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The Number One Reason Companies Need to Blog About Their Products

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

We write a lot of product blogs for our clients. No matter what size, shape, color, or price of the product, we’ve written several hundred blog product posts.

But for all the hundreds of posts we’ve written, there’s only one reason we do it: to win search.

Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware has long beat the “blogging wins search” drum. (And while I don’t agree about his “myth of the reader” — I believe you should try to get and keep regular, returning readers — he makes a great point about winning search.)

A product blog post is one of the easiest things to write. It’s just 200 – 300 words describing a particular product with a link back to the original catalog entry or product description. Each post equals a backlink back to your website, and the more backlinks you have to your website, the better you rank in a search.

Should I Keep My Blog Inside My Website, or Have a Separate Blog?

We’re fans of keeping a blog and a website together, but there’s no harm in keeping the two separate. After all, the search engines recognize it as a separate website that links back to your original one. However, you’re better off putting your blog on your static website and use internal backlinks to go from the blog to the static pages.

But if you want to boost your search engine rankings even further, create a second blog where you publish your blog posts, and keep it separate from your regular corporate blog where you’re publishing your authority posts, credibility posts, issues posts, and educational posts. This way you can improve search and find first time visitors with one blog, and gain returning readers with the other.

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: Chris Baggott, compendium blogware, corporate blogging, product blogging
Posted in Blog ROI, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, Marketing, ProBlogService, Writing | View Comments

No One Likes My New Job Title

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

It was a brief spark of an idea, and one I got a little excited about: I wanted to change my job title.

I am currently the VP of Operations and Customer Service. It’s a little wordy, but accurately describes my position here. (I’m also a co-owner.)

“I know,” I said to myself. “I’ll change my title to Chief Blogging Evangelist. That’ll be cool.”

I asked Paul Lorinczi, my business partner, about it, and he said it sounded kind of buzzwordy.

“Bah!” I thought, and emailed Jason Falls whether he thought the title sounded “cool” or “eww.”

I’d say “content” evangelist to stay hip with on- and off-site services.
I don’t think it’s bad. Not necessarily “cool” but not bad.

So I threw it open to my Twitter network. We’re always preaching about using one’s network, so this was going to be my chance to do it. I was looking for confirmation that Chief Blogging Evangelist was a cool title, and that it would help me land more speaking gigs, and make me look really cool (I mean, cooler) when I go to my high school reunion next month.

I received 37 responses on my SurveyMonkey.com survey, and was stunned at the results.

Question #1: When I first saw the title “chief blogging evangelist,” my first reaction was:
Love it!
Meh
Don’t care for it.
That’s stupid.

Out of 37 responses, 1 person loved it.

(One person?! And I didn’t even vote! What the hell? This is cutting edge! This is Job Title 2.0. This is the epitome of social media coolness. And only one person liked it? If I didn’t know any better, I would think my mom had voted.)

It gets worse: 15 people thought it was “meh,” 11 people “didn’t care for it,” and 10 people thought it was “stupid.” In other words, 21 people either didn’t like it or downright hated it.

In question #4, (I think the title “Chief Blogging Evangelist:”), 36 people said it was either too buzzwordy or trendy (23), or it would scare off customers (13).

If I ever wanted proof that I can have some fairly dumb ideas, my Twitter followers and SurveyMonkey just showed it to me. (Except I didn’t want proof. I like being blissfully ignorant and thinking my ideas are awesome.)

So I asked for a few alternatives. And people were very helpful and creative. Some of my favorites were:

VP, Verbal Artistry
VP of Social Media
VP of Creative Services
Creative Vice President of Operational Services
Chief Social Media Evangelist
VP of Communications
Chief Blogging Atheist
Big Daddy Blogger

But my favorite response was:

It made me laugh, but then I said “seriously?”

So, I don’t know what my new job title will be, or if I even need one. But I know what it’s not going to be.

Of course, “Big Daddy Blogger” has a nice ring to it. I wonder what that would look like in a Garamond. . .

Tags: blogging, job title, networks, Professional Blog Service, social networks, survey, twitter
Posted in Networking, ProBlogService, Research Desk, Social Media | View Comments

5 Tips to Become a Professional Blogger

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Someone once asked me, “How do I become a blogger?”

