How to Blog for Business e-book

Table of Contents
HOW TO BLOG FOR BUSINESS
How you can attract loyal readers and dominate Google rankings.
FREE DOWNLOAD: www.bluewiremedia.com.au/how-to-blog-for-business-e-book 14/05/2013 Version 1.6 2
Introduction by Adam Franklin & Toby Jenkins
Please Share
Acknowledgement & Thanks
Chapter 1. Darren Rowse: ProBlogger’s secrets for building a business blog
Chapter 2. Glenn Murray: SEO & blogging secrets
Chapter 3. Jonathan Crossfield: How to blog
Chapter 4. Liz Strauss: Blogging and social media Q & A
Chapter 5. Valerie Khoo: Why it is important to tell stories online
Connect With The Bloggers
Recommended Readings
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Table of Contents
More of our free tools
Connect With Us
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Introduction
If you want to hear first hand accounts from genuine blogging
experts, then you’re in for a treat with this How to Blog for Business
e-book. As business owners, bloggers and content marketers,
we’ve always aspired to learn from the best people in the industry
and Darren Rowse, Glenn Murray, Jonathan Crossfield, Liz Strauss
and Valerie Khoo are without doubt genuine stars in the blogging
world.
We’ve been long-time fans of the people in this e-book so when we
had the privilege of interviewing them we were thrilled to be able to
discover and share their exclusive insights.
Some personal highlights of the e-book include Liz Strauss’s gem,
“There is information all over the web, but there is only one
you!” and Darren Rowse, aka ProBlogger, on his 10th anniversary
of starting his blog, explaining that his success has come from
serving the needs of his readers. We hope this e-book serves you
well. And if you like it, please feel free to share it with your friends!
All the best,
Adam Franklin @Franklin_Adam
& Toby Jenkins @Toby_Jenkins
Founders, Bluewire Media

Please Share
If you find this e-book useful, please feel free to blog about it, tweet it, link to it and share it with the world!
The How to Blog for Business e-book is free & licensed under Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0.
This means you may edit or build upon the work, but you must give the original author proper attribution.
The requested attribution is a link to this How to Blog for Business e-book page at http://www.bluewiremedia.
com.au/how-to-blog-for-business-e-book
How to Blog for Business: How you can attract loyal
readers and dominate Google rankings.
www.bluewiremedia.com.au/how-to-blog-for-business-e-book

Acknowledgement & Thanks
Thank You to Darren Rowse, Glenn Murray, Jonathan Crossfield, Liz
Strauss and Valerie Khoo. Your generosity with your time and insights is truly
appreciated.
Thank you to Sarah McVeigh who interviewed Liz Strauss in San Francisco. Sarah was on her summer exchange
at San Jose University.
Thank you to Montse Balbuena and Ashley Holloway for designing this e-book.
Thank you to Ann-Maree Lee and Angela Logovik for editing and proofreading this e-book.
Thank you to Kyle Zenchyson who compiled some of the original interview transcripts.

Chapter 1. Darren Rowse: ProBlogger’s secrets for
building a business blog
Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder of ProBlogger.net and Digital
Photography School which have a combined monthly
audience of over 5 million people. He is an author, speaker
and eBook publisher. Husband, and Dad to 3 boys. He loves
lattes and Leicas.
www.facebook.com/problogger
@problogger
www.problogger.net
www.Digital-Photography-School.com
Other websites where you can find Darren Rowse

ProBlogger’s secrets for building a
business blog
Adam Franklin caught up with Darren Rowse at his ProBlogger event in Melbourne recently and got to ask him
about how to get a business blog going. Here’s what they discussed.
Transcript
Adam Franklin: Hi there it’s Adam Franklin and I’m here with Darren Rowse. You may know him as
ProBlogger, one of Australia’s premier bloggers. I’ve got a question for you... But first, thank you for having us at
your course this weekend.
Darren Rowse: You’re welcome.

Adam Franklin: You spoke a lot about from small things big things come and
you are obviously very successful; it’s taken 10 years, and congrats on your 10th
year anniversary. For business bloggers, what type of effort do they need to be
putting in the early stages, and how long until they can expect genuine business
results from a blog?
Darren Rowse: It is one of those things it is hard to give an exact timeframe
and the exact results that you will get. It is certainly is something that the more
you put in the better results, and that is pretty much like anything in life; the more
you work at it the better. I think for me, it is probably more important to understand
who you are trying to reach than the amount of time, so I would really be thinking
about; what are the needs of my potential readers? If it is a business; who are
my customers, what are their needs, and how can I serve them through that?
Doing that hard work is probably where most of the work, is actually identifying;
what are we going to talk about this blog? And setting yourself some targets, in
terms of the writing that you are going to do, and then just consistently dripping
out content that serves those needs.
Who are
my customers,
what are their
needs, and how
can I serve them
through that?

