Blogging on Purpose

Writing the Right Way

Thursday, December 17, 2009 by Tyler Bender

Last night I had dinner with a guy who owns his own business. We were talking about online business and the benefits and impact of social media on small companies and industries like the real estate business.

The purpose of him wanting to talk with me was because he knew that I have experience writing website content for companies and he's looking to redo his own website and wanted my feedback.

One thing stuck out on page after page

Is Your Blog Reading Like an Encyclopedia?

of his site, as I was going through it - paragraphs...and paragraphs...and more paragraphs. Tons of information that I assume, if I read it, was telling me all about him and his business. There was so much information, that the mere volume of information turned me off from reading any of it.

I felt like I was looking at an encyclopedia, not a website. I certainly didn't feel connected, engaged or like I was interacting with him or his company at all.

I told him the first place to start was to:

take the amount of words he had on his site and cut them down by 75%
Bullet them out
Give the readers quick hits and tidbits of information
Make it easy for them to do business with him. They don't want to feel like they have to clock in and clock out to find out more information on what he does.

The same rules apply for blogging, really. We blog for business - so naturally, businesses use our software as a service to their company and their readership. When your writers are blogging for your company, are they writing blogs or are they rewriting The Odyssey?

The point is - when people search for information, they want information quick. They're searching, but they dont want to surrrrrrrch (note: this is the best way I could think to insinuate boring work). They want to find your blog quickly, scan it, decide whether you're giving them what they want, and move on with their lives.

Here's what you can do:

Say what you need to say in the least amount of words it takes to get the point across.
use your keywords properly
bullet the content in your posts
engage your readers by providing links and calls to action - easy steps for them to connect with your business
don't bombard them with your entire company in one post.

Just because you have a website doesn't mean it's doing anything. Just because you're using a blogging solution doesn't mean that your customers are connecting. We gotta leverage the tools we have to do the work for us!

Check in with Compendium to see how simple blogging software and best practices can benefit your business.

Know Your Audience - and the Difference Between an Oven and Range

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Tyler Bender

This morning, while I was editing some blog content, I ran across something I had never seen before.

(preface: before you make any judgments on me or my lack of knowledge, please understand that I am a 26 year-old guy who isn't that far removed from dormlife in college and has never done the following:

bought a house
bought an oven
shopped for either a house or an oven
used an oven for anything more than a place to see what time it is in the kitchen.
been so intrigued by the names of various components on an oven that I felt the urge to ask the nearest person in my vicinity. )

This blog was about outfitting a new home with new appliances. Particularly a new oven. Only they didn't call it an oven anywhere in their text. Ever. They called it a "range." But I saw the picture in the post! It looks like an oven to me!

When I think "range," my mind immediately goes to golf or guns. Not ovens. Actually, there's only one oven-looking device on the first two google image search pages when you type in "range." So it's not at the top of other peoples' minds either.

I thought to myself, "ok maybe this writer isn't writing to me. Maybe they're writing to a different demographic. Maybe since I've never seen the backend of a kitchen, I should ask someone else if "range" was appropriate and common appliance-speak among regulars."

I asked the people around me (all female coworkers). They told me that "range" is part of an oven, and commonly referred to as "oven range," but most people probably don't exclusively call it a "range" without the "oven" preceeding it - and they certainly don't go tell a salesman "I'm in the market to buy a new range...show me what you got!"

(note: And after doing a little research, I learned that a range is the combination of an oven and a stove-top. Who knew?)

So if I'm not their target audience, and these women aren't their target audience, who IS their target audience? Are they even writing to their target audience at all? If I'm confused by the content in question, who else will be?

Point is - we need to know who our audience is when we're trying to blog for business. Sometimes when we're blogging we're so focused on hitting target keywords, learning blogging best practices, repeatedly having something to write about each day, it can be easy to lose what might be most important - the connection with our audience.

When you're blogging for search, put yourself in your audience's shoes. Use the most common language ("oven" or "oven range" - not "range") that anyone can understand. Don't expect people to know everything you know.

The great thing about blogs is that people can find you even when they don't exactly know what they're searching for. So don't lose them because your content is unclear and not directed toward an audience.

The upside of this morning: at least now I know what a range is. Just wish I didn't have to spend this long learning it.

Click here to learn more about Compendium Blogware and how blogging can help your business.

Don't Be Scared of Keywords

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Tyler Bender

I've been writing for years. I have a background in Journalism and was beat over the head with APA format writing in college. I have written websites, press releases, brochures, video scripts. I thought I'd seen the in's and out's of this "web 2.0" movement. The basic principles for writing for the web: keep it simple, put yourself in the shoes of your audience, tell them what you want them to do. Don't screw up gramatically, and don't have typos.

Got it.

Now, I've only been a part of Compendium's team for about three weeks as an internal content writer, and one of the things I have seen multiple times in some of our client keyword lists look something like this: (I'll use Compendium as my example)

Compendium Blogware
Compendium
Blogging Software
Corporate Blogs
Compendiums
Comppendium
Compendiam
Compendium Blog Ware

Notice something odd? The name of the company is misspelled. more than once.

And I'm expected to throw those keywords into my content like that? Whhhhattt? This concept takes some catching on. And for someone who has spent the greater part of his life trying to edit and perfect his writing so that it never has a typo, learning how to include typos into content on purpose is like telling Peyton Manning that it's ok to throw passes to the other team. At first, it was like nails on a chalkboard, only the nails were buckets of acid and the chalkboard was my eyes.

But it makes sense.

People don't check Webster's Dictionary or the phonebook before they visit search engines to search for your company's keywords. Sometimes they're going to misspell their searches and you want to win those searches - even if they're "wrong." Right?

When you're bloging for search, you should always account for the searches that aren't perfect. It's okay. Wouldn't you rather have someone find your blog even though they mistakenly typed in "Acmes Solution" instead of "Acme Solutions," than someone completely miss your content because you weren't comfortable including the misspelling in your content?

Part of the beauty of blogging is that it's not perfect. Actually, I think some imperfections in corporate blogs make the writers more "relatable" to their audience. If I saw a typo in a brochure, I'd think that the company was lazy, didn't care enough to edit their material and all-around not very professional. If I see a typo in a blog, it's easier to remind myself that an actual human being is on the other end of the blog, constantly updating their content, and it was probably a simple oversight.

So don't be scared of your keywords just because they're mispelled. They'll still work, and strategically, it makes sense to use them. The goal is to reach your audience - even if they're not sure how to spell your company name.