Readers Remember Helpful Hints

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Sometimes a concept just keeps slapping you in the face with how true it is…. I’d been writing about offering helpful how-to hints as a way of engaging visitors to your blog. Find complementary businesses or practices, I advised, asking those business owners or practitioners for tips they can offer for you to pass along to your readers. The best tips and hints, I added, are related to some a topic currently trending in the news, especially one affecting your industry.

Just the other day, in the course of attending virtual networking meetings, I heard two wonderful examples of helpful hints.

First, fellow InfoConnect2 member Jim Badger (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimbadger/)  explained that, because COVID-19 has caused to many people to meet virtually rather than in person, the logo imprint on the apparel should be put on the collar or high up on the shoulder of the jacket or shirt, so that it will be visible within in the frameword of the Zoom image

  • Hours later, in a Happy Networking virtual room, Samuel Brown, CEO of PacketEx in South Carolina (https://www.linkedin.com/in/packetex/) offered a helpful tip about computers and cell phones. Should we turn those off every night? Yes, Brown explained. It’s not because the phone or PC or Mac needs to rest (those machines are made to run, he said.) Turning off the devices allows them to perform automated tasks, including combating viruses, he explained.
  • At Say It For You, we teach that everything about your blog should be tailor-made for your ideal customer’s needs and preferences. The content is there to raise readers’ awareness of solutions and to educate them about products or tactics they perhaps hadn’t considered. With all that having been said, how do you get your business or practice remembered?

Well, the “logo” has to be high enough on the garment so it gets seen on the Zoom image. The advice has to solve a real problem and be implementable.

Try jogging your blog visitors’ memories with your own “in the now”, “in the know”, trend-related, practical, helpful hints!.

 

 

 

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How to Hug Customers in Your Blog

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“It’s not location, location, location,’ Jack Mitchell writes in Hug Your Customers. “It’s service, service, service.” Sure, a decent location with reasonable traffic, convenient to get to, and more than adequate parking – will do just fine if you learn to ‘hug” your customers. Personalized attention to customers is the proven way to achieve sales results, is the thesis of Mitchell’s book, based on Mitchell’s Family of Stores’ clothing and jewelry business.

Since the first publication of his book, the author admits, much has changed, with the most significant of those changes being the growth of Internet sales for all industries. One thing that has not changed, Mitchell, claims, is the need to deliver personalized customer service. People still yearn for at least a smile and a thank-you from an actual human being, he says. Actually, people do more than merely yearn when it comes to personal service – research shows that customers are willing to pay more for a product if they receive better customer service during and after a purchase.

At our content marketing company, we absolutely agree. The challenge we blog content writers take on is translating those “smiles” and “thank-you’s” into digital messaging. As part of the business blogging assistance I offer through Say It For You, I’m always talking to business owners about their customer service.  The challenge is – EVERY business says it offers superior customer service! (Has any of us ever read an ad or a blog that does NOT tout its superior customer service?)  It’s not enough to say it – you have to specifically illustrate ways in which your company’s customer service exceeds the norm.

There’s more. Personalized service includes teaching customers new skills, and some blog posts can take the form of actually tutorials and step-by-step instructions. Stories of all kinds –help personalize a business blog. Even if a professional writer is composing the content, true-story material increases engagement by readers with the business or practice. Case studies are particularly effective in creating interest, because they are relatable and “real”.

In Journalism 101 class, we were taught to “put a face on the issue” by beginning the article with a human example  A case study takes that personalization even further, chronicling a customer or client who had a problem or need, and taking readers through the various stages of using the product or service to solve that problem. What were some of the issues that arose along the way? What new insights were gained through that experience, on the part of both the business and the customer?

You might not think of simplifying your website navigation as another way to “hug” customers, but it absolutely is. Marketing blogs are all about getting found,, but now they’ve found you, both both the content of your blog posts and the navigation paths on the blog site had better be easy, calling for fewer keystrokes and less confusion.

When writing content for your own blog or when planning content with the individuals you’ve hired for business blogging assistance, keep in mind that online readers might decide at any point that they’re ready to learn more, that they have a question to ask, or that they’re ready to take advantage of your products and services.  Make the process feel like a smile and and a hug!

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Embracing the Encouraging Side of Blogging

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Corbett Barr, writing in thinktraffic.net, encourages blog writers to “embrace your encouraging side.” There’s plenty of cynicism and negativity in the world, Barr says, and sometimes readers just want to be encouraged. I heartily agree. In fact, one of the things we tell content writers is that the last thing you want to do in a blog is to be downbeat or attempt to “scare” readers into taking action.

