Freelance Business Writing

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.

In my previous post I talked about planning your blog before you actually set it up. If you have your editorial calendar and you’re ready to get going, let’s do it.

First, comes the fun part. Every blog requires a title and a description. If you are looking for good search engine results from your blog, try to use keywords in your title. My blog title is not terribly interesting, but “freelance business writing” incorporates my main keywords and makes it clear what my blog is about.

Write a description for your blog too. You will be asked for one when you set up your blog, so you may as well have it ready. I use blogger. com and the description is limited to 500 characters. I imagine it is the same everywhere. The description should explain what your blog is about. My description is short and to the point – “Using words to market your business”.

Once you have a title and description, you need to prepare your first post. Aim for a couple of short paragraphs to introduce yourself and the purpose of your blog. Refer to mine for an example, if you like. I typically write in Word, edit, edit again and then copy and paste into my blog editor.

Now you need to decide where to host this blog. You have 3 options – free hosting on a third party site, hosting on your own site or paid hosting. Conventional wisdom states that hosting your blog on your own site is best when you intend to use your blog for promoting your business. If you already have a site, you can host a blog there. If you don’t, you will need to purchase a domain name and set up your blog on that domain.

I started by with free hosting on blogger.com. I knew that I should be hosting my blog on my own site but, to be honest, I am not a very technical person. I read the instructions for switching my Blogger blog to my own site and couldn’t make much sense of them. I did eventually wise up and made the switch from Blogger to WordPress. More on that in a later post, but suffice it to say, if you want a blog on your site, WordPress is absolutely the way to go.  

But I digress. My blog is not really about the technical side of things. It’s about the content side of blog marketing. Since I am no expert in the area of hosting I will defer to someone who is. This article on blogging offers a good overview and I recommend you read it. You can also click the links at the bottom of that page for access to more articles about blogging.

Your blog host will tell you whether your blog title is available and will instruct you in how to add your description and other relevant details. From there, you can add your first post.

Stay tuned here for some tips on managing your many blog posts.  

Seems that just about everyone has a blog these days. Some are outlets for personal rants, some offer witty comment on the big stories of the day, and some provide valuable information about everything from cooking to high tech gadgets.

There is another use for blogs and many businesses have discovered it – marketing. Like article marketing and social bookmarking, blog marketing costs next to nothing. It offers an opportunity for a business to communicate on a more personal level with its clients. Businesses can use their blogs to keep customers informed about their industry, new innovations in products, and new services. They can also use their blogs to respond to customer complaints or concerns.

Creating a blog, preparing content and posting it can take a lot of time. And once you start, you are committed. Think of the impact on your business’ image if you started a blog and then let it wither and die because you ran out of time to keep up with the posts.

Since this post is about how to start a blog, I would suggest that before you launch your blog, you sit down and think about how you will manage it. Posts need to be frequent and timely. If a big story that is relevant to your business hits the news and you don’t get around to blogging about it for a month, that may not look good to your readers. If your posts are sporadic – once a week for a few weeks, dropping down to once a month for a bit, and then back to weekly – people may lose interest.

Big businesses can often afford to hire a marketing firm or freelance writer to write their blog posts, although many still choose to do it themselves. If you are a small business that cannot afford to outsource your blogging, you need to plan carefully before you even bother to set up your blog.

Begin with an outline of what you want to talk about in your blog. New product announcements, information on how to use your product, innovative uses of your product – all are good options. If you run a service-based business, like me, talk about how and why customers use your service. Tie in prevailing trends. For example, if you run a spa, there are infinite health-related topics you can use. I am a freelance copywriter, so I write blog posts that help small businesses learn how to use copywriting in the online environment to promote themselves.

Once you have a general idea of what you want to cover, draw up an editorial calendar using Excel or some other spreadsheet. List a bunch of topics, including an introductory, why-you-are-writing-a-blog topic, and then put a date beside each. Even if you can only manage to add one new post a month, commit to it on your calendar and stick with it. (Once you get started, you may find it easier than you think and you may be able to post more frequently.) Remember that these are posts, not articles. A couple of hundred words is usually enough, so you don’t need hours and hours to write each one.

