Every so often, the question comes up again: If a business uses a ghost blogger, is that business playing fair?

When I first introduced my Say It For You blog, I traced the long, proud history of ghostwriting.  I explained that celebrities and public figures have always used ghost writers to help them create books, write speeches, produce autobiographies, compose articles, or even format important letters. The reason?  They lacked the time, the discipline, or the writing skills to do it themselves!  In fact, as I pointed out in one of my earliest blog posts, Ghost Blogging In The Tradition Of The Founding Fathers, George Washington used several very famous ghostwriters. Over the generations, world leaders, corporate moguls, and even famous performers  considered the urgency and importance of their message justification enough for hiring talent to get the job done.

I was very interested to read comments in the Journal of Financial Planning about  outsourcing professional services.  Many financial planners around the country work with their clients to create an overall financial plan, but then hire outside money managers to implement that plan by choosing and monitoring the specific stocks and bonds for the clients' portfolios.  One Certified Financial Planner®  explained why: "If I were spending a lot of time on investment selection, I couldn't do the premier job that I want to do for my clients," she said. "There just aren't enough hours in the day."

Another planner added, "You're doing your clients more of a service by hiring expertise for them.," he remarked, comparing the situation to an internist who wouldn't perform surgery himself, but brings in specialists as appropriate.

With blogging fast becoming an indispensable customer acquisition tool in our web-based world, ghost blogging becomes an outsourcing solution for busy business owners who dearly want to" win search", but can't find time to play in the blogging arena!

I had a conversation today with the person responsible for managing the interactive media for one of the largest healthcare organizations in Central Indiana. I cannot help but feel sympathy for this individual because her search engine optimization goals are so clear and simple, but implementing any marketing strategies and SEO tactics to reach those goals is such a long and complicated process, which involves so many layers of politics and egos, that I doubt she will ever come close to maximizing her opportunity for success.

And that is such a shame, because with a simple goal and set of niche keywords available, it would not be too difficult to gain high rankings for the organization's primary keywords.

To help get away from all of the politics and egos, I advised that any time someone in the organization states what they want on the website, that she should ask them how that directly applies to meeting the single most important stated goal of the site. If an answer cannot be supplied, then she should ask that all requests for site content  be supplied with an explanation as to how it fits either the primary or secondary goal of the optimized site.

Of course, you have to have all stakeholders buy into the stated goals of your search engine optimization strategy, but once that is accomplished then it makes it easier to stay focused and reject input that does not serve the goals of the organization. It is easier said (or blogged) than done, but it is the path to search engine optimization and marketing success.

My past is catching up with me, I think. A retired financial planner and investment adviser, I still keep up with the CFP® continuing education requirements and subscribe to several professional journals on finance. So, now, here I am, a professional ghost blogger, and what do I find in the September/October issue of Practice Management Solutions (magazine for financial planners), but an article about social media and the value of ---blogging!

"Social media", the article explains, "is a general term that encompasses a number of interactive broadcast activities and….websites." Practice Management then goes on to say that the main benefit of adding social media such as blogging to an overall marketing communication strategy is "to attract the attention of your clients and prospects to your products, services, and capabilities." Resorting to the use of social media doesn't mean abandoning more traditional communications, the writer assures readers, urging financial planners to add such powerful new web-based tools to their current "suite" of marketing activities.

Stressing that, just as in the real estate game, location is key, Practice Management tells financial planners to "build a presence where your audiences are - on the busiest avenues of the social media infrastructure".

Mike Gegelman, a financial planner in Florida, couldn't agree more.  In Advisor Today, another of the journals I read, Gegelman reminds colleagues that "Successful prospecting comes down to three things: the right message to the right market at the right time". Truth is, Gegelman is highly unusual  in that he spends time studying writing and marketing, and composes and tests all his own marketing materials, from brochures to blogs. Most small business owners and professional practitioners, as I brought out in my earlier blog You May Be A Finder, Binder, Minder, or Grinder - Are You A Writer? devote their efforts to finding and minding business, with no time or inclination to compose to write even the most informal of blogs.

However, since most of these busy entrepreneurs are becoming aware that blogging belongs in every business tool kit, a ghost blogger is often invited to enter the picture (or, as I like to say, behind the picture!)

