Samples of Business Articles I've written for clients

business article & blog post samples
Samples of Business Articles I've written for clients 
1. BETTER DIGITAL CONTENT
Digital content is essential to your company’s online visibility. However, writing online marketing copy is a bit different than composition 101. Let’s touch on the basics of good online marketing content.
Be Original

First, write original content only. It’s fine to be inspired, but please don’t copy and paste other’s work. Your customers are looking for originality. Also, plagiarism can get you in trouble with Google and many of the social media sites. After your write what you generally want to say, you need to tailor it to the best fit for each of the different social networks, like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or Google Plus. For Twitter use pictures and hashtags, for Google Plus, post it to circles and communities. For Facebook use a strong headline with a link, an image, or a video. On Linkedin, you want your headlines clear and strong rather than funny or clever.

Compelling Headlines

No matter where you post your content, headlines are a big deal. I have good news and bad news about headers. The good news first, a lot of people will read your header. The bad news is most of them won’t read your content. The headline is your only way to get them to read the content. That’s how important the header is. Its purpose is to get the viewer to read the first line of your actual content. It’s a good idea to write five to ten headlines, then choose the best one.

Some things that work well in headlines are:

· Numbers

· Stimulating Adjectives (Incredible, Essential, Absolute.

· Trigger Words, Especially Why And How

· Tell Them What Your Going To Teach Them Or Tell Them Or Do For Them

Audience

You need to know your target audience. Who are you writing this for? Think about what is it you want to do for them. Also, think of how you want them to feel. And most importantly, think of your call to action, what you want your readers to do?

Keywords

SEO keywords have a big impact on your readers as well as search engine crawlers, so use them. Google Adwords keyword tool and semrush are great places to research SEO keywords and focus on them in your writing. However, make sure you don’t stuff your content with them. Only use keywords where it’s logical and natural to do so. Some main areas to include keywords are the title, headings, and subheadings, your first sentence, and your final paragraph.

Tone

Your web content represents you and your company, so keep your writing clear, error-free. You want to keep it conversational like you are having a real conversation with them. That also means avoiding jargon and acronyms and using simple yet strong words over big ones. Also keep them engaged by using the words we, your, you. Concentrate on filling your writing with powerful, exciting verbs over adjectives and adverbs. Keep the reader happy by always looking for a positive message or angle to your writing.

Keep It Short

When reading online, people like it fast and easy. That means short. Keep is under 1000 words and 300 – 500 words usually works best. Also make it easy to read by breaking your content up into chunks, bullet lists, short paragraphs, as well as headings and subheadings.

My final advice in writing the best digital content is check your spelling and grammar. And, definitely, have someone proofread your work before you post it. 

2. GET MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS

Grow your business by increasing your followers on Twitter. Twitter is a fantastic marketing tool, especially for small companies and entrepreneurs. But how do you get more followers?

Get Set For Success 

Revamp your Twitter bio. Make sure it’s the best it can be. Describe who you are and what you do in a thought provoking, but real way. Use a photo of yourself, not your logo. List the largest local city as your location. As a type of teaser, pin one of the most compelling tweets you’ve ever sent to the top of your stream. Upload your email list to Twitter and follow them, most will follow you back. Install the Twitter application on LinkedIn, and find and follow your connections on Twitter. Ask your employees to follow you on twitter. Follow excerpts and people with a lot of followers. Engage in Twitter chats #blogchat, #runchat, #mediachat, #tchat.

Promote

Insert a tweet button next to each post on your blog. Promote your Twitter account on your newsletter, signs, business cards, brochures, your website and all your other social media sites. Insert a Twitter follow button on your website and on your newsletter. Add your Twitter handle to your email signature.

Schedule

Schedule your tweets with services like Hootsuite or TweetDeck. And schedule older tweets as well, resend them. Tweet in the afternoon, Twitter is at its peak between 1 pm and 3 pm. Wednesday through Sunday are the best days to tweet. You Get 17% more click on your tweets by tweeting on the weekend. By simply Including images you can get 18% more people to click on your tweets. Offer coupons in your tweets, regularly, 94% of Twitters follow companies that give discounts and coupons.

