Authenticity Blogging

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Get personal on social media, is Justin Mack’s advice to financial advisors – to demonstrate that you’re unique, you need to explain what you care about and what it’s like to work with you. “The right mix of personal, educational, and corporate brand content can add great value to an advisor’s social media page.” What resonates strongly with prospects, Mack says, is “personal character, culture, and behind-the-scenes content. “Both current and potential clients want to see the people who power the firm more than the firm’s latest earnings success.”

Authenticity is powerful in blog marketing. “You can talk about your goals, background, mission, and products by simply writing and publishing posts,” Livia Ryan writes on.eonetwork.org. Ryan is talking about personal posts, but at Say It For You, we think her statement very much applies to business blogging: “Readers will be provided an intimate view of your journey and what goes into developing your products and services. Connect with readers, and you create potential customers.”

Real people are the key to authentic relationships, sproutsocial agrees. Consumers want to learn more about the people behind their favorite brands. Surveys show 72% of consumers report feeling sloser to a company when employees share information about a brand online. For that very reason, thehartford.com explains, “Your employees need to understand your company, its values, its goals and its priorities.”

Company employees’ contribution to blogging
At Say It For You, when I’m working with a company to set up a business blogging strategy and I’m training that company’s employees to post blogs, quite often I hit resistance, with employees seeing blogging as just one more task in a series of duties that makes their work load heavier. Still even if my team is going to be composing the posts, it’s crucial for the business owner to enlist the support of the employees.

  • Employees are the ones in the field and on the phone with customers and clients.
  • Employees know the strengths and best uses of their own company’s products and services.
  • Employees are the best people to , in conversation with customers. to elicit testimonials and anecdotes that can be used for blog content.

One combination tactic that quite often turns out to be just right is having professionally ghostwritten posts (to maintain the regularity and research needed to win search engine rankings), but with employees providing their very special touch when time and their regular duties allow.

Blogging for business represents an ideal tool for “getting personal” and earning trust, allowing business owners to express who and “what” they are – What makes them tick?  What “ticks them off” about their own industry? In short, business blog writing needs to be real. Being real, though, doesn’t mean being sloppy about grammar and spelling – or about properly attributing quotes and ideas to their sources.

There’s a balancing act between authenticity and brand, but there’s little doubt – authenticity is powerful in blog marketing!

 

 

 

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Guest Post: CMO Skills Essential for Marketing

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Since our Say It For You writers often work under the direction of a company’s Chief Marketing Officer, this insightful guest post about effective CMOs is of interest. Author Dana Harris is a writer and a freelance marketing specialist. She has been writing articles on marketing tips and strategies for over five years.

CMOs are invaluable members of any company. However, their role constantly grows and transforms due to the continuous evolution of the marketing world. From new tactics to the latest trends, there’s no shortage of skills and tools for marketers to master. But which strengths are truly essential for a chief marketing officer? This blog discusses what you need in a good CMO.

This Chief Marketing Officer resume guide details the top five common traits of a competent CMO:

  • good leader
  • quick adapter
  • customer-centered
  • great communicator
  • excellent data analyzer

A CMO needs each of these fundamental skills to fulfill all of the responsibilities of their position.

However, these are not the only desirable traits. A CMO’s role is so influential that it can make or break a company’s brand image, sales, and overall profit. It’s critical to prevent a decline in any of those areas. Here are five more skills your CMO should possess to boost your marketing efforts and impact.

Goal Setting

Knowing how to set goals is a significant marketing skill. As the leader of a company’s marketing department, it’s certainly a must-have skill for a CMO. They should know how to implement marketing tactics that align with the company’s goals. Not only that, they should continually aim for a stronger brand and a greater product reach. Even the best marketing strategy risks failure with no guiding goals in mind.

Understanding of UX & UI

Technology is a critical element for a marketing campaign to reach its full potential. This reason is why a company’s CMO and technical team must work together. However, a CMO with knowledge of basic UX/UI design skills is extremely valuable. These skills allow the CMO to build a consumer experience that supports a company’s marketing goals and strategies. Also, the technical team can achieve much more when the CMO has a basic working knowledge of their design skills.

Creativity and Innovation

The ability to be both creative and innovative is essential in the marketing field. Marketers should constantly look for new methods and inventive ways to execute marketing plans to keep up with the latest trends. A creative CMO has a better understanding of consumers and can deliver a valuable experience to them. The combination of data-driven insight and creative thinking is the perfect recipe for actionable campaigns.

Content Management

Did you know that 94% of consumers go to the internet to research products? People often go to Google to look for information and resources during the purchasing process. This fact shows the importance of content marketing. Content marketing covers the constant development and optimization of blog posts, videos, eBooks, whitepapers, and other content pieces. Content management skills have become essential with so much centered on the internet.

Excellent Storytelling

Every effective marketer should be a good storyteller. They should be able to use data to weave a compelling story and put the company’s name on top. Customers typically buy products based more on emotion than logic. A CMO must appeal to the audience’s emotional side and compel them to buy into the brand. Powerful storytelling speaks into the lives of customers and connects a product directly to a solution. It’s a balance of both emotion and logic.

Wrapping Up

Indeed, a chief marketing officer is a very complex and diverse role that is constantly evolving. Companies seeking a capable CMO shouldn’t overlook these essential skills, and neither should those seeking to be the next CMO. Regardless of marketing or technological advances, these skills will take both the CMO and the company confidently into the future.