Darren Rowse: I would probably spend a lot
of time those first couple weeks, before you even
start the blog, identifying needs and problems that
people have, and then in mapping out what to do.
I think that is probably the hardest part. Once you
got those topics and those needs to write about, it is
actually not that hard to create content, and it is the
type of content that you do not even think anyone
would, it is not even that important to you, because
you have forgotten all the lessons that you have
learned, but to other people, that is really important
stuff.
Writing that really basic content that helps someone
overcome a certain need really does not take that
much time. The key is doing it consistently over
time, and just consistently publishing good
content.
...a lot of bloggers give up before
they start because they are completely
paralysed and overwhelmed by the
technology...

Adam Franklin: Awesome. Where are some of the points where people give up, where they just need a bit
more encouragement that results are just around the corner? Where do you find, typically, they will fall over?
Darren Rowse: Typically, I would say a lot of bloggers give up before they start because they are
completely paralysed and overwhelmed by the technology, that is often the point. I have talked to a lot of
bloggers who have ideas for blogs but they do not act on them.
The other point is usually about 3 months, and 3 months is the hard part because you do not get a lot of
feedback from people. They say about 1% of visitors to a blog comment, so you could have 100 readers and
not be getting any feedback, at all. You are actually doing something relatively significant, but you are not
getting that interaction, so that is a really tough hurdle to get over, to start getting that engagement.

Darren Rowse: Then I often find about a year... In a year I guess you look
back over a year and you think of all the work you have done on something, and
for a lot of people, that is the point where they evaluate whether they continue or
not. I personally find, yes, 2 or 3 years on my blogs is what it has taken to actually
get over the hump, get that interaction, and to understand who my reader is,
but also; what is my voice and how do I communicate to them?
Adam Franklin: Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Darren. I really
appreciate it. On Twitter he is @ProBlogger. I highly recommend you follow him on
Twitter. Also read his blog. I have found it very valuable over the years.
Darren Rowse: Thank you.
...2 or 3 years
on my blogs is
what it has taken
to actually get
over the hump...

Glenn Murray
Glenn Murray is the founder of Divine Write, SilverPistol.com,
PropertyBlurbs.com and CarBlurbs.com. He’s a specialist
copywriter who, enviably, works out his home on the NSW
Central Coast. He was a technical writer in the software
industry for 9 years, and now writes for leading brands and
clients from all over the world. Loves reading and running.
@divinewritewww.divinewrite.com
Other websites where you can find Glenn Murray
www.SilverPistol.com www.CarBlurbs.com

SEO & blogging secrets
Glenn Murray’s SEO Secrets have been somewhat of a guiding light for Bluewire Media’s SEO efforts in recent
times (along with the tips from our SEO friends at Reload Media of course). Glenn was generous enough with
his time to do this interview with us.
Transcript
Just how important is blogging for SEO?
For most businesses, blogging isn’t just important. It’s all important. Most businesses don’t have the luxury
of thousands of pages of user-generated content or viral content that is just so amazing that people can’t help
but link to it. Most people are in a situation where they have to work at their content and they have to work
at getting links to it. That’s why blogging is so effective because blogging allows you to easily create lots of
helpful, informative and on-topic content that’s keyword-rich.

It’s updated easily and when combined with an effective social media strategy, it allows you to get the word out
there so the people know about that content and link back to it. Google also likes blogs because they tend to
be content that is up to date, current and topical. That’s an important factor in Google’s success, being up to
return that sort of material in its search results.
Link other blogs
Other bloggers like blogs too. It sounds like a given but it’s important in
the respect that you want people to link to your blog posts. In order for you
to convince Google that your blog is important, you’ve got to have lots of
links pointing to it. That’s how Google assesses importance and quality.
So, it is important that other bloggers like blogs as opposed to liking just
a static article. Bloggers prefer blogs, that’s where they feel at home and
general social media users do too. If you’ve ever tried to sustain blogging
for a period of time, you know that it’s not easy. You know that to write blog
posts and to keep coming up with quality content is very difficult. Bloggers
tend to look to other bloggers for inspiration. They might use your blog post
as a reinforcement of a point or to make a point. When they do that, they’ll
probably link to you. That’s the money-link.

