Do You Have a Cure for Writer’s Block?

How I Feel When the Words Won't Come

Every now and then a chill comes over me because I can’t think of anything to blog about.

Everything I know has been shared, or is already known. Every observation I can make has been observed. Inspiration is nowhere. Nothing I read or see suggests a topic. And most disconcertingly, this state of affairs for all the world feels permanent.

I shared my feelings on Twitter, and Muse Crossing bailed me out with a simple suggestion. Wisely and with a helpful heart, Christine said,

And so it is. What do you do when you can’t think of anything to blog about? What do you do when the ink runs dry, the keyboard won’t clack, the fertile field of your imagination falls fallow?
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

When I was young, I thought I had all the right answers.

Later on, I thought I had all the right questions.

Then, I thought there were no right answers.

And now, lo these many years later, I’ve reached the point where I think I was right in the first place.

Here’s what I mean. I was having a conversation with a young lady, a recent college grad with absolutely no business background or particular interest in marketing. We got on the subject of a b2b project I was working on involving website content creation and some social media work. At one point the conversation went like this.

Her: Wow! That’s a neat product. They should put a video on their website.

Me: Yeah, I’ve suggested that, but they don’t want to.

Her: But that’s what people want. They love video. It should be funny, too.

Me: Well, a couple of their sales people suggested funny video, but it got shot down. Too wild and crazy for their business, they think.

Her: (Stupefied expression) But their customers are going to be people my age pretty soon, and I’m telling you, we love video with a comic slant. Don’t they realize this?

Me: Well …

When marketing ideas that elude b2b leadership are patently obvious to young adults with zero training in marketing – you’ve got yourself a real problem. You’ve got a disconnect between what buyers want and what sellers think buyers want. Or, more precisely, you’ve got a disconnect between what buyers want and what sellers think they themselves want when they’re buying.

This point has been made time and time again by David Meerman Scott, and quite recently in a blog post by Jeff Bulla, 6 Questions To Ask The CEO When He Says Social Media Won’t Work For His Company. Corporate honchos use the web and social media when they’re buying or researching a purchase, but they continue to push old school marketing on their own customers.

Are these corporate honchos hypocrites? Idiots? No, not at all. I really do think the problem is generational.

• Old school business discipline says, keep business and pleasure separate. Keep your eye on the ball. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Be the first one in and the last to leave. New school discipline says, if you can’t enjoy your job, you should be working somewhere else.
• Old school business discipline is risk averse. Don’t take unnecessary chances. Don’t jeopardize one customer relationship attempting to initiate two new ones. New school discipline is willing to take chances, willing to offend in pursuit of a vision.
• Old school discipline plays it close to the vest. Loose lips sink ships. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt (A. Lincoln). New school discipline communicates everything with everyone, everywhere.
• Old school discipline is hierarchical. Decisions are made slowly. Communication goes up and down ladders. Trendy ideas are stale by the time they are acted upon. New school discipline is experimental. Better to implement a half baked idea than get burned by the competition.

If you put all this together, you have a recipe for communication disaster. I think that intellectually, business leaders know that the future of marketing is blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. But on an emotional level – and let’s not kid ourselves, that’s where decisions are made – people my age just have a tough time pulling the New Media trigger, going against the grain of every behavior we lived and died with throughout our careers.

Of course the transition can be made, as a multitude of social media marketing geezers wiser and more accomplished than I have proved over and over again. But the issue in b2b is not if the transition can be made. The real issue is that the transition to social media must be made. Otherwise, that young lady and millions like her will continue to take their business elsewhere. Companies that are risk averse should never take a chance like that.
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

What’s good for the human reader is good for the search engine reader. To demonstrate, here are four typography tips that improve readability and SEO.

