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Making money by blogging Writing - Bloggercises

Freelance writing for business blogs 3

October 14th 2010 16:02

Blogging is amongst the fastest-growing areas of the interactive digital world, and the business world is embracing this powerful promotional tool quickly. New corporate blogs are appearing every day, and as a result Craig's List and other web hangouts for freelance writers are teeming with opportunities.

To win business blogging contracts, however, writers must be able to show that they understand the corporate blogging environment. You must show a potential client not only what you can write for them, but why and how that will benefit them.

In this, our third post on the world of corporate blogging, we offer some responses to typical client questions about corporate blogs.

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Beyond the $10-per-post freelance gigs freely available through Craiglist, freelancer.com and many others (Google search "freelance writing jobs") is the professional world where organisations are willing to pay high rates for people who can deliver results.

It is a place where you build networks and reputation. It is a place where work is won through well-researched and professionally delivered pitches. It is a place of eye contact and hand shakes.

It is not a place to go if you are not prepared.

What follows is a theoretical question and answer session with a company interested in a corporate blog. The answers to these theoretical questions should be as well known to you as your own name.

What is a blog?
A blog is a flexible communication tool that allows an ongoing dialogue with its readers — your customers — in a controlled and moderated environment. It is a unique communication tool — no newspaper, TV or website advertising offers consumers an opportunity for instant response. Only a blog allows immediate reaction in the form of a question, a comment or a request for clarification, plus the opportunity to interact with people in the same field.

Why would a company blog?
A blog is an extension of a company's existing online presence. It allows you to engage with your target audience by providing information, opinion and even entertainment in a natural way not available through a website or other marketing mediums. It is the antithesis of a For Sale sign in a shop window — by providing readers with a source of valuable information, you build a strong, positive and lasting association with your brand.

A blog becomes an integral part of your company's online presence, allowing you to express a personality that breaks down the impersonal company facade which traditional corporate literature presents. A blog provides a destination for both existing and prospective customers to increase their knowledge of your martket and your brand, and engenders the empathy and, ultimately, loyalty of those readers.

A company blog is an engagement tool. It opens a two-way communication channel with your target market which provides valuable information flow in both directions. How much better than a tradtional advertisement is a marketing tool which gives you instant feedback on the perceptions, likes and dislikes of your target market?

A blog is the ideal platform for disseminating information. A blog's readers have come to you for information, making them a receptive and willing audience. This is a key advantage over the scattergun approach of traditional advertising.

What are the benefits of a blog over traditional marketing methods?
Traditional marketing tends to produce results when it addresses an immediate need of the recipient. By its nature it has to be highly targeted to your assumed customer base. For instance, if you are trying to sell brown widgets, you will focus your marketing efforts on those places that purchasers of brown widgets are likely to be found. However, in doing this you are likely to miss people considering white or black widgets, or those customers who have an interest in widgets but have not yet chosen a colour.

As a producer of specialist widgets, a blog allows you to greatly widen the focus of your marketing to encompass the widget industry in general. You may produce only brown micro-widgets, but people searching online for all sorts of widget-related information are going to find your blog because its content will cover the wider market. A blog allows you to take advantage of associative searching, ie, exposing your brand and products to people who would otherwise not have found them based on the items that they may have been searching for.

It provides you with a platform to become an information resource to people searching for information and ultimately places you in the position of trusted advisor. Once you have attained this, the purchase decision becomes a pro forma exercise when the need arises.

Why wouldn’t I do this in-house?
An effective corporate blog requires a long-term, hands-on commitment and a specialised skill set which even large marketing departments are unlikely to be able to provide. Blogs die if they are not fed a regular diet of high-quality content. Blogs never live if they are fed poor-quality content. Blog content must be unique — the search engines penalise copied material, and readers will not be impressed finding content they have seen elsewhere. It takes professional writing skills and a journalistic instinct for news to create a good blog.

Why not give it to my advertising or PR agency to produce?
A blog can not be a series of press releases, nor can it be an overt advertising medium. Building blog readership is a loyalty exercise. That loyalty is built with unique, quality content that informs, educates or entertains. Blog readers are not looking for advertising or pure promotional content, and if that's what they find, they will not return.

