Freelance Business Writing

I recently wrote an article about my experience with Twitter. I thought I would share the main points here.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Twitter has lately come to be considered an effective marketing tool for business. Much like Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites, Twitter is seen as a way for businesses to connect on a personal level with their customers and prospects.

Although a small, home-based freelance writing business has very different marketing needs than other product-oriented businesses, I decided to give Twitter a try.

I lasted a week.

I chose to follow a few others, just to get started. But the constant barrage of tweets from these few people wore me out after just a couple of days. There were topics of interest, but so much information that I couldn’t possibly take it all in.

What was more disconcerting was the reciprocal following of people who had no interest in what I was saying. I followed a couple of big businesses, just to get an idea of what they were doing from a marketing perspective. They quickly began to follow me, even though I had contributed nothing of value in my tweets. Although masked as a social initiative, these companies clearly had no interest in a two-way conversation. They simply wanted to get the word out about their business.

Another challenge with Twitter? The word length. It is probably an occupational hazard, but I cannot manage to say anything of value in 140 characters or less. Yes, I know you can link your blog posts into your tweets to spread your wisdom to all of the interested Twitterati, but I have enough trouble keeping up with my blog, never mind tweeting about everything I write and then maintaining some level of conversation about it.

No, Twitter marketing is not for me. I would suspect it is not really suited to any sole proprietor.  There is too much noise in the Twitter universe. Those of us who run our own small businesses do not have nearly enough time to filter out the meaningless babbling and reveal the really useful information.

For those businesses who have managed to make Twitter work as a marketing tool, kudos.

For the rest of you, don’t feel bad. Time is in short supply for those of us who operate our own businesses. Why waste it reading utterly useless drivel, like: “Added sugars - think sodas and candy bars - fill you up with empty calories and may lead to nutritional issues” (who knew?) or “Austin is a completely different city when you’re not hungover”? I think we can all live without that kind of insight.

As for marketing, it may be better to expend your limited resources on other online marketing initiatives. More on those in future posts.

A recession is not the time to cut advertising. So says John Quelch of the Harvard Business School in a recent newsletter article. He states that “brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.”

Quelch is talking about television advertising, but that is an medium that is out of reach for all but the largest businesses. For small businesses, the key to continued marketing in a recession is to make it affordable. And, although you may not realize it, copywriting is an option you can afford.

Copywriting is especially valuable in the world of online marketing, where large volumes of well-placed content can draw traffic to your site, and provide inbound links that can improve your search engine ranking.

So, how can you use copywriting to your advantage? Start a blog and link each post to a page on your Website. Write short articles, about 500 words or so, and post them on an online database with a link to your Website in the “about the author” section. Boost the copy on your Website - create a page for each niche market you serve.

Those are just a few of the ways that copywriting can help you. Yes, I have a vested interest in promoting professional writing, but you can even do this stuff yourself. Or, if you have an idea but lack the time or inclination to create an entire article, pass your rough notes onto a copywriter for finishing. It will take less time for the writer and he or she may even charge you less for it.

To find out more about article writing and blog writing, see my earlier posts.

In my previous post I implied that hosting a blog on your own site is preferable to external hosting. I feel I should explain that more.

Hosting a blog on your site can help with search engine marketing. If you’ve read some of my other posts or know anything about search engine marketing, you know that there are two keys to success: content and links.

Sites with lots of relevant content tend to rank better on Google for the keywords that people use to search. When your blog is hosted on your site, each post becomes a new page on your site. If your posts discuss your business or related topics – as they should – then you have an easy way to add tons of relevant content to your site.

Links are another way to boost traffic to your site from search engines and Internet users. There are two types of links – internal and external. Both are needed and, in this case, the external blog can still help you. In each post you can add links that point to your main site. If link building is the main purpose of your blog, then an external blog will serve you well.

When your blog is on your site, you can create internal links to and from your blog posts. Internal links help search engines navigate your site. Links that contain keywords are even better because the search engines see them as prominent, which makes your site even more relevant for those keywords.

Keeping in mind that I am woefully late to the blogging game, and that this blog is intended for small business owners who lack an IT department/local computer geek/marketing budget and must set up their own blog, I will endeavour to share my opinion of common blogging tools. Well, the two common blogging tools that I have used. Added bonus – both are free.