Be Professional

Always reply positively and promptly to questions, comments or complaints about your business. Keep in mind this is engagement marketing, it’s not about what your customers can do for you, it’s what you can do for your customers. For every promotional tweet you send, send twenty non-promotional ones. Retweet other people’s tweets, and also include questions in those retweets for more engagement and visibility. Write a blog post about a company that isn’t a competitor of yours but has similar customers and tweet it, asking for a retweet. They probably will retweet it to their followers and some of those people will follow you as well. Search keywords with hashtags that relate to your type of business and reply to those tweets, by engaging with them and following them, you’ll get noticed and get more followers. Use links in all your tweets. Use RT (retweet) or to be more polite ask, “Please retreat”. One tweet last basically eighteen minutes so to reach the most people send the tweet, with just slight changes, throughout the day, but do not tweet in bursts. Use hashtags in your tweets for keywords but never more than three in one tweet. Mention your location – with a hashtag…like I’m in humid, happening #Houston TX.

Great Content

The most important way to increase your following is tweet interesting, relevant content regularly. People like funny, inspiration, and motivational quotes, so tweet them. Post tweets that tell a story about yourself or your business.

Tweet interesting articles you just read especially if it’s about your type of business. Create anticipation and excitement with your tweets. Keep your tweets positive and stay away from your personal opinion on religion, politics, and sports. 

Twitter is a powerful tool and it’s free. Twitter connects you to customers in real time and allows you to build long-lasting relationships with them. Twitter is brilliant for branding and a great way to launch new products or services. It’s a fantastic place to boost sales with coupons and discounts. In addition, it’s valuable for keeping up to speed, getting feedback and keeping an eye on the competition. So start tweeting and following.

3. EMAIL MARKETING: NEWSLETTERS

One of the most important aspects of digital marketing and email marketing is your newsletter. It’s an essential key to your branding. The newsletter puts your name and your products or services in front of customers or prospects every month, so they think of you whenever they need those products or services. It is an essential key to your branding. Keep branding in mind when you create your email. Use your logo and the same colors you use on your website and your blog. Including a photo of yourself is a great idea as well. Send the newsletter from an email address with your company name or your name so the subscribers will recognize who the email is from.

More Than Monthly

Most newsletters go out every month, but consider the advantage of using your email list a little more often. Send news, updates or holiday greetings in addition to the newsletter. Don’t send too many though. The best number is two to three emails a month, with one of those being your newsletter. Nail down one date each month to send the newsletter and a different date for your news flash of updates or other additional information.

Focus

Your newsletter should target your business goals, such as increasing leads, closing more sales, retaining customers, and so on. Try to focus on one specific topic each email to avoid a crowded, random, cluttered feel. Keep it simple, aim for one call of action. Focus each newsletter on one chief thing you want the subscribers to do. Be concise, include just enough information to entice them to click to learn more. Keep some white spaces for that organized, none cluttered, look.

Describe

On your subscription landing page that has the link for subscribing to the newsletter, put a specific description of how often they’ll get the newsletter and what’s included in it. It’s a good idea to include a preview link of the newsletter for potential subscribers. This way your subscribers know exactly what to expect from you each month.

Exciting Subject Lines

Create a short, punchy subject line. An enticing subject line will greatly improve your open rate. Instead of using the same subject line each month, get creative with it. To ensure that it passes spam filters, don’t use all caps or words like free or limited time, and don’t add any dollar signs or exclamation marks. Clarity is the key, and get it down to 50 characters or less. Also, make certain that whatever your subject line promises is actually in the newsletter.

Worthy Content

Keep your newsletter interesting, filled with value-based content, not just products or services. Add an article or two that has something to do with your products but is educational or entertaining such as a fun fact or a handy tip. For example, if you sell cleaning products, include a top ten list of the hardest things to clean or a handy Eloise type cleaning tip. If you sell green products, simply add articles about the environment in general. What you are going for is 10% promotional content with the rest, 90%, fun or informative.