1. Bold Fonts. Used judiciously, bold fonts draw the reader’s eye to important text. Search engine spiders value bold text somewhat higher than plain text – so be sure to incorporate keyword phrases. Too much bold text, however, can backfire by overwhelming or confusing the reader.
2. Italics. Search engines also like italic text, but here, you have to be more judicious still. Italic text is hard to read, especially on a computer monitor. Use too much and readers will skip over it entirely.
3. H2 Tags and H3 Tags. These tags, valued by search engines, are used for subheads in blog posts and web pages. If you have been using bold fonts for your subheads, switch to H2 and H3 tags to generate more SEO juice. Always incorporate keywords in these tags. H2 and H3 tags should be formatted to be larger and more eye catching than regular bold text in order to draw readers in and inspire them to read further.
4. ALT Text and Captions for Images. Images should always contain keyword optimized ALT Text. Again, you’re not only improving SEO, you’re helping out readers who cannot display images on screen, or who need a little descriptive information about what they’re looking at. Captions are also great for SEO and allow you to tell a story about the image – an excellent way to engage readers.

Learn All About DIY SEO with Our Multimedia Training

Are you as sick as I am of the phrase, Think outside the box? Well, for all you b2b marketers, let me put a new twist on it for you -

For Winning SEO, Think Outside the Web

In other words, the real world is a real good source of content for your business website or blog. Even something as old school and old fashioned as an industry trade show can boost site traffic.

This dawned on me (again) as a large industry trade show was about to begin. Manufacturers from all over the world would be showcasing their latest and greatest technologies and gizmos and productivity enhancers. Attendees would visit the exhibits and ooh and aah. Excitement would build.

And then they would go online to see where they could buy.

So, if you were a dealer or a distributor or manufacturer’s rep, wouldn’t you love to have web pages and blog posts dedicated to the products on exhibit, pages that rank high when the surge of searches hits?

Make sure you know when your industry trade shows roll around on the calendar. Several months ahead of time, create optimized web pages with keywords matched to the key products or services that you know will be on display.

These days, any trade show attendee who is considering a purchase will window shop online. Are you going to be in a position to take that window of opportunity and convert shoppers into customers?
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Having an editorial calendar for your blog simplifies and brings discipline to the process of coming up with post topics. Taking it a step further, an SEO friendly editorial calendar simplifies and brings discipline to the process of writing blog posts that support your SEO strategy.

Here is a simplified version of an SEO friendly editorial calendar format that works really well for me.

This hypothetical blogger with an online golf equipment store has four categories he wants to blog about.

Blog Categories. The editorial calendar lists and repeats the category group over and over, so the blogger can systematically cycle through the categories.

Blog Topics. In the next column, we drill down to specific subject matter the blogger wants to talk about within each category. For example, in the broad “Golf Equipment” category, wide selection and high quality are his two most important sales points. The calendar allows the blogger to switch off between the two themes, always having a relevant “angle” for his post.

Keyword Phrase 1. This column displays the primary keywords for each post topic. The blogger will want to incorporate them into each post, particulary as anchor text pointing to the URLs that appear in the last column – more about that in a minute. You’ll notice that the primary keyword phrases exactly match the Category labels in every case. This is not a must, but if you can do it, you’ll enhance visibility for that search term.

Keyword Phrase 2. Now we display secondary keywords, which may be “long tail,” or niche phrases that perhaps – but not necessarily – apply more specifically to the topic. For example, when the Golf Clubs topic is Drivers – “low price drivers” is selected. When the Golf Clubs topic is Sand Wedges, target phrase becomes “sand wedges on sale.” Secondary phrases usually vary more than primary phrases from topic to topic.

Target URL. The overriding goal of this blog is to drive traffic to specific landing pages of the blogger’s online store, where people can buy his stuff. Therefore, every blog post will contain links to a landing page, which will help that landing page rise to the top of the rankings for the selected search terms. We always want the store’s home page to appear prominently in searches for “golf equipment” and “shop golfing”, so the keyword emphasis and URL target for posts in the Golf Equipment category will remain constant. However, in other categories, the target URLs will vary to cover other landing pages, such as drill down product group pages and sale item pages.

