Using Failure as a Foundation

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“This is one tip I’ll offer to any struggling writer out there,” says Heather Fawcett in Writer’s Digest: “If you have an old idea in a notebook or saved to a flash drive, try recycling it into a new form”.

“It’s time you reinvented the word failure and saw it as feedback,” Suzie Flynn, BSc agrees… When you fail you have the opportunity to look at things from a new perspective, to experiment and even playfully have fun with new ways of doing things.

It was back in the early days of Say It For You that my then networking colleague Robby Slaughter had published the book Failure: the Secret to Success.  Based on the thesis of that delightful book, I explained to my readers two ways in which failure could be an important ingredient in blogging for business:

  • Your posts can demonstrate that you understand the problems the searcher is facing, and are devoted to the process of finding – and sharing – unique solutions.
  • Failure can become a standard by which to understand how a successful outcome will look and feel.

Some ten years later, I gained another perspective on failure when then Nuvo editor Laura McPhee devoted an entire section of the paper to highlighting “alumni”, people who worked there but who had departed for “better things”. As a content writer, I understood that the best way to make a company or professional practice relatable is to introduce readers to the people behind the brand, even if those people are no longer involved in making the products or delivering the services. And, of course, some of those stories and memories are going to revolve around failures – things that, at the time, had gone very wrong.

For me, Heather Fawcett’s piece in Writer’s Digest added a whole other dimension to the concept of using “failure” as a foundational element in content marketing: “recycling” ideas and presenting them in a new way more relevant to what’s happening “in the now”… One great content marketing sustainability tip is to keep an idea file, online or in a little notebook or folder with articles you cut out of newspapers or magazines, notes on ideas gleaned from a seminar, from listening to the radio, reading a blog or a book.. Your folder of “ingredients” , I tell newbie content marketers, will make your job a whole lot easier!

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Commenting on Comments on Your Content

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 “If you are a business with a blog on your website, then I would lean towards NOT allowing comments on your blog,” Nathaniel Tower writes. Most of the comments on business blogs tend to be spammy attempts to direct your potential customers away from your site and to their own instead,” Tower says. “You aren’t going to sell anything in the comments.”

On the other hand, Tower observes,  sincere comments can promote community, and even be a source of ideas.  You can allow comments on some posts, but not on most, he advises. In fact, he suggests, you might write comments on other people’s posts or blogs, being sure your remarks are “thoughtful and promote discussion”.

There’s a reason many major marketing blogs don’t allow comments, Caroline Forsey of Hubspot points out,  confessing “we don’t either”. Her Hubspot colleague Dan Zarrella found that “blog conversations don’t lead to more views or links.” His conclusion: “With your blog, comments should not be a goal – They don’t lead to views or links.” Probogger comes at the question from a different point of view – removing comments doesn’t have to be a decisions you make once, for the first week or month the post goes live, but can be done at any point later on.

On the other side of the question, Fabrizio Van Marciano, on Magnet4Blogging,  uses a wry metaphor, asking us to think about eating toast in the morning cold with no butter or jelly (which Fabrizio likens to the blandness of a blog with no back-and-forth engagement).

In theory, I agree with Van Marciano – blogs should be available not only for reading, but for acting and interacting. Still, spam comment attacks are ubiquitous, typically  arriving in three forms (a. total nonsense, with links to sites the writer is promoting, b. comments totally unrelated to the topic of the blog post, and c. blatant advertising for web services.

At Say It For You, we don’t automatically accept comments, reserving the right to “check them at the door”.

 

 

 

 

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Either Way, a Good Bottle is a Good Bottle

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For the average wine drinker, it’s a no-big-deal thing, but for serious aficionados of Champagne and for those in the wine industry, Alison Napjus points out in Wine Spectator, there’s an important distinction:

While small grower producers, or “RMs”, source their grapes only from vineyards they own ,” negociants”, or ” NMs”, purchase their grapes from different villages and subzones. Connoisseurs (“wine snobs”?) might value RM products, but transferring ownership of land among family members is “prohibitively expensive” under French law, Napius points out, and RMs have trouble meeting demand. NMs, meanwhile, have begun paying closer attention to viticulture in their own vineyards.