“Simple,” I wrote back, “Raise your hands over your head, and shout to the heavens, ‘I. Am. A BLOGGER!!‘ And then you are one.”

It really is that easy to become a blogger. Truly anyone can do it. You just need some basic software, and know how to type. After that, you’re good to go.

But becoming a professional blogger is a whole different matter. Here are 5 tips to becoming an actual professional word slinger.

Make sure you define what you mean by “professional.” There are two types of professional blogger: the person who makes a lot of money selling something via their blog, usually either Google Ads or ebooks, and the professional ghost blogger. While finding success as the former is possible, finding it as the latter is more likely. I have one friend who has a very popular blog, and sells Google AdWords on it. It only brings in a few thousand dollars a year, certainly not enough to make a living. Ghost bloggers, on the other hand, can earn a decent living writing blog posts for other clients. Part copywriter, part social media geek, part blog manager, the ghost blogger is your basic freelance writer, but working in this specific electronic format.

Make sure your writing skills are strong. Writing is easy, writing well is hard. I realize that we can all write in complete sentences and organize our thoughts into semi-coherent patterns. So can your average eighth grader. Unfortunately, some people never progressed beyond that level of skill. If you want to be a professional blogger, your writing needs to be of a higher quality than most.

If you’re not sure, find some other writers you trust and whose skills you admire, and ask them to honestly evaluate your writing. Tell them you don’t want the typical pat on the head and “it’s pretty good” assessment. Ask them to be honest, and to give you a real evaluation of your skills. If they truly like it, then you’re on your way. If they don’t, start a blog, and work hard to improve. I’ve been a writer for 20 years, and am still learning and improving.

Try to specialize in an area you have experience in. It’s not a requirement, but it will make your life easier. The one interesting thing about newspaper reporters is that they are an expert for a day, absorbing enough information to write their articles. The next day, they move on to a new subject. Ghost bloggers do this. They learn as much about the client as they can, and will write whatever the client wants them to. The client will usually dictate what they want said, the writer writes it, and then gives it to the client for approval. This way, the writer learns about the client, much like a reporter learns about his or her beat.

When we take on a new client, we spend a lot of time learning about their industry and their company. As we work for them over the months, we do become knowledgeable about their field. But the clients we truly excel at are those we have experience and knowledge in. With them, we can hit the ground running, and our learning curve is significantly flattened.

Associate with other professional writers. It’s often said we’re only as good as the 5 people we hang out with the most. If that’s the case, make sure you’re spending it with other professional writers (or at least really good amateurs). In fact, some of your best mentors and referral sources will be your competitors. Read their blogs, meet them at conferences, hang out with them at coffee shops. You’ll learn a lot from them. Then — and this is the important part — be willing to do the same for other, younger writers who come to you for advice and education.

Read a lot. Every writer has a writing style they learned from reading someone else’s stuff. I learned mine from reading Dave Barry, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Waits, Hunter S. Thompson, and Ernest Hemingway. To keep my own style from becoming stale, I revisit my favorite works and re-immerse myself in their words and style. I also seek out new writers with similar styles, and draw inspiration from them.

It’s important to remember, however, not to copy your favorite styles, but take the best from each of them, and synthesize them into your own. By creating your own distinctive writing style, you’ll stand out as a quality writer and blogger, worthy of the fees you demand.

What about you? Do you have any writing tips or suggestions for aspiring professional bloggers? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

Photo: Brad J. Ward (Flickr), noted social media marketer

Tags: ghost blogging, Ghost Writing, Hunter S Thompson, Kurt Vonneut, Tom Waits, writing
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, ProBlogService, Writing | View Comments

Who has time to do the work today?

Monday, March 1st, 2010

There has been a lot of news lately on how companies are really not hiring right now. A recent report talks about how a companies are hiring temp workers, but they are not hiring them to stay. In the past, a common practice was to test drive a worker then offer them a position. Hiring them as full-time employees is not happening right now.

So, who is getting the work done?

When I joined ATA Airlines back in 1997, George Michelsons brought in Bain and Company to basically prepare the company for sale. The process was to get rid of a lot of people and put more jobs onto fewer people. While this strategy worked around the country for Bain, it usually preceded an upgrade in office automation to ensure the work could still get done.

