As a professional blogger, I see a lot of different blogs, both small business and corporate. Some are good, some are terrible. Some are informative and engaging, some are daily commercials, some are stilted and formal. I can spot the blogs written by people who are passionate about their work, knowledgeable about their field, or exploring new knowledge.
I can also spot the ones that are written by marketing professionals, committees, and the legal department.
Blogging tends to make corporate types a little nervous
It’s not that I have anything against marketers (I’ve been one for over 16 years). And I don’t have anything against lawyers. (Committees, on the other hand. . .)
The problem is blogging has a different writing style, a different flow. In blogging, you don’t worry about being technically accurate, covering every contingency, option, variation, divergence, modification, and refinement, you just have to be right.
But the blogs I see by marketers, lawyers, and committees don’t have that spark. Everything is written like a legal brief, or it uses all the proper product/service names, instead of what customers actually call it. Or it has that lowest common denominator feel of the committee, where every phrase is scrutinized, and meetings are filled with statements like “should we say ‘rediscover’ or ‘redefine?’” and then discussed heatedly for 30 minutes. (“Why can’t we say ‘rediscover or redefine?’” “But what about people who have not discovered or defined it in the first place?”)
Marketing Copywriting and Legal Writing Are Not Good Blog Writing
Blogging is informal. It’s written like people speak. It has punch, emotion, spark, verve. Sentences start with “and.” Or appear incomplete. While grammar is (and should be) used, people are a little more loose with some of the grammar rules. That’s not to say a blogger gets to write like an illiterate scribbler. But rather, they don’t need to march in lockstep with the grammar rules our 7th grade teacher drummed into us.
A good blog has to capture the attention of the person reading it. It has to be well-written and interesting. Too often, corporate blogs are stiff, formal, and uninteresting. They’re literary yawn-fests that seem to want to drive away readers, not bring them in.
I recently read a pro athlete’s blog that was hosted on his team’s website. And I could tell right away — see how I just started that sentence with ‘and?’ — that he didn’t write it. Or at least he didn’t have the final edit. That’s because the author or editor didn’t use team nicknames, and they made sure to include sponsor names.
“We’ve been working hard at the Sheinhardt Wig Company Indianapolis Beagles Practice Facility all week, and are looking forward to facing the Cincinnati Rough Riders on Sunday at 4:00 p.m.”
BLEAH! The only people who refer to anything by their sponsors’ names are marketers and race car drivers. The only people who refer to a team by their full name in an informal setting are marketers. Given that this particular athlete is not known for his eloquence, I could only assume this had been edited heavily, and not just for grammar.
While I’m not a big fan of misspelled words, poor grammar, and text speak, I do think writers should be given their own voice, and not edited to sound like some marketer’s idea of what they think it should be.
Basically, if you want to be a successful blogger, you need to learn to write like a real person. Loosen up the tie, disband the committee, unclench, and start to write like a real person. When you have an urge to fix something to as required by the marketing copy user’s guide, kill it.
Learn to write how people talk, and you’ll start to figure out how people read. And then they’ll start reading what you have to say.
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.
Okay, he didn’t say it was me per se, but rather anyone who was reading his blog post.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Content is not king. You are. (or Queen.) Content is currency. You’re the king.
Content is a means to deliver interest. It’s a gathering place for you and the people you hope to entertain/attract/educate/equip. That doesn’t make it the king.
And while I like Chris Brogan’s channeling of Mr. Rogers — everyone is special, a sentiment I firmly believe — I think new online relationships are started by our content.
Whether it’s our ideas, the words we choose, or how well we string them together, people find us because of search. They stay with us because of quality. They form relationships with us because of, well, us.
But I submit that it’s still the original content that started it all. You can’t win search without good content. You can’t win fans without good content. And people won’t stick around without good content.
Content may be currency in Chris Brogan’s world, but in a culture that worships the Almighty Dollar, I think the currency of ideas is our king.
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.
The 5 Categories and the the types of sites that were measured were:
Content (Sites like NYTimes.com, ESPN.com and Edmunds.com (Content sites)
Communications (websites offering email, and Instant messaging)
Community (Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn)
Commerce (such as Ebay, Amazon)
Search (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc)
Here is Jeff’s interpretation:
The study on online activity titled the “Internet Activity Index” released by the Online Publishers Association shows the trends of the types of activity that have occurred on the Internet over the past 6 years. The study’s findings has important implications for online marketers and how they should be focusing their time, resources and strategies in 2009 and beyond.
Five key findings of the study?
Internet users continue to spend a majority of their “time” with Content sites, up from 34 percent of total time spent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2009.
Emergence of Community (it wasn’t measured in 2003 as it wasn’t statistically significant enough and not on the radar)
Content is still king; the content rich sites continue to be a place where consumers spend the majority of their online time and provide an environment for brand marketers to reach and engage with consumers despite the emergence of community sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.
Community sites are reducing the share of online time by communications sites due to community sites ability to offer the same activities such as email and instant messaging more efficiently.
*Notes: Excludes .gov and .edu Web sites, as well as pornographic domains. Percentage change indicates the percentage increase or decrease from the previous month’s value (June 2009 % change not shown due to introduction of Nielsen’s NetView RDD//Online data). Share of Time data based on Total Time values. Source: OPA and Nielsen Online
For years now, the principals here have been preaching that content is king. Not only for search engine optimization (SEO), but also for it being the hub of a social media campaign. A colleague of mine, who is the Chief Marketing Officer of a large travel company has validated these findings with their strategy. Quote: “Blogging is the hub of a social media campaign. Social Media alone is not a strategy for corporations wishing to participate.”
The numbers Jeff shared this morning kind of validates this approach. From a hub, there are spokes to other platforms through sharing. The valuable asset is the content generated.
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.
Ghost writing is a tool. Hiring a ghost writer lets people who either don’t have the time to write or don’t have the talent to write communicate.
Without ghost writers, many people who have great ideas and insight would never blog.
It’s not because they don’t want to, it’s because the average blog post takes a non-professional 1 – 2 hours to write. If you think CEOs write every last one of their own blog posts, you are mistaken. They don’t write the letter in front of the annual report, they don’t write their speeches to shareholders, they don’t write their financial reports. Some of them don’t even write their own emails.
Would you really want a person who’s making $1,000 per hour spending 1 – 2 hours every day writing a single blog post instead of running the company? For that matter, if you’re making more than $35 per hour, do you really want to spend 2 hours every day writing blog articles?
If you bill or get paid more than $25/hour, writing a blog post may not be the best use of your time. The time you spend researching, writing, and editing is time you could spend billing and generating revenue.
The challenge is that hiring a ghost writer is tough because there are no real professional standards in the business. There is also no clear definition of “professional ghost writing.” Our professional experience has taught us that ghost writers and ghost bloggers generally fit into five buckets:
Cheap and Dangerous copywriting sweat shops typically charge $10 or less per post and usually promise keyword rich copy. The challenge is these writers rarely are paid enough to do original work (after overhead, they have $3 – $5 left to actually pay the writer). As a result shortcuts are the rule. Dangerous shortcuts like stealing content from other websites, using non-native writers, skimping on editing, and failing to do any fact checking can come back to haunt you later.
Solo Practitioners are often very good at what they do, except during their day job’s regular working hours, while on vacation, some weekends, or when life gets a little busy. The challenge with a solo practitioner is simply making sure they have time to meet your deadlines, can work with your legal department and are highly responsible. You’ll also need to make sure you have time for doing more editing on your own, as solo practitioners rarely have an editor. Solo practitioners can be a great value if you want to manage them. If you can find a solo practitioner who does this as a regular job, hang on to them. They’re worth what you’re paying them.
Social Media “Experts“ should generally be avoided. The general rule of thumb, at least according to Malcolm Gladwell, is you’re considered a top performer (an “outlier”) if you have 10,000 years of experience, and you’re considered “good” if you have 8,000. The problem is, a lot of social media tools like Twitter aren’t even 10,000 hours old, so it’s hard to become an expert in a field like this. Plus there are too many social media tools to truly become proficient at. You can have a passing knowledge about a lot of them, but a passing knowledge doesn’t make anyone an expert either.
Ad and Marketing Agencies are usually a good source for writers, but this isn’t their core business. They do ad campaigns, marketing campaigns, and online marketing. But they also have higher overhead, because you’re paying for people who typically don’t work on your project or technology.