Back in August, I used an advertising supplement to the Indianapolis Star named “Why 2 Buy Now” to illustrate the point that blogs are not advertisements, but more akin to “advertorials” (see "Why To Buy A Piano" Is Good Advice For Blogs).  I had cut out and saved another page from that Star supplement, this one about Segways.  These lawnmower-looking, two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transportation devices seem to be the all-the-rage way for getting around Indianapolis these days.

The article about Segways begins "Getting around more efficiently seems to be on everyone's mind these days," and concludes by pointing out that  "A Segway is more than a travel alternative.  It's a new way of thinking."

The same kind of innovative technology that produced the Segway has also revolutionized the way in which businesses market themselves.  And, just as with Segways, whose "early adopters" you can see touring White River State Park on wheels or speeding through the mall, early adopters of business blogging are each staking out their own little corners on the Web, helping customers navigate with ease to their blogs and on to their company websites.

The Segway/Blog parallel is less labored than might at first appear.  A Segway takes one rider at a time, taking her exactly where she wants to go. In Won't You Please Come Into My Blog? I likened the Internet to a big trade show.  (Now, imagine each person at the show is not walking around, but driving around on a Segway!)  These potential customers are navigating around the Web, looking for information, a product, or a service.  If you have a "booth" at the show (your blog), customers stop their Segways there. It's not by accident they've found your blog, but precisely because they are seeking information about something you know about, a product you sell, or a service you provide! As Yentl said in Fiddler on the Roof, "It's a perfect match!"

Segways are still a novelty in the Circle City, and, although more and more people are catching on to the Segway advantage every day, the jury is still out on whether they will turn out to have been a passing fad.  Blogging, on the other hand, is no fad.  Bloggers post millions of items per day, a dozen every second.  Business owners that can "hop on board", providing relevant, recent, and frequently updated blog content, will be positioned to "win search", and, even more important, win business!

Can a small business, serving a niche market, benefit from having its own blog?  You betcha. According to Chris Anderson, Internet marketing is absolutely different from anything that came before it.  Anderson coined a phrase for blogging and other forms of digital marketing - The Long Tail.  Originally the idea applied to the selling of music.  A traditional music retailer, he explained, has only limited space to stock CDs and DVDs, so a store would probably choose to carry only the blockbuster hits it knows will move quickly off the shelf.  But a digital music store, he explains (think i-Tunes or Napster) can keep all  the tunes in the catalog, even obscure songs no one's asked for in years  What Anderson found was that digital music stores were actually selling as much of these less widely known songs than the "blockbusters"!  (Anderson's term The Long Tail refers to a chart showing sales figures for each song.  The chart "tails off" as the list gets down to the less popular numbers.)

The whole idea, says Anderson, is that, in the digital world, you don't need big numbers to make a big impact.  When I thought about it, I realized that, if your business is targeting a certain niche, there probably aren't a whole lot of other blogs being regularly posted about your subject.  The competition for those top spots on Page One of Google, Yahoo. or MSN isn't likely to be very fierce.  And remember, the people who find your blog are exactly those people who are looking for your kind of product or service in the first place!

Regular, high quality content, posted consistently on your blog, can have a huge effect in a small market.  As Chris Anderson might put it, your short blog posts can give your business a very long and powerful tail!

The Home Economics section in the Indianapolis Star a couple of weeks ago offered the welcome news that "Just because a dish is basic - or better yet - easy and affordable, doesn't mean it can't be fabulous."  The Star went on to offer a list of 13 ways to cut energy costs.

How-to lists, by the way, are a good way to offer helpful information to your blog readers, especially if there's a unique slant to your list or unusual suggestions.
Three of the items on the Star's how-to-save-energy-costs list are unusually apt advice - for bloggers:
 
Check your tires often and keep them inflated.  (Fuel efficiency dropped 1.3 miles per gallon when the tires were deflated 10%, in a test of a Toyota Camry) Often's the operative word here - your blog content may be wonderful, but if your last post was sometime back in May, you're losing  efficiency in a big way when it comes to "driving" traffic to your website.  It's well-nigh impossible for once-in-a-while blogging to "win search".