First is blogger.com. Owned by Google, Blogger is easy to use and quick to set up. Visit blogger.com, click Create Your Blog Now and you’re off. The dashboard (the interface where you add and manage your posts and settings) is clearly laid out and easy to follow. For novices, Blogger is a great tool. It helps get your feet wet in the world of blogging.

Blogger is an external host. That is, the blog is not hosted directly on your Website. You can change your Blogger settings to move the blog to your site but I found this task difficult. In all fairness, this is not Blogger’s fault. The change involved something called a CNAME and I couldn’t find a setting to change it in the clunky interface of my Web domain provider (the organization I bought my domain name from). Since I have a moderate level of technical expertise and I couldn’t figure this out, my advice to any non-technical people is that you may need a good IT or Web person with you to help.

You could also do what I did. Instead of having to bother with the CNAME, I just switched blog tools. I now use WordPress and I love it. You need a moderate level of technical expertise set up WordPress, but once you do, it is great to use. WordPress also makes it easy to host your blog on your site, if you have that bit of technical knowledge that I mentioned.

Note that to create a WordPress blog in your site, you need some knowledge of the folllowing:

• adding a subdomain to your site – not necessary if your entire site is a blog, but definitely needed if you want an address like http://www.tigerlilymedia.ca/blog/
• adding a SQL database to your site and adding a user with full access rights
• editing the WordPress config file to include your SQL database, user name and password
• changing other areas of the config file, including a bunch of authentication numbers that have to be both long and unique (luckily WordPress has a tool to generate these numbers)
• transferring WordPress files to your Website

Once the files are on your site you can access the dashboard from within your site. WordPress provides you an admin password to use for logging in on the WordPress admin page associated with your site. From there, the dashboard is straightforward to use.

WordPress is open source and people are always adding new plugins to use with it. There are also a ton of templates to choose from to enhance the look of your blog. As a moderately technical user who likes to keep things simple, I recommend WordPress highly.

I am an obsessive bookmarker. I live in perpetual fear of losing the link to some snippet of information that, however tangentially related to my current project, could prove useful in future. You should see my list of Favorites. While I have made good use of the folder option, and continue to do so, my Favorites list could be considered excessively long.

At last count I had 49 folders in my Favorites, with many of those containing subfolders. In addition to these categorized items, I have quite a lengthy list of others that did not seem to fit anywhere, so I left them to languish in a kind of non-category, all listed together in no particular order. This system actually works fairly well for me, although I recognize that more judicious use of the Delete key is probably in order.

So what is my point? If you are doing any kind of writing for your business, be it a blog or an article or even a Web page, try to keep a list of references. You never know when you might need them again. Maybe you’ll feel the need to elaborate on a point in a future article. Maybe someone will ask you where you got your information. Or maybe there’s a piece of information that you think would be a great starting point for a future article.

There are a couple of ways to manage your bookmarks. You can use your browser or a bookmarking site.  

In Internet Explorer bookmarks are called Favorites. In Firefox and Netscape they are called Bookmarks. If you are not familiar with folders, I suggest you take the time to learn. Just like the folders in Windows Explorer, bookmark folders allow you to set up your own categories and save Web pages within them. This makes it easier to find your favourites at a later time. 

As an aside, I feel the need to offer my non-expert’s two cents’ worth about the capabilities of each browser in this area. In the interest of full disclosure, I will also tell you that I am highly predisposed to hating anything Microsoft does. I use their products grudgingly because they are the standard for most businesses.   

All of that being said, the reality is that while each browser may have its strong points, when it comes to managing bookmarks, Netscape is far superior to the others. The standard Firefox bookmark manager looks a lot like Netscape, but doesn’t offer the easy drag-and-drop interface that Netscape has. (Note that anything with Firefox is subject to change since there are always new add-ons available.) And Internet Explorer’s clunky interface comes nowhere near either of the other two. All of the browsers allow you to bookmark groups of tabs – a very cool feature for anyone who does a lot of Internet research, like me. But for simple management and organizing your bookmarks, Netscape wins hands down.  

Adding a bookmark in any of the browsers is straightforward: from the page you are on, click the Bookmarks or Favorites menu option and then choose the “Add” or “Bookmark” option. To add a folder, choose the “Organize” or “Manage” option. With Netscape and Firefox you get an interface that looks a lot like your Windows Explorer, so it should be fairly easy to figure it out.  