Test It

Experiment, try out and test different things on your newsletter to see what works best for your company. See if funny subject lines work well or try different tones of colors like big and bright or muted business tones. Trying switching from very few images to lots of them. See what works best for your company.

A monthly newsletter is vital to digital marketing and branding. It brings more traffic to your website, boosts your social media following, and keeps your customers connected. It is also one of the fastest, easiest ways to connect interested customers with a point of sale. 

4. TRAITS OF A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR

You remember that old nursery rhyme, what are little boys made of? Rats and Snails and Puppy dog tails. And what are little girls made of? Sugar and Spice and everything nice. That’s right. But what are successful entrepreneurs are made of?  

Vision 

Entrepreneurs imagine or think of something new and they fully believe their idea will work. Vision puts you several steps ahead of everyone else. Where other people see problems entrepreneur see opportunities – they step it up and step up to the plate. Entrepreneurs are often called crazy because they believe in something others don’t understand. Listen to your intuition. Believe in your ideas and see them through. Caterina Fake is a great example, she followed her intuition and vision about online users interacting on the internet. In 2004 she co-founded Ludicorp which created Flickr and Yahoo acquired it in 2005 for an estimated $35 million. She continued to believe in her vision. Caterina Fake stayed focused on your goals and focused on her next step. And in 2008 she founded another startup called Hunch which was acquired by eBay in 2011 for approximately $80 million.

Passion

Being an entrepreneur is not like working a 9 to 5 job, you’ll worker harder than you ever have before and you have to handle everything and anything that arises. If you pursue your entrepreneur choice with passion, that will give you the tenacity and drive you need. Successful entrepreneur are driven, they’re undeterred, they are able to overcome difficult obstacles by simply not giving up. As they say – put your big girl panties on and deal with it.

A good example of someone who utilized their passion and put on their big girl dress, big girl heels, and big girl wig is Robert Suchan, known as the Tupperware Drag Queen. He combined his passion for acting with selling Tupperware. As the character he created, Aunt Barbara, he entertains his buyers with hilarious comedy shticks. One example is the cheese grater - "I tell them: 'I live alone. I get fearful of home invasions. If someone is there, I'll reach for my cheese grater and say, 'I'll grate your freaking face off. Then I'll call 911 and say there's a man with a bloody face outside and I collected most of his DNA.'" His passion for acting gave him the drive to rise to the top of the Tupperware sales ranks. 

Rule breaking

Entrepreneurs take the risk needed and go around the traditional ways of doing things. Successful entrepreneurs are willing to make mistakes. They push through doubts and fears because they believe in their idea or product and that belief spurs positive actions.

The founder of the American beauty dynasty Estee Lauder is a great example of an entrepreneur who broke the rules. Her uncle made his own skin care products in a lab he set up in the stable behind Estee’s family home. As a young girl, she sold the homemade beauty creams to her friends at High School. After she married, she cooked up her uncle’s creams in her kitchen and gave free demonstrations and makeovers anywhere she could—hotels, the subway, even in beauty shops as the women sat under the hairdryers.

Then she made the controversial move of fabricating a biography that represented her as an elegant high-society lady so she could gain social contacts with the highest of the upper class. She gave away samples sizes of her products to them to show that those who only use the best used her products.

In 1946 when she and her husband formed Estee Lauder Inc., she decided to sell her products exclusively through upscale department stores. In 1948, a buyer at Saks placed the first order and in two days, Saks sold out. She made sale visits to every fine department store in the United States to convince them to carry Estee Lauder products. Lauder then created an innovative promotional technique, free gift with purchase, that became an industry standard. Then she launched her first fragrance-Youth Dew, a bath oil that doubled as a perfume and she priced it low, $8.50, making it an affordable luxury for most women. By the mid-1950s, Estee Lauder was a multimillion-dollar business. She continued to take risks that paid off, introducing male toiletries under the Aramis brand name and the first line of fashion-oriented, allergy-tested cosmetics, Clinique. Estee Lauder went worldwide as Harrod's of London and Paris' Galleries Lafayette began to carry her products and by the mid-1970s, Estee Lauder items were sold in more than 70 countries.

