Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Top 10 Choices We Make as Small Business Owners

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© retrostar - Fotolia.com
© retrostar – Fotolia.com

Choice magazine just released their latest Business Builder issue, including my feature article, “Business is a Choice.” It offers a bigger picture perspective of the choices we get to make every day when we choose to be our own boss.

Yes, it’s unpredictable and, at times, uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t change it for the world! This month marks 10 years since I launched my writing business (originally called You Talk, I’ll Write). What a perfect time to step back and appreciate all I have (including all of YOU) and all I’ve done.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Click here to read “Business is a Choice” in Choice magazine or subscribe to the magazine.

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3 Ways to Improve Your Blog Writing Right Now

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© bradcalkins - Fotolia.com
© bradcalkins – Fotolia.com

Do you wish more people would read and share your blog posts? Watch what happens when you take a few simple steps to create higher quality content.

#1 Replace passive language

Want tighter, more impactful writing? Replace passive verbs with active verbs. In a recent post, Lynn Gaertner-Johnston challenges readers to see how quickly they can eliminate the passive verbs from 10 sentences.

While active writing is typically more clear, direct and concise, Lynn also identifies four times when passive verbs work as well as or better than active verbs.

Take Lynn’s challenge: How Fast Can You Change Passive Verbs?

#2 Write with conviction

Do you take the wind out of your writing by adding disclaimers? Business rebel Ash Ambridge echoes something my sister Ruth said early on as my editor – “It’s your writing; we already know what you think.”

Ambridge continues,”Prefacing a statement with ‘I think’ sounds like you’re asking permission for your thoughts.” As an entrepreneur it’s common to sometimes feel like an imposter or like nothing you write will add value to the sea of information out there.

Sound familiar? Here are some suggestions:

Read Ash’s post: Starting a Sentence With “In My Opinion” is Bad for Business. Here’s Why.
Get bossy with your blog.
Write (and speak) with conviction.

SlamNation – Taylor Mali – "Like Totally Whatever" from DevlinPix on Vimeo.

#3 Proofread

As powerful and convincing as your writing may be, writing and publishing errors can repel people before they receive your message.

While you can always edit a blog post later, it’s well worth taking a few moments to proofread before you publish.

Ideally, walk away from the post for a few hours or a few days. It’s amazing what you’ll notice when you see it again with fresh eyes. Just watch out! Since you know what you meant to say, your eyes will trick you into seeing that. Read the post out loud to catch these tricks, and use this five-step readability checklist.

How you do anything is how you do everything. When you commit to writing well, you show the world the quality of your services, your business, and your character.

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Blogging Can Be a Profitable Passion

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© Zubada - Fotolia.com
© Zubada – Fotolia.com

Blogging is the cover story of the July/August 2015 issue of The Costco Connection, with a slant towards what I call passion bloggers. I’ve written before about what small business bloggers can learn from passion bloggers, and it’s great to have fresh examples from six Canadian women with successful blogs.

Costco-Connection-cover-Jul-Aug-2015

I’ll introduce them in a moment, but first I want to clarify one point from the article where I’m quoted as saying that “ads are one of the hallmarks of a successful blog.”

Before you rush off and clutter your blog with Google ads, affiliate links, and multiple ads for your own products and services, please note that we were talking about third-party advertisers, sponsors or patrons.

As it states earlier in the article, “Before a company places an ad on a blog, they need to know [the blog’s] readers are engaged.” That’s why if you see a blog with sponsors and advertisers, it usually means the site has already demonstrated some success.

Advertisers are crucial for sustaining passion blogs (and their bloggers) over the long term, yet it’s important that bloggers are transparent about their relationships with advertisers and sponsors.

Karen Bertelsen from The Art of Doing Stuff (and she does a LOT of different stuff!) showcases her advertisers in a way that also brings value to her readers. She notes in a post, “As much as I love this blog I wouldn’t be spending 12 hours a day doing it if I didn’t make any money.”

Quiet Fish’s Andrea Tomkins also introduces her blog’s patrons in a thoughtful way. Tomkins has been blogging since 1999 about family, food and life, which has generated awards, readers and a part-time income.

Cendrine Marrouat, a blog writer and social media consultant, wrote about how excited she was when the magazine landed on her doorstep. Just one of many things she and I have in common! Check out her savvy blogging and social media tips.

Chef, food blogger (Simple Bites) and cookbook author Aimée Wimbush-Bourque focuses on bringing families together around the table. If you’re feeling patriotic, check out her Bloody Caesar Shrimp Salad for Canada Day.

Jane Macdougall’s passion is pedestrian safety. She launched the Pedviz blog as a way to share the research she’d collected after her sister-in-law was struck in a crosswalk by a hit-and-run driver.

Lori Godin, the Frugal Edmonton Mama, disclosed some specifics of her blogging success – she’s attracted 100,000 readers and earns $3,000 per month from sponsors like Proctor & Gamble, Netflix and Mattel. You can read exactly how businesses partner with her.

