I met Putoff Pete after my business blogging presentation at a local chamber of commerce event, he asking if we could meet for coffee to discuss his company’s blogging needs. After consulting our calendars we agreed on 10am Thursday at The Big Buzz Coffee House, which was just down the street from Pete’s office.
In preparation for our meeting, I looked up Pete’s company website. I found that he worked for a telecommunications company in downtown Portland. Their web site was well built, but it had a few too many keywords and the site organization could have been a little cleaner. I noted that Pete’s company had a blog site, but there hadn’t been any new articles in several weeks and the articles online were unfocused sales pitches.
I arrived at The Big Buzz Coffee Shop about ten minutes early, ordered a medium Coco Sugar Buzz and secured a table that would be comfortable for our meeting. The coffee was good, but the music was a bit too loud, the wall decorations were on the wild side and most everything in the room was distracting.
Pete arrived ten minutes past the hour with a binder in one hand, loose papers nearly falling out and a legal note pad with a couple dozen pages turned, exposing just a few blank sheets for taking notes. Pete entered the coffee shop quickly but did not appear to be in a rush. He was dressed in casual business attire and appeared to be hip to the local fashion trends.
Pete spoke first.”Sorry I’m late. I got held up at the office with some last minute paper work and lost track of time.”
“No problem”, I replied. “I’m glad you could take some time to meet with me today.” I offered to buy Pete a cup of coffee while he got settled. While standing in line I couldn’t help but notice Pete seemed comfortable in this very busy, noisy environment. I ordered Pete a medium Coco Sugar Buzz. While waiting for the coffee I began to wonder if I should have ordered Pete a decaf. I returned to the table to find Pete had a stack of printouts organized loosely in his now open binder and his legal note pad ready for taking notes; but no pen.
Pete told me he had recently been promoted to Manager of Electronic Communications and one of his duties was to use the company’s blog site to increase search engine visibility. Peta said, “I’ve blogged before, but never for business. I don’t really know how to get started. It seems like the articles my predecessor wrote had little to no impact and your chamber presentation opened my eyes to the possibility.”
We talked a bit about Pete’s job history and his back ground in writing and social networking. Armed with a better understanding of Pete’s motivations, back ground and company resources I felt we were ready to proceed to the next phase–organizing our first article.
I asked Pete, “Who are your ideal prospects you would like to attract?”
Pete thought for a moment and replied, “I don’t think we want to limit ourselves to doing business with any one type of individual. We would like to do business with anyone and everyone.”
“Of course, the goal is definitely to attract people of all sorts to your website, but I like to start with the low hanging fruit. Writing for your ideal customer will help you learn how to business blog. The process of blogging is just that; a process with a beginning, middle and an end. We will create many articles over time and the entire collection of articles will represent something of interest for all your company’s target audience. But individually each article should be focused on just one product or service for just one type of customer.”
“Oh, I get it. I should start by writing about things I’m very comfortable with for people I know really well. Then I can write new articles about different topics and different target audiences and by having all of those articles together on one blog site my eitre site can reference everyone.”
“Excellent,” I replied. “You have some homework to do. First you’ll need to do some keyword research. You can use Google’s Keyword Tool to help you find popular search phrases for one of your products or services. Make note of all the top keyword searches because those phrases are related to one another in Google’s database. We’ll use a combination of these keywords when we write.”
Pete was taking notes so I paused to give him a moment to catch up. He then asked, “Does it matter which product or service I start with?”
“Yes. You should start with your most popular product or service. Using Google’s Keyword Tool you’ll get an idea of how people are searching for associated keyword phrases. These keywords will become your categories and opening sentence statements.”
“Next, make a list of ideal customers. What type of businesses do they run? How many employees do they have? Where are their businesses located: downtown or the outskirts? Are they experienced business people or first time business owners? Pick one type of customer and start writing.”
“When writing there are two main things to keep in mind. First, don’t make a sales presentation. Your ideal customers are not browsing the net for new phone systems; they are browsing the net for entertainment or answers to questions. Second, keep your articles single topic focused. Don’t try to solve all the world’s problems in one sitting. Your articles will be located in the same place and readers can browse or search through all your articles if they wish.”
“Once you get your first draft written, eMail it to me and I’ll give you my feedback.”
“This sounds kind of laborious?” Pete replied.
“There are several steps and at first they do take time; but no marketing plan is easy out of the gate. They all take some time to internalize and become comfortable. Once you understand the process you’ll be able to write articles in about an hour.”
Pete asked, “Is there anything else I should know?”
“Well, since you’ve asked, yes. I suggest you seek a comfortable, quiets work environment to write. Noisy environments slow down the writing process and negativity affects the writer’s vision. What you write should be a snap-shot of your mind’s eye, telling a tale of one aspect of your business.”
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