You should add other columns to the spreadsheet for things like Publish Date and Author, but I hope this stripped down version gives you the gist of the idea. A little time spent on planning up front can make a world of difference in your SEO results.
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Start Connecting

A few Sundays ago I met the world’s greatest marketer.

I was not at a Web 3.0 convention or a Fortune 100 firm or a seminar at the University of Chicago. I was leaving church.

Standing on the sidewalk at the church’s parking lot exit was a young woman holding a sign and carrying a cup. Her clothes were old and a little tattered, but she had obviously taken time over her appearance and carried herself with dignity. The sign, written on cardboard, said something to the effect -

Please help me. I am a single mother with two children, trying to find a job. We need money for food and clothing. God bless you.

The woman’s plight moved me, and I gave her some money as we exited from the parking lot to the street. I hope she and her family make their way through these difficult times.

As a human being I was saddened by her suffering. As a marketer I was blown away by her strategy.

Timing. Asking for donations to relieve human suffering as people are leaving church – how could the timing be any better? Most often, companies send out their marketing messages at any old time. There is no catalyst to make people respond. In fact, asking for money when people are going about their business, with their minds on other things, is starting with one big strike against you. Think it over – when is the best time to send your message? Telemarketers notoriously violate the rules of timing when they call folks at home during dinner. Again, think carefully – might the timing of your message be worse than neutral?

Simplicity. The woman’s strategy and message were simple and straightforward. I got the message without even exactly reading the message. Complex strategies and intricate messages mainly confuse people, and confused people seldom take decisive action.

Originality. I live in the Chicago area, where, sad to say, hard cases press for money here, there, and everywhere – street corners, sidewalks, traffic intersections – you name it. But in all my years here, I’ve never seen anyone position herself – literally and figuratively – where this woman did. It seems so obvious … but I suppose most brilliant strategies do – after someone else has thought of them.

Resonance. It’s impossible to remain indifferent about this woman. Her appeal is deeply emotional. I hate putting it in these terms, but she paid careful attention to her content. She took the trouble to state her case. There was no guesswork involved as to her motives or intent, as there might be if a strange, shabbily dressed man or woman accosted you on the street. Do customers know where you are coming from? Do they care? Do you stir prospects into action, or is your message as flat as last night’s beer?

Positive Motivation. People asking for money on the street quite often put passersby on the defensive. Passersby may feel fearful or (again, sad to say) scornful toward them. A few may feel guilty enough to make a donation, but guilt or pity are rather negative motivators. The woman at church sought to inspire action by appealing to the sense of compassion and community and brotherhood that people presumably feel in high degree upon leaving church. She minimized potentially negative feelings by paying attention to her appearance. By refusing to take a “woe is me” stance, by asserting her human dignity, she reinforced the positive appeal of her message tenfold. Emotional messages are not enough – is your marketing message hitting the right emotional buttons?

Believability. There are cynics out there who believe every person asking for money on the street is running a scam. Ridiculous and contemptible as that attitude may be, it exists to a much greater degree in the business world, and perhaps with greater justification. Sure, the woman could have been making up her story, but if so, her audacity is admirable. I believed her. Nope, this woman couldn’t lose with me. Even if I had suspected her of running a scam, I would have given her money anyway as tribute to her ingenuity. What about your marketing message? Is it believable? And … are you brilliant enough to give skeptics a reason to buy, too?

On this blog, I like to talk about marketing strategies, tactics, and techniques. The world’s greatest marketer in the world made me feel woefully inadequate – at least as far as my blog is concerned. Reason being, she reminded me that marketing is much, much more than what’s going on in one’s head. Marketing is about heart and yes, even soul. Let’s hope that, in the interest of sustaining a strong economy where can people find work, we marketers always remember this.

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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Number 9 in a series, Business Blog FAQs, culled from my business blog consulting practice.