 

 

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Guest post: 3 Ways to Create an Extra income Stream from Home

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(Photo by Upsplash)

Want to earn an income but don’t know how or where to get started? Your home can be a money-making machine. Here are a few ways you can add to your finances by taking advantage of your own house…

Sell Items Online or in Yard Sales

If something’s just gathering dust in your house, consider selling it. You could have a cabinet or a couch you no longer need — sell them online! A yard sale is also an excellent idea if you have more items you need to dispose of that are in good condition. In addition, yard sales are visible and advertise themselves, which is an advantage over indoor sales. Make sure you check your local zoning laws and homeowner association restrictions to avoid issues.

Make Renovations and Share the Steps

Equity is the percentage of your home that’s already been paid off. If your home is worth significantly more than what you still owe on your home loan, you may be able to use that equity to pay for home enhancements or renovations. It’s a smart way to finance a renovation project. You may even enjoy tax deductions (if you use the money to enhance your home substantially) and low interest rates (because the property is used as collateral for the loan). Additionally, you can expect a healthy ROI with the right renovations, as well as sell the house quickly and for more money, if that’s something you’re considering.

Start a Blog or a YouTube Channel

Blogging is a smart way to make extra cash. If you like sprucing things up regularly in your home, create a website or a YouTube channel to share your home improvements, DIY projects, flips, and more. You can create an additional income stream by placing ads on your website and earning sponsorships (in time). Post often, research the best times to upload content, make your home enhancements compelling, and really provide valuable information — more people will like and share your videos and content this way, helping you earn more.

Affiliate marketing is another excellent way to make money when you run a home improvement blog. You could simply recommend products or items you like or personally use in your projects. Each time a client uses your link to purchase, you’ll earn a commission. Of course, you’ll need to reach and build up an audience for your platform to take off. Promote your posts and videos on social media accounts by sharing before and after images of your projects.

Making cash off your home is relatively easy as you have more options than you might realize. Whether through selling stuff you no longer need, starting a blog or vlog to document home renovation tips, use your home as the starting place to get your message across and get visitors coming back for more.

 

Today’s guest post was contributed by Seth Murphy.  Seth first dabbled in DIY projects because that was cost-effective. Now Seth hopes his blog, Papa DIY, will encourage readers to take a chance at tackling their own hands-on projects… check out Seth’s blog at https://papadiy.com/about-me/ 

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It’s Easier to Buy Perfume Than Blog

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If you’re involved in any way in marketing a business or a practice, I know you’ll get a kick out of this story from the Reader’s Digest June issue:

  Every year for my birthday, my husband buys me a particular perfume that
                  I especially love. This past year, with money tight, I told him not to bother getting
                  me a gift. Instead, I asked that he handwrite a letter encapsulating our 25 years together.

                  My husband leaned in, gently took my hand, and begged, ”Can I please just buy you the bottle of perfume?”

Every minute of every day, millions upon millions of new blogs come online. Fast forward a few months and many of them quit. Visitors to those websites find content dated months and even years ago. Why?

Bloggingtips.guru.com thinks there are several reasons:

  • They have no patience.
  • They lose motivation.
  • They have a “me too” mentality and don’t know how to be unique.
  • They cannot write interesting content.
  • They fail to promote their blog.

There’s actually a scientific name for what ails that husband in the story. In fact, there are two:
“graphophobia” and “scriptophobia”, Jacob Olesen explains in fearof.net. Fear of writing, he says, usually originates from a negative experience in one’s past (Could it be that the husband was forever scarred by his second grade teacher’s criticism of his cursive??).

Whatever ails the guy in the story, don’t let yourself fall prey to that malady, cautions selectmkt.com. Don’t participate in the neglected websites syndrome. Give your blog some love and it will make a huge difference against your competitors.

Problem is, it’s less work to buy that bottle of perfume. Far too many business owners start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. Daily blogs become weekly blogs, and pretty soon, months go by between blog posts. In fact, my company, Say It For You, was founded to provide professional writing services to business clients, whose attention was constantly drawn away from content creation because they were putting out fires, making sales, and dealing with personnel issues.

Most business owners today know that business blog writing in their area of expertise is important for getting indexed by search engines and getting found by potential clients and customers. Rather than having web visitors find years-old content on their blog page, owners are best off leaving the driving to professional content writing “surrogates

Truth is, it’s easier to buy perfume than blog!

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Starting – and Sticking With – Blogging for Business

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While launching a business blog is a fearsome thing for many, sustaining the process is even harder, as Seth Godin discusses in The Dip.

Too many business owners and professional practitioners embark on blog marketing in recognition of its power to generate interest in their products and services. What gets them down is the week-after-week work of creating new, relevant, interesting, and results-producing…blog posts.

In the face of all the compelling reports demonstrating the value of blog marketing, Caslon Analytics tells us that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month!, 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days. The average blog, Caslon remarks ruefully, “has the lifespan of a fruitfly”.

Problem is, as we well know at Say It For You, in blog marketing, it’s just not OK to quit. Those abandoned blogs belong to those who don’t recognize what Seth Godin describes as the “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”. Google and other search engines tend to give more weight to websites that update their content regularly and that “keep on keeping on.” In fact, it’s the constant, consistent stream of new content that gives blogging its edge over other forms of marketing.

After years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and corporate blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that blog content writers who do nothing more than “show up” are exceptional! That’s because business owners who are able and willing to maintain consistency and frequency in posting to their blog are so rare. Remember, a company or practice might be achieving exceptional results, but potential customers and clients don’t yet know that, and that’s the message that needs to come across in the blog (and the latest entry cannot be six months old!).

Readers and search engines each know to “expect” fresh content. Freelance blog content writers are helping their business owner and professional practitioner clients build equity in keyword phrases over time, helping clients achieve those “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”.

 

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