That’s the important thing for your ranking. That’s the link that will tell Google that
your site and blog post is important because it tends to be keyword-rich. The
anchor text tends to vary because people naturally write it so it might be the same
on every site. The link tends to appear on a page which is relevant to your content
because otherwise that blog wouldn’t be linking to you if you were irrelevant. Also,
it tends to appear in a site that is relevant to yours for the same reasons. Blogs
work for both Google, for the readers and other social media users and bloggers
and that’s why they are very effective for SEO.
Integrate Twitter
There has recently been some mounting evidence to suggest that if a lot of
people link to your post or your site in Twitter or they have a general conversation
about your site in Twitter, those links and conversations may actually impact your
ranking. I spoke to quite a few SEO writers who have performed tests that suggest
this is the case. I’ve asked Greg Grothaus from Google about this and he didn’t
really deny it but he really answered my question with another question. In my
experience, that’s an indication that something may be going on.
For most
businesses,
blogging isn’t just
important. It’s all
important.

So, there is some evidence to indicate that the conversation in Twitter and the links in Twitter can increase your
ranking and can get your site and your pages indexed quicker. This is important because from a blogging
perspective because bloggers are those who tweet most often. They’re using Twitter to support their SEO
strategy. By blogging and by engaging in social media, you’re accessing the people who are most likely to
be linking, tweeting and having conversations about your content. Therefore, you’re most likely to be in the
position to leverage this new ranking signal.
What impact has blogging had on your business?
My blogging stories aren’t very typical because when I started blogging I actually already had an established
site and a high ranking. I established my high ranking through the use of article marketing, which is a practice
where you write lots of useful, informative, helpful articles you make freely available to other webmasters to
publish on their sites in return for a link. It’s a trade. The link has to be a follow link of course. The trouble with
that practice is:
It got spammed a lot.
But secondly, I simply ran out of time to do it.

Writing an article takes about the same time as
writing a blog post, so it can take anywhere from
two hours to a day to write. However, distributing
that article to all of the websites that make them
available to other webmasters, can take anywhere
from a day to a week just for a single article. So you
can imagine if you’re trying to write an article a day,
you could physically do that. Especially if you’re not
very busy with client work and you’re trying to build
up your client base. But there’s no way in the world
you could distribute those articles.
That practice for me became unsustainable. It was okay before I got really busy but once I got very busy
because I had a high ranking, I couldn’t sustain the practice. So I stopped and I didn’t focus on SEO at all for
probably a couple of years. And because I wasn’t blogging, I didn’t have lot of new content going up on my
website and over that couple of years my ranking slid from being in the top five for all my magic keywords to
being on page two, sometimes page three. I had repeat clients, which was good, but you don’t like all your
eggs being in one basket. I decided that I had to invest more time in SEO. Article marketing wasn’t going to
be to go.

As it happens, I was at an SEO conference and I met Darren Rowse, who is
ProBlogger. Not surprisingly, he was talking about the benefits of blogging
and tweeting and I decided to follow his advice and get back on the blogging
bandwagon. I had done a lot of blogging in the past, I just hadn’t done it very well
or very strategically.
As soon as I started following some good practices and investing time in my
social media presence, two or three months later my ranking had popped
back up again so. I was once again in the top five for things like copywriter,
copywriting, SEO copywriter, web copywriter - all the important key phrases
out there. That was entirely due to my blogging and my social media presence.
Beyond that, I’ve met a great number of really cool people and developed some
good relationships in the social media space and that’s partly due to my blogging
and twitter use.
I was once
again in the top
five...

How much time should you commit to blogging?
This is always a big question and this tends to be the speed hump that stops a lot
of people getting into blogging. The truth of the matter is, any SEO is like any other
form of promotion. You need to invest in it, whether it’s money or time. If you’re
doing your own blogging you really need to invest as much time as you can in
blogging.
I would imagine most people struggle to blog more than once a day. I wouldn’t
generally recommend blogging more than once a day, anyway. Whatever you
do, blog as often as you can. As long as you’re not blogging more than once
a day, you can’t do any damage. This is in fact the advice that I offer to freelance
copywriters who contact me asking how to become a successful copywriter.
You’ve got to invest every spare moment in SEO (blogging, Twitter or other social
media) and every spare cent in web design.
You need
to invest in it,
whether it’s
money or time.