Professional Blogging Agencies usually cost a little more, but have advantages, especially for businesses and high profile clients. Professional ghost writers should have a solid editorial process, access to a diverse stable of writers, provide safeguards against copyright infringement, have no issues with deadlines and can accommodate your compliance department.
When you’re looking for a ghost blogger, pay careful attention to your budget, your blog requirements, and whether you have any special requirements you need to meet, like passing posts through your legal department. Then see if you can work with a solo practitioner, a blogging agency, or whether you want to cheap out and risk it all with a sweat shop.
About the Author: Mike Seidle Mike Seidle is a leading Internet marketing strategist and has been helping companies with search engine optimization and developing cost effective Internet marketing strategies since 1998. Mike is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service and currently serves on Professional Blog Service's board of directors.
I was recently asked by our friends at Compendium Blogware to help judge an internal blogging contest they were holding among the employees. I was chosen to be the impartial outside observer (thanks, Doug) to judge the entries.
The rules were simple. Come up with a creative and relevant way to use keywords, use photos or videos to support content. They had their wealth of knowledge about corporate blogging software to draw on.
The idea was a simple one: show business owners why and how to start a business blog.
That’s easy to explain. Blogging is all about search. People search for answers to their problems. Your goal in blogging is to have people find you at the top of the search engine rankings, and recognize you as having the answer to what they need.
Chris Baggott, Compendium’s CEO and co-founder, tells a great story about one of their clients, a small liquor store in Greenfield. The owner will write about different exotic liqueurs and products she gets in from time to time, and talk about different recipes and drinks her readers can make. When she talks about root beer schnapps, sales for the product goes up. When she writes about a particular wine, sales for that wine jump.
One week, she wrote about absinthe, the liquor often consumed by Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, and Pablo Picasso. She only had a few bottles in the store, so she thought she would see what would happen if she wrote about it.
A few weeks later — if I have my details straight — a new customer showed up and bought up all the bottles of absinthe she had in the store (one bottle went for nearly $100). How did you find us? she asked.
The customer explained that he was going to the Indianapolis 500 that weekend, and wanted some absinthe to share with his friends. He did a quick Google search for local liquor stores carrying the stuff, and found the Greenfield liquor store — the only one in the area carrying it. Or at least the only one that showed up in the search engines.
The guy flew into town, landed at the Indianapolis airport, drove east 1 hour to buy the bottles, and then raced to the track. Talk about a blogging success story!
This is just one example of a business who patiently plugged along with their blogging efforts, not doing anything out of the ordinary. She just wrote something new, week after week, focused on what her customers needed. She made sure to employ best blogging practices, and stuck with the fundamentals. As a result, she sold her entire stock of absinthe to one customer.
And sometimes, that’s what blogging is all about. It’s a great tool for search engine optimization (SEO) that leads to some great Long Tail opportunities. That one-in-a-million or even one-in-a-thousand opportunity that comes along only to those people who were prepared for it.
Not everyone is going to be scrambling for absinthe in the Indianapolis area. In fact, if I were a betting man, I would have bet that no one would ever search for absinthe in Indianapolis. But one guy did, and the liquor store won that Long Tail search.
As a business blogger, you need to focus on winning as many Long Tail searches as you can. Write frequently about topics that are related to your company’s mission. If you’re in the blogging business, write about the different ways people can use blogging and social media. If you’re in the liquor business, write about great liquor recipes. But write a lot, and then measure it.
The key is to write about these topics frequently and regularly. If you just poke around at it, throwing up a post every few weeks, you’ll still be relegated to the dregs of the search results, never to see the light of day.
If you want some ideas for blog posts, want to know how to create great content several times a week, or just want to find out more about how you can get those regular, frequent posts without ever having to lift a finger, get in touch with us and we’ll tell you everything we know.
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.
You started a blog, great. When was the last time you updated it? Do you have readers? More importantly, do you have the 4 hours a day needed to develop a post concept, write the post, edit it, post it and then promote it across your social networks?
Unless the economy’s worse than I think, I doubt it. Oh, and that web guy that got you into blogging and sold you your blog site, he got one detail wrong: Blogging is not a technology problem. It’s a people problem. Turns out you need more than a little software and a hosting account.
