Blogging for Business: Write with the End in Mind

(Start time 4:49 a.m.... for Speed Blogging experiment)

What's the best way to come up with a post on your business blog that works for marketing purposes, that actually leads to getting sales, registrations, and new business?

Many bloggers struggle with getting results from blogging. In my opinion, after working with many professionals who are also good writers, it's not what they write but the way they begin a post.

Write with the end in mind. What would you like readers to do after reading your post? Having a clear goal in mind will help you write better. It will also help you find ideas to write about and will direct your writing so that it's laser-like in clarity.

I can only explain this by giving my own example. Here's what I went through this morning in order to come up with this post. I woke up a bit bleary-eyed without having any direction or ideas. I knew that I had to post something here on this blog. Here are the steps I took.

1. Opened up 4 tabs in my Firefox browser: 1 of each of our 3 primary blogs and looked to see which one needed fresh content; opened up the Typepad 'compose a post' page for this blog.
2. Looked at Google Calendar and Blog Squad events coming up soon, to determine which event to promote.
3. Picked our 5 Traps of Internet Marketing that Can Derail Your Business, free teleseminar on June 24 as an event that I would promote at the end of my blog post.
4. Examined what Denise and Kathleen Gage had already written on their other blogs about this.
5. Sat and thought for a few minutes about valuable and relevant tips to share with readers that could tie in with traps and struggles with marketing online.
6. Went to a folder I keep on my computer marked Blog Posts to Do, to see if I already had some notes I could use. (I found notes a similar event 6 months ago with good stuff in it that I'll use later.)
7. Decided to write something new and keep with my Speed Blogging post on Monday: demonstrate writing fresh content in under 30 minutes.
8. Decided that it might be most valuable for readers to see exactly what steps I took to post this morning.

Voila! I don't know if this is valuable to you, but I know anytime other bloggers share their details on "how to" do things, I always learn something.

The big take away here is to learn to write with the end in mind. My goal was to write valuable info that helps you with better business blog writing AND encourages you to learn more by registering for this free teleseminar:

The 5 Traps of Internet Marketing that Can Derail Your Business, and what you can do to avoid them.
Brought to you by The Blog Squad and the Street Smarts Marketer, Kathleen Gage
June 24: Completely free, including the audio recording afterwards but you do need to register
www.actandattract.com/5traps

I'm not sure I did a particularly good job of meeting my goal because I'm not sure this valuable tip has a direct and obvious tie into the traps of Internet marketing. If I took a little more time, I would develop that part of the message further. But I want to write and complete linking in under 30 minutes, so that's all for now!

Relevant posts:

Online Promotion Tips: Use Facebook
Web 2.0 - Is it a trap or what?
My biggest gripe about Internet Marketing
Web 2.0 Soap Opera: The 5 Deadly Traps of Internet Marketing

Completed posting time: 5:17 a.m. Time elapsed: 27 minutes!

Comments

[Phyllis A Rogers]

I did find it very helpful to hear you "thinking out loud". It makes a lot of sense to know what action you want your readers to take before you start writing. Thanks for letting us visit inside your head.

[Connie Ragen Green]

Denise,
This was very helpful. I still maintain too many blogs to count and sometimes run out of fresh ideas. I like this call to action approach to each blog post. I now have a second wind and can carry on with my blogomania. Thanks.