What tips do you have on speeding up traction?
Everyone wants to talk about traction because it’s frustrating if you’ve been blogging daily for a months and
you know no one’s listening or you feel no one’s listening, no one’s commenting, no one’s subscribing, no one’s
tweeting about you or your blog posts. It’s good to know that it’s possible and it’s good to get some advice
about traction but unfortunately because my experience is not really typical, I may not be the best person to
offer advice. I already had traction when I started blogging. I had a good search engine ranking and some
presence in the SEO field and the copywriting field, so it wasn’t so hard for me to get traction. I’ll offer what I
can, but I’m by no means an expert on this.
Obviously, the first thing I have to say is the same thing that everyone else says - write great
content. If you want traction, you’ve got to write great content. There’s no way around that.
Follow people on Twitter. Follow people who you think will be interested in your content. And when
you post something that you legitimately think will help them (not sales or promotional material), let
them know. Contact them directly and let them know. Either an @ reply or if you can contact them
and give them a call, even better. Engage with them and help them out.

Comment on other people’s blog posts. It seems crazy but when you comment, you show that
you’re engaged in a community and prepared to help. People will listen and discuss and they might
check out your blog and perhaps subscribe to it or at least talk about it.
Guest posts are another useful way to go about it. For a similar reason, people will look at what
you’ve got to say and you get in front of an audience that you wouldn’t normally get in front of. They
may then come back to your website and read the other things that you’ve got to say and perhaps
subscribe.
One really important thing that I think isn’t discussed too often by people who talk about traction is your web
design. It plays a very important part in the effectiveness of your blog. Let’s say you run a business website
and your blog is there to support your SEO efforts. Your blog needs to be easily accessible, it needs to be a
very prominent call to action and your blog itself needs to be in the top level navigation- Home, About Us,
Products, Services, Blog. It needs to be one of those top level navigation items.

Once people get to your blog, you need to try and keep them there, so make
subscription really easy, prominent and understandable. Don’t just settle for
RSS because a lot of people don’t know what RSS is and a lot of people aren’t
comfortable with it. I know what RSS is but I don’t subscribe to any blogs by RSS
because it just doesn’t fit with my work practices. Whenever I subscribe to a blog,
I’ll subscribe via email. I have wanted to subscribe to blogs before and found that
they didn’t have any email subscription facility, so I didn’t subscribe. Since then,
I’ve found a facility called “Feed My Inbox” which is a website that allows you
to subscribe with email to blogs that don’t have an email subscription. But most
people won’t know about that. If you want to capture a large percentage of your
audience who won’t use RSS, just give them an email subscription, it’s easy.
If you want to hear from people who blog all about this stuff all the time, follow
Darren Rowse. He’s ProBlogger on Twitter. He blogs about blogging in
www.problogger.net. Follow Paul Cunningham on Twitter and his blog . They both
know their blogging stuff. They come at it from different angles and they’re both
worth reading.
If you want
traction, you’’ve
got to write
great content.

Who are your favourite bloggers?
Darren Rowse would have to be one of them. He blogs
about blogging. He’s a professional blogger, that’s what
he does and that’s what he knows. He’s very good, he’s
also a good guy. Paul Cunningham is another and
again. He blogs about blogging and blog developments
as well. Angie’s Copywriting -
www.angiescopywriting.com. She blogs about
copywriting and SEO issues.
There’s one called The Frontal Cortex and it’s about brain
neurons and psychological facts in decision-making
and buying. The blogger is Jonah Lehrer and the blog
is The Frontal Cortex - www.scienceblogs.com/cortex/
Of course, Jonathan Crossfield is another one of my
favourite bloggers. His Twitter handle is Kimota and he’s
a copywriter. He’s very prominent and a good guy.

Who should buy your ebook SEO Secrets?
If you’re a hardcore SEO writer already, you’re not going to get much value out
of it. But if you’re new to SEO or if you’re a marketer who’s finding it a little bit
confusing or an owner of a small business. It’s called SEO Secrets. It starts from
the basics and works its way through.
I’m actually an ex-technical writer from the software industry. For nine years I wrote manuals, so it’s kind of a
manual on how to understand and make use of SEO. If you are relatively new to SEO but you want to go from
the basics right through some pretty hardcore stuff, then you’ll find a lot of use in that book. I actually sell
another book called Practical SEO Copywriting and that is for more hardcore practitioners. If you already know
copywriting and you wanna learn SEO copywriting, that book’s for you. If you’re an SEO copywriter and you
want to really brush-up on your skills, that book is for you as well.

