Benchmark Blogging

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“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” legendary management consultant Peter Drucker was fond of saying. “How do we know if we’ve identified a result rather than an activity?” he asks. To achieve any goal, whether personal or business, explains local consultant Michael Hill, use the acronym SMART:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Results-oriented
  • Time-phased

When blog content writers use SMART, that can greatly enhance the value of the information and advice they’re offering.

Specific:
Start by asking yourself what you want the person to do as a result of reading this post.
Each business blog post should impart one new idea or call for a single action. Focused on one thing, your post has greater impact, since people are bombarded with many messages each day. Respecting readers’ time produces better results for your business.

Measurable:
Readers need to know how they will know that choosing a particular product or service has been a good idea. Offer tips on small, incremental positive changes they should begin to notice.

Attainable:
Describe realistic, achievable and easily identifiable signs that can signal that the client is on a trajectory leading towards the desired outcomes.

Results-oriented:
While time may have elapsed from the initial transaction, the content of the blog can serve as a reminder of the initial reason for beginning the regimen, purchasing the item, or continuing to take training.

Time-phased:
Setting expectations based on time is a good idea for blog content writers. Imagine readers asking themselves “How will I use the product?  How much will I use? How often? Where? What will it look like?  How will I feel?”

Remember, if clients and customers can’t measure it, they will not even try to “manage it”.

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Blog “As-Measured-By” Calls to Action

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“Just Do It” worked for Nike. Let’s face it, though – readers of our marketing blogs aren’t going to convert to customers that easily.

True, as I stress in corporate blogging training sessions, blog content writing has an enormous advantage over traditional “push marketing” tactics, because, what blogging does best is deliver to corporate blog sites customers who are already interested in the product or service they’re providing!

In corporate blogging for business, the “ask” comes in the form of calls to action. Offering a reason for the requested action needless to say, greatly improves the chances of having your request fulfilled. At the City University of New York, I learned, experiment subjects were instructed to ask someone using a copy machine if they could go first.  When persons making that request offered a reason, they were given permission 94% of the time (versus only 60% of the time when they gave no explanation for why they deserved to go first).

There’s more, though, to improving the chances readers with fulfill your requests. Jason Buetler, who trains software design apprentices at Edusource, uses the “as-measured-by” principle. In doing what Buetler calls “predictive” planning, it’s crucial to establish sets of benchmarks by which progress towards the goal can be measured.

What-can-I-expect questions are implicit in every decision-making process:

  • “How will I know?”
  • “ How will I measure success?”
  • “ How can I tell it’s working?”

If our blogging Calls to Action are going to be effective, I realized, it’s up to us blog content writers to offer workable benchmarks, explaining the “as measured by”.

In “Say This, Not That”, Christine Georghiou advises salespeople to justify a request or statement with the word “because”.  That word immediately answers the question on every prospect’s (and every online reader’s) mind – “What’s in it for me?”

“As-measured-by” goes even further than that, setting up specific, time-based expectations. For reader/prospects to know what’s in it for them, they need the reassurance that certain signals will be there to tell them results are in the process of happening.

Use “as-measured-by” in your Calls to Action!

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Triggering Trivia in Business Blogs

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Modern technology has made it possible to find and share fascinating information, explains Alex Palmer in the delightful little book Alternative Facts. Of the 200 entries in the collection, about one-third are “true-ish” rather than true, and readers are invited to guess which those are, with answers found at the back of the book.

Trivia in general, I’ve long maintained, represent useful tools for blog content writers. In addition to adding some fun to the discussion of a topic, trivia can be used in business blogs in at least four different ways:

1. defining basic terminology
2. sparking curiosity about the subject
3. putting modern-day practices and beliefs into historical perspective
4. explaining why the business owner/practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way

Of course, stocking up on ideas for future blog posts isn’t all about trivia, as I explain to newbie blog content writers. The trivia tidbit is just the jump-off point for the message.

Here are eight facts, culled from Palmer’s book, that illustrate the value of “triggering” the discussion of a subject using a piece of trivia and relating it to the sponsor of the blog:

Who might use each of these tidbits in their blog?