Lori echoed my own thoughts about the importance for all bloggers to “be authentic and find your voice.”

Dessau-quote-Costco-Connection-Jul-Aug2015

Thanks to The Costco Connection for continuing to cover the topic of blogging, writer Allison Lawlor and the other profile writers for bringing the story to life, and to all the bloggers for sharing your inspiring journeys.

Read “Building a Blogging Business” in The Costco Connection.

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5 Business Blogging Lessons From Tweetstock 2015

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© olly - Fotolia.com
© olly – Fotolia.com

I recently attended the 11th Tweetstock social media conference at the Hamilton Public Library (Hamilton, Ontario). It was my third time at this social media event and once again I found a like-minded group and many tweetable lessons about marketing and business success.

I pulled my takeaways into five core themes and gathered those tweets into a slideshow (enclosed below). For now, let’s look at how these concepts can help you as a business blogger:

  1. Know yourself

What are your strengths as a blogger? Love to talk about your ideas? Combine podcasts and video posts with written ones. Record your thoughts and use a dictation app or transcription service to turn them into written posts. Or use a ghostblogger.

What are your limitations as a blogger? Sam Fiorella talked about the importance of consistency in activating an audience for an initiative or a business. Determine how often you’ll be able to blog, and then stick to that.

(I know as well as anyone that none of us can be perfect with this. A blogging schedule can be the first thing to go when competing priorities arise.)

Give yourself room to grow. Even if you aspire to weekly blogging, start with every other week or even once a month. Still aim to write every day and finish one post a week. Then you’ll have a reserve of posts to draw from if inspiration wanes or your schedule heats up.

Speaking of blogging frequency, you can also take a page from Julie Cole of Mabel’s Labels:

Remember that people may have missed the links you shared last week – keep promoting your old posts!

  1. Know your audience

I think every Tweetstock speaker touched on this concept, and it’s also a common theme at the weekly #CMWorld chats put on by Content Marketing Institute.

Be clear from the start about your blog’s mission and who it serves. In most cases this will be the target market of your business – those to whom you want to sell your products and services.

Try this marketing exercise I learned many years ago, where you immerse yourself into your target market by interviewing a different person every day for a month about their needs, challenges, preferences and ideas.

  1. Don’t broadcast, help

This was another very popular point at Tweestock, and for good reason. People quickly learn to ignore a business that only sends out promotional information. In order for people to know and trust you, they must first feel that you understand and care about them.

Before posting anything, ask yourself how it will help the reader. Why would someone take the time to click through and read what you’ve written, and will they be glad they did?

  1. Connect emotionally, authentically

The more genuine you can be in your writing online, the quicker people will be drawn towards you or repelled away from you. Both reactions are exactly what you want, so you end up connected with the people who are most likely to follow you, promote you, recommend you, and buy from you.

When you read what you’ve written, does it sound like you? Are you the same person online as you are in person?

  1. Don’t just build a network, nurture it

A lot of people talk about numbers in social media, and there can feel like an endless quest to collect more and more. Yet in the end it doesn’t matter how many people see, read or share what you write. It’s whether they trust you enough to let you help them with your products and services.

When choosing blog post topics, look to your audience for ideas. Track whether people are opening, clicking on, and reading what you write. Repeat what’s working. Survey your readers about what they want to see on your blog.

Want to read more quotes from the Tweetstock conference? Browse this Storify slideshow for my highlights.

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Who is the Blogger Behind Your Blog?

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group-of-faces-textIn a guest post for Above the Law, LexBlog founder Kevin O’Keefe writes that for lawyers or other professionals, “blogging works because of your ability to establish an intimate relationship with the reader.”

He explains how that bond is formed: “You, by making yourself vulnerable and available to help people. The reader, by discovering someone with passion, experience, and care who can help them.”

Each party must open themselves up to this intimacy. Professionals, entrepreneurs, and solo business owners who blog become a combination of three types of bloggers:

  1. Passion bloggers who document their journey, share their experience with others, gain support and accountability, evangelize what they’re passionate about, and/or teach and help others.
  2. Thought leaders who identify and explore the most important research, news, trends and issues in their industry. O’Keefe is a perfect example, and he points out, “You discover new interests and grow as a professional through blogging.” As long as you’re enthusiastic about your work and your industry, he writes, “How can you not find things to blog about?”
  3. Subject matter experts who explain complex ideas and guide customers to either do a simple task themselves, or feel more confident about working with a service provider.

It may not always be comfortable to be transparent and authentic when you write. You open yourself up to judgment and there will definitely be some people who don’t like what you say and think.

Yet as a business blogger, the truer you are to your personality, the easier it will be for the right clients to find you.

Read Kevin’s post at Above the Law: Blogging Is About You, The Blogger, Not The Copy.

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