Jonathan Crossfield
Jonathan Crossfield is a storyteller at JonathanCrossfield.
com. He’s also a content marketer, awarded columnist,
jobbing copywriter and angry blogger. Jonathan lives in
Sydney, Australia, with his wife and two cats, and he rants
and scribbles ghost stories.
@kimotawww.jonathancrossfield.com/
Other websites where you can find Jonathan Crossfield

How to blog
Transcript
How did you get started with blogging?
I started blogging when I first came to work in Netregistry as a way for me to learn online marketing and
business very very quickly. My attitude has always been practice is better than theory. So if I wanted to learn
about SEO, if I wanted to learn about Social Media, if I wanted to learn about how to build a website, I had to
get my hands dirty myself.
So in the evenings, outside of work and starting my own blog, I’m making a few mistakes and building
something so that when I did start writing for the magazine or advising people, I could talk from a place of
experience. I know this works because of that experience, not because I have read it in a book somewhere or
have been told that this is good.

How important is it to keep the topic of your blog
consistent?
This is something I’ve learnt and been battling with because a lot of people have
different opinions about this. Some people say a blog should be more free and
loose, so if you do go off topic and start discussing something else, that’s what a
blog is. It is supposed to be who you are as a person. Others of course say that
a blog is more successful if you have a clear focus because people will sign up
for the focus. If it’s a blog about small business they expect it to be about small
business every post otherwise they might unsubscribe. So there is a balancing
act and it is probably somewhere in the middle.
People will tolerate an out of topic post, for example if you are posting about
Movember. If they have got to know you through a series of posts, then they know
that’s just your personality coming through.
...there is a
balancing act
and it is probably
somewhere in
the middle.

What level of commitment did you need to put in to get results?
That’s the 64 million dollar question isn’t it? It does take a while. When people come to me and say, “can you
help me set up a blog for my business or my website or whatever the first thing I always point out to them is:
Persistence
Your first post out there, no one’s going to read it. Your second post out there, no one’s going to read it. In fact
your 10th, 20th, 50th post, you might have your Mum reading it if you are lucky. It really does take a long time for
an audience to build. It is really a pebble rolling down a hill slowly gathering moss. That’s the best way to look
at it. But if don’t start pushing that pebble down the hill it will never ever become the boulder at the bottom. That
analogy goes off the rails there but you know what I mean.

Post frequently
Even when the blog isn’t being successful, even
when you are the pebble, you have to treat it as if it
is a success story. You have to treat it with the same
passion and same amount of regular posting and
so on, even though you’re asking, “why am I posting
today, only two people read my last one”. You still
need to put the time in because eventually it will
break. I was posting three times a week, which I
found to be a good sort of average. It meant every
two to three days there would be a new post that
was up. I got into the habit of if I was home in the
evening and I knew I hadn’t posted for a couple
of days, I actually started feeling guilty. Why am I
watching a crappy TV show about people at the
airport borders getting done with a frog in their
underpants when I could be spending an hour on
the PC and putting up the next post?
Even when the blog isn’t being
successful, even when you are the
pebble, you have to treat it as if it is a
success story.

Links and Sharing
So, I got into the guilt mode which made me do a lot more and by design and a certain amount of luck,
because you never know when it will break, I actually had a couple of posts which became popular with other
people sharing them around. Then they would tell their friends and then their friends would come back and read
that post and they might subscribe and would start to grow from there.
About eight months after I had started I put out one story that was picked up big. It went huge. It’s got the
most comments I think the blog ever has had on one post. You scroll, scroll, scroll – no one ever reads those
comments. It got syndicated around a lot of other blogs which produced a huge number of links back in,
where people were either blogging their own comments about the post or reposting the post on their own blogs
with a link-back. So it it got a humongous amount of links. That humongous amount of links also makes your
website or blog far more visible, top of SEO rankings and certain keywords. Then suddenly I had to come up
with another post that all these people, who are now waiting to see what the comes next, will read. That’s when
the pressure really came on. I have done it once, now I’ve got to keep that going.

