Is Your Blog Boring? 5 Tips to Spice it Up

Just when we thought our attention spans couldn’t get any shorter, along came micro-blogging. In 140 characters or less, people can tell readers all about how great dinner tasted or what they think of the latest political scandal. So why, in the breakneck social networking world, would people take the time to read 300 to … Read more

Can an Internal Blog Boost Employee Morale?

Internal newsletters have long offered a great way to share information inside a company. Published by employees, for employees, these publications can help workers feel more involved in the business’s day-to-day operations, boosting overall morale. But as attention has shifted toward the internet, the company intranet has taken the place of those newsletters. Enter the … Read more

How to Make Your Blog Less “Salesy”

Just as stereotypical, pushy car salesmen are a turnoff, so is a pushy blog loosely masquerading as helpful content. You took on a blog to share useful information and, of course, to get existing and potential customers to visit your site. Here’s how to do it without pushing them away. Drop the drama! Reserve your … Read more

The 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 … Read more

How 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 … Read more

Want 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 … Read more

Me, 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 … Read more

Be 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 … Read more