Why should a corporate client choose you?
You may have your own answer to this — the crucial thing is to promise nothing you can't live up to. For bloggers seeking clients at the top end of town, ask youself if you can live up to the following:

A professional corporate blog requires a blend of writing skill and journalistic news sense. Anyone can throw words together — I understand what makes a successful blog. I will deliver complete professionalism across the full range of blog deliverables: hosting, design, research, content, moderation and search engine optimisation.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Corporate blogs, Freelance writing, Making money by blogging, Writing

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Is blogging the future of everything?

May 28th 2009 08:10

A few weeks ago I wrote a post here entitled "Will blogging rule the world?" It evoked a lot of discussion, and I have found myself thinking about the question ever since. This opinion piece is the result, looking at changes that the digital age and, in particular, blogging, may bring to many things that we now take for granted. It is the first of a two-part series, with the second instalment to cover media, publishing and opinion leadership.

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Is blogging the future of news, publishing and the world?

To borrow from Mark Twain, reports of the death of newspapers and books have been greatly exaggerated. The world wide web was supposed to finish them off, but it has not done the job any better than radio or television before it.

As part of the Innovations in Newspapers 2009 World Report, released on April 29, Rupert Murdoch wrote that he was optimistic about the future of newspapers, and warned that complacency, rather than new forms of media technology, was the threat. Newspapers that continue to succeed in the digital age will do so, Murdoch said, by developing their traditional relationships with readers, no matter how they are delivered.

"Our success will still depend on the bond of trust between readers and our content, not on how many platforms we use."

Blogging is part of the social media revolution. MySpace and Facebook popularised it, LinkedIn corporatised it, and Twitter is heading into outer space with it. According to Australian futurist and University of Sydney associate Mark Pesce, social media heralds the start of a truly fundamental change, and one most companies have yet to grasp.

"Power flows in large organisations will change," Pesce says. "All their processes and marketing and advertising will change. Business as we thought of it over the 20th century made it to about 2007 and then started to shudder.

"The wheels came off, and the thing that comes out in 2010 or 2012 looks quite different. The power flows in business and how they're talking to customers is all changed."

Pesce sees three waves of change: the sharing of media, the sharing of knowledge and the sharing of power. The first two are "well under way" he says. The third thing, the sharing of power, is the "chasm that we've started to cross right now".

At first glance, the views of Murdoch and Pesce may seem opposed — the newspaper magnate arguing that there's life in the old way, and the futurist who doesn't bother mentioning newspapers at all. There is, however, a common theme, and it is perhaps the one theme to bind the old and the new; the way that news will be presented in future no matter what medium is used for the delivery.

The theme is engagement. It is what Murdoch meant by relationships, and it is the basis of Pesce's motif of sharing. In the new, digital, sharing world of news, the Letters to the Editor column has been promoted to the front page.

Social media is built on a platform of interaction, and engagement is the step up from there for any commercial application — selling anything from news to real estate to widgets which will net you 1,000 new Twitter followers per day.

Among the glittering young actors on the social media stage, the standout engagement star is the blog.

In the run-up to the US presidential election on November 4, 2008, the most read political commentary in America was a blog. Nielsen Online reported that The Huffington Post gained "the most unique readers among all outlets on a list of top 30 news destinations in October (2008)", ranking it ahead of news portals such as CNN. The Huffington Post had about 8 million readers during the election campaign, became the most linked-to blog on the Web. In January 2009, it was valued at about US$200 million.

Go to its web site today and what you see is a newspaper, future style. It looks like an online newspaper, and it reads like a newspaper, but there are two big differences with the online presences of mainstream papers such as The New York Times.

The first difference is The Huffington Post's Blogger Index tab. Click on that and a world of blogs opens, pretty much every one of them written by politicians, well-known political commentators or experts in some field or other. Many of these blogs have daily readerships in six figures, and those that don't will have just as soon as the blogs have been around a little longer and the search engines have a firmer hold. If your blog is accepted for The Huffington Post site, you are virtually guaranteed of that kind of success.

The Huffington Post has evolved from a blog to Blog Central when it comes to American politics and social issues.

The second difference is that The Huffington Post employs approximately 50 staff, an astonishingly small number for a $200 million company. Its blog writers and news gatherers don't work for The Huffington Post — they work for themselves and sell their expertise and views.

There is a telling third difference — at least there was today when we checked — which is that The Huffington Post web site was carrying an advertisement for The New York Times, but we could see no Post ad over at the Times site.

This post appeared first on the Salient Point blog by Chris Champion. Image: "The History of Writing", by Henry Noel Humphreys, 1810-1879; first published in London in 1853 by Ingram, Cooke and Co.

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