What tips can you recommend to help people fast track
getting their blog out there?
It does go hand in hand with your other social media strategies. I think a blog that
tries to exist by itself without also tapping into Facebook and Twitter and so on
is handicapping itself. But don’t wait until you’ve got that brilliant, golden piece
of content before you think, “I need to get this out through twitter”. Because your
Twitter following won’t be strong enough to be able to get it where it needs to go.
You need to be looking at these other strategies in tandem with your blog from day
one, for example, the various bookmarking sites or aggregation sites such as Dig
or StumbleUpon that allow people to vote for pages that they find are interesting.
A lot of blogs get tracked in through that way. But you will not be able to go into
that crowd at a moments notice and say “hey I’ve got this piece of content, vote
this up for me”, if they don’t already know who you are. So you need to be building
up those relationships as you are building up the blog so when you have a piece
of content you really think could go big, you already have the networks that can
help you to do so.

Liz Strauss
Liz Strauss is the founder of successful-blog.com and
SOBCon, the high-touch business summit. She is also a social
web and international business strategist, keynote speaker,
prolific blogger and one of the most influential non-celebrities
on the web.
@lizstrausswww.lizstrauss.com/
Other websites where you can find Liz Strauss
www.facebook.com/lizstraussfanwww.successful-blog.com
Chapter 4. Liz Strauss: Blogging and social
media Q & A

Blogging and social media Q & A
Bluewire Media had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Liz Strauss - CEO of SOBCon, brand strategist,
community builder and author of the widely acclaimed Successful Blog, while she was in San Francisco for the
Social Media Strategy Summit.
In the interview, Liz covers how she helps businesses become ‘irresistible’ to their clients and customers.
Transcript
I’m Liz Strauss. I’m a brand strategist and community builder, and I live inside your computer.
media Q & A

What’s your definition of ‘irresistible’ in business?
Irresistible has to do with two or three things:
“One is you have to take away all the things the customers don’t like. You have to enhance and then
build up the things the customers love, and then you put in something of extraordinary value that you
can do that customers would die for.”
What’s are ingredients of a successful
blog?
Well, one of the main ingredients of a successful
blog is a voice and great content that only you can
provide, because information is all over the Internet,
but there’s only one you.
...one of the main ingredients of a
successful blog is a voice...
media Q & A

I often talk about movie critics. If every movie critic just gave information, they would all be talking about the
same thing. But it’s their experience of the movie that they bring, that’s what actually makes them worth reading
and talking about. My husband follows this one movie critic who he thinks is outstanding, and believes what
he writes, because he knows if that movie critic gives a movie four stars, that movie sucks. It’s like that for you.
You’re the reason I read your blog.
A lot of people say, “Where do I find the time?”
It doesn’t have to take a lot of time. I was talking to someone on Twitter the other
day, and I was telling him that you only have to have one idea, and sharing that
with a person is really the start of a conversation. A friend of mine got up not
too long ago and looked at me and said, “I realise that successful people only
do two things - talk and move.” And there’s a blog post in that. If you blog your
experience with what you discover and who you know, it doesn’t have to be like
150 million words. It can be just brief: something you know that I didn’t know.
I realise
that successful
people only do
two things - talk
and move.
media Q & A

What are some of the ways business people can come up
with ideas for their blogs?
I think the most compelling and profound blogs are blogs where . . . I have a
saying that, the minute you put yourself in the centre of the universe, the universe
goes out of balance. So, if you take a point of view that’s on the edge and you look
at your customers and make it more about who your customers are, celebrate
them, write stories about your customers, remember your customers.
One of the fastest ways to make a blog post is to send a customer three questions
about them, and ask them to answer them. You’ve got a blog post right there. So
interviewing customers, writing articles about businesses that you admire, that are
doing great things, there are lots of ways to write blog posts that don’t take a long
time.
media Q & A

“People.”
People. It used to be that I would hold up this glass
of orange juice and tell you how wonderful this
glass of orange juice is. Now I hold up this glass of
orange juice and explain to you why this glass of
orange juice is going to connect you to someone
else. It’s not about the product anymore. It’s about
how the product will help you connect to other
people.
What do you see as the main difference between traditional marketing and
marketing in Web 2.0?
media Q & A