Now that you have an editorial calendar, you can start to assign resources to the writing. You do not have to have a single blog writer, although for consistency of voice and tone you may want to. (I’ll talk more about that in a future post).

If you think you can manage your schedule, it’s time to get into the specifics of setting up your blog, which I’ll cover in my next post.

I’ve talked a fair bit about social bookmarking and the benefits it can bring your business. Being an active participant in a social bookmarking site can help draw traffic to your business Website. But social bookmarking is a two-way street. Not only do you want to add items to your bookmarks, you want people to add your blog posts, Website and articles to their list of favourites.

If you read a lot of blogs or newspapers online, you have probably seen a button with the words “Add This” or “Bookmark” and a bunch of symbols. If you have ever wondered what it is for or how you can get one on your site, let me tell you.

Social bookmarking and news sites can provide you with snippets of code to add to your Website or blog. This code creates a button that allows visitors to add your site or blog post to their bookmarks. Trouble is, if you have a del.icio.us button and the visitor doesn’t use that particular service, the button is of no use to them. To save you having to add a button for each possible bookmarking site, the people at Add This have created a single button with options for all of the big sites – del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, MySpace and more.

Adding this button is pretty easy for anyone who manages their own Website. Visit http://www.addthis.com/. Click Get Your Button. Select your button from the page that opens. Tell them where you are putting your button and then click Get Your Free Button. Add This provides you with the code you need. Just copy it and paste it into your HTML, wherever you want it to appear. The Add This instructions also tell you that you can add the button to your Website template (if you use one) and have it appear on every page in your site.

If you do not manage your own site, your Website manager can help. If you have some access to the code on your site but feel less than confident in your knowledge of HTML, find a tech-savvy relative or friend to give you a hand.

The Add This button is easy to add to your site and is a great way to encourage visitors to link to you. Give it a try.

If you are new to social bookmarking and plan to use it as a marketing tool, like me, you may know that to take advantage of it you need to add a lot of bookmarks.What you may not know is what you should post. Here are a few suggestions:

Your own Website. This may seem obvious, but your first addition to your bookmarks should be your own site.

Your own blog posts. Each blog post has its own Web address or URL. You can add each one to the social bookmarking site you use.

Your articles. If you have published articles somewhere, you can add each one to your list of bookmarks. When you add your blog posts and articles to your bookmarks you can build your list and, if your posts and articles have links to your site (which they should), you may end up driving traffic to your site.

Bookmarking is not all about you though. You need to enrich your listings by adding interesting items that you come across online. These items should also be relevant to your business. For example, I manage the online marketing for a women’s centre in my community. In the past couple of days I have read articles about women in the energy industry, the local Take Back the Night event and young women and self-esteem. I have added all of those articles to the centre’s bookmarks because I know they will be of interest to their clients.

Social bookmarking sites offer you an opportunity to build your online profile, but if you abuse that opportunity and only post sites that relate directly to your business, your profile may do you more harm than good. Aim for a balanced approach and be a true participant in this very social medium.

Social bookmarking sites are not only fun to participate in, they have also become a valuable marketing tool.

If you plan to use social bookmarking sites for marketing, you need to know what tagging is. Keep in mind that I am referring here to del.icio.us, which is the social bookmarking site I use. I am not familiar with others at this point, but I assume they all operate in a similar manner.

Each item you add to your bookmarks on the social bookmarking site can be tagged. The tags are free-form, which means you can use any term you want. People who view your bookmarks will see the tags you have used. The list of terms will suggest to them the type of business you are in. You can also include these tags on your own Website in a tag cloud or list, which is a great way to build your site’s relevancy for these terms.

When you consider all that I have said in the previous paragraph, you’ll see how important it is to make those tags relevant to your business. Example:

I am a freelance business writer, so I need to use tags that apply to my industry. I recently added an article I wrote on women entrepreneurs to my bookmarks on del.icio.us. I could have tagged this article with many words, but I chose to use the word “business” only. Why? I did not want to highlight terms like “entrepreneur” and “women” in the keywords pointing to my site.