Think Strategically about Your Blog Domain

Conventional SEO wisdom holds that you are better off setting up your blog within your existing company domain. There are a number of good reasons supporting this point of view. These three strike me as being especially compelling.

1. Blogs have many strong SEO characteristics – fresh content, ample opportunities for text and meta keyword optimization, and internal links, to name three of the most important. In addition, blogs attract inbound links – also critical for high search rankings. Adding a blog to your company domain will lift the authority of the entire domain, improving the search performance of all the pages within the company site.
2. Blogs positively influence customer perception and branding. Today’s customers, whether b2b or b2c, seek to do business with people, not faceless corporations. Blogs present a golden opportunity to personalize the business and deepen customer relationships. When blogs appear within the company domain, they make a stronger statement than when they are separated.
3. Blogs on a separate domain complicate user experience. It’s almost always better to keep visitors browsing or searching within a single website. When you force visitors to shuffle between one site and another, you’re more likely to confuse them … or lose them.

At times, however, the case can be made for setting up blogs on a separate domain.

When the corporate site is sitting pretty for SEO. Suppose the company site has a high authority and is already performing well on search. It might then be advantageous to set up blogs on a different domain and build that one up into a high authority domain as well. This could lead to a situation where a company is competing against itself on important keyword searches – far preferable to competing against competitors.

When branches have different content needs than corporate. Companies with multiple locations often need a diverse web presence. The corporate site might present a general picture of the firm, but individual locations need to speak more directly to their respective markets, addressing local concerns in local language. This situation is well supported by blogs that serve as or supplement local websites. A locally situated blog will strengthen local search performance and transform a token local web presence into one that generates very good sales leads.

When blog content departs from the core business. If you are a tax attorney eager to blog about skydiving, I’m not sure your firm’s website is the place to do it. You may humanize yourself in a way that attracts certain individuals, but you’re likely to scare off many more. This example is not as far fetched as it may sound. A tax attorney may have good reasons for not blogging about his core business. Liability, confidentiality, and compliance issues may make job-related blogging impractical. Perhaps he would be better served by pointing clients and potential clients to his blog selectively and using his blog to cultivate clients who happen to be skydiving enthusiasts.

When starving for quality inbound links. As mentioned earlier, obtaining quality inbound links is an extremely important SEO factor. In some industries, obtaining quality links is very, very difficult. In such a case, it might make sense to set a blog on a new domain to create links to the corporate site. If the corporate site has a low PageRank and limited opportunities to add content, a robust blog might overtake it in authority in a reasonable amount of time. I would view this strategy as a last-ditch effort, though. Too much reliance on inbound links of this type could be interpreted as spam, so proceed with caution and don’t overdo it.

When in need of a defensive maneuver. Some company are extremely vulnerable to hostile user reviews that achieve high rankings on Google and other major search engines. One or two bad reviews on a site like Yelp can go right to the top of the SERP, giving searchers a (often unjustified) negative impression of the company. When this happens, setting up a blog on a separate domain, with the intent of pushing negative search returns down, is a legitimate tactic.

Bottom line – It’s generally better to set up your blog within your existing domain. But don’t go through the motions, think it through. There are exceptions.

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Please contact me now for a Business Blog Blueprint

Blog Posts Are Not Written in Stone

Through the ages, the written word has become more flexible. The Ten Commandments were written in stone. Books, sales literature, print advertising – not quite stone, but not so easy and quick to change, either. In contrast, web writing can be changed in an instant. When it comes to SEO and your blog, it’s useful to keep that in mind.

A blog post written six months ago, a year ago, five years ago, can have SEO impact today. Here are 7 ideas for retrofitting your old content for an SEO boost. Can you think of others?

