Why should your small business value writing as part of their marketing efforts? In this episode of the second season of the Launch With Words Podcast, Bridget is joined by writer Maddy Osman for an insightful conversation on how small business owners can DIY their content or hire a writer.

Follow Maddy Osman at @MaddyOsman on Twitter and check out her company website at theblogsmith.com.

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Transcript

00:19 .53
Bridget Willard
Hey hey season 2 another episode. This is episode 3 with Maddie Osman -- the Maddie Osman. If you have seen anything in WordPress written about anything you've seen her byline. Maybe you haven't seen her byline. D you ghostwriting? yeah.

00:34 .26
Maddy Osman
I Do some ghostwriting.

00:39 .13
Bridget Willard
She's she's pretty ah prolific, is the word we would use, welcome. I'm like career goals I want to be like Maddie Osman. Will you be on my podcast?

00:44 .20
Maddy Osman
I'm glad you think so and thank you for having me.

00:50 .84
Maddy Osman
Well I'm I'm super happy to and I feel like Bridget like we learn from each other. You know, like we both have these different approaches but we both like ultimately are trying to do the same thing which is like help businesses communicate better.

01:06 .18
Bridget Willard
Yeah, and that is a problem because they have a passion and an an expertise and knowledge for what they do, but sometimes they feel inhibited ah by writing.

01:13 .60
Maddy Osman
Right.

01:19 .22
Maddy Osman
So yeah.

01:21 .31
Bridget Willard
So like what are some of the things you think small business owners need to know or to get over that inhibition. Like for me I'm a something is better than nothing person. Like just put it on the internet fix it later.

01:33 .99
Maddy Osman
Solo. Yeah yeah.

01:36 .52
Bridget Willard
So like what kind of tips would you give a small business owner?

01:40 .47
Maddy Osman
Yeah, no I think that's ah, a really great start and I think that the beauty of the internet as a publishing medium versus print or even you know like media like TV or radio or something like that is that we can change it. Right? after we publish it. We have that power and not that the bar is like lower for things like grammatical errors or making mistakes. I mean that's still super important. But I think that because of the medium that we're publishing on and the fact that a lot of content that we're creating has some sort of timely nature to it. There's also this like forgiveness like if you do make a mistake or you know maybe you like need to dig a little bit deeper into something for it to really provide the value that you want somebody to get out of it or if you made you know, just a grammatical error or whatever, you always have the option to go back in and edit it and I don't think that many people are are going to be upset about that. Versus like a print book and it's like oh crap that's how it is now.

02:45 .40
Bridget Willard
Well I started my career working at a publisher of college textbooks. There are errors in every book Always as they just have those redlined for the next edition. It's not that big of a deal even in print.

02:49 .70
Maddy Osman
Nice Oh sure.

02:59 .68
Maddy Osman
Right.

03:01 .67
Bridget Willard
But now with "screenshots are forever" - everybody's like you did this wrong. I just read a job opening today for a mortgage company that had the wrong like plural. The plural was missing like ah all you're only going to use 1 resource I guess not many of it. So but that's me.

03:07 .37
Maddy Osman
Yeah, yeah.

03:13 .13
Maddy Osman
Ah, snaps.

03:21 .20
Bridget Willard
And that's my, you know, occupational hazard. But wouldn't you say that most people don't even read on the internet?

03:23 .18
Maddy Osman
Show. Right? They they Skim is really what we're trying to optimize for and so that's maybe another maybe another like helpful thing to know for a small business owner. That people aren't going to like dig into it. They're not going to write literary critiques about it. It's.. It's really just like you want to write something. It's the same approach as um, trying to optimize around somebody going into search and typing something and being like what is what are they trying to find and how can I be the perfect answer to their question. And so that's that's kind of how you have to go into it and the perfect answer is not a novel. It is as short as you can answer that question and then you can provide some additional information if people really want to know more. So.

04:12 .53
Bridget Willard
[Bridget laughs] I can't. I can't help myself. I can't believe we haven't ah talked you know actual with our voices conversation yet. "The perfect answer is not a novel" is now the title this episode. But.

