Not-An-Ad Blogging for Business – Made of Something Better

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“Made of something better” is the headline of a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream ad in Oprah Magazine. This week I’m paying special attention to ads, sharing what I learn with Say it For You readers.  Even though business blogs are definitely not ads, there are a host of takeaways for us content writers in the ways advertisers sell their products, services, and ideas.

In this particular full-page spread, Ben & Jerry’s makes several different claims.  One simply differentiates their product by its density: “We don’t add a lot of air to our pints, which means rich and creamy ice cream.”

The other claims have to do with the environmental friendliness of their operation and their social consciousness: No genetically-modified ingredients are used, Fair Trade standards assure farmers of a fair price, the company uses vendors in the local economy, and cows are treated humanely.

Looking at this Ben & Jerry ad from my viewpoint as a corporate blogging trainer, I was impressed.  The piece is focused, even while offering a lot of information.  The copy writers seem to have followed the rule I suggest to bloggers – emphasize only one central point in each post.

What’s more, the Ben & Jerry ad gives magazine readers a “learn more” option, leading to the website.  In designing blog content, we need to present the “condensed” version of the information, then offer as one CTA (call to action) the ability to click through to a landing page on the business’ or practice’s website to obtain more information. In fact, blog posts have a distinct advantage over the more static website copy, because you can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business in today’s post, saving other topics for later posts.

Imparting one new idea or calling for a single action, your post has greater impact, since people are bombarded with many messages each day. Make no mistake – focused blog posts are made of something better!
 

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Not-An-Ad Blogging for Business – No Famous Wedding Dress Designers

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Ever pay attention (I mean really pay attention) to ads? I do, even when I’m not out to buy anything. And, even though I’m constantly stressing to business blog content writers that blog posts are NOT ads, there’s a lot we can learn from advertisers.  Let’s face it, like them, we have stuff to sell – whether it’s products, services, or ideas, and whether it’s for our own or our clients' businesses or practices.

One ad I keep hearing on my favorite radio station is a case in point.  The commercial for Bowles Mattress caught my attention for a couple of reasons:

First, this isn’t one of those where the DeeJay or talk show host tells how he and his spouse had had their house painted or their financial plan done and how glad they are for having chosen that particular provider. No, in the Bowles ad, it’s the business owner talking right to me, the listener. That very personal “from-me-to-you” tone is perfect for business blog writing.

The second thing that stood out about the Bowles “pitch” was the indirect and lighthearted criticism of a competitor. In writing blog content for a professional practice or business, the big challenge we have is demonstrating to the readers why we or why our client will better serve their needs, and doing that without “slamming”. Sure, we have to clarify how we stand out from the competition.  It’s doing that graciously that’s the trick.

The Bowles ad is emphasizing that they have the same quality as the “big box” store brands, but at a much lower price. How can they make such a claim?  40% of the cost of a typical mattress is in the advertising, the mattress man explains.  Bowles, he points out, doesn’t spend money “talking about famous wedding dress designers or bowling balls” (a semi-humorous reference to Serta® and Sealy® ads), so the company can pass those savings along to the consumer.

What Bowles has accomplished with the ad is what branding specialist Thaddeus Rex calls “painting the clown”, getting us to laugh at competitors without coming out and naming them.

No, I’m not backing off my original statement.  Blogs are not ads, nor should they ever be. But emphasizing the positive in your blog content writing may mean first explaining what your competitors do, going on to explain why you do things the way you do.
 

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Borrow-Plus Blog Content Curation

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“We write with you in mind,” says Tim Roberts of Trustpointe Sandler Training.  To that end, Roberts offers a series of promises to us loyal newsletter readers, including these two:

  •  We will present original thinking.
  •  We will cite our sources.

On the face of it, it might appear that these statements contradict each other (if the material is original, then what’s this about citing sources?)  But as a blogging trainer, I know there’s no contradiction at all.

I encourage freelance content writers and business owners alike to curate, meaning to gather OPW (Other People’s Wisdom) and share that with their readers, commenting on that material and relating it to their own topic.

To sustain our blog content writing over long periods of time without losing reader excitement and engagement, we need to constantly add to our own body of knowledge – about our industry or professional field, and about what’s going on around us in our culture. Business blogging can serve as a form of market research in itself, and through curating material we find and then adding our own original thinking about what we’re sharing – that brings our readers the best of both worlds.