Blogging Takes Two Things: Time and Skill
Let’s be clear about how long it takes for a complete blog post cycle – about half a business day plus lunch:
Average Time to Create a Business Blog Post
Starting your day at three in the afternoon is one thing, but for someone who can make $100-$200 an hour billing or $200 a day in sales commissions ($200 in commissions usually means $600-$1000 in profits), writing blog posts is a wast of money, too. It’s not efficient. It’s bad business. Especially bad considering you can get a professional to handle it for somewhere between $75 and $175 and keep the revenue flowing. Do the math. You can lose $500-$1000 in revenue doing something that would have cost $135 to outsource.
Skill
The other reason boils down to talent, experience and education. Blog writing may seem easy, but if it’s so simple then why are there so many orphaned blogs floating around the Internet?
Blogs die for two reasons: lack of content and lack of readers.
If you don’t know how to expand the readership of the blog or promote a blog post, you’ll be yelling fire into an empty theater. Promoting a blog isn’t that difficult, but just like writing posts it takes time doing the right things to expand readership. It takes about a year of trial and error to know what the right things are. Not a good use of time and, again, not efficient.
Finding the Right Partner
There are two predominant types of blog writing services out there. First, there’s the guy who charges $10-$15 a post and writes bad formula content or worse yet, plagiarizes and borrows from other site’s content. Most of these writers focus on single topics or s specific keyword. The end result? Generic, disconnected text with little to no personality, poor quality control and the risk of a copyright infringement leading to your website being taken down or a lawsuit.
Then, there are professional blog writing services who take the time to do in-depth interviews and research designed to capture your personal voice, your ideas and your branding message and convert those into well-organized blog results. Professionals also take steps to guard against plagiarism and ensure posts are made on time every time. It’s genuine, it’s in tune with your message and will engage the reader.
Which would you prefer?
About the Author: Mike Seidle Mike Seidle is a leading Internet marketing strategist and has been helping companies with search engine optimization and developing cost effective Internet marketing strategies since 1998. Mike is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service and currently serves on Professional Blog Service's board of directors.
Before you rush into business blogging there’s something you should know:
Blogging does not work in a vacuum.
Every week someone calls us and asks if we can just ghost write blog articles for super cheap for their business blog. There’s a name for these spammy business blogs, and it sounds like something that grows in that goo that accumulates in the drain pan under the fridge: splog.
Splogs are blogging’s answer for the guy at the fair who yells “Hey you, with the face! Step right up…” So, after discovering that our future client has a splog, our first question is, well, if we are just writing, how is the blog being promoted? The answer from our prospective client is nearly always:
“We don’t care about that. We just have the blog around to mop up on some keywords on Google. It needs lots of new content, but we don’t really care what it says. We just want Google to index it.”
After we take a look at the prospects blog, we usually find three things are true about the aforementioned business blog:
1. It’s written by fake people. Not real people with pen names, but fake as in department store mannequin with a bad wig and big sunglasses.
2. The content isn’t personal (it’s written in third person), usually isn’t well written and isn’t tracking in the search engines for keywords that actually get traffic. It’s usually just more spammy content that will end up on page 8,500 in Google’s search results for a fourth rate keyword.
3. The business blog is screaming fire in an empty theater at three in the morning on a Sunday after the popcorn ran out. It gets 20 clicks. Per month. Meaning a visitor is more likely to be a hacker’s spider looking for unpatched scripts than a person, anyway.
Cheaply written business blogs which are put up for an audience consisting of a search engine spider and a ranking algorithm don’t work very well if you are trying to actually market. To engage, you have to actually communicate with people. Which raises the biggest mistake that people make when they start business blogging: failing to be genuine.
Blogs which are written by real people that can be called on the telephone are the most effective if you want good marketing. That does not mean you have to write the article, but it does mean that every blog post needs to be your ideas, and said in a way that is personal and genuine.
Why? Because, people do business with people. It’s that simple.
What are you going to do when someone calls and asks if Mr. Fake Person can speak at a trade show or come on a sales call? Hire an actor? Good luck with that.
Think about it.
People do business with people. People network with people. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn connect people to people. It’s called social media for a reason, and the blog is the foundation of it all. Spammy business blogs are anti-social.
About the Author: Mike Seidle Mike Seidle is a leading Internet marketing strategist and has been helping companies with search engine optimization and developing cost effective Internet marketing strategies since 1998. Mike is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service and currently serves on Professional Blog Service's board of directors.