If you want to access your bookmarks from any computer anywhere, a social bookmarking site like delicious is a great option. Create an account and you can start saving your bookmarks. You can do so by using the “Save a new bookmark” option on Delicious, and then copying and pasting the URL (Web site address). Or you can download the Delicious toolbar and whenever you are on a site of interest, just click the Tag button. It’s that easy.  

When you save a bookmark on Delicious, you can give it tags, or categories. That makes it easy for you to keep track of where your bookmarks are, and it opens up possibilities for networking with other people who share your interests.

In my last post I talked about getting content ideas for blogs that depend on current events.  

So now that you have your ideas, what’s next? 

My last post talked about where to get ideas for your business blog. As I discussed my ideas, I noted that there are two main types of blogs used for business marketing – the how-to and what I like to call the “current events” blog.  

In the current events type of blog, writers comment on happenings that pertain to their business, their products and services, or events that might be of interest to their target demographic. For example, mortgage blogs are all over the current discussion as to whether Canada is or is not in a recession. (I know because I write a mortgage blog).  

For some businesses, like mine, the current events blog is not entirely applicable. As a copywriter, I rarely encounter breaking news that requires immediate sharing with the readers of my blog. But I do know where to find current news, and here are some tips for those of you who are stymied.  

• Google News – Have I mentioned that I love Google? If not I will be sure to do so in a future post about Google Analytics. To get to Google news, just go to your Google domain (google.ca for us Canucks) and click the News link at the top. Enter the topic of interest in the search box and Google will bring you the latest headlines. If you need a regular feed of current news items, search the pane on the left for the News Alerts link and set up an alert to have Google send you headlines on a daily, weekly or as-it-happens basis. Be warned that too many alerts will clog your Inbox and drive you nuts, but judicious use of this fabulous tool can be really helpful.
• Social News Sites – I personally use Digg, but there are many others out there, StumbleUpon and Reddit included. All of these sites provide links to new and cool information. They are searchable by category and keyword and rated according to popularity among their community of users. A lot of what you find will not necessarily relate to your business, or business in general, but you can find some valuable, useful and well-written articles and sites.
• Your Favourite Newspapers – Every national and local paper has a Website. Just check the sections that pertain to you. A couple of warnings: this method is not as efficient as Google News and it can lead to many distractions as you stumble upon stories that are too interesting to ignore but not at all relevant to your business.
• Other Blogs – Yes you want your blog’s content to be totally original, but you can still get news from others. If you see an interesting post, explore it online. See what others are saying and then offer your own opinion in your blog.   

There are lots of ideas out there. All you need to do is find them and get in the habit of commenting on them once or twice a week. Luckily, the searching is made easier by some really easy-to-use sites.

How ironic that I am writing a post about getting ideas for blogs when I have spent the past 2 weeks struggling to come up with some myself! I had promised to write a post about where to get ideas, but when it came time to write I drew nothing but blanks. I’ll blame it on the short vacation I took.  

The source for your ideas depends in large part on the type of blog you are writing. Since I am concerned with blogs used for small business marketing, I will limit my focus to the two main types I have encountered. There is the how-to blog, kind of like mine. And then there is the “current affairs” blog. I will discuss the latter in another post.  

If you are writing a how-to, your professional knowledge is your best resource. But how to translate that into a series of blog posts? 

The key is to plan and I must confess that this is my biggest downfall. Since I am a writer and spend much of my time writing for others, I tend to do my own writing in batches. In theory, that should make planning easier but it rarely seems to work that way.  

I have thought a lot about how to generate and track my ideas, so here is an example of my system. Even if I can’t manage to follow it all the time, I do manage to do at least some of these things.  

To start, write down a list of the services you provide. Then make a point-form list of the types of things people need to know about those services. Look at the FAQ pages on your site or someone else’s if you need help. Each item could be at least one blog post. Here’s a list that uses my services as an example:

• Web Content - search engine optimization (could be several posts), use of bold text on sites, meta tags, how many words per Web page, how much content on a site
• Article Marketing – what is it, how do you do it, ideal article length, getting ideas, reference tools for writing, editorial calendars, managing article files
• Social Media Marketing – what is it, how do you do it, popular social media sites, social bookmarking

You could also start tracking topics that your clients may have asked about. For example, when I started my blog I began with the theme of hiring professional writers. I thought of questions I had been asked.  Why would anyone hire a writer? What difference does a professional writer make? Who can afford a professional writer? 