Don't overload the dryer, advises the Star. (Clothes will take longer to dry and come out wrinkled.)   The Quamut blogging guide, after explaining that "good writing is the bedrock of blogging", hastens to add that "Web readers have a very limited attention span."  Keep it informative, but keep it short. ('Nuf said on that one!)

Open blinds and shades on cold days.  (Solar heat can raise interior temperature significantly.) You can "open up" your blog by inviting comments and answering them promptly, and by linking to other blogs that you find interesting or informative.

Thirteen's a little long for a blog list; three may be just right.  Inflate your blog with frequency, don't overload the content, and you'll do just fine. Just because your blog is about basic business marketing, doesn't mean it can't be fabulous! 

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As I drove home after a downtown meeting the other day, my eye was caught by four words on a billboard.  My first thought was that someone had designed the perfect ad for my ghostblogging business. But, no, it turned out to be a billboard ad for Indiana University: "More brain, less drain."

Talk about an effective "word tidbit"!  It wasn't necessary for I.U.'s advertising folks to use any more than those four words - Indiana's "brain drain" has been the stuff of headlines, talk shows, and even political rhetoric for decades, deploring the number of students who get their degrees here in Indiana, then take off to work out of state.  In one sense, while this was a billboard I was looking at, not a blog, the ad followed good blogging principles by keeping the message short.  Quamut, the "go to how to blogging guide", advises bloggers to get right to the point.

But, in making the connection between that billboard and blogging, I found the words "brain" and "drain" most important for business owners to keep in mind.  In my earlier blog post  In Blogs Or Tennis, Start Strong, Avoid Fizzle, I stressed the fact that many start out blogging with the best of intentions, only to find themselves unable to keep up with regular blogging while also keeping up with the demands of their own business.  Since frequency and recency play such a large role in search engine rankings, what a professional ghost blogger can add to the marketing mix is a discipline of consistently posting high quality content on behalf of the business.

Put briefly, hiring that extra "brain" relieves the "drain" on the business owner's resources of times and energy.  Business owners can devote themselves to taking care of business, rather than writing about it.

 

Dancing's my favorite of pastimes, but now, Dancing With the Stars - (the sheer power of it - viewers' eyes glued to the TV, cell phones in hand, dialing the local Arthur Murray for lessons) - that's what I call dance marketing-with-machismo!

Alas, I wasn't invited to strut my steps on ABC, but I am excited to be part of a local "show" about blogging, my favorite of professional pursuits.  Confluence Networking's November event will begin with a panel discussion on blogging, the latest online marketing buzz.  I'll be joining blogging greats Chris Baggott of Compendium, Kyle Lacy, Doug Karr, and PR Guy Rodger Johnson, with host Erik Deckers.

You'll find us at Comedy Sportz on Massachusetts Avenue near College starting at 3PM this Tuesday, November 11, covering topics such as starting your corporate blog, keeping your material fresh, selecting your target market for the blog, and then judging how your blog is being received.

As I explained in my blog How Say It For You Was Born, a good ghost blogger should not, herself, be seen or heard.  But, for Confluence's sake, on November 11, I plan to do both. In fact, I'm planning to talk about ghost bloggers and tribute bands, the two new, real things!

After the panel, there'll be general fun and networking next door at 45 Degrees. I'm counting on "confluencing" you there!

 

As of a few weeks ago, at least twenty major U.S. art museums were without directors.  Newsweek commented on just how difficult it is to fill these positions with anywhere near perfect candidates. The magazine's "Help Wanted: Museum Boss" article talked about some of the challenges of running a modern museum - dealing with huge staffs and groups of volunteers, handling budgets, running retail operations, attracting crowds to special exhibits, all amidst constant pressure to secure donations to pay for it all.  Museum trustees, Newsweek remarks, are looking for someone "who can collect like a connoisseur but compete like a CEO."

Museum directors apparently need to juggle the demands of both art and commerce.  Juggling different roles is nothing new for my business owner clients. In fact, in my earlier blog You May Be A Finder, Binder, Minder, or Grinder - Are You A Writer?, I discussed the four different and distinct roles that must be filled in order for any business to succeed, pointing out that it's very rare to find any one person who's comfortable and skilled in all four.