Further, the “tag cloud” on my site makes my services immediately clear to site visitors. Words like copywriting, marketing, and writing make sense there. Words like women and entrepreneur do not really belong.

In addition to planning your tags carefully, you should also plan your bookmarks carefully. Under my business ID I have added a bunch of links to articles and sites about marketing, social media and writing. While I would love to share some cool movie reviews or articles about environmental or women’s issues, they do not fit with my business. Instead, I will create a separate ID for my personal interests and add those bookmarks under that ID.

When you first start with social media marketing, it is easy to get carried away and start tagging everything in site. But you should use social bookmarking wisely, carefully selecting sites and articles that pertain to your business. Save the “fun” stuff for your personal bookmarks page.

As I have discussed in previous posts, social media marketing is a cheap and effective way for businesses to promote themselves. It is especially relevant for small businesses and non-profits, which typically have little or no money in their marketing budget.

Because social media sites are so accessible and plentiful, it may be tempting to jump in with both feet and start posting stuff everywhere. Don’t. Before you start your new marketing initiative, do some research and make a plan.

Research comes first. Investigate the various options out there. Spend some time on social bookmarking sites to see how they work and if they are the kind of site you want to be connected to. Same with social news sites and social networking sites. Check out the kinds of things being posted and the types of comments being made. After you have looked at the main players in each of those categories, select one from each and start there. Remember that there is a social aspect to these sites. You need to participate to reap the marketing benefits and if you are signed up with a bunch of sites, you will never be able to keep up. Include distribution methods in your research too (more on that below).

Second, think about the time you can commit to social media marketing. There are only so many hours in a day. How many of them can you spend reading, reviewing and commenting on news items or blog posts? If you don’t have enough time, maybe you need to narrow your focus to a blog and forget about social news and networking for now.

Third, think about content. If you are planning to use a blog or articles as part of your marketing strategy, you need to be realistic about how much content you can produce in an average month. A blog needs current content that is posted frequently. Consider how many posts you can write in a typical 30-day span. Can you post once a week or once a month? Do you have time to research and write both blog posts and longer form articles? Where will you get topic ideas? Your social media marketing plan should answer all of these questions and define a minimum number of posts so you will know whether or not you are keeping up with your marketing goals.

Fourth, think about distribution. It isn’t enough to just post an article or blog entry once. While you may think that readers will love your stuff and pass it on, that kind of response takes a long time to build, if it happens at all. You will need to give your content a helping hand to make sure it is spread far and wide. Linking your posts to social news sites, tagging them on social bookmarking sites, using RSS feeds – all of these actions are part of distribution, and you need to have a strategy for disseminating your content before you start creating it.  

After you have gotten your feet wet in the social media marketing pool, you can revisit your plan and adjust it accordingly.

Social media marketing is a lot of things – easy, affordable, and fairly effective if done right. It is also a lot of fun. Writing blog posts and bouncing them around the Internet, seeing what other people “digg” and have tagged as favourites – none of this seems like work. And, to be honest, some of it isn’t. Therein lies the danger of social media marketing – the ease with which you can lose focus.

Yes, from a marketing standpoint I should be digging and tagging things that pertain to my business or at least fields related to it – online marketing, article writing, blogs etc. But social bookmarking and news sites have made it so easy to find cool stuff that it’s hard to resist the temptation of say, “The Top 20 Most Influential Rock Producers” or “The Most Obnoxious Tourists in the World”, both recently featured on Digg. Over on del.icio.us, I recently logged in with the express purpose of finding links to good social media marketing sites, and was quickly sidetracked by “Listening Post’s Top 10 Hottest Music Sites”.

All I did was read these posts and that took a lot of time. If I had actually bothered to formulate and write a comment, I would have lost even more precious minutes from my workday.

What should you do if your primary focus on social media sites is marketing and not leisurely browsing and chatting? Well, it isn’t easy, but I would suggest limiting yourself to one bookmarking site and one news site. For simplicity’s sake, I went with two of the biggest – Digg and del.icio.us. Give yourself an allotted time on each site and be disciplined. No matter how intriguing the story on Hellboy or the Dark Knight seems, stay the course. Tag the story for later reading and concentrate your real efforts on links and networks that can help your business.