04:24 .62
Maddy Osman
Oh love it! Perfect.

04:32 .31
Bridget Willard
Ah I always tell people that writing a blog post isn't an eighth grade essay. Writing an email isn't an eighth grade essay and if you really need some help Grammarly is right there by your side for free.

04:35 .92
Maddy Osman
Right.

04:44 .25
Maddy Osman
I Swear by Grammarly honestly everybody on my team has a premium subscription. And I'll say part of the reason why is not only like Grammarly is fallible. You can't. It's not the same as a human editor. You know it doesn't get nuance the same. But what's really cool about Grammarly is you can add your own custom style guide so that you know it it adapts to the things that you decide are important, that you say are important and.

05:11 .44
Bridget Willard
Yeah I should definitely get that premium subscription because I'm constantly going incorrect suggestion incorrect suggestion. Go home You're drunk. But seriously it's a great tool because a lot of times.

05:18 .56
Maddy Osman
Ah, come on Grammarly right.

05:27 .45
Bridget Willard
You know, Ernest Hemingway said, "write drunk at it sober." We we just need to get it out of our system. We need to get out. When I was in construction we we would hear these like objections people had to epoxy injection, for example, and and then you just solve that problem. It doesn't have to be necessarily polished.

05:33 .55
Maddy Osman
Yep.

05:40 .19
Maddy Osman
Okay. Right? so.

05:46 .60
Bridget Willard
They just need to know that their building isn't going to look ugly when you finish correcting this problem. So there are tools as you mentioned like you know, but um, like what kind of a what kind of.

05:50 .60
Maddy Osman
Totally.

06:03 .10
Bridget Willard
Like that perfect answer. How does a small business owner who is super good at framing or drywall and maybe doesn't do SEO because they don't do SEO but like how can you give them that common sense tip of what is that perfect question?

06:03 .60
Maddy Osman
And.

06:09 .35
Maddy Osman
Sure.

06:17 .87
Maddy Osman
Yeah, yeah, totally yeah. I think for somebody who doesn't want to spend like one hundred plus dollars a month on SEO tools, that's you know, just going to be for you know some smaller marketing efforts.

06:22 .80
Bridget Willard
I mean I have my methods I Want to know what you're getting your secrets. Ah.

06:37 .21
Maddy Osman
You know that they barely have time to run. Um I think honestly the easiest way to find that information and the most effective way to find that information is to go in and start doing those searches. And to see like what comes up as like a suggested search. So like what are different ways to think about the same topic?

06:49 .39
Bridget Willard
Yep.

06:56 .59
Maddy Osman
Um, looking at other like Google SERP which is Search Engine Results Page for anybody who doesn't know that um features like the People Also Ask. So that's kind of like you know what specifically do people want to find in these search results I mean that's that's probably the most useful part of.

07:06 .34
Bridget Willard
Yep.

07:15 .49
Maddy Osman
Google Search data um and then looking at the bottom. Yeah I mean that's it's really that simple I think that a tool like Hrefs which we swear by because that's what we do is SEO content. Um a tool like Hrefs is good to validate.

07:15 .52
Bridget Willard
Um, literally that's how I do it. That's literally how I write for my clients.

07:34 .73
Maddy Osman
Things like the market or how difficult like realistically it's going to be for you to be able to rank in that market and so that's fair if you're doing it at scale. But if you're just trying to to answer the question and you know which. And SEO might not even be your goal. But I think that SEO has a lot of answers for even just like outlining content.

07:56 .30
Bridget Willard
Yeah, absolutely so when when you're not using it for that reason not SEO in particular although publishing is a ranking factor which is my point with Launch With Words is just do it right? What? What would you say is.

08:01 .94
Maddy Osman
And. Sure right.

08:15 .24
Bridget Willard
Um, ah other uses of the content on their website?

08:17 .82
Maddy Osman
So Oh yeah, what I was going to say that I forgot to add to my last thought was in