From these questions I spun off 4 blog posts. Remember that posts are intended to be short. So even a 100-word answer to a commonly asked question can be a post. The next time a client asks you something or you find yourself explaining something for the hundredth time, make a note and then turn it into a blog post. 

As far as where you should track your ideas, try using a spreadsheet. Set it up with each broad theme in bold, each potential topic beneath and a column to indicate whether you have completed that topic.  

If that is too complicated, start a simple Word doc with the theme in bold and the topics in a bulleted list below. Just remember where you save the file.

And if that doesn’t work, use good old pen and paper (my method of choice). Either get a notebook specifically for blog (and, if applicable, article ideas) or tack a piece of paper to your bulletin board and add to it when something inspires or motivates you.

In a future post I plan to discuss how you can come up with ideas for your blog posts. In this post, I’ll provide some general pointers about writing a post.

First of all, there is the title. Remember that every blog post becomes a separate URL (Web page). As such, it is searchable and “index-able” by search engines. To help your posts rank higher, try to use keywords in your title. See how mine uses the phrase “blog marketing”? That title will hopefully capture people looking for information on blogs and marketing.

Unlike most business writing, blogs are meant to have an informal tone. That may present challenges to you as a blogger, since you are likely used to writing in a kind of bland, non-confrontational, non-controversial, formal style. Not that I am suggesting you be confrontational or controversial in your business blog – not at all. But you should try to show a little personality in your posts.

Decide on a tone for your blog when you first set it up. The tone depends in large part on the type of business you run. Someone who runs a party planning business for kids, and who is aiming their blog at parents looking for birthday party ideas, will want a tone that conveys energy and fun. Someone who runs a spa and wants to talk to clients about new treatments and trends will likely use a softer tone that shows some authority with and knowledge of the subject matter.

The vocabulary you use can really affect the tone of your posts. Do not use a lot of long words and esoteric terms if you are aiming to speak to a general audience. See what I mean? Words like “esoteric” do not generally belong in your blog posts. Unless you are a writer who wants to show off her expansive vocabulary. (I’m kidding of course)

No matter the tone, try to use a conversational style. A blog is really intended to be a conversation with your customers, and you should write as though you are speaking directly to them.

If you are having trouble coming up with the right tone, or if you feel your writing is not so great, look around your business and see if anyone you work with might be willing to write the posts. Or check with your local college or university to see if anyone in a journalism or copywriting course might be able to write you some posts for a nominal fee or for a “byline” that would give them some writing experience. You may even be able to talk a professional freelance writer into a barter arrangement, whereby they write you some posts and you exchange your products or service (but I’m not naming any names).

I have mentioned the value of an editorial calendar for blog posts. Now I have to confess that I don’t actually have one myself. At least, not one that is written down in any kind of formal way.

What I do have is a mental list of topics and a bunch of scribbled ideas in the notepad (one of about ten) that I have designated for blog posts. I live in a strange hybrid world of computers and old-fashioned pen and paper – I do most of my work on the computer but I am a scribbler at heart. For ideas I always use pen and paper, with notes written all over the page, sometimes in different colours of ink. It is a bit chaotic, but it seems to work for me.

While my idea-generating habits may appear a bit messy to everyone else, the process I have developed for managing my posts is quite orderly.

Because I spend most of my time writing for others, I need to take advantage of any time I get for my own writing. As a result, I usually write several blog posts at once. I write them in my word processor (MS Word) and save each as a separate file. I store them in a folder very simply called “blog”.

I do not post all of my entries at once. I try to post no more than 2 a week so that my little cache of posts will (hopefully) last until I have another block of personal writing time.

To keep things in order, I adhere to a strict convention for filenames. I begin with a number, then a general subject, then a brief but specific description of that post’s content. For example, this very post you are reading has a filename of “021-blogs-managingposts”.

At the bottom of each Word document I write down a planned posting date. I then add an item to my MS Outlook calendar to remind me to post that entry. I use the number from the filename to reference the specific file I want to post. While the obnoxious reminders popping up all the time can get annoying, this system does work.

When it comes time to post I open the Word doc, copy and paste the text and then close the Word doc. I then rename the file to include the posting date in the filename. This tells me that the file was, in fact, posted and the date that I added the post. Using this post as an example again, the final name is “021-blogs-managingposts-080608”.

Can you tell I have a degree in library science? Probably. But my detail-oriented system works and makes managing my blog posts a cinch.