1. Chewing your food longer can help you lose weight.
(weight loss advisor, spa, health provider, health food store) ,:

2. Of all creatures, moths have the strongest sense of hearing.
(audiologist, hearing aid company)

3. Americans are the only people who label pencils No. 2.
(private school, tutoring center, office supply store)

4. Warner Music Group owns the rights to the lyrics of “Happy Birthday”, and earns royalties on every use of the song on film, on TV, or in a public performance.
(patent attorney, birthday party organizer, party favor store, child care center)

5. William Shakespeare wore one gold earring.
(jeweler, fashion advisor, salon)

6. The bathroom scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” was the first time a toilet was flushed on screen.
(plumbing supply store, plumber, home builder, realtor)

7. The oldest preserved human body in the world was covered in tattoos.
(tattoo parlor, salon, spa)

8. Being double-jointed is something a person is born with.

(dance studio, exercise coach, dance equipment or exercise equipment provider)

For blog content writers, adding fun and interest to blog posts might be a “trivial” matter!

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Tell-Me-How Blogs

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Readers Digest is obviously aware of a certain not-so-secret secret: Useful, everyday advice hits the spot with readers. The Digest “tips” are meant to apply to a broad range of consumers and describe easy-to-implement “fixes” and processes, including:

  • Clever uses – for ammonia, vinegar, club soda, aluminum foil, apples, you name it…
  • Safety mistakes to avoid – ignoring a burning smell in your microwave, letting your dog drink water from the Christmas tree stand, blaming heart pain on indigestion…
  • Ways to be more eco-friendly: use recycled gift wrap and LED lighting….
  • Myths you need to stop believing: about cell phone batteries, thermostat settings, Google maps

One form of intelligent reader-attracting article is the technical how to, explains Neil Patel in an Inc.com article on blog content writing. “This kind of article is very straightforward. You simply explain, step by step, how to do something. In every niche, there are certain activities, processes, or techniques that people do. When you explain how to do those things, you gain the attention of deliberate and smart people who want to learn.”

“Does your advice stick?” is a question Moira Somers asks financial planners, explaining that the field of adherence research explores why people follow – or often don’t follow – advice. Key advice-giving “sins”, the author explains, include:

  • using incomprehensible jargon
    disregarding the emotional side of the client experience
    take a judgment-laden stance towards clients

Of course, in the case of the to-dos offered in Readers Digest, “compliance” is not an issue – the advice is “down-home” and applicable to a broad range of readers. The lesson, though, for us blog content writing professionals, is that we should follow the KISS principle, breaking technical information into bite-sized pieces, while basing our content choices on an understanding of our target readership’s needs.

Useful, everyday advice has an excellent chance of hitting the spot with readers!
.

A

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Using GOLO in Blog Marketing

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I had never heard of GOLO, but once I’d seen the company’s TV commercial, I had a hard time getting it out of my mind. Sure, the name GOLO is catchy, but it was the clever memory hook that did the trick:

  • GO LOse weight
  • GO LOok great
  • GO LOve life

Around six years ago, I’d had a similar experience at a Financial Planning Association meeting. The speaker wanted to convey to us that spending is highest early in retirement and declines with age. He had catchy names for each of three age groups of retired people when it comes to spending needs:

  • Go-Go  (ages 55-64)
  •  Slo-Go (Age 65-74 )
  •  No Go (Age 75 and up )

Since business blog content writers like me are always searching for novel ways to present information to online readers, memory hooks are “a good thing”. The delightful little book, Brain-Boosting Challenges, confirms my instinct about the value of memory hooks.

“A useful technique when learning facts is to contrast them in some way.”  Compare-and-contrast is one of several structures we blog writers can use to help customers and prospects derive the greatest use out of the information we’re presenting. Use what they know, comparing your ”new” solution to traditional “old” solutions to the problem your company solves. Compare unfamiliar things to things with which readers are already comfortable.

“Chunking” is a memory device that binds sequential digits or words into groups. Chunking is one way business bloggers can offer technical information in “chewable tablet form”,  breaking down information into bite-sized pieces so readers’ brains can more easily digest it. The “reverse” form of chunking is to take individual pieces of information and show how they are related, perhaps in ways readers hadn’t considered.

Bullet points represent a graphic way to organize information, and it seems content writers either love or absolutely abhor them.  Myself, I’m kind of partial to those little black dots as a way to keep readers’ attention on track. Like anything else, of course, bullet points can be overused, but they’re certainly visually attractive.

The idea, of course, when it comes to marketing a business or practice through blogging, is not to have the readers memorize your content, but to have them find it – and by association – you, memorable. If the writing style is clear and simple, triggering familiar associations in the readers’ minds, those memorable business blogs can improve their memories, and, quite possibly, your own bottom line!
GO blog!

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