What I'm finding, as I deal with entrepreneurs of every ilk, is that most business owners are aware that having an online presence, complete with a regular business blog, is an indispensable thing in today's competitive - and digital - climate.  The problem, of course, is that, once Finding new business is accomplished, there's still the Binding, Minding, and Grinding to be done, leaving precious little time for composing blogs.  A big part of the challenge is the need to post blogs with frequency and consistency, minimum requirements for success in climbing the search engine ladder.

Newsweek doesn't suggest that finding multi-talented museum directors is an impossible task, only a near-impossible one, "like finding a lost Leonardo.  Everybody wants one, and good luck with the search."  We all know entrepreneurs who wear many hats with consummate skill.  But, for others who lack the time and inclination (and, as some of my business owner clients are quick to admit, the talent) to write, one of us professional ghost bloggers can be hired for behind-the-scenes help in staging online "exhibits" by posting the most artful of business blogs!.

Brilliant as he was, Albert Einstein still needed to get to the top of the scientific search list.  So, how did Einstein, who started his career as an obscure patent clerk, do it?  How did he come out of nowhere, I mean, to be known the world over for his Theory of Relativity? Well, recently I read a fascinating theory about that in, of all places, The Journal of Financial Planning.  (By way of explanation, before my Say It For You ghost blogger days, I wrote financial planning columns under my own byline and was a practicing Certified Financial Planner®. )

Journal editor Lance Ritchlin explained one secret of the Einstein success story - Albert Einstein spent a lot of time and effort reviewing other people's work.  In 1905, Ritchlin informs us, the same year Einstein's own writing changed the universe, he'd submitted more than twenty reviews of other scientists' papers. As a result of these connections, several people became aware of his work, most notably Max Plank, editor of the respected physics journal Annalen der Physik.  In short, Ritchin opines, Einstein got to the top by commenting on others' work, in that manner calling attention to his own research efforts.

Smart bloggers for business can take a tip from this 1921 Nobel Peace Prize winner.  It's not enough to write and post blogs (or to hire a professional ghost writer to do it for you); it's important that you also read what others are saying in blogs and in the press about your field.  "Review" those other blogs by posting comments.  Mention others' observations in your blog.  If there are bloggers whose writing you especially enjoy, create a mutual link between your websites.  Your own blog content will be all the richer for this back-and-forth sharing.  What's more, you're likely to win the wholehearted approval of the search engines; you'll notice that "approval" in the form of upward movement of your blog in the rankings!
Blogs calling blogs, moving from review to renown…what a win-win strategy, discovered by none other than the great physicist himself!

 

In the summer issue of Indianapolis Tennis Magazine, coach Spencer Fields writes, “It has always been interesting for me to see the player who picks up a racket right before season begins, and then to see how they perform for the next three months.” (Here’s the part that really grabbed my attention): “Often, they start out strong, but fizzle toward the end.” 

Funny, I don’t know very much about the game of tennis, but blogging’s something I do know about. Fields might have been referring to the many business owners who start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. Daily blogs become weekly blogs, and pretty soon, months go by between blog posts.

Fields lists the eight major strokes of tennis that great high school players must master, then goes on to say that’s not enough. Players, he adds, need a good sense of athleticism.  But what really separates the successes from the fizzlers, he points out, is that winners “must know how to play the game of tennis.  They must have ways to win, as well as ways to play defensively. They must possess knowledge of momentum and be able to alter tactics and strategy in order to gain an advantage.”

Business bloggers need ways to win, too.  Momentum comes from frequency of posting blogs and from building up longevity by consistently posting content on the Web over sustained periods of time.  As I explained in an earlier blog, The Blog Is Your Introduction Roof, a business can build equity through the steady and repeated use of search terms relevant to that business.

When it comes to blogs, altering tactics takes reading – news, other websites, other blogs – and commenting on current issues, relating what’s going on out there to the owner’s expertise and experience.  Effective tactics include linking to other blogs, posting comments, and responding to comments posted on your blog, in short, getting a two-way “thing” going.

Spencer Fields advises high school players to use the nine-month tennis off-season to advantage by practicing and strategizing.  That may be where the parallel between high school tennis and most small businesses ends. Down time is rare for a small business; business owners who can maintain the drill-sergeant discipline needed to increase web rankings are rarer still. The task of playing the kind of sustained game that “wins search” might fall, in many cases, to professional ghost bloggers.

