Tips, Opinions and Perspective for Professional Communicators
Some days you wake up and you’re all out of ideas. Too bad, because your schedule calls for a 750-word blog post today.
My presentation at Chicago Blog Week (Nov. 9, offers some easy concepts that will stimulate your brain and help meet that deadline, based on an earlier blog post (“Jumpstart Your Car by Answering Five Simple Questions“).
Check out the slides, and if you’d like a fuller explanation one-on-one or in a workshops, just ask.
Statistics would show (if there actually was such a statistic) that a huge number of blogs on the web haven’t been updated since Al Gore invented the Internet.
(True, Gore didn’t really invent the Internet, but then why is so much technology based on an Al-Gore-ithm?)
Many executives, PR people and entrepreneurs start a blog with all good intentions, posting weekly, then monthly, then every couple of months, then “I don’t remember the last time I posted something.” This makes your site out of date and doesn’t reflect well on your organization. You’re missing out on the benefits of content marketing.
But it’s not so easy to find something to write about, right? I have a simple procedure that will stimulate your creativity, getting you past your writer’s block and back into the grove of blogging.
Here are five creative questions. Pick one and write out your answer. Make it at least 300 words. That’s the first post on your newly resurrected blog. Then pick a second question — and that’ll be your second blog post.
You’re the head of a successful company. Tell us what inspired you to develop the product or service that made you rich.
You could blog about your job title or description. Boring!
On the other hand, Lia Lehrer tells me that a very effective interview question focuses on a single moment. Perhaps you were on a call with a prospective client. Write about your sales pitch. Or maybe you were reviewing plans for a new product introduction. Blog about how you select new offerings. (If you were taking a nap, you could write about work-life balance.)
Note from Jonathan: You’re busy running your business. How can you possibly keep track of your marketing efforts, especially when the list of available tools gets longer every hour? Our colleague Morrie Goldman penned this helpful list of resources for business-to-business (B2B) marketing that will send you in the right directions.
By Morrie S. Goldman
Definitive Marketing, Evanston, Ill.
(Guest writer)
Morrie Goldman, B2B Marketing Expert in Chicago
If you don’t have a Web site and you are in business, you need one! If you have one that’s more than a few years old, you probably need to re-evaluate it. Look at competitor Web sites for comparison, then try searching your keywords or business category on Google and see if you can find your site. Talk to an experienced marketing communications professional.
Limited funds? Build your own basic Web site from a variety of templates, from web hosts like these.
Without even registering a domain name, you can build an attractive site by mustering your creativity and heading over to wordpress.com or weebly.com.
These low-cost hosting providers offer many good templates:
Better solution: learn how to build a site in WordPress or have a pro build it for you. This open-source (no charge) software is also the most popular for creating a blog. Learn much more at wordpress.org.
Dear Mr. Communicator: Should I blog? Should I be on Twitter? — an executive looking for inspiration
Use your Fundamental Idea as the key ingredient, whether the recipe is for a blog, a website a company brochure or a white paper. If you get this right, you deserve latkes — potato pancakes — with applesauce (lower left).
When clients ask me these questions, the answer is almost always, “do you have something to say?” In other words, if you don’t have a message — a Core Concept — it’s fairly useless to worry about how you’ll deliver it.
To the business owner who dreams of getting a lot of “likes” on his Facebook postings, the concept of a message strategy can seem a bit foreign. So I illustrate it by talking about my favorite topic: dessert.
Lately, as I have been having occasional business meetings at Baker’s Square – for their free wireless Internet, of course – I’ve been thinking about pies.
Should I have Country Apple, French Apple or Apple Cinnamon? Should I accompany the pie with a cup of apple-flavored herbal tea?
They’re all different formats of apples, and obviously they couldn’t exist without the apple.
(At about this point, it should occur to you that in my fruit-flavored analogy, the apple represents the Core Concept. Clever, no?)
Let’s expand the analogy to include just plain apple slices, apple slices with peanut butter, apple slices in a salad, applesauce (on potato pancakes, of course), apple cider and taffy apples (a favorite of both my wife, Estee, and my daughter, Lia).
If you don’t have an apple – a Core Concept – you’ll have a hard time coming up with something to blog about on a regular basis.
But if you have a basic message, or a perspective on your business, you’ll never run out of topics.
“Help us continue to offer our free Wi-Fi.”
Portion of the Panera Bread splash screen displayed when users log on to the Internet. My PR plan could help Panera Bread maximize the benefit of their free Wi-Fi
On a beautifully sunny (but freezingly cold) weekday afternoon, I’m sitting at Panera Bread in Skokie, Ill. using the free WiFi. There are at least a dozen other people doing the same thing.
At that table, three people are having a business meeting, reviewing printed documents and gazing at the screen of their laptop. At the next table, two women are having some kind of meeting involving something on their computer screen.
Several years ago, Panera made me a customer for life by establishing the trend of offering a free wireless Internet connection to diners, office-less road warriors and work-at-home types who were bored by their basements.
It became so popular, that now the fast-casual restaurant chain must remind me at every login not to stay in the cafe too long and not to single-handedly hog a table for four. That’s cool.
Here’s my creative idea, a sample marketing plan outline offered for discussion at your favorite business school.
These creative marketing ideas might help Panera expand on their popularity with the Internet-addicted masses, specifically the business folks.
Benefits:
