Blog Category Analytics Provide “Pull”

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woman tug-of-warLean production solves the problem of inventory with a technique called “pull”, explains Eric Ries in his business book “The Lean Startup”. Rather than having the business carry large inventories of many different items, manufacturing and shipping is done on an “as needed” basis. When a unit is used or sold, that creates a “hole” in the dealer’s inventory, which automatically sends a signal to a restocking facility, and a similar signal to a regional warehouse, then yet another signal to the factory. “It’s as if the whole supply chain suddenly went on a diet,” Ries concludes.

Working through this fascinating book, it occurred to me that blog content writers could take advantage of the “pull” technique as well.  Of course, blogging itself is a form of “pull marketing”. Online marketing through blogs helps to get a business “found”, and quickly. After Hubspot interviewed hundreds of marketing professionals, researchers concluded that inbound marketing channels, in contrast with “traditional outbound marketing in which businesses push their messages at consumers”, deliver at a dramatically lower cost per sales lead.

I was thinking that, from an “inventory” viewpoint, that lean production principle might relate to the categories set up for a business blog. Categories help readers find their way to content that matches their specific interests. When you’re just beginning to post blogs for your business or practice, organizing the material isn’t so important, but as you continue posting content, and you’ve been doing that for several years – those categories come to be invaluable.

The “lean production” concept comes in when you’re studying your blog report from, say, Google Analytics.  The report shows which categories were most frequently viewed by readers that week. Let’s say there were twenty five “sessions” for a particular category. That tells you, the blog content writer, to “replenish” that category with new content in the same manner as the car dealer might replenish its stock of front bumpers based on 25 customer orders.

In other words, the content creation would be driven by the ‘demand” for each category, with the blog itself functioning as a consumer survey tool!.

Blog category analytics can provide “pull”!

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Truths and Trivia for Business Bloggers

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I love “reading around and learning around”, as I call it, and advise all blog content writers to do the same. Ideas are all overlaser pointer the place, all of the time, but we’ve got to see and hear those ideas, learning everywhere and from everyone, making connections between our own experience and knowledge and Other People’s Wisdom. 

“What if?” is the question posed by author Randall Munroe in the book “Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions”. Now, this book is nothing if not off-beat, but that’s a good thing for freelance content creators, I think. After all, we face the challenge of churning out creative writing over extended periods of time, and we need fresh ways of looking at things.

Here’s one of Munroe’s serious scientific answer to an absurd question:
“If every person on earth aimed a laser pointer at the moon at the same time, would it change color?’  Answer: Not if you used regular laser pointers. Not everyone can see the moon at once, but 75% of the world’s population lives between 0 degrees E and 120 degrees E, we should try this while the Moon is somewhere over the Arabian Sea.
The typical red laser pointer is 5 milliwatts, and good one would have enough power to hit the Moon, but the light would have no effect compared to the much more powerful light of the sun.” 

So how might this gem be useful in business blogging? For one thing, like any piece of trivia, it can be used to spark curiosity. But, once having brought in the question and answer, you might continue by pointing out that the red laser is extremely useful for

  • Astronomers
  • Outdoor sporting
  • Teaching
  • Business presentations

Then, depending on what business or practice you’re marketing, the post might continue with a story about how a laser printer proved useful in a certain situation.

“What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty?” is another of those absurd hypothetical questions with a lot of wisdom to offer if you’re willing to search a bit.  Here’s part of the Munroe commentary:
When people say “glass half empty”, they usually mean a glass containing equal parts water and air.

What follows in the book is a serious discussion of what happens when there’s a vacuum, but I’d challenge writers of blog content for psychology practices, motivational speakers (you know, “glass half full thinking), and private schools stressing STEM courses (emphasis on understanding our physical environment) to make use of that material in their blog marketing strategy.

Nothing like an offbeat book filled with truths and trivia to spark ideas for business blogs!

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Honoring Business Blogger Ghosts on Halloween

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friendly-ghostsIn traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear in visible form to the living, explains Wikipedia. Of course, with today being October 31st, ghost costumes are the dress of the day at parties and even in the workplace.

Here at Say It For You, the term “ghost” takes on a whole other meaning. A ghostwriter, of course, is someone who writes books, articles, stories, reports, song lyrics, or performs other kinds of wordsmithing on behalf of another person or organization.

Generally, entrepreneurs don’t have a great deal of time when it comes to writing blog posts. That’s why, as John Jantsch of ducttapemarketing observes, “Outsourcing content creation is an essential tactic, especially for small businesses.”

Most business owners and professionals are clear that the potential benefits of corporate blogging are substantial, but for one (or sometimes all) of three reasons, they haven’t been able to make their blog keep happening:

  • no time
  • no motivation to make it a priority
  • no talent to apply to business blogging.

