Who Should Definitely Read This Blog?

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Every month my Mensa monthly newsletter Mind has a book review section, and I love the way that review is presented. First, there’s a page-long description of what the book is about. But then, there are three smaller sections:

  1. Has this book changed the way you think or your attitude towards life?
  2. Who should definitely read this book? Why?
  3. Provide a short characteristic section, an awesome sentence, or an inspiring quote.

Question #2 is one that we blog content writers need to ask ourselves each time we work on a post on behalf of a client – Who should definitely be reading this?? That’s because, just as the only people who will be receiving the Mensa newsletter are those already qualified to be members, visitors to our blogsite “self-select” in terms of choosing to click on the link and read our content.After all, while I’m fond of thinking of ghost blogging as an art, there’s quite a bit of science to it as well.  A blog can’t be all things to all people, any more than any business or professional practice can be all things to everybody.  The blog must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who will want to do business with you.
Years ago, I heard humor speaker Ron Culberson at a National Speakers Association meeting tell an anecdote that neatly sums up the need for audience targeting:

A woman attending a conference says, “This is the most boring conference ever. I’m going to skip the keynote address that’s coming up next and go to the beach.” Overhearing her, a man asks, “Do you know who I am? I’m the division president and I’M the keynote speaker!” The woman responds “And do you know who I am?” “No,” responds the man. The woman gets up and leaves…..

One of the very first principles of blog marketing is targeting.  Not only must the content you include in your business blog (or, in the case of Say It For You clients, the business blog content created by your freelance blog writer) offer valuable and up-to-date information, you must make clear to readers that the information has been assembled specifically for them:

  • You understand their concerns and needs .
  • You and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs.

If readers find themselves asking “Don’t you know who we are?” those searchers are going to do what that woman conference attendee did – get up and leave.

A tantalizing title, well-researched content, opinion, story – all important elements to include in your well-thought-out blog post. But, before hitting the “Publish” key, ask yourself, “Who should definitely read this blog and why?”

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In Blogging for Business, Data is a Commodity, But Insight is Gold

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Writing in the Indianapolis Business Journal, Samantha Julka recalls a professor telling her that “Data is a commodity; it’s the insight that’s gold.” Anyone can create a survey and a pivot table, Julka observes…but real researchers pull insights! When numbers are tossed around, people generally view it as vital information, she says, but people may not know what to do with that information. As a consumer, Julka points out, I don’t want to read raw data; I want someone to tell me what the data means. The really juicy stuff, she says, makes people think and helps them make decisions.

Oh, so true, as I’ve been teaching at Say It For You. Citing statistics and other data is certainly one tactic I teach Indianapolis blog content writers to use as a way to capture readers’ attention. But my own experience as a business blogger has shown me that statistics, even the startling sort, aren’t enough to create positive results for any marketing blog.

In fact, the ultimate success of any blog marketing effort depends on readers taking action. In that realm, blogging has one enormous advantage over traditional “push marketing” tactics, in that it delivers information to visitors who are already interested in a particular product or service. Still, that’s not enough.

The blog content needs to address the “So what?” within the data, so that the statistics and facts not only are true, but feel true to your online visitors. In a way, I realize in retrospect, my own years of experience crafting messages for different businesses and professional practices might very well fall under the job descriptor “translator/interpreter”.

Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business-to-consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers. In other words, blog posts will go from information-dispensing to offering the business owner’s (or the professional’s, or the organizational executive’s) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic.

Several years ago, I read about a study performed at the University of Pennsylvania, in which participants were divided into three groups. Each individual was given $5 which they could choose to donate to a certain charitable organization after they learned more about it. A presentation was made to each group. Group A was given all kinds of statistics about the charity – size, budget, staff, funding sources, etc. Group B heard a story about a young girl who was helped by that organization. Group C was given both data and the story. Which group ended up donating the largest amount? You guessed it – the one that had heard the story, because the story gave meaning and insight into the data.

In blogging for business, data is a commodity, but insight – well, that’s gold!

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Is the Size of Your Blog Post Inflated?

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For the second time this week, an article in the Indianapolis Business Journal caused me to consider some of the unique challenges of blog content writing…

“Looking for signs of inflation? Check the sizes of the goods you buy,” observed Cecil Bohanon & Nick Curott in the Indianapolis Business Journal. “Sellers of many consumer items resorted to reducing the quantity of the product to obviate explicitly increasing the dollar price of the product.” In other words, the package of cereal or cookies, or gum, stayed the same size; there was just less stuff in the box!

“Why are cereal boxes half empty?” Well, ABC Packaging admits, “bigger boxes give the impression that there is a lot of cereal inside”. “Large packaging is misleading and not fair, consumer campaigner Fred Isaac was saying back in 2016.

Well, duh….But economics aside, as a blog content writing trainer, I caution against “inflating” the length of blog posts. What’s the current wisdom on the subject? Brightedge.com offers the following advice in favor of longer posts: “If your piece does not provide enough depth or if it only gives a cursory treatment of the topic at hand, it may not be deemed high-quality content. You will want to dive deeper and provide more information as well as have an optimal blog post length.” “While attention spans may be going down, the average word count of blog posts is on the rise,” observes blogtyrant.com.

