As Chatty Cathy spoke, Sally’s words echoed in my mind, “I think you need to experience my challenge first hand.” Chatty Cathy spoke of her blogging vision with endless enthusiasm and energy. I couldn’t help but wonder, how could someone say so many words without taking a breath?
As she took a breath, I said, “Cathy these are all great thoughts, but we need to back up to the beginning and slow down. Let me read a little of what you’ve written.” Sally slid over a group of papers stapled together; it could have been four or five pages. “Great! How many articles are here?”
Sally replied, “One.”
Cathy had obviously gone all out to prove she could write. I began reading.
“All in all this article is very good.” Cathy’s thoughts were clear and concise; she just had dozens of them! I turned to Cathy and asked, “You titled this article ‘Catching Up’, but what is the goal of the article?”
“I wanted to bring the reader up to speed with where we are today. I thought this way we could lay the foundation for building great conversations online and even a sense of a community where all of our readers can share their thoughts and learn from them and through these thoughts, I’m thinking, we might even be able to advance the design and development process, the…”
“That’s great Cathy.” I interrupted. “You have lots of energy and we will need that. However you’ve nearly written a book and have scattered the subject matter. I do believe we have several dozen great article topics here, but let’s back up a little further. What do you see as the goal behind business blogging… in 20 words or less?”
Cathy sheepishly smiled and said, “I’ve been told that I have a tendency to talk too much. I see the goal is to give our customers, current and future, a place where they can learn more about our company and find ways to solve technical issues.”
“Good,” I replied, “do you see value in this information for people who are not currently customers of your company?”
“Sure, these tips and technical conversations have lots of value for…”
I stopped Cathy before she was able to get a head of steam. “Excellent! How are your non-customers going to find the information if they don’t know to visit your website?”
Cathy thought for a moment. I couldn’t help but wonder how many words a minute does she think? I bet she could recite the Declaration of Independence in her head in 10 or 15 seconds.
Cathy spoke, “On the search engines.”
“Exactly, but what is the search people will use to find your article?”
Cathy thought again. Sally was sitting with a pleasant look on her face, she doesn’t look the slightest bit rattled, I thought.
“I don’t know,” Cathy finally replied.
“When writing a business blog article, you should start at the search to pick a topic. Google has a free tool you can use to see how many people are searching for any particular search phrase. Pick five or six topics and condense them down to two or three keyword phrases. Then use Google’s keyword tool to help you narrow your topic based on the number of people searching for that topic.”
“So if I wanted to write on gear stress or metallurgy break points I would see which one has the higher search volume?”
“Exactly; but that is only a third of the process. Next we need to understand why a person might search for gear stress or metallurgy break points. Are they surfing for fun or are they seeking knowledge?”
“How do we know?” Cathy asked.
“Internet researchers in a 2003 Pew report concluded that over 70% of all internet users use the internet to find information. Those same researchers say 50% of all internet users consider the web to be a source of entertainment. Our goal is to give information while entertaining the reader.”
The look on Cathy’s face was that of absolute confusion. She held back the obvious question…how?
“I see a puzzled look on your face and right now I bet you are thinking how do I do that?”
Cathy said, “You read minds too? I mean, I am tasked with writing technical articles to help our customers trouble shoot problems with our machines; wouldn’t they feel I’m wasting their time if I tell them a fun story?”
“Yes they would, but telling stories is not the only way to entertain the reader. Entertainment comes in all different forms. For some, entertainment is a mystery novel while others like a well written reference guide.” Cathy giggled. “You seem like a techno-savvy person, have you ever picked one reference guide over another because you liked the writing style?”
“Yes.” Replied Cathy.
“Then you already have a reference point for entertaining via an informational article. A reference guide has dozens of different topics, maybe hundreds. Your blog article will have only one. Your blog site then becomes the reference guide that users, and search engines, can search for information they need.”
“Ok. I understand the difference. I do buy a lot of reference guides and I have my favorite authors because I like they way they present information, although I never considered it a form of entertainment.”
Sally said, “Actually Cathy, remember last week you and I were reviewing the new operators specs for the Chomp2000 Shredder? You said the people who wrote the manual probably never had fun because their writing was super boring.”
Cathy replied, “Now that you mention it, there are a lot of technical manuals that are super boring, but there are others that are fun to read. Why is that?”
“When reading a boring manual, do you feel the writer is talking at you with no emotional drive?” I asked.
“Yes. I never thought of it that way, but boring manuals don’t seem to have any human delivery, they just feel like words on the page.”
“There are only so many ways to write ‘turn the red dial counterclockwise until the digital readout reads 12″, but you are not writing the manual. You are writing the online technical support or reference manual. When trouble shooting why the red dial might not turn, you describe the solution several different ways finding the one that reads the best. The way you write will be captured and presented to the internet searcher. If the list of search results includes one that sounds interesting because it is more human, the likelihood the searcher will click on the link is greatly increased.”
Cathy said, “I guess this will take some practice.”
“Yes. Ok, we are two-thirds of the way there. The last part is really the easiest part. So far we’ve researched the internet to find the popular search phrases because we want to write about things people are searching for. Then we made sure to structure our articles to be interesting. Next we need to narrow our focus and strategically place our keywords.”
“Because blogs don’t have the extra page description and keywords meta data that a typical website has, we need to make sure and clearly communicate the topic for our article. The search engines will score your article based on the contents relevancy to the implied topic. If you are writing about gear stress you shouldn’t include a section about oil viscosity. If oil viscosity is important, then you can write a separate article highlighting the important factors. Keeping your articles focused on a single topic is very important because every time you add a topic point, the search engines must evaluate the value of the content of your article with two or more topics against articles that are single topic focused.”
“Lets recap.”
1. Write about topics people are searching.
2. Write to entertain as well as inform the reader.
3. Write on single topics.
Ed Bejarana
BusinessBlogging.net
a division of Zenith Exhibits, Inc.
To learn more about business blogging, please visit BusinessBlogging.net or call us at (503) 709-1454 to learn more about how we can help you start your blog today.