The office automation phase did not occur at ATA Airlines.

The result was a lot of stressed out people carrying around their imaginary trays trying to figure out how they were going to fit one more item onto an already heavy load. No longer were people interested in teamwork, they were more interested in self-preservation. It created a lot of ill-tempered people in the process.

As some of my clients reveal their corporate cultures, I am finding similarities to what I experienced at ATA Airlines. No one has time to commit to anything above and beyond what their core responsibilities are. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is not projected to get much better – CEO’s are reluctant to hire.

What are the solutions?

The easiest is what is being done by some today. Hire temp workers to get things done. They may cost a little more in the short-term, but allow you to avoid the headaches of hiring employees and their costs over the long-term. There are a lot of companies providing these services.

Sometimes, just hiring a grunt worker is not enough. Sometimes you need a professional person to do the work, you don’t have time to do. There are companies being set up that can act as your Marketing Department, your Accounting Department, or your HR Department. They can do it at a cost that is far cheaper than hiring full-time employees, but are focused solely on getting work done for you.

So, look around and ask yourself, are you and your colleagues a bunch of stressed out grumpy people not really accomplishing much because there is too much to do? There is help out there that can help your company meet its strategic goals for the year.

We actually put together a white paper on the ROI of outsourcing blogging and social media. You can download it here, if you want to take a look.

About the Author: Paul Lorinczi
Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.

Tags: best practices, blog writing, business blogging, Business Blogging Content, strategy
Posted in Blog ROI, Blogging, Ghost Writing, News, Research Desk, Tools, Writing | View Comments

Want to Improve Your Writing? Be Intentional

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Years ago, I had a chance to hear one of the Philadelphia 76ers speak about how he became a professional ballplayer. Now, I couldn’t tell you who the guy was even if he walked up to me today. But one thing he said always stuck with me.

When he practiced shooting the ball, he was always intentional when he practiced. When he practiced his shooting, he didn’t screw around. He didn’t goof off, and he didn’t take shots he wouldn’t normally take. He wasn’t a sky-hook shooter, so he didn’t shoot Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s famous shot. He didn’t do backward shots or trick shots. In short, every practice shot he took was a real shot.

“I don’t shoot these shots in a game, so I don’t waste my time practicing them.”

It’s the same for writing: if you want to get good at it, you have to be intentional with it. (Actually, this is true for getting good at anything, but I’m a writer, so I’ll stick with what I know.)

My Moleskine at Hubbard &Cravens What does that mean? Writing is one of the most intentional activities we can do. It’s not like shooting trick shots in basketball, or going for a slow leisurely ride instead of a training ride on your bike. You’re either writing or you’re not, right?

Actually, no, you can even screw around when you’re writing. It’s in your attitude, rather than your subject matter. It’s reading when you should be writing (and no, “I’m doing research” doesn’t count). You can be just as intentional writing an email as you are a novel, or writing a comedy sketch as you are a marketing piece. It doesn’t matter where, when, or how you do it. Chris Brogan will write wherever he can find the time. And I carry my laptop and a Moleskine wherever I go.

How do I write with intention?

When I’m writing, I always have three questions in the back of my mind.

Is that the best word I can use? Is this conveying the right impact, drama, or humor? Dave Barry would take hours to write a single humor column, sometimes struggling with choosing which word carried the best impact for a joke. I’ll sometimes hit Thesaurus.com to find a good word.
Did I set this up for the best possible impact? In humor, setup is crucial for a joke to be funny. You can have the best punchline in the world, but if you tank the setup, the whole joke fails. It’s true for every other kind of writing too. This blog post, a marketing brochure, a speech, anything. If you want to have impact, you have to set the reader up for it.
How can I make this better? I edit everything. Even my emails get edited before I send them out. But I’m not always looking for punctuation errors or typos. I’m looking to make sure I’m satisfied with everything I’ve written. It usually works best if I can leave something for a couple hours, overnight is even better, and a week is a rare luxury. I have even edited some of my humor blog posts six months after I published them.

Becoming a good writer doesn’t mean taking all kinds of classes, or writing in your very special notebook with your very special pen in your very favorite coffee shop (just don’t tell my wife that; I use it as an excuse to get out of the house sometimes). It’s a matter of focusing on the task at hand and casting an eye at how you can improve. Not just the piece you’re writing, but future work you’re going to do.