At Say It For You, we tend to agree with the checklist Jasmine Gordon offers. We blog content writers will know we’re done with a particular post IF:

  1. we’ve covered the topic in depth
  2. we’ve offered more value than the competition
  3. we’ve incorporated high-quality visuals
  4. we’ve verified our research and facts

My take is similar to that of Fred Isaac: Honest packaging should mean that longer posts deliver more information and a deeper dive into the subject. Having composed blog posts (both as a ghost and under my own name) numbering in the tens of thousands, I’m finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!”  I think maybe Albert Einstein said it best: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” In blogging, I’ve found that as long as you stick to a central idea for each blog post, you need to “say it until it’s said”, making your post as short as possible, but not shorter.

Ask yourself – Is the “package” filled with necessary, useful information, or is the size of this blog post inflated?

 

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Blogging, Like Design, is About Creatively Solving Problems

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“Design is often misconstrued to be a luxury. Yet, at its core, design is about creatively solving the problems we all face at any scale,” Tom Gallagher writes in the Indianapolis Business Journal. “…practitioners often downplay the importance of beauty, but aesthetic must not be dismissed”. In urban design, Gallagher continues, fashion addresses who we are and how we respect others. The quality of materials speaks to our shared values.

“What we see has a profound effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are,” Mike Parkinson of Billion Dollar Graphics asserts. Parkinson quotes famed psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who demonstrated that no less than 93% of communication is nonverbal. “

In fact, the aesthetic element must not be dismissed in blog content creation, either. Images are one of the three “legs” of the business blog “stool”, we teach at Say It For You, along with information and perspective or “slant”. Not only is it true that articles containing images get more total views and higher ratings, images help explain and emphasize concepts. The visual presentation of a blog post – the type font, the bolding, italics, spacing – all the details work to support the words and ideas and contribute to the general impression left with online readers.

So, if design is so important, does all that mean video blogs are going to supplant text content?

As a Say It For You blog content writer and trainer, I appreciated a 2017 fourdots.com blog post discussing that very question, and making a four-point case for textual content as a primary driver of online communication:

  1. Text gives you the option to stop exactly where you want to, wrapping your mind around a certain piece of information.
  2. Text can be easily updated and upgraded.
  3. B2B buyers consume informational pieces and case studies, looking for industry thought leadership.
  4. Text stimulates the mind and is more focused.

Just about ten years ago, I published a blog post titled “Shoes and Business Blogs – Some People Care if They’re Shined”. The post touched on aesthetics, advising marketers to “dress your blog in its best” by preventing “wardrobe malfunctions” such as grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors, avoiding redundancies, and tightening up those paragraphs.. Avoid redundancy; tighten up those paragraphs, I cautioned.

Yes, blogging, like design, is about creatively solving problems, but aesthetics must not be dismissed!

 

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Comparative Marketing for Blogs

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“As long as the value of one product or service is being communicated through its comparison to another product or service, it qualifies as comparative advertising,” Conor Bond writes in Wordstream. The goal, as with all advertising, is to communicate value, but in the case of comparative advertising, that value is conveyed not only from quality, but from the disparity in quality between one product or service and another. The other company or provider serves as an anchor, Bond explains, something concrete to use as a reference point.

Bond offers examples of comparative advertising, including:

  • Mac portraying its own users as immune to the viruses that commonly attack PCs
  • Verizon portraying its own customers enjoying online games and YouTube videos on their phones while ATT&T customers suffer lack of access
  • Wendy’s tweeting about MacDonald’s beef patties still being frozen
  • Popeye’s “dinging” chick-fil-A for being closed on Sundays

Two companies that choose to compare themselves against an amalgam of others rather than a specific rival, Bond notes, are Dove (treats your skin with care, unlike the others who treat it harshly), and Allstate using Mayhem to show that they outdo competitors in preparing customers to deal with unpredictable events.

Can comparative marketing work for blogs? At Say It For You, we teach, negatives against competitors are a basic no-no. It’s almost axiomatic that, in writing for business, we want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition.  In getting the point across that readers should want to choose this business or this practice, or these products and services over those offered by the competition, staying positive is still important. In fact, sometimes knowing what not to include in your business blog writing makes you a better blog content writer.

The “Golden Rule” advice Advisor Today gives to financial planning practitioners applies here: “say only those kinds of things about specific competitors that we’d want them saying about us!” The high road in blog marketing strategy and tactics development is what Bing Crosby used to croon, “Accentuate the positive…latch on to the affirmative.”

One format I’ve found useful is the “Some……but we….”

  • “Some stylists are in the practice of ……, but at Shirley’s Salon, we believe …….. is best.”
  • Some housecleaning companies require you to provide your own products, but at ABC, we supply our cleaning staff with green products.”

    In other words, accentuate the positive. Comparative blog marketing means explaining why you do things the way you do, letting readers draw their own conclusions.

 

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