Should we be celebrating the use of professional copy writers to create business blog content? asks Robin Hale of writers-elite.com. Hale answers her own question in a decisive affirmative. Without delegating the task of bringing your voice and your brand value to a target audience, she warns, you “can’t expect to grow beyond the limited number of tasks you can accomplish on your own. Ghost writers, bloggers, and even ghost tweeters are valued resources that will clear your plate and allow you to further carry out the plan and growth of your business,” she adds.

“The ghost is hired primarily as a professional freelance writer, in order to produce high quality writing copy and so that the writing reads professionally,” explains Karen Cole of freelancewriting.com. (I loved reading this sentence) “A paid professional freelance writer is often the only source to which to turn to get sparkling, well written website copy or other paid professional writing copy.”

As you’re donning your Halloween costume, remember to honor all the business blogger ghosts who make that sparkling blog content happen!

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From Meet to Exceed in Blogging for Business

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“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations,” observed marketing consultant Roy Beyond Expectations Ruler Exceed Results Great JobHollister Williams.

It’s a simple and very hard fact, says Ross Beard in “The Complete Guide to Customer Expectations”. “You need to know who your customers are and what they want.”

Nowhere does that principle hold truer, I’d say, than in blog marketing.  While blog posts are only (or at least should be only) one part of any company’s marketing plan, the “mechanics” of the process are different from, say, advertisements, billboards, mailers, or store signs.

What do I mean? Well, to a certain extent, potential customers self-identify; through the search engine process, they are delivered to your “digital doorstep”. The need or want – for information, if not for products and services – is already there. “Inbound marketing is doing all the right things so that when people are out there on the Web, they can’t help but bump into you – almost by accident,” is the way Mike Volpe of HubSpot puts it.

Now, with the prospects having been brought to your page, it falls to your content to take it from there. Where to? The top three marketing goals for blogs, according to the Marketing Sherpa’s Search Marketing Benchmark Report are increasing website traffic, increasing brand or product awareness, and increasing lead generation.

So how can you, in the blog post content itself, demonstrate that you know what customers want? Remind readers of their own concerns, calling to mind the costs, the risks, and the problems that drove them to seek information in the first place.  Only then should the blog content demonstrate that you and your staff have the experience, information, and the familiarity with the newest and most effective solutions available.

Stories and testimonials can show that you focus not only on meeting customer expectations, but exceeding them.  Truth is, though, the usual “I’d-certainly-recommend-ABC-to-my-neighbors” type testimonials in raw form rarely accomplish that goal, as fellow blogger Steve Guise points out. Business blog writers need to find stories illustrating how someone’s life was truly improved through using the company’s products or services. Business owners’ passion needs to come through, so that the online searcher feels she’s found people who “get it” and who are therefore a lot more likely to exceed her expectations.

Go from meet to exceed in blogging for business!

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In Blogging for Business, Teaching is the New Selling

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Business guru speaking to people“In today’s world, your customers have access to tons of information, they are super busy, and they are overwhelmed,” says Jim Keenan of A SalesGuy.com.  “They want to know that you and your organization can teach them something.  If you can’t, they’re not interested.”

Whatever your business or profession, there’s no end to the technical information available to consumers on the Internet. Our job then, as business blog content writers, becomes to help readers absorb, buy into, and use that information.

“Briefly,” says Jim Connolly of Jim’s Marketing Blog, “here’s how content marketing works: You build and market a website and stock it with free information that has real value to your prospective clients.”

There’s skill involved in offering that free information. Chunking is one way business bloggers can offer technical information in “chewable tablet form” by breaking it down into bite-sized pieces, or, in reverse, showing how individual bits of information are related in ways readers perhaps hadn’t considered.

Everywhere it’s becoming evident that there’s a lot of competition for readers, as local author Madalyn Kinsey observes. And, to our point today about using business blogs to offer readers valuable information, Kinsey adds, “How-to subjects sell best – money, health, self-improvement, hobbies, sex, and psychological well being.”

“Tell and sell tradition marketing is dead,” according to Stan Phelps of Yahoo! Small Business Advisor. “Cause of death was the empowered consumer,” he adds. Conclusion? If marketing is about anything, it’s about differentiating what you do and how you do it.

As a business blog writing trainer, I’d go a step further. It’s about differentiating what you think about what you do and why you think that way. Taking a stance on issues relevant to your business or profession will give your blog post more “pow” every time.

It’s about authority. Sure, “authority” has become an important term in search engine-speak, but, more than that, presenting a definite perspective goes a long way towards having readers perceive you as authentic as well as expert.

In blogging for business, teaching – and opining – are the new selling!

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