Do you suck at dialog? Work on improving the dialog for the next piece you write. Then use that new level of competency as your starting point for the next time, and try to improve from that. Frankly, I used to suck at dialog, so I worked on it for months and even years. Now, unfortunately, my narration and scene description are less-than-acceptable, and I have to really focus on those.

But by writing my narration with my three questions, I’ll be able to improve my descriptions, so I can spend less time writing and more time sitting on a beach, drinking little umbrella drinks, served by. . . some kind of. . . woman wearing a dress that she bought at one of those. . . dress selling places.

Dammit!

Tags: Communication, writing
Posted in Communication, Ghost Writing, Writing | View Comments

The Two Most Important Ways to Tap Into a Buyer’s Motivation

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Why do people buy? When you boil it down, there are two reasons why people buy anything.

Fear and Greed. Loss or gain.

In fact, when you look at the Seven Deadly Sins (Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride), Greed isn’t just one of them, it’s the foundation of for most of them: Gluttony, Pride, Lust, and Envy are all greed-based sins. Gluttony is greed of food, Lust is greed of sex, Envy is greed of possessions, and so on.

We see ads for nice cars, nice clothes, good food, expensive watches. We’re told, you need these, you deserve these, people will like you if you have them. You’ll be successful and rich, and able to afford more things like this. We Envy the people who have them, and we are Greedy to have them ourselves.

Even the ads that sell through sex tap into this mindset: if you have/eat/drink this product, hot women will want to have sex with you. And sex — Lust — is one of the most primal Greed urges we’ve got.

Fear is the other driving force. We buy locks because we fear losing what we have (which is fear driven by greed, so it’s a double whammy). We buy safe cars and SUVs because we fear being injured in a crash.

One day, I was flipping through a parenting magazine and saw that every single ad was fear based:

Buy this baby monitor so you can hear if your child stops breathing.
Buy this car seat so your baby won’t be hurt in a car accident.
Buy this sleeping trough so your baby stays on his back and doesn’t die.

It was actually kind of depressing, because all these new mothers were being bombarded, not with just advertising, but frightening thoughts that their tiny new life could be extinguished at the snap of Fate’s fingers. I remember what it was like the first time I was a dad, and I was able to conjure up all these scary images without the help of advertisers. So I can only imagine what it’s like for new mothers to see this, page after page, ad after ad.

As a writer, this is important to know. This is, deep down in the places we don’t talk about, how your customers think. They buy so they can have more of something or prevent the loss of something else. You need to write your copy in a way that draws water from one of these two wells.

Look at your product or service, and figure out why someone would want to buy it. Let’s say you sell synthetic motor oil. It’s fairly expensive compared to regular motor oil, but it lasts longer than regular motor oil. You could write your copy in one of two ways:

Greed: If you use this motor, you won’t need to change your oil as frequently. Instead of getting your oil changed every 3,000 miles, you change it every 6,000 miles. Instead of spending $250 per year, you’ll only spend $125 per year, which means you’ll put $125 back in your own pocket.

Greed (Envy/Pride): Drivers who love their fancy, expensive cars put synthetic motor oil into them. If you want people to think your car is just as good as these expensive cars here, you’ll put our oil into your car too.

Fear: Synthetic motor oil last longer and works better than regular motor oil. Cheap motor oils break down more quickly, and results in more wear and tear on your engine. The more wear and tear, the sooner your car will break down. This can result in a very expensive repair, or even an entire engine replacement, which will cost at least $3,000. By using synthetic oil, you’ll save your engine and protect your car from costly repairs.

Unfortunately, appealing to people’s nobler efforts — it’s good for the environment — isn’t the most effective way to get people to buy. They’re not thinking that way. If you ask Prius owners why they bought their car, and most of them will tell you it’s because of gas prices. A very few people will cite the environment as their number 1 reason for buying it. Otherwise, hybrid cars would have been overwhelmingly popular five years ago, and not just a growing trend.

Instead, people bought the Prius because they were afraid gas prices would be very expensive and they didn’t want to pay too much for their gas (Greed and Fear. Double score!) Even today, gas prices and fuel economy are still the number 1 reason for the hybrid’s success. (And just so I don’t sound completely cynical, I will agree that “it’s good for the environment” is a very good reason to buy a hybrid, and probably in the top 3 for most Prius owners.)

