The Problem with Guest Posts on your Blog
When working on an editorial strategy for their blogs, clients often ask me about “guest posts.” Why write our own content, the argument goes, when there are numerous industry luminaries willing to write content for our blog for free? If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and I generally advise against […]
Continue ReadingWhat Should Your Business Blog About?
Online, the old adage that “anything goes” may be true, but on your business blog, you need to think about your posting strategy before you write a blog post. What should you write about? Well, it depends on your business. These tips should serve as a guide to help you get started. 1. The Industry […]
Continue ReadingIs Quality Important in Blogs?
Check out a few blogs online — even A-list blogs or blogs published by major news outlets — and you’ll quickly start to notice something: No one seems to be editing this stuff. They’re riddled with grammatical errors, typos, dead links, and more. Why is this? The quick answer is that, yeah, no one is […]
Continue ReadingThe Problem with “Corporate Blogs”
I’m constantly thinking about how we can help improve the state of corporate blogging in the world, and it’s a tough challenge. I think the main problem is the word corporate. Much as a “corporate suit” doesn’t inspire confidence and a “corporate office park” doesn’t make you want to hang out for the day, a […]
Continue Reading9 Tips: Building a Great Business Blog
Want to build a great business blog but don’t know where to start? Consider these nine tips to help get you on your way. 1. Blog daily if possible, or at least a few times a week. 2. Understand your reader/audience. When preparing every post, think about who you want to read it and what […]
Continue ReadingHow Often Should You Blog?
When we’re bringing a new client onboard, this is a question that invariably comes up early in the conversation: “I know my company should be blogging, but how often should we blog?” The easy answer is this: As much and as often as you possibly can. For most companies, even a “heavy” blog posting schedule […]
Continue ReadingWant More Business? Blog!
Just ran across this statistic from Hubspot: How much business blogging is best? To answer to those questions, I looked at data from 1,531 HubSpot customers (mostly small- and medium-sized businesses). 795 of the businesses in my sample blogged, 736 didn’t. The data was crystal clear: Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the […]
Continue ReadingMe, Myself, and I
Leave it to my alumni magazine (The University of Texas at Austin) to offer an insightful look into a major pet peeve of professional writers: Over-use of the word “I.” In years of editing thousands of works of film criticism, this has been perhaps my biggest pet peeve. (And yes, I’m aware that I’m breaking […]
Continue ReadingBe Helpful
We’ve said it before but we’ll say it again: The way you get people to pay attention to you in the blog world is not by writing about yourself but about writing about what people are interested in. The Intuit Small Business Blog recently published an interview with Chris Brogan, who puts it in simpler […]
Continue ReadingGive It Away Now
Loved this interview with Michael Stelzner on the subject of offering web visitors free content, courtesy of the Intuit Small Business Blog (which we edit). The #1 takeaway is right here: “Your content needs to be commercial free,” Stelzner says, drawing from the core argument of his book, which has won rave reviews from all […]
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