Last year, the promoters behind the award-winning film Prince Among Slaves tried to hire freelancers to Digg their movie to the front page of Digg.com. You can read about it here. And yes, this story is from January ‘08, but this backwards mentality still persists. Online marketers are still trying to pay for mass traffic – whether it’s hiring diggers, paying for links or even opting in for reverse pay-for-view schemes.
Too bad that’s never going to work.
You Have to Be Genuine
Not only will tales of paid-for-traffic haunt your business and your reputation, it’s ineffective and a waste of money. In the new Web 2.0 world, traffic has to be earned, not purchased. You need to attract visitors with genuine interaction and content that’s both valuable and sincere. And yes, you can outsource some of the content, but work with them closely and be sure that what gets published is real.
It’s not about paying for hits, hiring diggers or spamming – it’s about being transparent and genuine and really engaging the viewer.
So, how do you do it?
Stop Thinking About Demographics
If you’re running a blog for your business, stop thinking about demographics. Put away your assumptions that everyone who visits your site is 40-65 and female. Remember, iVillage’s visitors are 44 percent male while AskMen.com’s visitors are almost 25 percent female.
Instead, group your communities by interest, encourage their feedback and use (more…)
About the Author: Mike Seidle Mike Seidle is a leading Internet marketing strategist and has been helping companies with search engine optimization and developing cost effective Internet marketing strategies since 1998. Mike is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service and currently serves on Professional Blog Service's board of directors.
One question that gets asked a lot by new clients is “Should we start with a blog or should I start with building social media profiles?”
Some social media experts say this is a bad idea because a blog is worthless without a network to read it. They argue you’ll get more eyes by guest blogging on a bigger website. They’ll say that you need to develop relationships with “influentials” or “A-List” bloggers.
And they are right…
I do agree you need to work on building a social media network. I do agree you should guest blog. I can’t agree more that it takes a lot of time to get serious blog traffic.
That said, I disagree with putting off blogging (more…)
About the Author: Mike Seidle Mike Seidle is a leading Internet marketing strategist and has been helping companies with search engine optimization and developing cost effective Internet marketing strategies since 1998. Mike is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service and currently serves on Professional Blog Service's board of directors.
Background Info: I have been in the search engine optimization business for over seven years. More Background Info: I just left SEO land for good. There is a better way.
First, I can tell you what isn’t working: traditional Search Engine Optimization. I could make up a lot of really impressive, buzzword rich, techno-spam to explain why. Instead I’m going to cut to the chase: search engines want fresh, hot content.
So the game has changed from old fashioned keyword rich, quality content with a million high page rank links to a model where the best, fastest content factory wins.
Search your name: you’ll find social networks and social news sites own it.
Search your product names: chances are you’ll run in to social media sites like dealstreamers (Fat Wallet type social deal sites), blogs and membership forums.
Search for your core products: Unless your product is described by uber competitive keywords, you’ll find blogs, forums, and news articles.
All of which have one thing in common. The content is usually fresh, or at least surrounded by fresh content. And the funny part is that content is not difficult. It takes some talent, some training, time and lots of discipline. Oh, and a maniacal dedication to getting more content. And more content. You can’t stop. And that’s why most companies are struggling with dealing with the 2009 model of internet marketing. They are stuck worrying about the wrong things like link structure, gaming Google (good luck with that), rich media and widgets, when the real issue should be having lots of fresh, hot content.
Making fresh, hot content is exactly what ProBlogService does best. And it’s why I get up in the morning. Somewhere, there’s a company that needs content. We want to supply it. Content is the new rocket fuel for your marketing program.
Mike Seidle is the CEO of ProBlogService.com, a full service blog and social media agency. ProBlogService.com provides blog writing, management and promotion services for business.
About the Author: Mike Seidle Mike Seidle is a leading Internet marketing strategist and has been helping companies with search engine optimization and developing cost effective Internet marketing strategies since 1998. Mike is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service and currently serves on Professional Blog Service's board of directors.
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Last year, the promoters behind the award-winning film Prince Among Slaves tried to hire freelancers to Digg their movie to the front page of Digg.com. You can read about it 
One question that gets asked a lot by new clients is “Should we start with a blog or should I start with building social media profiles?” 
Search your name: you’ll find social networks and social news sites own it.