So as you write your web copy, see if you can tap into the fear or the greed mindset, even a little, and see if your response rates don’t go up.

If you do, you could become fabulously wealthy. If you don’t, bad things may happen to you.

Tags: copywriting, seven deadly sins, writing
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Ghost Writing, Writing | View Comments

Making the Argument for Ghost Blogging. Yet Again.

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

My good friend Lindsay Manfredi and I were both interviewed about ghost blogging last week, and asked whether we thought it carried any ethical dilemmas.

The answer is no, it doesn’t. Not if it’s done correctly.

I’ve talked about ghost blogging before, and said if it follows a few basic procedures, it’s as ethical as, say, public relations. (Er, on second thought. . . )

Yet, the issue keeps getting brought up, as if we’re committing some unpardonable ethical sin, like medical testing on baby seals. But the only people who seem to care are social media purists and “social media ninjas” who talk about transparency, yet work in industries where their efforts, if done correctly, are anonymous and behind the scenes as well.

Ghostwriting = copywriting

Anyone who does freelance copywriting can tell you that their name doesn’t go on squat when it comes to their efforts. Sales brochures, web copy, sales letters, speeches, you name it, the writer’s name is not-so-noticeably absent from the final copy. And that’s fine. That’s the life we choose.

Marketing agencies don’t get their names on their clients’ campaigns. No one whines that “my name isn’t on that sales brochure I wrote” or “my name isn’t in the newspaper article I sent the press release about.” Frankly, if you’re worried about getting credit for your work, you’re in the wrong business. If you want a byline, be a journalist.

Maintaining Ethical Boundaries for Ghost Blogging

A good ghost has procedures they follow with their clients:

I interview the client, who tells me — in his own words — his thoughts about their industry-specific issues.
I transcribe the interview and clean it up, turning it into 350 – 450 words of clear, informative copy.
The client approves the article.
I publish the article on their blog.

It’s the clients thoughts, the client’s words. I just transcribe it. Or as we like to say, “we do the work so you can go to your meetings.”

How is this any different from the CEO’s letter at the front of the company’s annual report? Or a politician’s speech to her constituents? Or the catalog copy that was supposedly written by the company’s founder? How is it any different from a PR flak’s press release that becomes the basis for a news article? (I say this as a former flak whose press releases were often turned into “Staff Wire Reports” by one county newspaper.)

Answer: It isn’t. Not a bit. They are exactly the same thing. (In fact, Jason Falls says that we’re not ghostwriters, we’re copywriters, and that it’s okay.)

These are the same steps that every other copywriter, speechwriter, and marketing director in the world follows when they produce work for a client. This has been an acceptable practice since well before Judson Welliver ghosted for Warren G. Harding, thus becoming the first presidential speechwriter.

The only place ghostwriting isn’t acceptable is journalism and academia, as it should be. Your merit is based on the work you produce; in business, it’s based on the results you achieve. (Although academia seems to have some of its own ghostwriting issues.)

So if you are against ghost blogging, you need to be against all ghostwriting. You need to speak out against speechwriters for politicians. You need to put an end to all freelance copywriting. You need to stop sending out press releases that don’t include your name as a quoted source.

Otherwise, it’s a non-issue. The people who hire me are the ones I’m concerned with. The social media purists? Well, you just give me something to blog about, thus boosting my own search engine rankings.

So, thanks for that.

Tags: blogging, ghostwriting, Social Media, social media experts
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Ghost Writing, Writing | View Comments

Writing for Readers Always Beats Writing for Search

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

As a blogger, which is more important to you, winning search or winning readers?

Quantity or quality? Spiders or readers? Left brain or right brain? Classical or Romantic?

Less filling or tastes great?

Some of the authorities in our blogging community believe quantity is more important. That as bloggers, it’s more important to just throw up as much as you can and see what attracts Google’s attention.

“Don’t worry about the quality,” one Spiders-oriented blogger told me. “Just get up as much as you can, as fast as you can. Spelling and grammar aren’t that important.”

I shuddered involuntarily.