In October's Southside Times, advertising guru Dr. Robert Montgomery talks about Elmer Wheeler's "Six Rules For Successful Salesmanship". Interesting; I'd actually been taught these very rules years ago, and, like Bob Montgomery, I find them every bit as relevant today as they were back then. 

Two pieces of Wheeler advice, I think, are an especially good fit for today's business bloggers (and, of course, for ghost bloggers as well). "We live in a 'my' world", says Wheeler, so "your sizzle must transfer the concept of ownership to your customer….Get people to like you before you introduce your product."  Blogs are made to order for this getting-people-to-like-you thing, because, done right, they're informal and allow your humanity to shine through.  In fact, as I brought out in How Say It For You Was Born, as a professional ghost blogger, working with you, the businessowner, I need to listen with my "third ear", capturing your passion and style in order to speak in your "voice" to your potential customers, person-to-person.

A second Wheeler principle business bloggers would do well to heed is, "Don't write -  telegraph!  Your first ten words are more important than the next 10,000."  Search optimization specialists explain that, for maximum impact on search engine ranking, a blog's title as well as its content should incorporate as many key search terms as possible.  Those key words are what help your blog get "found". From there, though, it's up to the blogger to engage the reader with relevant content that's up-to-date and interesting, starting with the opening words of the blog. 

Business owners who take care of blogging for business, posting frequent, relevant content, and doing it with passion and discipline, (or who, lacking the time or inclination to maintain such a prolonged effort, hire ghost bloggers), will find their blog helps take care of their business!

 

Bloggers and burritos - it doesn't seem as if the two have anything in common other than sharing the same first letter. Of course I could make the observation that blogs, like burritos, "wrap up" ideas in nice, tasty packages that deliver just enough information to searchers on the Web - you catch my metaphor.  Always on the alert (since I'm a professional ghost blogger, after all) for special word tidbits, I heard one the other day that made me realize there's another way in which blogging and burritos might be connected. This tidbit came in the form of a radio commercial for steak-in-a-wrap, telling listeners to "think outside the bun".

This is a great slogan, I think, for business bloggers (or their ghosts) just as much as for workers selecting lunch. In the U.S., and increasingly around the globe, our first association about fast food is that it comes in buns. This "outside the bun" radio message, in just four little words, effectively nudges us to broaden our tastes and explore new options.  I know that tag line got my attention!

So, how is this all connected with blogging?  With the big goal of business blogging being to "win search", bloggers fall into the trap of thinking that every word they write has to be directly about their business' products and services. Remember, search engines award high rankings based on frequency and longevity; the only problem with that is, if you keep a very narrow focus in your blog, it won't be long before you run out of new things to say.  What this burrito commercial shows is that, by relating what we do to other things, especially when the link is an unexpected one, we engage readers' curiosity.  That, in turn, gives them an "Aha! moment" that holds their attention and keeps them hanging around our blog for longer times.

Sure, generously seasoning each blog post with key words that searchers use to find you is smart strategy, as Ted Demopoulos brings out in his book about blogging.  And, sure, those key words relate directly to your business, not to other things.  But, the insight I had about the "Think outside the bun" tag line was that we bloggers should draw in information from everywhere to make our points, and to make those points in a sit-up-and-take-notice way that differentiates our blog from the thousands upon thousands of others.  In short, the best bloggers may turn out to be the ones who can "think outside the blog"! 

After learning some interesting facts about the inaugural addresses of early U.S.
presidents, I found myself wishing I could go back in time. Before each president uttered the first word of his speech, I would share with him some good "new-fashioned" blogging principles…

You'll recall how I'm always describing blogs as being less formal and more conversational than other kinds of marketing materials (See Between Crafted and Cranked Out).  Well, it's difficult to imagine anything less conversational and informal than George Washington's two-minute inaugural address: "Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month." (That's just the first sentence of the address -can you believe it?)  He then goes on (and on) to say, "On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years."  While George is to be commended for keeping it short, I imagine those two minutes must have seemed like two hours to the listeners.  The biggest irony is that Washington understood the importance of having a ghostwriter help him with his speech; unfortunately, "ghost' James Madison hadn't been taught any better than Washington that short, clear sentences are the hallmarks of effective speeches and effective blogs!

