Blogging for Business

Dear Moxie Maven

Last week you talked about blogging. That’s great and all, but I’m not a writer. I just don’t know what to write about, so how would a blog do me any good for my business?

Blogless

Dear Blogless,

I would have to say that writing is the top concern of most business professionals that I consult with. These business owners suffer from one of two problems:

One: The business owner feels they can’t write.
Two: The business owner has no idea what to write.

Good news, there are actually solutions to both of these problems.

In the first case the easiest solution is to find a ghost writer. There are several ways to accomplish this and one of the first is to post an advertisement for a college student that may be majoring in journalism or English that is looking for some experience. The business owner would give the topic and a general outline of what they would like for the article and the student would write it.

Another option is to use one of several websites that have bidding systems in place where freelance writers can bid on your project. One of the top sites is Elance. I recommend hiring at least two or three professionals to write the same article. This will give a good idea of the writing style and allow you to choose a writer that best reflects your voice.

Now for the problem of what to write about…

There are several ways to address this. One of the first is a simple brainstorming session. Many times I find that professionals just think they don’t know what to write about, but when you ask them direct questions topics come pouring out.

Some questions that may invoke topics to write about:

• What is a misconception that most customers generally have about my business?
• Are there recent events in the news that apply to my industry?
• Is there a way to use my product or service that is unique or unusual?
• Is there a customer that was helped by my company and do they have a testimonial?
• Are there any industry experts that can be interviewed for my blog?

I hope you are getting the idea, but as you can see there are probably thoughts already flowing for you on what you could write about.

Another great source of topics is the use of Google Alerts. When you visit Google you simply click on the “More” button, and then at the bottom of the list is a link for “Even more.” Once you click on that link you will see a list of all the tools that Google has to offer and the very first item is Alerts. Or go directly to the Google Alerts page.

You can set up as many alerts as you see fit for your business, consider setting them up for your competition, your own name, your industry, your business name, etc. Then you simply select what type of alerts you would like and how often you want them delivered to your inbox.

Make sure that you are fully utilizing your email client (Outlook, Mac Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) by setting up filters to catch the alerts as they come in and this way you don’t have to rifle through the alerts unless you are looking for something to write about or just checking on what people are saying about you.

I know that there is a lot of information in this little article, but I hope that it is enough to get you started on blogging even if you didn’t know what to write about or you felt you couldn’t write at all.

Published on 9/7/09 in the Grand Junction Free Press.