“I don’t worry about search,” said a Readers-oriented blogger. “I don’t pay attention to SEO, keywords, backlinks, or any of that. I just make sure I write good stuff, and the readers will come.”

It works too.

Both are experts in their field, and are widely sought after as speakers and consultants in the social media and blogging realm. But the Readers blog has a much bigger social media footprint. He’s got more Twitter followers (18,000 vs. 1,200), more blog readers, higher Technorati rank (1526th and 598 auth. vs. er, none), more readers (approx. 50,000 vs. 7,000 via Compete.com), but fewer Google hits (84,000 vs. 44,000).

(I emailed my friend the Readers blogger as I was writing this post, and he told me he doesn’t pay attention to numbers at all, and wasn’t that concerned about them.)

The results are rather telling. Quality is winning out over quantity, readers are winning out over spiders.

Tastes great is beating less filling.

The problem is, you can write for spiders and search all day long, but if people don’t like what you have to say, they’re not going to stick around, let alone come back on a regular basis. Just because they showed up once doesn’t guarantee they’ll show up again. That’s where good quality writing comes in.

You could argue that it takes search to bring a person in and then hook them with good writing. But there are so many other ways to bring them around: Twitter, Facebook, speaking opportunities, networking, business cards, etc.

As a writer, I’m also more concerned about readership than, well, spidership. I’m not that concerned about winning search, because I write about a number of esoteric topics. However, I occasionally get lucky. On my Laughing Stalk humor blog, I have seen some pretty weird results.

I once won search for “animal methane problem” out of 30,000 results, and topped out at 7th for “animal fart gene” out of 17,000 for 9 months or so. Results: 2 – 4 visitors per week during those 9 months.
I beat the original “Suite Talk with Peyton Manning” website, where you could get customized greetings to you from Peyton (they got 2nd). Results: Big fat zero. Who wants to read about the commercial, when you can see the commercial.
I’m currently second for “it’s in my raccoon wounds” out of 135,000 results. I held first for a few years, for a post in 2005. Results: I still get 1 – 4 visits per week for some variation of “raccoon wounds.”

The net result of this? About 3 – 8 visits per week on two rather weird and unrelated topics. But if I tried to build a readership off of this, I would have to write about a whooooole lot of weird stuff and win a series of long-tail searches before I started gaining traffic.

That’s why I do a lot better by focusing on writing, rather than writing a bunch of stuff as quickly and sloppily as possible.

Bottom line: anyone who’s interested in building a blogging following needs to devote more time and energy to their writing than their search engine optimization.

Tags: blogging, readership, search, writing
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, ProBlogService, Social Media, Writing | View Comments

At the Top – Entrepreneurial Networking for Indianapolis

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Ron Sukenick approached me several weeks ago and described a new networking event he was putting together called “At the Top”. As he his idea, it had a familiar sound to it. It sounded a lot like the old Entrepreneurs Alliance of indiana.

I thought, “Man, I miss the old Entrepreneur’s Alliance.” I miss seeing everyone on the 3rd Thursday of every month to have drinks and learn about how business started, failed and succeeded.

So, Ron asked if Professional Blog Service would like to be a co-sponsor of the event. I said, “Absolutely.”

Here is why, I would not have co-started Professional Blog Service, if not for the Entrepreneurs Alliance. It was there that I heard many stories from many different Indianapolis business people who were just like me. My all-time favorites were:

Ray Compton – “You don’t need a lot of money to market, you need to be creative.”
Harley Davidson – “There are three things needed to be a successful manager – knowledge, experience, and emotional competency.” With the emphasis on emotional competency.
Jeff Smulyan – Great story about how he got started

And the other companies:

Ritters Ice Cream
JD Byrider
Scott Jones
Ontario Systems

The list really goes on and on. There were a lot of great companies and speakers that participated at the Entrepreneurs Alliance of Indiana.

So, Ron has resurrected this idea with his “At the Top” program. The venue is the excellent Skyline Club downtown. (Get it? “At the Top” on top of Indianapolis?) The format is going to be similar to what we did at EAI. There will be cocktails and appetizers with a guest speaker for each meeting.

So, if you are an Entrepreneur seeking inspiration from other Entrepreneurs that have gone through what you are experiencing, go to the “At the Top” meeting November 18, 2009.