Decades and many presidential terms later, William Henry Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address in history.  While Harrison managed to avoid the stilted sentences of our first president, he could have used some good blog-based editing; his talk contained no fewer than 8443 words! Speaking of irony!  Harrison's over-long inaugural ushered in the shortest presidential term in history.  Refusing to wear a coat or hat on his Big Day, Harrison caught a cold that turned into pneumonia and died thirty-one days after being sworn in.

In history's inexorable march towards what would one day become our blogosphere, presidential inaugurals made use of the technology of the day, with James Polk's being the first to be reported by telegraph, James Buchanan's the first to be photographed, Harry Truman's first to be televised, and Bill's Clinton's the first to be broadcast live on the Internet.

As I said, our early presidents might have been more effective at their inaugurations had they utilized best blogging practices, delivering fewer words in less formal tones. Perhaps what bloggers can learn from the early presidents is an old-fashioned respect for the power and beauty of the English language, not to mention old-fashioned respect for the dangers of winter colds!

The other morning, listening to the radio in my car on my way to meet one of my ghost blogging clients, I heard a traffic alert.  The announcer was warning listeners to stay away from the vicinity of Southport Road and Madison Avenue (on the south side of Indianapolis), warning of stop-and-go traffic there. Grateful my route wouldn't pass anywhere near that intersection, I pictured being in a line of cars moving two or three feet, then having to stop, then moving another couple of feet and again having to stop - you know the drill, where it takes an hour to get to a place ten minutes away.  It's hard to think of a less productive way to spend time than that.

You need to know that, when a professional ghost blogger like me hears the word "traffic", another kind of traffic comes to mind.  Remember that business bloggers care about one thing most of all, and that's increasing traffic - only what we mean is driving traffic to websites.  The more people that click on a business' blog, the more those searchers become engaged with the content of the blog, the more traffic will flow to the website.

Now, one of the main keys to traffic on the Internet is offering valuable content.  Yaro Starak, "The Blog Traffic King", says "If you do nothing else for your blog but write quality content, you will get traffic."  But then blogging expert Ted Demopoulos adds (see What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging And Podcasting) "Keep that posting consistent and even….posting only four or five times a month will cause you to lose readership."  Demopolulos is referring to frequency, one of the variables Google and other search engines measure in ranking a blog.  Blogging three to five times per week is recommended to keep traffic flow smooth.

Business owners who make blogging part of their routine are able to make blogs pull their weight as part of an overall business marketing strategy.  Professional ghost blogging services can help make blogging work for business owners who lack the time to maintain the schedule of writing and posting blogs.  One thing's pretty clear - stop-and-go driving slows everything down, but, now frequency - that's what puts your blog in the express lane!

A joke I remember from years ago has a man knocking at the gates of Heaven.  "Who's there?" asks St. Peter.  "It is I", comes the response.  In the punch line, St. Peter says, "Go away! We have too many English teachers here already!"  (Okay, I confess; my B.A. degree is in English Education, so, while many people may chuckle at this joke, I "resemble that remark"!)

Anyway, the point I want to make in sharing this old chestnut is that, when a blog is posted in the name of your business (or, for that matter, when you put out brochures, design your website, or do print advertising), you're really "putting yourself out there". In fact, with blogging, you're putting yourself out there on the World Wide Web.  Yes, I know I always write about how a blog should be less formal than other marketing pieces, more conversational and more personal (see Blogs - Between Crafted and Cranked Out).  And granted, it may feel much more natural and conversational to simply say "It's me!" rather than the stuffy-sounding "It is I."

But, here's the thing: You always want to be sure that poor usage and misspelled words aren't distracting the reader and taking away from your business' message. And, while stilted and over-formal language can be a distraction, poor grammar and misspelled and misused words can be an even worse one. Think about a great after-dinner speaker  delivering a great motivational message…if only you weren't distracted by that stain on his tie or the popped button on her blouse!

