What Does a Professional Blogger Bring to the Table?

By Jennifer Mattern on July 20th, 2011 / Business Blogging / Leave a comment

Should your company hire a professional blogger, or should you handle your business blog on your own? A case can be made for either option. After all, no one knows your business as well as you do. You would be a logical choice. Then again, not all business owners count writing as a strength. In that case, bringing in a pro makes more sense. The same is true when your time would be better spent elsewhere.

Blogging involves much more than slapping some words up on a website. Professional bloggers understand this and offer you content that can more effectively appeal to your target readers. Here are some things professional bloggers bring to the table, some of which you might not have considered:

A professional blogger knows how to engage with your audience. We get them talking and entice them to connect with your business more directly. That allows you to have more meaningful conversations with prospects and customers rather than simply having them read your content.
Professional bloggers can invest the time serious blogging demands. You’re busy running your business. Chances are good that your time is worth more in other areas (like closing sales) than it would cost you to hire a pro to manage your blog content.
Professional bloggers can help you develop a solid blog content strategy. This should be based on your company’s goals for the blog — from search engine rankings to customer support.
Your professional blogger knows how to craft content for the Web. Good blog content can be very different from other types of writing you might be more familiar with, such as newsletters or sales copy. People read differently on a screen than they do in print. Professional bloggers understand the formatting issues involved in writing effective blog posts.

These are just a few examples of things professional bloggers can do for your business. You might hire a full-time blogger to manage multiple blogs or handle all social networking and community management as well. Or you can outsource blog content to independent professional bloggers (like myself) when you need the content but prefer having in-house staff handle the more direct communications and marketing.

Have you ever worked with a professional blogger? What was your experience like? If you’re considering hiring a blogger for the first time, what kind of benefits do you hope to see? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Two New Client Spots to Open in January

By Jennifer Mattern on December 13th, 2010 / News & Announcements / Leave a comment

As you may know, I rarely have openings to take on new clients due to existing regular contracts. However, with some schedule adjustments beginning in January I decided to open just two new spots at that time. These new openings are reserved for long-term prospects only, with a three-month minimum commitment (for five or more articles, blog posts, press releases, etc.). However those prospects may place a one-time one-off order first to see if my style fits their needs. The only exceptions to the regular contract restriction will be for white paper writing and e-book writing services as individual projects often last an extended period of time.

If you’re interested in hiring me for ongoing business writing work such as blogging or press release writing, or to write your next e-book, please review my rates, service pages, and FAQs here and then contact me to discuss your project details. There is no guarantee that these two new openings will still be available in January. They may be booked during December. So don’t wait too long. Send me your project details and let’s find out if I’m the right business writer or blogger for your project.

3 Reasons to Consider Pre-scheduling Blog Posts

By Jennifer Mattern on October 22nd, 2010 / Business Blogging / 2 Comments

Do you tend to write your blog posts on-the-fly, writing and publishing all at once? Did you know that blog platforms often give you an option to pre-schedule your posts instead? For example, you can write the post at midnight on Wednesday and have it automatically go live at noon on Thursday. Did you know that pre-scheduling your blog post drafts can be a great thing for your business?

Here are three reasons you should consider pre-scheduling blog posts on your business blog:

1. Improve Efficiency

Sometimes you’re simply in the mood to write, you have a lot to say, or you have a nice flow going and you don’t want to waste it. At other times you need to get a blog post up but nothing comes to you. If you do most of your blog writing while you’re in one of those productive and creative stretches you can cut down on the overall time you spend blogging. But being virtually yappy one day doesn’t mean you need to send all of the posts live right away. Schedule them for future post dates instead (unless, of course, they’re incredibly timely and really need to go live right now).

2. Improve Quality

No one has “fresh eyes” immediately after drafting a blog post. That means you’re more likely to miss things when you proofread the post before publishing. The only way to get those fresh eyes is to walk away from the project between the writing and editing phases. If you’re writing evergreen content or at least something that can go up in a day or two, consider writing your posts a day or two before they’re scheduled to be published. Then you can proofread them and catch more errors before they go live to your customer base or other target audience.

