How to Avoid Coma Inducing Business Blog Posts

Do you wish that your blog posts had more views? Do you wake up each day thinking that today will be the day you’ll write your breakthrough post and really make a connection with your readers?

Do you sit at the keyboard wondering what you are doing wrong? Do your readers regularly need a new keyboard after reading your posts? Do you think SEO and Keyword stuffing is the solution to your business blogging problem?

If you muse on any of these things then this blog post is just for you.

No blogger likes to know that their reader replaces their keyboard after reading one of their posts (they headbutt it in frustration and lose the e and k key ).

If you don’t worry about these things and you have lots of engagement on your blog and lots of search and social traffic, then skip straight to the comments and share with us what you do.

It’s all about you

Have you ever read a business blog that’s all about the writer? Yes? Me too.

It can start with how the company is brilliant, how wonderful it is to work in their office and it usually ends with buy my product. It’s a read that is as dull as dishwater. If this is you, stop writing this crap right now. It may be your business blog but it isn’t about you, it’s about your customer and what they have a problem with.

Of course that means you can expand more on the problem, make the reader feel a little pain (to show you understand what they are going through) and identify that your product is the solution.

At this point your call to action can be “buy my product” and your readers would. At the very least they would still be awake…

Because it spoke directly to them instead of inducing a coma

If you use the word “I” more than three times in your post, then you are putting people into a coma.

Stop it right now. The same goes for “we”.

I and We are not customer-focused words, they are self-focused words and unless you are a celebrity no-one, and I mean no-one, is interested in what you have to say.

There is one exception to this rule: bitchin’ and complaining about someone or something online. Complaints can generate a lot of interaction and it would be easy to think that you’d written a better article based on the interaction.

You’d work out quickly that that wasn’t the case… so you’d write another complaint post. And before you know it, you’re known as the person that rants online…

There has to be better way – and there is

Write for your reader, your imaginary reader if you don’t have any. Make each post about them.

As I type this post I’m visualising the writer of the blog post that put me to sleep. She’s self-centred and so focused on her own success that she has to share the minutiae of her family life on her unrelated business blog.

She doesn’t realise what she writes is of no interest to her readers and this post has to smack her straight between the eyes to wake her up to the opportunities she’s missing.

Sign number two is a subtle sign, it creeps up on you. You start getting engagement on your blog, a few comments here and there and you think this is awesome! At last you have a community. And then you stop writing for your reader and start writing for yourself.

You ignore the emails that flood your inbox asking what’s happening and slowly your community, albeit fledgling,  has gone.

You can blame the season, the school calendar and even the periodic table if you want, the truth is you put your foot on the gas and moved down a gear at the same time.

• Do not change a winning formula just for the sake of change.
• If it’s not broken, there is nothing to fix.

Of course the next step is to decide that SEO is the answer to your problems with your blogging. See, it’s no longer your fault you aren’t attracting readers; it’s Google. So instead of carefully crafting a meta description for clickthroughs. you stuff it with keywords – that way you’ll get more search engine traffic. Simple, right?

Only you’ve forgotten that your reader is smarter than you think.

They saw your entry in Google and although they needed a coach to boost there outcomes, they thought that your meta description that said Internet Marketing Coach | Internet Marketer| Internet Marketing Strategist was all about you… and they didn’t really like to click something so spammy looking.

What’s more Google is onto you… you’ve added the Google Author Mark up (rel=author tag) and your photo shows next to that crappy description. It also shows that you are in 3 circles and one of those belongs to the fake account you’ve set up for your cat.

You will of course decide then that SEO does not work and it’s a waste of time.

And my final warning sign that your reader has feel asleep on the keyboard and nearly electrocuted themselves through drooling into their laptop  is this: No matter how broke you are,  if the bailiffs are pounding on your doors and you need money ASAP, do not write (and I mean it), do not write sales pitches and try and disguise them as blog posts.

Do not blackmail your readers and threaten that the site will close if they don’t buy – do not air your frustration - NOBODY CARES. Okay, a few people may feel sorry for you but you will then decide that blogging does not work, and that may not be a bad thing.

People rarely remember the good things you’ve done. They won’t remember your many kindnesses but they will recall your angst and your desperation.

When talking about you, this is what they will discuss and they’ll finish it with… I don’t know if they are still in business. Be remembered for being remarkable, not for being desperate. If you have to reach out, then there are more effective ways of doing it than blogging about it on your business blog.

But there is a solution. One that gets great results, one that will revolutionise your business blog posts.

Write better – write for your reader

When you do that they stay awake, they engage with you and they want to get to know you. And after riding your wave of success you can write the post about how your laptop was taken by the repo man but you changed your writing attitude and now you are a trillionaire.

It’s not a complaint and it will get interaction, your readers will find it inspiring and, if they are in the same position, they’ll ping you a message. You’ll also include some lessons and advice for your readers in case they were ever in this situation, and you’ll remember the moment forever.

It’s the day you emerged from your self induced writing coma. It was also the day you realised your contribution to the world was better when it wasn’t about you…

PS – Yes I know that I broke the I rule, but you’ll forgive me, right?