What are some of the ways that you market your own business?
Well, it’s like being fully self-expressed. When you’re really into your business and you really know what you’re
about, it’s like talking about what you’re doing. I just talk about what I do all the time. What I think is critically
important - one of the things I do a lot - is make sure that I’m talking about it online and offline. We do events
offline, we do events online, and I talk about it on Twitter. We talk about in on my blog. I talk to you about it. I’m
doing this. I live it.
Any tips on how to build your network before you need it?
It’s really interesting that some people, when they read someone, they get that person, so they get what that
person can offer them right now. But my experience is that most people I read end up being more valuable to
me three years from now. They represent an opportunity. A friend of mine, a young man who graduated from
college, was going for a job interview awhile back. I said, “Don’t look at this guy as the job. Look at this guy
as a whole network of opportunities because you might not fit that job.” And, sure enough, that night he text
me and he said, “You were so right. The guy said that I didn’t fit the job, but someone in the next department
had a job where I was perfect for it and I got that job. He walked me right over there.” So look at people as
opportunities to connect to their whole network.
media Q & A

What are your tips on promoting blogs?
Promote other people. Find people who are like you. First of all, your best
readers, your best customers are always going to be people who look and think
like you do, because we always think that other people who think like we do are
really, really smart. And people who don’t, we think, well, they’re are not so smart
or are being difficult, whatever. So look for people who are interested in what
you’re interested in, and be interested in them and promote them, because
you promote twelve other people, and those are twelve people who are going
to say you are a really nice guy. The best self-promotion is to promote other
The best self-
promotion is to
promote other
people.
What tips can you share for encouraging comments and generating dialogue?
You have to understand that if you want to have a conversational blog, you’re actually writing an entirely
different kind of genre. There’s a difference between presentation and conversation. Presentation is like what
we’re doing right now. Presentation is - I stand up and say a whole bunch of words and you listen. Conversation
is - I put out one idea, and then it’s your turn to talk.
media Q & A

So you blog your experience, and then if you’re going to put up a list, like don’t rack your brain to put every
possible thing. I call it, ‘be complete, but don’t be thorough’...
“Be complete, but don’t be thorough.”
... If you are trying to make a list, put in as many things as come to mind and then stop. Don’t like try and fill it all
the way up. Leave room for other people to come in and add to your list. I came up with these seven. How
many more can you add?
If you put a question at the end, I spend probably 30% of my time on the title and 30% of my time on the
question at the end. I make it a question that people actually want to answer. It’s not like, “What do you think?”
They answer like, whatever they want. But ask a question that you can answer and that you would want to
answer if you were out there. A lot of people don’t do that.
Then incorporate your experience. Don’t just like tie it all up in a bow either. If you write something that’s like a
perfectly completed painting...
media Q & A

Have you ever been to a hotel that has a jigsaw puzzle laying out in the reception area - the lobby area - that’s
not done? It sort of invites you to put a piece in it. But if the puzzle was done, you couldn’t add anything. The
best you can do is go, “Oh, what a pretty puzzle.” “Great blog post”. So leave room for people to come in
and add something and then ask them to.
Then one of the other things that people often don’t do is, when somebody does leave a comment, they
don’t answer. Or if they do answer, they say, “Yeah, I agree with you”. But you could actually encourage
conversation by saying, “Yeah, that’s a really good point, so what do you think?” Ask another question, right
then and there to keep it going.
media Q & A

What are the most common fears about getting into social media?
One is the one about time, which is . . . I’m not sure it’s really valid. There are lots of ways. Content is another
one. Once you get into the habit of looking around, everything is something to write about. I usually help them
build out a calendar. On Monday, let’s be motivational, On Tuesday, let’s do an interview. On Wednesday, let’s
pre-select some other things from the web.
How often do I blog? As often as you want. But let’s be regular about it so people know when to expect your
stuff.
A fear of the negative comments, which if you invite people, when you first start blogging, to be a part of your
blog, like guest bloggers, not famous guest bloggers, just people at your level, they own it. They often feel like
they own it. Then they help protect it. So when somebody comes along and tries to tear something down, they
protect it for you. So I call that, ‘Raise a barn. Don’t build a Colosseum.‘
media Q & A

“Raise a barn. Don’t build a Colosseum.”
A lot of people try and build up Facebook and then invite people. Just invite people from the very beginning to
be a part of the blog, and it’ll be a more friendly place.
Who are some of the bloggers that you follow and think are irresistible?
That’s my most least favourite question. I just read so, so many. I used to love Kathy Sierra’s blog when she
still wrote it. I, of course, read my friend Chris Brogan’s blog. I read Seth’s blog. I still read Nina’s blog every
now and then. I like reading blogs about blogging, and what’s kind of out there. I like touching on Jason Falls’
blog and Dave’s, Shelly Kramer’s blog and my partner’s Terry Starbucker’s blog. I’m all over the place as
you can see when you read my cafe post every Friday.
I like blogging.
media Q & A