3. Improve Consistency

When you pre-schedule blog posts you don’t have to worry about making sure you publish things at the right time each day or each week. Because things are written and scheduled early you can make sure each post is published as consistently as possible so readers know when to expect them (and you don’t have to rush out a blog post at the last minute, trying to stay on schedule).

Pre-scheduling blog posts could be a great idea for your business. But it doesn’t apply to every blogger or every blog post. If your blog is about timely stories (like a news commentary blog), you’ll need to put posts up shortly after writing them. But for most business blogs there’s a mix of content. So even if you can’t put up something like company news a few days in advance, your tips and advice can enjoy that cooling off period and you’ll still reap some of the benefits.

How to Make Your Business Blog an Authority Source in Your Niche

By Jennifer Mattern on October 20th, 2010 / Business Blogging / Leave a comment

If your company has a blog, one of the best things you can do is make sure that blog is seen as a source of authority content in your niche or industry. Why? Because people trust authority blogs. They come back to them time and time again. And they tell other people about them. That means more traffic, a larger community, and more reach within your customer base. Authority sources are also more likely to attract wider attention, such as for media interviews.

But how can you make your business blog an authority blog in your niche? Here are a few tips to point you in the right direction.

Talk About More Than Your Company

There’s nothing wrong with company-focused blogs. For example, support blogs can be popular resources when customers need to be kept up-to-date on problems. Web hosts are an example of a group that tends to use this blog model effectively. But it’s not how you make an authority blog.

If you want people to see your blog as an authority source, you need to talk about things they care about rather than only talking about yourself. Major company news? Sure. But don’t plaster every tidbit on your business blog. Have a dedicated news section for that. For an authority blog, focus on giving insight into serious issues your customers and industry peers care about.

Don’t be Anonymous

There’s also nothing wrong with having more than one person write content for your company blog. But don’t go with the anonymous “we’re all one big group” mentality. If you want readers to trust your content and view you as an authority source, it’s better to include names. Some companies need to hire a professional blogger to help them out if they don’t have staff available to manage the business blog. If that outside writer is an authority source in their own right, make them by-lined rather than having them ghostwrite your blog content. If you have company reps well-known in the industry, try to get them on board with the blog. Any existing authority you can throw behind the blog can help.

Get the Head Honcho on Board

Sure your company’s owner, President, or CEO is busy. But precious little will lend more authority to your company’s blog than having the guy or gal on top directly interacting with readers. Even if they’re just an infrequent contributor and others manage the blog on a more regular basis, attention from them can get the attention of others.

These are just a few business blogging tips to get you moving in the right direction. Having your business blog recognized as an authority source of information in your industry can be the difference between blogging for the sake of blogging and seeing a real return for your blogging efforts.

Do you run an authority niche blog or business blog? Feel free to leave a comment with additional tips for authority blogging or stories about how you turned your own blog into an authority source below.

Pro Business Writer News and Updates – Spring Cleaning

By Jennifer Mattern on March 31st, 2010 / Business Writing - General / Leave a comment

I just wanted to share a few updates with you today, mostly related to site maintenance issues:

Please forgive the temporary mess here on ProBusinessWriter.com. Some pages still show formatting from the old site design, I have editing to finish up, and there are images and charts to be added. It looks a bit nekkid. I know. It will be all tidied up as soon as humanly possible.
If you follow my freelance writing blog, you’ll notice it’s going through a design change. Most of the quirks have been worked out and I should have all of the free online tools and other features back to normal later today. A few new series were started in March, so I hope you’ll check them out. Dan Smith joined us to pick up the monthly DIY project series. Catherine L. Tully joined us with a monthly series on writing for print markets. And our existing writer, and ESL-certified teacher, Rebecca Garland has added a monthly series on grammar and issues facing ESL writers.
Also related to All Freelance Writing, we’re merging two of my other sites into that blog. QueryFreeFreelancer.com, dedicated to The Query-Free Freelancer book I’ve been working on for months, will be fully merged with AFW shortly. My partner on the FreelanceTheater.com audio play series and I have also decided to join that entire site with All Freelance Writing. It will allow the freelance writer audience to access all of our related projects and features from one place.
In other news, I’m going to be serving as Editor-in-Chief for a new social media blog launched by a client of mine. I hope you’ll stop by and read some of my upcoming posts there!

Posts Tagged ‘blogging’