jr., offered “Top Ten Tax Planning Tips for 2012”. Owen was using the “list” technique that is very useful in freshening up blog post content: starting with one idea about your product or service, then putting a number to it, such as “2 Best Ways To …,”  “3  Problem Fixes to Try First….”, or “4 Simple Home Remedies for…”
The point of the "lists", of course, is to demonstrate ways in which your product or service is different, and to provide valuable information that engages readers.

The speaker knew, of course, that any of us could have turned to more technical sources, to find information, but that we wanted him to help us make sense out of the ocean of information out there about tax law.

Speaker #2 was Professor William Evans of the University of Notre Dame, speaking about the Health Care landscape”. Out of the 24 Power Point slides Evans used for his very dynamic talk, fully 17 of them contained visuals – either photos or charts.

With more than 15 years of financial planning seminars using pictures and charts under my belt, I heartily approved of Evans’ approach. In training new freelance blog copywriters,  I stress that, whenever you can include an actual photograph illustrating the content of your business blog post, that adds power to the words of the blog. In fact, online readers will not necessarily understand the significance or interpretation of the chart or photo without your help, I explain. (While all of us financial planners could have read the charts, we were looking to Prof. Evans to elaborate on the source of the information in each chart and to demonstrate why that information would be important in our work with clients.).

In every business or profession, there’s no end, it seems, to the technical information available to consumers on the Internet. But it falls to us business blog content writers to break all that information down into chewable tablet form!

We Indianapolis blog content writers are likely to find a whole lot of very useful information in Don Vorhees’ Book of Totally useless Information. As just one example, I found this little piece about “posh”.

Why is “posh” used to describe something elegant or fashionable?

During the Victorian era, Voorhees explains, wealthy British travelers would go to India on luxury cruise ships.  Air conditioning hadn’t yet been invented, and the air on the route around Cape Horn was extremely hot and humid. Portholes were the only way to ventilate the staterooms. 

Since staterooms facing land tended to be cooler (more shade, more shelter from bad weather) than the rooms facing out to the open sea, it became trendy to pay extra for the privilege of staying in a portside cabin on the way to India and a starboard cabin on the way back home. A "P.O.S.H." label on one’s luggage signified “port out, starboard home”.

So, why do I, a professional ghost blogger and corporate blogging trainer, find such so-called “useless” tidbits of information so very useful when it comes to SEO blog content writing?

• Common myths surround every business and profession.  Offering little known explanations like the one about “posh” can engage readers' interest (I know that tidbit engaged mine) and entice blog visitors to keep coming back. And, while these tidbits are probably not appropriate for the more permanent website content, they fit perfectly into blog posts. Business owners or practitioner can lead into some little-known fact about their own business or profession. 
   
• Questions in blog post titles help capture interest (that’s the technique Vorhees used to capture his readers’ interest, including my own). How much…? How far….? How long….? How little….? How true is…..? are all questions that can be used to get readers thinking about aspects of your business of which they might not have been aware. History tidbits in general engage readers' curiosity, evoking an "I didn't know that!" response.
   
• Back in July of last year, I issued a Tidbit Challenge to other Indianapolis blog content writers.  The whole idea was that any unusual or little-known piece of information can be used to explain the company’s products, services, and special expertise. Since I find that the biggest fear business owners have when it comes to maintaining a company blog is running out of ideas. I was out to prove that ideas are all around us.

Content that is useful for SEO marketing blogs IS all around us; if you don’t believe me, try leafing through the Book of Totally Useless Information!,