With a combination of knowledge of her products and risk-taking, rule-breaking activities, she defied conventional wisdom and by 1999, Estee Lauder products accounted for close to 50 percent of all retail beauty items sold in the U. S.

Flexibility

Successful entrepreneurs are adaptive and flexible So much can change from the inception of an idea to the final product. When faced with unforeseen issues or changes in the marketplace you have to accept that something isn’t working. You have to be willing to pivot—to try a new approach. 

A good example is Theresa Fette's company focuses on "self-directed" IRAs, helping about 30,000 clients look into alternative investments to boost their retirement funds. She created Provident Trust Group to revive a stagnant financial world. By focusing on the technology facilitating Provident’s unique self-directed services, she quickly increased the company’s client database. The oldest self-directed IRA Company took 30 years to obtain 60,000 clients but Fette reached 30,000 in just four years. Fette tries to stay flexible, ready for any unforeseen glitches reality throws her way. She adapts as needed, always willing to revise and rework concepts.

As you can see each example of an entrepreneur can be interchanged with one of the other traits. Each of the four have all four traits of a successful entrepreneur. What are successful entrepreneurs made of? Vision, Passion, Rule Breaking and Flexibility are the traits that make a good entrepreneur. If you have these four traits then you have a head start on the path to success. Of course adding a little everything nice to the mix doesn’t hurt.

5. MILLENNIALS HAVE A LOT TO OFFER & CEO'S/ PRESIDENTS DIVERSE IN BUSINESS KNOW IT. 

Millennials today make up most of the labor force (one in three American employees). Consequently, corporate leaders need to start today to develop the leaders of tomorrow are their companies won’t have much of a future. Most upper executives reached mid-management positions by their mid-thirties, which fast-tracked them to C-level roles later in their career. These same top leaders must, in turn, develop the talent of millennials, who possess the ability but not the experience. Engage senior leaders to align millennial talent with a shared cohesive vision and direction for your organization.

Millennials Want Mentoring 

Millennials would rather be leaders than followers. They find the opportunity to learn from a mentor enticing. By teaming upper management with millennials in ‘reverse mentoring’ you offer the younger generation career path guidance directly from senior executives. They gain a precious peek into the world of top-level management. Plus the firm gets a chance to transfer corporate knowledge to their younger talent.

This generation is eager for training. Consider assigning projects to millennials that allow them to network. Another thing is cross-training on a quarterly basis. Invite professors or business coaches for presentations on various types of management or leadership fundamentals. This will help employees understand the company’s strategic course and its organizational issues.

In addition to career development, you need to tap into this generation's strengths. For that, you must encompass the way millennials engage, grow and learn. You need to work with them and not discourage them. As the president of the Spring Klein Chamber of Commerce, I cater to young entrepreneurs in the area. Half of our board is made up of millennials. I encourage them to bring their ideas to the table. 

Listening to millennials and taking their ideas seriously is the best way to motivate and retain them. Create activities and venues where they can voice their ideas and they’ll propose inspired solutions to issues. Brainstorming meetings allow them to get to know other employees and gain visibility. Give your millennial employees varied responsibilities, propose projects that include a learning component. This generation works harder when challenged.  

Outdated, Rigid Work Styles Hold Them Back

The millennials’ enthusiasm will have a positive influence on your firm. Their connection with social media along with their adaptation to the latest technology is key to your organization’s future. This will prove vital to your company’s development as you look for new, innovative ideas. Keep in mind, they were raised in a digital world and communicate electronically…rather than face-to-face. Relying on mobile platforms: phones, tablets, laptops for work and projects…they collaborate in open gathering spaces and often work from home.