The result of all this supply/demand push-pull is that the ” perfect” Champagne product today is neither an RM nor an NM, the author explains. Consumers are really just looking for a steady supply of quality Champagne. “At the end of the day, it’s what’s in the glass that matters, not the code on the label,” the author concludes.

The same observation might be made in my field of content marketing, I couldn’t help thinking. “Content marketing works by capturing the attention of your desired audience members and helping them address their informational and task-oriented needs,” Jodi Harris of the Content Marketing Institute explains.

  • Prefer to use straightforward or “Huh? Oh!” titles for blog posts? Doesn’t matter, so long as, in the body of the post, you deliver on headline’s promise.
  • Whether you post content once a week or once a month, consistency helps build trust with your audience.
  • Statistics can be used to demonstrate the extent of a problem or to provide data about products and services a company offers. Either way, when presented effectively, numbers can move readers to make decisions.
  • “Jargon”, industry or profession-unique terminology can be used judiciously by content writers for explaining and defining a point, or simply as a way to establish common ground with a select audience.

Either way, a good piece of content is a good piece of content!

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No Explosion Needed – Just Information

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“There was a time when we were taught to start with the explosion, the crisis, the murder, the detonation of the bomb, then go back and show the reader how we got to this terrible situation. I’ll explain why you might want to avoid this approach,” says book writing coach Myra Levine.

As content creators for business owners and professional practitioners, it’s tempting to be enigmatic in order to arouse curiosity, but at Say It For You, we agree with Levine that it’s not always the best idea.  After all, it’s essential for us to assure readers that they’ve come to the right place to find the information that satisfies whatever needs brought them online to find answers. In other words, the opening lines can set the tone and arouse curiosity, but it’s best not to sustain the mystery very long.

In terms of satisfying readers’ need for information, Brightedge.com comments that many types of content simply do not need very long blog posts to provide value for readers. On the other hand, articles with only a cursory treatment of the topic may not be deemed high-quality content.  “You will want to dive deeper and provide more information.”

One technique used in comedy is exaggeration, which, as humor speaker Jeff Fleming explained to me years ago at a National Speakers Association meeting, can emphasize points you want the audience to remember. In content marketing, however, while we sometimes aim to engage readers and show empathy regarding their dilemma and problem, it’s crucial that we be seriously “factually correct” in describing the extent to which our products and services can be of help.

Should your book start at the beginning or in the middle of the trouble? “These are decisions, and they’re not easy ones to make,” admits Myra Levine.  In creating  marketing content, while we’re out to engage online readers, no “explosions’ are needed, just valuable information with a personal touch.

 

 

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The Three Dimensions of Content Marketing

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“Researchers looking for strategies and solutions for increasing financial literacy have identified three dimensions,” Jalene Hahn explains in the Indianapolis Business Journal, consisting of knowledge, attitude, and awareness.

The goals of content marketing, it occurred to me, are the same as those named by Hahn:

Knowledge:

When it comes to content marketing, teaching is the new selling. With so much ready access to so many sources of information, visitors to your site want to know that you and your organization have something new to add. At the same time, people generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they’ve arrived seeking information on a particular subject. As content writers, we want our vendor or practitioner clients to be perceived as subject matter experts offering usable information and insight in addition to readers’ own knowledge level.

Attitude:

In the book Stop Hiring Losers , when authors Minesh and Kim Baxi  talk about hiring and retaining good employees,  they name six defining attitudes, or things that motivate different people. These include learning, money, beauty/harmony, altruism, power, and principle. When it comes to content marketing, the secret is knowing your particular audience and thinking about how they (not the average person, but specifically “they”) would probably react or feel about your approach to the subject at hand.

Awareness:

Social media can be used to raise awareness about social issues and encourage users to make changes in their own lives, a University of Plymouth professor explains. Online search can’t create awareness of something people don’t know exists. Once awareness is raised, readers are ready to learn more from reading content and become more engaged.

As is true of helping consumers gain financial literacy, content marketing is a way of helping business owners and professional practitioners use the three dimensions of  knowledge, attitude and awareness to appeal to their online audiences.

 

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