Blogging Who You Are

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Ahead of the launch of its inaugural flight from Indianapolis to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, Spirit Airlines announced two new year-round flights coming to market this November.  Since Spirit is new to our airport, John Kirby, vice president of network planning, delivered some introductory remarks at the press conference:“We are a leisure airline, so we look for opportunities to enhance our leisure position in the marketplace.”

In training Say It For You business blog content writers, I can use this one sentence to talk about niches. A niche is all about serving a particular group of clients with a particular need, applying a solution to that need.  After all, that’s what we do as blog content writers – serve niche markets.  As writers, we define a narrow target audience made up of people who are already looking for products, information, and services relating to a particular need they have.  For our part, rather than presenting ourselves (or the clients who’ve hired us to write for them), as knowing a little about a lot of things, we demonstrate that the owners are uniquely informed – and passionate – about just one or two.

“When approaching a new market niche, it’s imperative to speak their language.  In other words, you should understand that market’s ‘hot buttons’ and be prepared to communicate with the target group as an understanding member – not an outsider,” advises Kim T. Gordon, writing in Entrepreneur Magazine. That advice is particularly applicable to business blogging, and that principle is part of the “Power of One” concept on which Say It For You was founded. “The more focused a blog is, the more successful it will be in converting prospects to clients and customers.

Spirit’s “We are a leisure airline” is a great example of “blogging who you are.” It relates to what I call the “training benefit” of blogging.  When you create and maintain a blog, you’re verbalizing the positive aspects of your business in a way people can understand.  You’re putting your accomplishments down in words. You’re reviewing the benefits of your products and services, keeping those fresh in your mind.  You reveal some of the early struggles that helped you forge your business beliefs.  In other words, the very act of blogging provides constant training on how to talk effective about your own business or practice.

 

 

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Mythbusting? Don’t Forget to Throw the Camel a Coat!

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mythbusting in blogs

“Was it daylight savings time this weekend?” Brett Molina asked a couple of weeks ago in USA Today. “Nope. But it was daylight saving time.” Molina goes on to explain (citing a post from the blog Grammar Errors), that “daylight savings time” is grammatically incorrect, and that, next time, we should lose the “s” along with that hour of sleep, because there are not multiple savings.  Grammar Cops is even more precise, explaining that we don’t really save daylight; the term Daylight Shifting Time would be more accurate.

Reading this little information-you-could-have-done-without essay, (with eyes simultaneously crossing and glazing over), I couldn’t help remembering a Say It For You blog post I composed almost ten years ago. In “Myth-Bust in Your Blogs, but Give the Camel a Coat”, the point was this: While mythbusting is a great use for corporate blogs, since addressing misinformation shines light on the owners’ special expertise, the technique must be used with caution.

You see, just prior to writing that original blog post, I’dread in the Book of General Ignorance that camels do not store water in their humps – they store fat. Far from appreciating the new insight, my reaction was a bit resentful – something I’d taken as true for all of my life, was, in fact, a lie. But then, authors Lloyd and Mitchelson “threw me a coat” in the form of interesting new information about camels: When a camel builds up resentment towards human beings, a handler can calm the animal by handing over his own coat to the beast, who “gives the garment hell”, biting it, jumping on it, and tearing it. After that pressure is relieved, the authors explained, “man and animal can live together in harmony again.”

Now ten years later, I felt an identical twinge of resentment about Brett Molina’s correcting the Daylight Savings Time misnomer. Business blog writing lesson relearned: When debunking myths, follow up by throwing readers a “coat” in the form of some intriguing, little-known information related to your industry.

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Saint Patrick’s Blue Blog Content Writing

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Okay, so you wore that green tie or green jacket on St. Patty’s day and had yourself a good time, but now, almost two weeks later, I think you might be ready for the truth. Several truths, actually. Since at Say It For You, I teach that mythbusting is one very legitimate and important function of blog writing, I want to pass along a few super-busts straight out of one of my favorite sources – Mental Floss magazine.

For starters, St. Patrick wasn’t Irish. (He did introduce Christianity to Ireland back in the year 432, but the man himself was born in Scotland or Wales.) His real name wasn’t even Patrick – it was Maewyn (he changed it to Patricius after becoming a priest.) What’s more, though we’ve come to associate Kelly green with the holiday, the saint’s official color was St. Patricks blue. (The color green was linked to St. Patrick’s Day only later, during the late-18th century Irish independence movement.) Perhaps the most startling “bust” has to do with the fact that St. Patrick’s Day started out as a dry holiday; up until the 1970s, pubs were closed on that national holiday!

So, what’s the point of all this? Well, mythbusting can be used to counteract counterproductive thinking, and I’m a firm believer that a big function of business blogs is doing just that. In the normal course of doing business, you’ve undoubtedly found, misunderstandings about your product or service might surface in the form of customer questions and comments.  (It’s even worse when those myths and misunderstandings don’t surface, but still have the power to interrupt the selling process!) By myth-busting, blog content writing can “clear the air”, replacing factoids with facts, so that buyers can see their way to making decisions.

