Writer Guidelines
for Our Entrepreneur Blog
Thanks for your interest in writing for our blog readers of
Entrepreneurs, Founders, Small Business Owners
We only accept and publish high-quality original blog content, so be sure to review and follow our writer’s guidelines in its entirety prior to submitting your draft. We will not only publish your blog article, but we also promote it, again and again, each month to our social media audiences and repurpose some as video episodes on YouTube.
Guidelines:
1. WRITE FOR OUR AUDIENCE
Established business owners typically generating 1M-10M in annual sales … entrepreneurs, service-based business owners and solopreneurs.
Writing for our audience means USING EXAMPLES for the following popular industries we serve:
– B2B (Brokers, SaaS, Marketing Agencies, Staffing Agencies, etc)
– B2C (Chiropractors, Home Remodeling businesses, Builders, Flooring…)
– Experts (CPA Firms, Law Firms, Naturopathic Doctor Clinics, etc)
The posts that perform best on our blog will include…
– How to’s … case studies…tactic driven…shared strategies
– Data backing all claims
– Insert screenshots/images/illustrations that support the points being made (these most commonly come from with analytics programs, engagement data, etc — not stock imagery.)
The important thing is that the post includes real actionable specifics that the reader can implement in their business.
2. WRITE ON BUSINESS GROWTH RELATED TOPICS
Every post we publish will teach our readers to do at least one of the following:
– Attract More Clients
– Boost Productivity
– Create High Performing Teams
– Develop a Success Mindset
3. WRITE IN OUR VOICE
The voice and tone in our blog articles need to be written in simple everyday conversational English. We do NOT want our blogs to read like an academic essay.
I suggest taking a scroll through some of our recent content if you need to familiarize yourself with the type of topics we cover and writing style.
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/5-steps-for-small-business-to-stand-out/
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/7-reasons-your-website-is-leaking-leads/
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/blog/recruiting-tips-find-top-talent/
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/blog/overcoming-employee-resistance-to-change-part-2/
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/are-your-thoughts-boosting-or-killing-your-sales/
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/blog/business-growth-by-leadership-part1/
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/driving-business-through-strong-leadership/
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/how-to-motivate-sales-force/
4. WRITE ORIGINAL 800-2,500 WORD SEO OPTIMIZED CONTENT
We only publish original content that has not been published anywhere else. Writers must also include the long-tail keywords in the title and throughout the blog content.
In addition to submitting the blog article writers must also include a well-written meta description that entices the reader to click on the blog.
You can choose a working title from our editorial calendar.
We have pre-selected themes/topics each month depending on the campaign we are launching. You can email your draft to Yoon (at) ParamountBusinessCoach.com.
5. WRITE 5-12 ACTIONABLE TIPS
Make sure the tips you write about in the article are clear, specific, and easy for readers to implement. Also, be sure to number your tips. Edit your own work to make sure the tips you share are insightful and CONGRUENT with the title of the promise of the article.
6. WRITE AN ATTENTION-GRABBING OPENING
No one will read the rest of the article to even see and click the links contained if you don’t grab their interest from the beginning. Therefore, it’s critical that you spend the time to work on writing a clear, compelling hook and promise opening.
1. OPENING HOOK – What are the specific symptoms this article is addressing? What is the promise of the article? What will they be able to take action on? What will they know when they’re done reading?
2. CLOSING – Why should they take action on what you just shared? What’s at stake if they don’t? What can change for them personally if they do take the action steps in the article?
3. ENGAGEMENT QUESTION – Be sure to end the article with a short question readers can answer quickly and easily.
7. AVOID STATING THE OBVIOUS
Our readers are mostly established, experienced, intelligent business owners, so avoid writing tips that are glaringly obvious.
8. INTEGRATE STORIES & EMOTIONS
The blogs that resonate the most with readers will always be ones that hit on the emotions they are feeling as well as giving them highly useful and actionable tips they can implement right away in their businesses.
In order to achieve that you’ll need to understand who is our customer avatar. Below are three key types of people who represent our audience
Christina the Success Coach ($175K) 48, female, married, 2 kids (ages 14, 17), lives in Denver, Colorado
Christina works out of her home office running her business primarily alone with the help of a part time virtual assistant.