Last spring at the Ivy Tech Community College graduation ceremony, I heard Indiana's Governor Mitch Daniels express the same idea, stressing in his commencement address how important it was going to be to students' future success for them to gain command of our English language.  He pointed out the unfortunate habit many young people have of inserting the word "like" into every sentence, and admonished graduates, as they embarked on their careers, to "lose the 'like'"!

Good command of language counts in blogging.  In fact, words are a blogger's only tool to engage readers and drive traffic to the website. Shouldn't you sound down-to-earth, friendly and approachable, rather than stuffy or stilted or formal? By all means!  You want your customers and clients to l-o-v-e doing business with you. But be very careful not to distract the visitor's attention with shoddy use of the English language.  The message you want to convey is that every product and service your business has to offer is a thing of quality.  In all your marketing materials, and particularly in your blog, keep the "love", but, as the Mitch Daniels says, lose the "like"!

I've said it before in Buildings, Like Blogs, Can Be Interactive: it takes two to blog - the blogger (or ghost blogger) and the searcher.  That's because the whole purpose of blogging is to establish a communications link between a business and potential customers of that business.  Unlike brochures, billboards, or print ads, blogs are meant to start a conversation, answer questions, and generally get a two-way "thing" going.  After all, the person browsing online arrived at that particular blog because something that business blogger knows or something that business blogger sells matches up with something the searcher came online to find in the first place!

I was thinking about that two-way aspect of blogging the other day while watching Butler University College of Business freshmen prepare to navigate the high ropes course as part of their Freshman Business Experience (an all-day orientation exercise to build leadership and team-working skills).  Before each student began climbing the sailors' rope ladder up to a platform 38 feet above the ground, the belayer offered coaching and safety instructions.  In the sport of climbing, I learned, "belaying" refers to the technique of controlling the rope that is attached to the climber's harness, so the climber cannot fall very far.

Communication between climbers and belayers, we were told, is absolutely critical.  Climbers were taught to wait for verbal confirmation from their belayer that everything was in place for a safe climb.  The student would call out, "On belay?", then wait for the belayer to respond with "Belay on!".  As a second check, the student would then ask, "Climb?", and then wait for the belayer to answer "Climb on!".

Blogging doesn't involve such formal exchanges between blogger and reader.  But, as a professional ghost blogger, I'm keenly aware of the parallels between blogging and belaying when it comes to two-way communication.  Business blogging involves another sort of climb, using SEO (search engine optimization) techniques with the goal of having the blog "climb" towards the top of Page One on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or other search engine.  The higher the placement or "ranking", the closer the blog is to "winning search".

But, just as a rope climber can't make it to the top without input from the belayer, blogs are indexed based on their relevance to what searchers want to find.  The more visitors click on the blog, the longer those visitors stay around reading the blog itself, the more comments visitors post, the more they move on to the website of the business that posted the blog, the more "feeds" customers request to their email or to their own websites, the more these visitors "belay" the blog "climber" and help it reach a higher internet ranking.  Bloggers can't climb until readers encourage them by saying, in essence, "Cllimb on!". 

The other day I mentioned author Seth Godin and the names he's coined for different categories of blogs. Well, the same Seth Godin's got a blog of his own that I find fascinating.  He blogs about selling, he blogs about raising money for causes, about time management - I mean, Seth Godin's got advice on a whole host of topics, and I almost always find it advice worth heeding.

One of Seth's recent blogs might have been written with me in mind. You see, as a professional ghost blogger, I not only spend a good deal of time planning, researching, and writing business blogs, I spend a considerable amount of time discussing blogging with folks who've heard about blogging, but aren't 100% sold on this new marketing tool.

Just as Seth divides blogs into categories, he divides people into categories, too, remarking there are four kinds of people in the world.  Some people want to do things because they are interesting. Some people want to do things because everyone else is doing them. Some people are satisfied/scared/shy/lazy and don't do anything. And then, explains Godin (this is the part I really like), some people want to do things because they work!

In one of my own earlier blog posts, For Songs Or Blogs, Success Proves The Best Silencer Of Critics, I drew a parallel between ghostwritten songs that brought success to the artists who performed them, and ghostwritten blogs that contribute to the success of a business.  I stressed the idea that, if consistent, targeted blogging honestly speaks a corporation's message, whether written word-for-word by the business owner or in cooperation with a professional ghost blogger, it can lead to long-term marketing success for that business.