1. Add ALT Text and captions to images, using keywords of course. You may not have given a great deal of thought to optimizing images on old blog posts, but doing so will help you stand out on image searches, which can be very important depending on the type of business you’re in.
2. Change H1 Tags. H1 Tags are thought to carry weight with Google. If your old post titles are keyword poor, enrich them.
3. Insert tags. When I started blogging in 2005, tags weren’t used much. In WordPress, adding post tags is now easy as can be – by adding them to old posts, you make it easier for visitors to find them when browsing. In addition, WordPress generates a unique web page which lists posts for a given tag. These tag pages sometimes rank prominently.
4. Add a call to action on popular posts. Some of your old posts probably attract lots of traffic. Those posts are prime candidates to insert a sales message, a link to a landing page, perhaps an Amazon Associates book link. This is an area where I need to spend some time, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
5. Add a footer message. The footer links you see here appear on several of my posts. The internal links to important static pages on my site are helpful, and the image supports branding. By adding a footer like this to old posts, you can give your important web pages a lift.
6. Adjust keywords. Content optimization is a process, not a project. The language of business changes. We discover new, better, more relevant keyword phrases as we test and review results. If your old posts contain clunker keywords, swap them out for the new and improved ones.
7. Insert H2 Tags. H2 Tags carry weight with search engines, too. Do you have old posts with large blocks of text? Add keyword rich H2 (or H3) Tags, and you will do better with Google – and your readers.

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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Number 8 in a series, Business Blog FAQs, culled from my business blog consulting practice.

Are You Excited about Your Blog?

7 Blog Writing Tips to Keep Writing Exciting

1. Form a writing team. Sharing the workload takes pressure off, creates opportunity for interaction, and quite often makes a blog more interesting. Many bloggers are open to writing regularly on other blogs because it keeps them fresh. If you’ve got a few people in-house who like to write, by all means involve them in your company blog.
2. Plan your editorial calendar well in advance. There’s nothing worse than not having a topic for a post that needs to be published immediately. It is a surefire recipe for angst. One handy editorial approach is to set up 8-10 general topics in advance and keep cycling through them, with each post focusing on a different specific. I like to take an hour or two every so often, head over to Starbucks, leave my cell phone in the car, and sit down over a cup of coffee with my Moleskine notebook. Invariably, I’ll leave with 10 or 20 solid blog post topics on paper. That feels good.
3. Solicit guest posts. If you can’t find or don’t want regular writers, invite bloggers to guest post. They’ll add variety to your blog and bring in new readers.
4. Do interviews. The interview format bring dialog and life to any topic. For business blogs, interview opportunities abound – everyone is looking for an opportunity to showcase their products and services. Conducting interviews is also a great way to be generous – to help suppliers, stakeholders, and associates get some exposure. The spirit of generosity is what makes blogging such a special form of business communication, and it never goes unrewarded.
5. Take a break. There’s no law that says you have to publish on a rigid schedule. If you need to recharge your blogging batteries – just do it! Your readers will understand, especially if they’re bloggers, because we all go through the same ups and downs. A lot of blogging pressure is self imposed; bloggers worry if they miss one scheduled post, their community will abandon them. I’ve never seen that happen yet.
6. Brainstorm post topics. Do you know someone with whom you have great creative chemistry? Folks like that can be a stupendous source of inspiration. For me, SEO specialist George Ajazi is a go-to guy for post ideas. Fifteen minutes with him generally yields about 5 blog topics I never would have thought of on my own. So not only do brainstorming sessions work, they’re fun.
7. Try something new. Study Joanna Young’s writing blog. She is brilliant at pushing the creative envelope, experimenting with new media, bringing new approaches to old topics, and applying traditional approaches to new topics. Nothing destroys writing quality like being in a rut. Don’t let it happen to you: take a new angle, make a video, do a podcast, try satire … there’s always something you haven’t tried.

Over to You

How do you prevent blog burnout? If you’ve had blog burnout – how have you recovered?

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Please contact me now for a Business Blog Blueprint

Here’s a cartoon that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I thought it might be a nice way to end the week.