Your Blog Helps ‘Em Go With What They Know

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branding through blogs

 

“As a handyman, you will be driving a lot. It would be a shame to waste all of those miles when you could be promoting your company at the same time with almost zero long term effort,” Dan Perry, handyman business owner advises. “Customers are more likely to hire you if they are aware of your brand, Perry explains. “People like to go with what they know.”

“Branding” – we hear a lot of this popular marketing term, don’t we?  Business owners put a whole lot of their time and money into creating a brand name, complete with a logo and other graphics, sometimes adding a motto or slogan.  As blog content writers, we’re considered part of a company’s or a practice’s marketing team, always looking for ways to help reinforce each client’s brand. The creating of each blog post is part of the process of inventing – and reinventing- a business brand.

Reading Perry’s description of truck decal advertising, I recalled reading about an experiment with billboard advertising. The subjects of the study were people (several hundred of them) who drove the same route every day to work and back, passing a giant billboard advertising new cars.  When questioned, almost none of these people could remember even seeing a billboard, much less that it was about cars.  On the other hand, the moment any individual was in the market for a car, she’d notice the billboard immediately.

The point Perry makes to handyman entrepreneurs is that, while “that lady in the Lexus sitting behind you may not need a handyman today, but if she finds you online when she does, she will recognize you and probably call you.”

What does Perry suggest in terms of content for ads on vehicles? “The most important thing is to clearly say what you do and how to contact you.“ Your blog posts are out there on the Internet “super-highway”, available for anyone to see, but the only people who are going to notice your blog are those who are searching for the kinds of information, products, or services that relate to what you do.

The only difference is, of course, is that sustaining a long-term blog marketing initiative is hardly the “zero long term effort” affair Perry promises his handymen advisees. Eleven years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them have the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

But Perry is on the right track when it comes to customers, who are more likely to hire you if they are aware your business or practice exists, and that you have solutions to offer them.

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Find a Focus in Each Blog Post – So They Can

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focus in blog“Sometimes a writer can go on and on for pages with examples that prove a point…only she hasn’t quite figured out what that point is,” a writing guide from Vanderbilt.edu so aptly points out. I thought about that he other day as I attended what started out to be a fascinating talk on how smart watches and tablets are being used to collect data for predicting illnesses.

Only problem – the speaker began to ramble, “getting into the weeds” and going far over the allotted time. The result – people lost interest and some even stood up to leave. Our presenter had obviously never read the book Brain Rules, in which educator Wilbert McKeachie demonstrates that “typically, attention increases from the beginning of the lecture to ten minutes into the lecture and decreases after that point.”

In a sense, focus is the point in blog content writing. At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the Power of One, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience.

Of course, in blog marketing, one purpose of the content is moving visitors along the spectrum from scanner to reader, to customer/client. One technique salespeople are taught is adding an “Oh, by the way…” to describe an add-on service or product that can go along with the primary purchase. In blog marketing, there are ways to do that kind of “oh-by-the-way” without losing focus: provide a link to a landing page, or simply tell readers to watch for information on that related concept, product, or service in your next blog post.

“The simple reason a lot of blogs struggle to succeed,” writes Jeff Goins, “is a lack of focus.”
Focus consists of three elements, Goins adds – the subject, the theme (specific angle), and the objective. “Focus is the feature of effective writing that answers the question ‘So what?’”, Academic Writing explains.”By establishing a clear focus, students can craft their writing into a coherent, unified whole.”

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The Self-Help Checklist for Blog Content Writers

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This week, as I begin my thirteenth year of part-time tutoring at the Ivy Tech Community College English Learning Lab, I’m culling information from the Study Power Leader’s Guide the school offers as a resource to my students. The “Report Evaluation Worksheet”, I thought, was particularly apropos for blog content writers….

Has your topic been focused as a question, issue, or thesis?
At Ivy Tech, I often find that students have difficulty knowing the difference between the topic of a paper and its thesis. Suppose they were instructed to write about graduation cap tassels.  That’s the topic.  But what about tassels?  Are they silly? Important? Should we hold on to that tradition? (The answer is the thesis, or the “slant” the paper will take.) The same set of decisions will determine the focus of a blog post.

Is your approach original and imaginative?
Your client’s business blog, I remind content writers, is part of their brand, and it needs to put the best aspects of their business or practice forward with fresh, relevant content that engages readers. Blogging requires applying a thinking process. When business owners or professional practitioners blog (or coordinate with a professional writer), they are verbalizing the positive aspects of their enterprises in a way that people can understand, putting recent accomplishments down in words, and reviewing the benefits of their products and services. The very process provides self-training in how to talk effectively about their business or practice.