Valerie Khoo
Valerie Khoo is the author of Power Stories and founder of the
Australian Writers’ Centre; also and investor, author, speaker,
mentor, traveller and people-watcher. Valerie is an avid media
nut and self-confessed technophile. Loves her pets.
@valeriekhoowww.valeriekhoo.com/
Other websites where you can find Valerie Khoo
www.facebook.com/valeriekhoowww.powerstoriesbook.com
Chapter 5. Valerie Khoo: Why it is important to
tell stories

Why it is important to tell stories
online
Adam Franklin got the chance to interview Valerie about why it is important to tell stories in the online world.
Transcript
Adam Franklin: Hi there it’s Adam Franklin and I’m here with Valerie Khoo, the author of ‘Power Stories’.
Thanks for joining us Valerie.
Valerie Khoo: Glad to be here.
tell stories

Adam Franklin: Valerie’s taught us this morning about how to write business
book. So thank you, it’s very valuable. Now, just with regards to the book, I’ve got
a question: the book is called ‘Power Stories’, and I’m wondering why it’s important
to be telling stories in the online world.
Valerie Khoo: I think it’s so important to be telling stories in the online world
because when it’s online, it’s there to stay. Therefore, it so much more easily
shareable. So your stories actually live on and are able to be spread far more
easily than simply if you’re just talking to me like this.
Adam Franklin: Okay. And what’s your favourite way to tell stories online?
Valerie Khoo: I think that when you’re telling stories online, you need to find the
format that is going to suit you, that’s going to fit your personality, your timetable,
and what really resonates with you. For me, I love blogging, and I do some video
as well. But I do communicate most of my stories through blogging. But, of course,
that’s not necessarily going to suit everyone. You should find the format that’s
going to be best for you.
...when it’s
online, it’s there
to stay.
tell stories

Adam Franklin: Okay. Where can people go and
read your blog, Valerie?
Valerie Khoo: valeriekhoo.com.
Adam Franklin: How about the book, where can
they find that?
Valerie Khoo: powerstoriesbook.com
Adam Franklin: Awesome. Thanks so much,
Valerie.
...when you’re telling stories online,
you need to find the format that is going
to suit you...
tell stories

You can follow and connect with all of the people in this e-book on Twitter:
@Toby_Jenkins
Toby Jenkins
Bluewire Media
CEO & Co-founder
@ProBlogger
Darren Rowse
ProBlogger
Founder
@Franklin_Adam
Adam Franklin
Bluewire Media
Marketing Manager &
Co-founder
@DivineWrite
Glenn Murray
Divine Write
Copywriter
Connect With The Bloggers
Feel free to contact us at our e-mails:
adam.franklin@bluewiremedia.com.au
toby.jenkins@bluewiremedia.com.au

@LizStrauss
Liz Strauss
Successful-Blog.com
Founder
@ValerieKhoo
Valerie Khoo
Australian
Writers’Centre
Founder
@kimota
Jonathan Crossfield
Jonathan Crossfield.com
Writer & Marketer

Recommended Reading
Products
If you'd like to explore the ideas in this e-book even further, here are the products that these bloggers have
available.
31 Days to Build a Better
Blog
by Darren Rowse
The Copywriting Scorecard for
Bloggers
by Darren Rowse & Glenn Murray
SEO Secrets
by Glenn Murray
SEO Copywriting
by Glenn Murray

DIY Web Strategy Toolkit
by Adam Franklin &
Toby Jenkins
The Secret to Writing a Success-
ful and Outstanding Blog
by Liz Strauss
Products
ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging
for Your Business
by Mark Hayward
based on Darren Rowse
Power Stories
by Valerie Khoo

More of our free tools
Social Media
Planning Template
Social Media
Guidelines Template
Editorial Calendar
Template
Web Strategy
Planning Template
Web Strategy
Secrets e-book
Inbound Marketing
for Business

Enjoy applying the knowledge you have gained from the shared
experience of these diverse experts.
Thank You!

Connect With Us
Bluewire Media
www.bluewiremedia.com.au
Bluewire Media helps implement and embed an Inbound
Marketing System in your business. Clients are usually
successful businesses that want help building their web
marketing function in order to attract more leads, more
customers and more revenue.
If you would like a hand with building your web marketing function,
please get in touch with Bluewire Media via
1300 258 394 (1300 BLUEWIRE) or
www.bluewiremedia.com.au

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