Goals
> Christina wants a predictable system to attract a steady flow of higher level clients.
> Christina wants to add additional revenue streams that are leveraged, so she’s no longer trading time for money to grow her business.
Values
Christina is committed to professional development, providing value for her clients, she values her family which is why she wants to create a freedom business.
Challenges
Christina is great at what she does. She loves helping her clients reach higher levels of success, but Sheryl struggles with marketing her business. She feels constrained that she doesn’t have the amount of time and money to do the kind of marketing non solopreneurs have the capacity to do. The challenge is not knowing what marketing strategy will work for her with a small budget of 1 hour a day and less than $500 a month marketing budget.
Pain Points – Fears
FEAR of not achieving her personal greatness – don’t want to feel like an average person
FEAR of not being able to put her kids through college
Their Target Buyer
Other Coaches, Consultants, Speakers, Authors, Experts, Online Entrepreneurs
Dan, the Workaholic CEO ($3M) 36 yrs old, male, married, 3 kids (ages 2, 4, 7) lives in Philadelphia, PA
Dan started his security business 11 years ago and grew it to 3M primarily through deals he prospected and closed himself.
Goals
> Dan wants to find a sales manager he doesn’t have to manage who can recruit, train and manage a high performing sales team — that includes a more direct path for effective lead generation.
> Dan wants to shave 10 hours off his work week, so he can be at home more with his wife and 3 little girls.
Values
Dan is committed to building his reputation as the leader in his industry.
Challenges
Dan has so much knowledge as a security expert which is why he has been so successful selling multi million dollar contracts using his consultative selling approach, but Dan doesn’t know how to transfer his knowledge to his sales team, so he ends up needing to come close the deals for them.
Dan doesn’t enjoy managing his sales team. He just wants them to get their job done and build their book of business.
Dan frequently cancels his 1-1 sales team meetings when he is overwhelmed with competing priorities like delivering the work.
Dan doesn’t have a lead gen system his sales team can learn, so his team ends up wasting a lot of time trying old school methods that no longer work.
Pain Points Fears
FEAR that his marriage and family life will suffer and worsen if he doesn’t figure out a way to systematize his business growth and operations, so he can work less.
FEAR if he will not be able to be a good provider for his family.
Their Target Buyer
Colleges, Universities, Private Schools
Bill the Builder ($8M) 58 yrs old, male, married, 3 kids (ages 17, 22, 26), lives in NJ
Bill started this business 30 years ago. He lives 10 min. from his office and has a crew of 10-14 + 1 GM + 1 office staff. His wife often helps in office.
Goals
> Bill wants to have a well trained team and GM, so the business can continue to grow without him.
> Bill wants to retire soon, but still have revenue from the business.
Values
Bill believes in investing in his people. He values being respected as the leader in his industry. He values delivering consistent high quality work.
Challenges
Bill is old school, so his challenge is online marketing, social media and technology is all new to him and he knows it will be a huge learning curve.
Bill knows his business needs to adopt current approaches t marketing, but he doesn’t know who to trust. He has already been burned hiring marketing agencies in the past who took $100K with no real ROI to show for it.
Pain Points Fears
FEAR that his business will go under if he’s not the one running it.
FEAR that he will end up working same intense schedule in the next 5-10 yrs when he really wants to slow down, enjoy the fruits of his 30 yrs labor and retire.
9. SUBMIT USING CLEAN FORMATTING
You can review examples of clean formatting here:
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/blog/are-your-thoughts-boosting-or-killing-your-sales/
– http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/blog/fill-your-seminars/
FORMATTING CHECKLIST – DID YOU?…
❏ Identify the long tail keyword phrase your article is optimized for?
❏ Write the meta tag description that compels viewers to click to read the article?
❏ Increase the font size to reflect H1 and H2 title tags?
❏ Set each action step / tip # as bold font size 14?
❏ Make the article very chunky and easy to skim for readers?
❏ Include source under each royalty-free image?
❏ End with an easy to answer question to increase comments on the article?