HubSpot explains the concept well, defining content curation as “selecting and aggregating information into one place that creates more value for information consumers.”

Trustpointe’s twinset of promises make for the perfect credo for writers of business blogs – collate and curate valuable sources of information for readers’ convenience, and apply original thinking that reflects the practices and philosophies of the business or professional practice you’re promoting!
 

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Dis or Dat – Words Count in Fundraising and in Blog Writing

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If a charitable organization were asking you to become a volunteer or donor, which phraseology would be more likely to get you to act?


At our business networking meeting, the Executive Director of an arts education nonprofit organization gave us members pairs of statements. We each were asked to select one out of each pair as our idea of a better way to spur involvement and open pocketbooks.

1. “Program that improves capacity of schools to teach better”  

            or


2.  “Program that improves capacity of students to think better”

     1.   “a novel business model”

             or


     2.   “a great story”

     1.    Statistics on the program leading to student success in later life

                or


     2.    Statistics on ways the art program helped students succeed in their schoolwork today

All of us in the group found this exercise highly engaging.  The results of this informal survey were especially relevant given my own work as a corporate blogging trainer.  Here’s why:

Our group overwhelmingly voted for #2 about benefiting students, not schools. The relevancy of the content in a business blog can be judged only in relation to the end user.  Are you speaking to the need that drove the searcher your way? Drown out unwanted noise and go directly to a “Relax-you’ve-come-to-the-right-place-for help” message.

Hardly a surprise, the vote was in favor of the “great story” over the “novel business model”. Nothing, but nothing, trumps a great story. That's precisely the reason it's so important to use customer satisfaction stories as content for your business blog. No discussion of how novel the structure of this arts organization can ever have the power of one little boy’s pride in his newfound skills.  And when readers encounter our blog marketing content, no claims, no statistics can ever wield the power of "people just like them" praising the product or service.

I coined the phrase “the Sensa Rule” when discussing blogging with newbie blog content writers in Indianapolis. Every single SENSA® ad is focused on a result, an outcome, on the What’s-In-It-For-Them, and not on the product! One key element in successful corporate blogging for business is usable information that solves problems now.

The closer the potential donor or volunteer feels to being able to help bring about the result, the more likely they are to act, our group concluded, opting for statistics on the art program helping students in their schoolwork today.

Dis or dat? Words count in fundraising and in blogging for business.
 

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Your Business Blog Reads the Label from Inside the Bottle

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“How can you see yourself from far away?  Not easy. It’s hard to see the label from inside the bottle,” my “rockstar” friend Thaddeus Rex so aptly observes.  So, how can you see your STUFF the way your customers do? Well, (consumers are saying, if you will only listen, says Rex), rather than wrestling us into your stuff, you sit down at our level and ask. When a story emerges, you bottle it up and take it back home, add polish and panache, and send it back.

And that, Thaddeus Rex concludes, is how you leave customers selling your stuff to themselves!

Advertising maven Donny Deutsch looks for the human, emotional connection between a product and its audience. "The market is not an abstract entity," says Deutsch, but "real people with real desires and needs".
As a professional blogger for business, I realize blog marketing isn’t an attempt to create a new market where one doesn't exist. On the contrary, "pull marketing" is designed to attract searchers who have already identified their own need for a particular product or service.

That is not to say that, through blog posts, you can't introduce readers to a solution they hadn't known was an option for them. In fact, because an effective blog is part of an ongoing conversation (as compared with the more static content on traditional websites), there is the chance to introduce unique approaches to satisfying customers' needs.

Whether it’s traditional push marketing (mailers, ads, commercials, etc.) or blogging, at the end of the day, as Donny Deutsch emphasizes, "if a product doesn't meet a need, all the marketing in the world can't sell it."

I think that’s where the Thaddeus Rex concept is so appropriate for us freelance blog content writers to keep in mind as we look for ways to tell our clients’ stories.  We don’t (in fact, we can’t) make up those stories. They, our clients, can’t make up the stories, either. The stories need to come from “sitting down at the customer level” until the story emerges.  Only after that happens will there be something for us writers to bottle up and add polish and panache.
 

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