Are your ideas supported with useful examples, quotations, etc.?
You can use quotations in blog posts to reinforce your point, show you’re in touch with trends in your field, and to add value for readers (by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog). Still, I remind both owners and their content writers that the idea is to make their own cash register ring, which means it’s their own voice that must come across strong throughout the post..

Are your punctuation, spelling, and capitalization accurate?
Whether you’re a college student or a blogger, anything that puzzles readers interferes with readers’ interest and engagement defeats the purpose of the writing. Proper spelling and punctuation helps readers know what you think, what you do, and what you’d like them to do about it (give you a good grade or click on your blog’s Call to Action).

Using the Study Power Leader’s Guide worksheet can help blog content writers become leaders in their field!

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The All-Important Call to Action in Blog Content Writing

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One of the resources Ivy Tech offers to students is the Study Power Leader’s Guide. The Guide suggests students keep a daily activities list containing three categories:

  1. Must Do!
  2. Should Do
  3. Could Do

“We live in a culture of information-saturation. Consumers today are highly-distracted, which is why you need to end your posts with a bang, by including enticing, well-written calls to action,” writtent.com suggests. An effective call to action will act as a logical extension of your blog posts, the authors add. “Your calls to action should never seem abrupt, or you’ll struggle to get the reaction you’d hoped.”

Over the years of working with business owners and practitioners, I’ve encountered two very different attitudes towards blog marketing and specifically towards Calls to Action. At the one extreme are those who feel that any direct Call to Action is abrupt and obtrusive, believing that if the blog provides useful information, the reader will want, without being asked, to follow up with the company or practice. At the opposite end of the spectrum are owners who feel uneasy about giving away valuable information “for free”, even though they realize their blog will become a way of selling themselves and their services to online searchers.

In response to the first fear, I explain that a CTA does not at all invalidate the good information provided in the piece. When people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or on different websites, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business. But as long as the material is valuable and relevant for the searchers, they’re perfectly fine with knowing there’s someone who wants them for a client or customer.

Similarly, I can reassure business owners getting ready to launch a marketing blog that the only people who are going to notice their blog are the ones already interested in that topic. “Giving away” knowledge showcases the owners’ experience and expertise rather than threatening it in any way. More often than not, readers want to get it done, not by themselves, but by the expert you’ve shown you are!

Using those three Study Power categories might be a good way to vary the Calls to Action in blog posts, was my thought.

  • Must-do!s can include safety and health checklists, along with an offer to download a white paper or brochure.
  • Should Dos might include links to landing pages with more information.
  • Could Dos include an invitation to chat or telephone for further information.

Using the three categories can help students keep track of their activities, and varying your calls to action can help you get the reaction you’d hoped for, I teach at Say It For You.

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Using Skillful Surprise in Blog Content Writing

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Blog post titles have a multifaceted job to do, arousing readers’ curiosity while still assuring them they’ve come to the right place. One compromise I often suggest to blog content writers is using a two-tiered title, combining a “Huh?” (to get attention) with an “Oh!” (to make clear what the post is actually going to be about).

In the body of a blog post, surprise can be used in a different way. I remember, several years back, listening to Jeff Fleming of the National Speakers Association of Indiana meeting, talking about misdirection as a way of adding humor to a presentation. Fleming explained the “Rule of Three”, in which the first two statements serve as a “set-up”. The third statement is not what the listeners are expecting, he added. That “misdirection”, Fleming said, causes a surprise, which tickles listeners’ funny bones.

I thought about that Fleming demo the other day when browsing through Coffee House News Indiana:

 

What has four legs, is big, green, and fuzzy, and, if it fell out of a tree would
hurt you? Answer: a pool table.

Now, as blog content writers offering information about a product or service, we’re not necessarily “into” tickling readers’ funny bones. What we are “into”, of course, is engaging readers and sustaining interest.

To be sure, using humor is an effective way to connect with your audience and humanize your brand or company, as Jason Miller of Social Media Examiner observes. All marketing doesn’t have to be serious, he adds, along with the caveat that “being funny is a risk…Some people might not appreciate your company’s brand of humor!”

So what do I think the bottom line is for using humor and surprise in blogging for business? Well,…barring politics (including company, city, state, national, and international), religion, ethnic groups, physical appearance, food preferences, insider information, and anything anyone might conceive as risque – go right ahead.  But keep the humor centered around your own weaknesses and around the consumers’ problem you’re offering to solve.

As for surprise, it can be highly useful in business blogs. At least some of our readers already know quite a bit about our subject.  What they’re looking for is new perspective on the subject, new ways to connect the dots. People are going to want to do business with people who have something different to say. There’s great power in offering strong recommendations and opinions in a blog.

Surprise them with the strength of your convictions, the depth of your knowledge, and the courage to map out a unique approach to doing business!

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