Myth-busting is also a tactic content writers can use to grab online visitors’ attention. The technique is not without risk, because customers don’t like to be proven wrong or feel stupid.  The trick is to engage interest, but not in “Gotcha!” fashion. Business owners and professional practitioners can use their blogs to showcase their own expertise without “showing up” their readers’ lack of it.

‘Course you’re still going to wear green, not blue, next March, but at least that decision will be based on the facts!

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Of-the-People Blogging Content Writing

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Brand positioning is still important, but ensuring you have the right people to deliver on your brand is, too, Advisa leadership consultant Mandy Haskett points out in a recent Indianapolis Business Journal article. All the ping pong tables in the world won’t be enough to keep people working in roles that don’t align with their own inherent motivating needs, Haskett cautions, talking about talent optimization, which is matching the “job personality” with that of the employee performing that job.

Scott Greggory of Forbes calls it “highlighting your humanity to help your brand stand out”. “If your company sells a certain brand of tires, cell phones, or frozen pizza, you are literally no different from every other establishment that sells the same item,” Greggory says. What differentiates your company and builds loyalty is only a more human experience, he asserts.

Every business class studies the “4 Ps of marketing”: product, price, place, and promotion. As a blog marketing professional, I like what marsdd.com had to say about changing the 4 Ps to four Cs, butting the customer’s interests ahead of those of the marketer:

  1. Customer solutions (not products)
  2. Customer cost (not price)
  3. Convenience (not place)
  4. Communication (not promotion)

Brian Tracy (one of my longtime heroes back from my National Speakers Association days) has it right, adding a seventh P to his marketing list. “The final P of the marketing mix is people. Develop the habit of thinking in terms of the people inside and outside of your business who are responsible for every element of your sales, marketing strategies, and activities.” Tracy says. “It’s amazing how many entrepreneurs and businesspeople will work extremely hard to think through every element of the marketing strategy and the marketing mix, and then pay little attention to the fact that every single decision and policy has to be carried out by a specific person, in a specific way. “

In Creating Buzz With Blogs, veteran business technology consultant Ted Demopoulos explains, “Blogs create buzz because people will feel like they know you, and people like to do business with people they know.”  After more than ten years of writing content for business owners and professional practitioners, I’m absolutely convinced that’s true. People shop for products and services, but when all is said and done, they buy with their hearts. What that means is that the best blogs give readers into a company’s core beliefs, and help readers meet the people inside that company. And, while blogging can help achieve quite a number of goals, including:

  • building good will
  • staying in touch with existing customers and clients
  • announcing changes in products and services
  • controlling damage done by negative PR or by complaints
  • recruiting employees,

the most important function of your blog is expressing your brand in terms of the people behind it!

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Best Days Blogging for Business

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Want to know the best day in 2019 to begin a diet? Straighten hair? Lay shingles? The Old Farmer’s Almanac can tell you, based on the moon’s astrological signs. There’s a “best day”, according to astrologist Celeste Longacre, to:

  • buy a home
  • pick fruit
  • pour concrete
  • wean an animal
  • wash the floor
  • paint
  • lay shingles
  • get a perm
  • make jelly and jam
  • go camping
  • get married

Since chicks born under a waxing moon in Cancer, Scorpio, or Pisces are healthier and mature faster, eggs should be “set” (placed in an incubator or under a hen) 21 days before the desired hatching time, we learn.

Fascinating stuff. In fact, I thought, naming a “best time” for certain activities can be an effective “template” for serving up information to business blog readers. From the list above, for example, I can see:

  • a real estate company’s blog post about the best time to buy a home or paint
  • a home repair company’s blog about pouring concrete and laying shingles
  • a beauty products seller’s blog about perms
  • a caterer’s blog about the best time to plan a wedding

Is there a best time to publish blog posts?

Garrett Moon of CoSchedule.com reviews the results of a study by Kissmetrics:
The highest percentage of users read blogs in the morning.
The average blog gets the most traffic around 11AM on Mondays.

Blogtyrant.com came to a different conclusion: The most traffic is around on a Wednesday, between 9:30 and 11 USA East Coast time, he says.

Managing Editor Erin Balsa has a practical piece of advice: if the majority of your traffic lives in Los Angeles, distribute your content on weekday mornings at Pacific time; if they’re in New York or Boston, the mornings on Eastern time.

As a blog content writing trainer, my second favorite piece of advice comes from Karen Evans, founder of Start Blogging Online! Karen reveals “the surprising truth” – there IS NO universal best time to publish. What works for one blog might not work for yours.

My very favorite advice comes from Rob Steffens of blueadz.com. Ron tells bloggers: “Remember, riming isn’t everything; consistency is key.”

You may not need an astrologer to pinpoint your own best days for blogging for business!

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