The “press release” aspect of blogging for business dictates that the first sentences of any post must engage interest (with the “or else” being that visitors click away). Different tactics include raising questions in readers’ minds or describing a provocative scene or situation. Your post might play off a topic currently trending in the news, especially one relating to your profession or industry. Now, having gathered information, using it to demonstrate how readers can use that information in their own lives, remember to present the material in reassuring and encouraging words.

As a retired financial planning practitioner myself, I really appreciated what financial psychologist William Marty Martin advised financial planners: “How you communicate can serve to eliminate, decrease, or exacerbate panic experienced within yourself, your family, your team, and your clients…Words have the power of providing comfort, or generating panic, or even helplessness.”

One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional blog content writers is that we are interpreters, translating clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms.  That’s the reason I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting”. (I think people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.)

The idea that little things can mean a lot when dealing with difficult circumstances is reinforced in an article in Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge newsletter. “Even as COVID vaccines begin early deployment, pressure on leaders continues to mount to engage in ‘Big C’ change.” But, “instead of questioning everyone and everything I a crisis, leaders should create an atmosphere of trust and confidence.”

“Empathy is the key to gaining readers and followers in all kinds of writing, says Karen Hertzberg of grammarly.com. “from blogging to marketing to social media.”

Embrace the encouraging side of blogging!

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Blogs That Go WHAC

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Write less,” advises Seth Godin in the preface to his book The Dip. Now Brant Pindvidic, in his book The 3-Minute Rule, tells us to “say less to get more from any pitch or presentation”.

At Say It For You, I teach the principle of “reading around”, emphasizing the point that business bloggers are going to need to spend at least as much time reading as writing. Even after almost a decade and a half creating blog content for business owners and practitioners, I feel the need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my clients offer. But now, both these business authors are making the case for less, not more, when it comes to sales pitches, speeches, and blog posts.

It seems this “reading around” habit of mine has presented me with a dilemma: Godin’s and Pinvidic’s advice to write and say less seems to fly in the face of the latest trend towards long-form blog posts with a word count numbering in the thousands.

Brant Pinvidic’s advice is based on the science of approach motivation. “Every time you make a pitch, presentation, or proposal to try to influence anyone to do anything, your audience’s first impression will be fully formed in less than three minutes”. And it’s not that we’re all dumbed-down, he says, but that people today focus more intensely and efficiently, he explains. The WHAC outline helps organize the key information you need to impart – and dictates the order in which you present that information:

W – What is it? (What is your offer?)
H – How does it work?) work? (Why are the elements of your offer and why are they valuable or
Important?)
A– Are you sure? (This is a fact or figure that backs up your information and establishes
potential.)
C – Can you do it? (Your ability to execute and deliver.

In the first two stages, the W and the H, the audience will conceptualize. In the A stage, they will contextualize, judging whether your offer is true real, and right. In the C stage, the audience will be asking whether this could actually happen in the way being described.

Transferring this model to the arena of blog marketing, I’d suggest that the WHAC sequence could be employed over a series of blog posts rather than using it all in one. One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that blog posts can stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the corporate website or the content in white papers. What helps the separate posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy are the blog “leitmotifs” or themes.

Whether Godin’s “Write less” advice is suited for us blog content writers remains a matter of debate. On the other hand, “Read more” continues to be a requirement for imparting bog posts with WHAC!

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To Be Interesting, Think Broad

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“Many people and most organizations narrowly define what’s relevant and interesting to their followers. They mistakenly assume that their followers want to read about only a narrow band of subjects,” Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzgerald point out in The Art of Social Media.

As examples of how posts can be “broadened”, Kawasaki suggests that a restaurant chain might include news about atomic particles that help solve wine fraud, while an airline might offer news about drive-in theaters or mindful travel photography. It’s not that you don’t want to promote yourself and your own business to followers, the author explains; it’s that sharing interesting stuff and broadening by “catalyzing more interaction,” you earn the right to promote yourself!

As part of blogging training at Say It For You, I do often recommend including interesting information on topics only indirectly related to your specific business or profession (or, if you’re a freelance blog content writer, related to the client’s business or profession). If you’ve unearthed tidbits of information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, so much the better. I agree with Kawasaki that even if some tidbits of information are not “actionable”, if they are intrinsically interesting, it’s worth including them simply to add fun and variety to your content.

But broadening the scope of information you offer in a business blog needn’t be only for the sake of adding fun to your content. Little known and trending news stories can be offered to readers with some very specific “ulterior motives” on the part of the business owner or practitioner, such as:

  • clarifying the way your business or practice works
  • demonstrating the many uses of your products
  • reinforcing the importance of a widespread problem
  • explaining why your business practices are designed to prevent that particular problem
  • busting a common myth

Online searchers who’ve arrived at your blog post definitely need assurance they’ve come to the right place. But now they’re here, you’ll have a better chance of engaging their interest by “going broad”!

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