What: At the Top
When: November 18, 2009
Time: 5:30p
Where: Skyline Club – Downtown Indianapolis

Professional Blog Service is very happy to be a co-sponsor of this important series of meetings. Without entrepreneurs, there is no economy. And we’re happy to help contribute our efforts to this event.

Photo: ExistDifferently

Tags: At The Top, entrepreneur, Indianapolis, networking
Posted in Lead Generation, ProBlogService | View Comments

Blog Writing Is Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master

Friday, October 30th, 2009

I’ve been blogging since before it was called blogging. Since before there was software to even do it. I started out by publishing my newspaper humor column once a week on a website where I hand coded the html. In the intervening years, I’ve written over 900 articles and blog posts, so I’ve been asked a lot of questions about blogging.

“Think of blogging like you’re writing an email,” I tell aspiring bloggers. “Put ‘Dear Mom, Let me tell you about this cool thing I learned today. . .’ and then write about that cool thing. Then, go back and delete the salutation, and you’re done.”

All in all, it’s pretty easy. I can do it a typical blog post (350 – 450 words) in about 20 minutes. Add another 10 – 15 for editing, and I’m done.

Of course, I’ve been a writer for nearly 23 years, so I’ve got a few secrets and techniques. I’ve written marketing copy, newspaper columns, speeches, and anything else you care to name, so I actually know how to write something well in 20 minutes.

The problem is that most new writers figure, “Hey, Erik takes 20 minutes to write a post, I can write it in 20 minutes too.”

Yes you can take 20 minutes, but it sure shows.

Listen, writing is easy, writing well is hard. Just because you know how to construct a complete sentence doesn’t mean you are actually a writer. I know where Middle C is on a piano, but that doesn’t make me a concert pianist.

A good blog post on the part of a beginning writer should take about 1 – 2 hours each. That includes reading, researching, writing, editing, re-editing, and then editing some more. Notice that the actual writing is only one small part of that list.

Yet, these noobie writers will vomit something out in a few minutes, hit ‘Publish’ and think they’re done. Or worse, they study all the SEO writing blogs and come up with little gems like “For free writing tips, download this free writing tips article about free writing tips.” (And then wonder why no one is reading their stuff.)

I’ve been seeing this a lot lately in people who profess to be professional writers and content creators. They’re the ones who are advising clients on how to create content that will set them apart in their industry, make them thought leaders, and help them win searches in the search engines.

I don’t know how to say this, except to just say it: Some of your writing just sucks.

There, I said it. I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to say it. I feel like Simon Cowell, but without the Botox.

It’s not that you’re bad people or that you’re trying to trick people. It’s just that, well, you look like you spent 20 minutes writing your post. There’s missing and misused punctuation, bad grammar, egregious misspellings, and incomplete sentences.

“But it’s blogging!” you’re saying. “It’s supposed to be more informal, and not bound by the same rules of business writing.”

True, true. But if you claim to be a writer, then for God’s sake, act like one! Writers have at least a basic grasp of language, storytelling, and sentence structure. Admittedly not all of them do (American novelist Leon Uris is famous for not being able to spell or use punctuation properly), but if you’re a product of our public schools and universities, I would hope you have some understanding of these basic concepts.

It’s especially important as blogging is starting to see some legitimacy in the business setting, and the decision makers are still concerned that their writers don’t sound like complete boobs churning out electronic doggerel for the world to see.

The problem is that I’ve seen more and more so-called “content creators” who are putting up some of their own stuff that looks like it was written by a 10th grader. I believe you should put as much care and attention into your own stuff as you do your clients. The way you react to the small things is the way you will react to everything. And if you can’t be bothered to write your own stuff well, how can you be counted on to write others’ stuff well?

As a writer and teacher in spirit, nothing warms my heart more than someone who tells me they want to learn how to be a writer. I love teaching them some of the lessons I’ve learned in the past 23 years, and showing them how to express the ideas they want to share with the world.

Just be prepared to put in the time and energy it will take to make your writing successful. Don’t just throw something up and hope no one will notice all the problems and mistakes. If you want to be able to write something in 20 minutes, it’ll take you several years.

(For the record, this took me 22 minutes.)

Tags: blog writing, blogging, writing
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing | View Comments

Category: ProBlogService

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