#writingablog

Your website is built, your product or service is starting to gain leverage with customers and industry leaders, but you find you are sorely lacking content.

 Where do you begin?

You may have heard blog posts are a great way of informing and educating customers and can also turn complete strangers into sales. But where do you begin, and what are you supposed to write about.

You could outsource your content, but will the writer understand your product or brand message? How can you make the writer understand the foundational principals of your business? More importantly, how much will it cost you and will you have a solid ROI with outsourced content?

 Blog Busting to Save Your Time and Money

Let me give you a few tips about blog busting. That’s a term I created for creating quick content, when it’s the last thing you want to do, and it’s the first task you procrastinate because let’s face it, you’re busy running a business.

 What exactly is Blog-Busting? Well, it’s a lot like clutter busting. If you’re a parent you know how important having a routine is for your family. There are certain chores that need to take place before school, after school and before bedtime.

 These are small and simple tasks that help keep the clutter to a minimum and your household semi-functional. It’s the same with content. You need to do something every day to maintain consistency and continuity for your customers. 

 Here are 5 simple ways to tell your customer about you without shoving product offers down their throats:

1.    Create a catchy headline with alliteration like, ‘Seven Secrets of Sizzling Summer Foods’ or go big like, ‘The Ultimate Guide to Buying a Used Car’.

2.    Your introduction should ease your customer into the Information and not be an immediate sales pitch. Keep it to no more than two paragraphs.

3.    The main body of the article should inform, educate or entertain your customers. Try using lists or provide quick tips on how your customer can solve a problem.

4.    Never forget a picture in your article or blog post. After all, pictures do say 1,000 words, and when writing your content you should keep your posts to fewer than 500 words, so let your pictures help tell a story.

5.    Finally, you’ll want to give your customers a reason to buy your product or service, and you’ll need to include a call-to-action. It’s not needed for every article, but if you’re writing a sales post, it’s necessary. Keep your online call-to-action simple with one step your customer can either click or download to receive the product or service information.

Once you brainstorm these ideas, you’ll find you’ll have plenty of information to write about. Need an even simpler way to write? When I was a stand up comic, I had a great mentor, Gary Hood also know as the Godfather of Comedy, at least to a small group of Dallas comics he’s known as the Godfather.

 When “Hoody” taught a comedy writing class it was always a must attend event. His advice to writing jokes was Topic, Premise, Punch line.

 Get it? Let me explain:

 Determine your topic and place it in the center of a blank page. As a comic in my twenties, I talked about dating so this was my main topic.

 Now for the premise, you can have as many premises as you want, but eventually you’ll need to narrow it down to just one (one topic, one premise, one punch line per joke).

Here I made three sections and titled them ‘Things you say’, ‘What you wear’ and ‘Dating Faux Pas’. It’s here in the premise section that I will brainstorm the many facets of dating. For ‘Dating Faux Pas,’ I came up with three premises, from which I can make a punch line.

 For example: Kissing

My mama always said I have to kiss a lot of frogs before I met my prince. Kiss?! Oops!!

 The punch line is where you get the laugh, but more importantly, it’s where you make your point. The best way to lead an audience to a punch line is through a story. It’s through great storytelling that you capture the audience, lead them down a path and eventually get the buy-in or laugh.

 Breaking it down like this makes me realize that comics really are the best sales people around because they earn their laughs every night. The keyword is earned, and comics will tell you they earned every laugh.

 How does this relate to you?

Okay, okay, I may have gotten a little sidetracked reliving my comedy days and you want to know how does Topic, Premise, Punch line relate to you.

 It’s simple, your topic is what you want to tell your customer, but it shouldn’t be a sales offer or some product demo; it should be informational or educational and offer value to your customer by solving a problem they have or answering a question.

 Your premise can be a list of helpful ideas or bolded section headers with short paragraphs containing quality information.

 The punch line should be well-earned and if you are asking for a sale, make sure you provide valid reasons for the customer to take the next step. However, your punch line can be a teaser to your next blog post or ‘information coming soon’ about an anticipated product or service.

Writing a quick blog post of at least 500 words should take no more than an hour to write. If you need to research the topic, be sure to allot an additional hour. I always do my research first and have those points of references either printed or pulled up for quick reference.

Also, don’t let the little things get you distracted. If you have an idea while you’re writing, like including a quote in your blog, just write TK –in the space you want to place it. TK is an old reporter’s word for ‘more information to come’. You never want to interrupt the flow of your writing...unless of course, it’s time to take a break and enjoy a little comedy.

 That’s all folks!