Personal time is important to them. Millennials pursue a balanced life and flexibility. With a focus on results not hours, they don’t have a clocking in and out work style…they might work from home or a coffee house. Set deadlines for them and if they complete their work to your standards, they are finished for the day.

Offer Rapid Progression

Career advancement traditionally depended on seniority, but millennials value results over tenure. Create a strategic plan that illustrates what their future looks like at your firm. Let high achievers, who have the potential to rise up the ranks quickly, do so. Otherwise, they’ll get frustrated.

One reason millennials want to rush up the career ladder is compensation because they begin work with an average debt of $20,000 in student loans. Also, they don’t think they’ll ever see a pension or social security check, so they expect they’ll have to create their own financial independence in retirement. Basically, this generation merely wants to get paid what they’re worth. If you can’t afford raises, offer them more vacation time and flexibility—a day off for a job well done goes a long way with millennials. They are also the most educated generation in history and they are continuous learners, so offering tuition reimbursement programs will increase retention rates.

A Stimulating Career 

Millennials want to contribute something to the world and they have a passion for international settings. Most want at least one overseas assignment during their career. They also want to be proud of their employer’s corporate values. They want to work for a company that strives to improve its community. This generation looks for employers with good environmental and social records, and many will leave a company if they find the firm lacks values.

Frequent Feedback

Owning to social media, millennials like instant feedback. A yearly review isn't enough for them. They require frequent, honest feedback in real time. They expect praise for a job well done. Regularly highlight their positive contributions.

Set well-defined targets for millennials and touch base with them often. A transparent management system, detailing how performance is rewarded gives them a feeling of value, and the motivation to work hard. Millennials prefer open communication, so have an open door policy and make yourself accessible. When employees offer constructive criticism, invite them to present a business solution and give it serious consideration.

The Latest Technology

Millennials assume the technology that empowers their personal lives will drive communication and innovation in the workplace. Update your IT plan and provide state of the art technology. However, this generation is more effective at work when they also have access to their own personal technical devices.

Diversity

The millennial workforce is composed of more minorities and women than any other generation. Consequently, they bring in fresh ideas and contrasting perspectives. Workplace diversity is important to millennials and it helps eliminate challenges stemming from gender and diversity gaps that currently effect many corporations.

Millennials are an asset as they are the future leaders. But their greatest resource is previous generations who went through the same things they are facing: a bad economy and a tightening job market. And the older generation can learn from the younger one as well. Both offer attributes that complement each other. This is important, as the baby boomers leaving the work force will be replaced by the millennials. So now is the time to prepare for that future. As a CEO I have been a huge leader in understanding the market and changing to help support future leaders. Loving change is one of my best qualities when others hate change.

6. HOW AI WILL CHANGE YOUR JOB

Artificial Intelligence will transform our work and our world. Major changes have already taken place. Manufacturers rely more and more on AI technologies. Software and computers now handle numerous clerical tasks that people use to do. Robotics and computers are replacing workers who perform backbreaking jobs or those with repetitive tasks. In the next five years, Artificial Intelligence will immensely impact our working lives. Let’s look at what your workplace will be like between now and the next five years.

Let’s start at the beginning— recruitment. A position in your company is open but with AI, the tasks of screening, sourcing and assessing applicants will be automated, so you can evaluate the candidates’ qualifications and skills faster and more precisely, removing the possible element of human bias. Also, the applicant’s records will automatically update through AI profiling. And, since you are doing semantic searches instead of old-fashioned keyboard ones, you’ll discover candidates you wouldn’t have found before. You’ll probably be using a standardized, transportable, universal resume profile. You will also use biometrics, to conform applications and verify the candidates’ identities. Candidates will even initiate a background check using their fingerprint upon submitting their application to you.

If you are a recruiter these changes will give you time to focus on impactful recurring projects instead of mostly filling requirements. However, if you are a hiring manager you’ll now be able to develop your own pool of qualified targeted applicants. Also, social search technology will keep that pipeline fresh and full almost automatically. So now you’re role will be more of an end user in the recruitment process.