Effective blogging takes a lot of effort.  So, what I tell business owners is this:  Don't blog because you heard about it and it sounds interesting.  Don't blog because everybody else is doing it.  Blog because - blogging works!

Author and marketing guru Seth Godin says there are three types of blogs: cat blogs, boss blogs, and viral blogs. 

We've all come across cat blogs, which Godin describes as personal and idiosyncratic. From the looks of those blogs, you might say they were written purely out of the need for self expression, or perhaps to gain converts to the writer's way of thinking on a particular topic. When a couple I know took a cruise to Alaska earlier this year, they created a blog to keep friends and family current on their adventures. That was a cat blog.  Other bloggers comment on everything from the weather to what they had for breakfast that morning.

Boss blogs are written by people who work together, and those blogs are used to share ideas with team members.  There needn't be a boss involved, says Godin, but I imagine bosses might share their ideas with subordinates through a boss blog. I was involved in a textbook writing and editing group, and the group leader used a blog to coordinate the various steps of that project.

It's the viral blog category in which my professional ghost writing business, Say It For You, is involved. Godin explains that viral blogs are used to spread ideas, so I imagine that might include political or religious blogs.  But what each of my business clients is interested in is spreading the word about what they know, what they know how to do, and what they sell.  In other words, I'm a blogger for business, and business blogging is viral blogging.

One thing worth mentioning is that effective business blogging has a little bit of "cat" in it. In talking about business blogging, I always come back to the idea that blogs are much more informal and much more personal than brochures, advertisements, commercials, billboards, or websites. In a well-done business blog, even though it's viral, you can sense the personality of the business owner reaching out to connect with the reader.  There's often quite a bit of "boss" in a business blog, too, because an effective business blog is sharing valuable information and knowledge.

In How Say It For You Was Born, I described the qualities that make for a great ghost blogger.  A ghost, I said, uses her "third ear", hearing not only what the business owner wants to say, but picking up on that business owner's unique style and business culture. Armed now with Seth Godin's blog monikers, I can add that a professional ghost blogger must inject a little "cat" and a little "boss" while spreading the "virus" and bringing in business!

Ari Hest gets it - blogging, I mean.  Unlike me, though, Hest doesn't blog for a living; he's  a singer and songwriter (see www.arihest.com) who's taken on the discipline of releasing a new tune every seven days. Apparently Ari understands one of the cardinal rules for successful business blogging, namely frequency.  He explains why, in his former position with Columbia Records, he couldn't have done this "52" project.  "At Columbia", he relates, "everything needs to filter through a lot of different hands….now I just finish the song in my apartment and get it online.  It's a lot simpler, and I'm the boss." 

As a professional ghost blogger, I couldn't have come up with a better description of the advantages of communicating with your clients and customers through business blogs.  In Blogs - Between Crafted And Cranked Out, I explained that blogs, unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, are short and concise, more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces.  That's what makes it so feasible to use blogs to achieve the frequency that's needed to win online search engine rankings - there aren't a whole lot of steps to the process.  In fact, once my business owner clients and I have spent some upfront time working out the best tone and format for the blog posts, the process is -  well, it's a song to carry out!

Hest's using audience online voting to select the songs that'll make up his next studio album.  With business blogs, online browsers can provide feedback, too.  They post comments, ask questions, and request regular "feeds" to their own websites or email.  The most important form of feedback for a business blog, of course, is when the potential customers vote with their dollars, clicking through from the blog to the business' website and becoming buyers of the product or service.

In an interview with Indianapolis Star ,Ari  Hest gave readers an insight into his new way of handling those songs that don't end up in his album.  When he worked for Columbia, he said, he'd keep those songs on his hard drive and never use them.  "This year", he said, "I didn't really want to be in the position of holding things back."  Exactly the same logic applies to blogging.  Because blogs are short and conversational, over a period of months, the business owners can express everything they want to tell their audiences about their special knowledge, insights, products, and services. There's no need to hold anything back - it just doesn't all go in the same piece!  Instead, the blog posts provide a steady stream of "sound bites" - little bits of different, interesting, and informative content for searchers to read, little clues that they've come to the right place to find what they need..