We are at the next stage of employment, let’s say you were the applicant and you have now been hired. You head to work for your first day on the job. Your commute will be drastically changed with driverless automobiles. Instead of being stuck behind the wheel, you’ll relax, sitting at a table in your car, working, watching the morning news or even working out in an individual seat that doubles as a stationary bicycle. Most people will use car sharing and AI systems will handle the route planning, making sure everyone in the carpool gets where they need to go safely and efficiently. Since the days of car crashes will be over, so will the days of auto insurance companies and body shops and other car accident related businesses. 

Now you’ve arrived at work, it’s your first day, time for employee on-boarding. The employer has used AI to build a comprehensive company knowledge graph, so on-boarding and orientation will be tailored to you, and much more efficient. For instance, you won’t read through any physical manuals, user guides, policy documents or on-boarding teams. An AI program will tell you everything you need to know. On the first day on the job, you’ll have the advantage of the knowledge graph the AI compiled. You’ll not only be able to fully understand the duties of your new position,  you’ll have information that use to take weeks to know. An on-boarding AI will answer your questions on whom you should contact for different things, new changes and what meetings they were discussed in, the dates of upcoming meetings, as well as how the previous employee handled your job and what they spent most of their time working on. In fact, before that person left, the AI probably had them review and update any of the main documents that you’ll need.

AI will determine where your work area will be and what tasks and teams you’ll be assigned to. AI will help your manager chose which important projects you are best suited for based on your greatest strengths.

Every day you come into the office, an AI receptionist will consider the project you are assigned and your work style to book your workspace, making sure everyone has a spot in the office. Also, the office will be a casual open area so you and your co-workers can share what you are working on. They’ll be places for Teams to work on projects as well as smaller booths when you need a quiet area to work. You’ll probably work at a standing booth to dictate your emails and documents. There won’t be any keyboards in the office, no typing, you and everyone else there will use speech recognition programs. AI will then create your documents, making any revisions needed to ensure they are well written with correct spelling and grammar. The

AI system will also index your documents, folders, and files and include emails, proposals and anything you share with colleagues including chat and corporate messaging.

Now, you have to attend a meeting at work. It will be conducted using virtual reality in a small office space that is easily re-configurable. AI will record, transcribe, and archive the meeting. If you are assigned or volunteer for a certain task during the meeting, AI will record and track the task to completion then add a record of the outcome to the transcription of that meeting.

Let say you manage this employee and their co-workers, you’ll no longer use data like revenues, app downloads, and payroll information to get a feel of what’s happening in the company. AI-generated knowledge graphs will provide you with an updated, detailed depiction of the company. You’ll know what issues and topics are trending, what risks people are considering, and who is networking. You will be able to see who is driving results, who made key decisions, and who took the initiative to get things done. You will use this accurate information to create performance reviews, bonuses, and promotions. So, subjective criteria, company politics, and unconscious bias will no longer play a role in accessing your employees’ performances. 

As a manager, customer service and social media will still be very important to you but bots will handle them. Bots will get smarter with more human interaction and learn which information individuals really want and when they prefer to receive it. So chatbots will quickly understand a customer’s request or issue rather than drag them through a series of selection menus. Your customers will read and receive information, ask technical questions and even make purchases from one chatbot.

If your company owns it’s own building or factory and pays the utilities, machine learning will save the company money on cooling, heating, and power expenses. With custom-built servers and more efficient cooling systems, your building will get more power from the same amount of input at power plants, reducing your energy and water usage.

Now and in the next five years, you will see swift, significant advances in AI technology in the workplace. Remember in school when you learned about the huge effect the industrial revolution had on work, society, and lifestyles? Well, that was nothing compared to the effect the AI revolution will have on us. AI will affect more than our jobs, it will change our entire lifestyles. Don’t let it take you by surprise, keep up to date with the latest innovations. Evaluate your job and beef up your skills and value in the areas of work that an AI won’t be taking over anytime soon. Get ready for the transition, AI is here and it’s getting smarter everyday.