The Power of “When” in Blog Marketing

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It’s not only what you do, but when, Michael Breus explains in his new book The Power of When. There’s a best time for each of us to eat lunch, ask for a raise, write a novel, and take our meds, depending on our individual “chronotype”, Breus teaches.

Circadian biology in humans is a rather new field of study, but the concept of good timing can be traced back to the Bible. Surely you remember this passage from Ecclesiastes: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:  a time to be born and a time to die…”.

Does timing matter when it comes to marketing your business or practice using blog writing? It certainly does, maintains Melissa Albano-Davis of Grapevine Marketing. In positioning your business to take advantage of timely marketing opportunities, Albano-Davis says, “the key is to be ready and able to move on a dime”.

“If you’re not paying attention to the trends as they occur, you’re going to miss the boat…tune into major events and the types of programming that is most popular with your audience.” You can take advantage of:

  • obvious events, such as the presidential debates and Superbowl
  • events happening within your own community
  • things that affect everyone in your area, such as the weather
    topics trending on Twitter

Consumers are more inclined to do certain things on certain days of the week, and if you can understand those habits relevant to your business, you can make sure your marketing campaign hits when the consumer is in the right frame of mind to act, suggests Chloe He in business2community.

Ms. He offers a couple of valuable timing hints having to do with weekends:

  • Social media is quieter on the weekend.  Even though fewer people check their accounts, those who do are more active than they might be during the week, more likely to read articles.
  • Weekends are about DIY

When it comes to the science of blog timing, the main thing people think about is when to publish a post, but that’s not the only timing consideration, Kissmetrics points out. You must also consider the timing of:

  • How often you publish
  • When to promote the posts
  • When to repurpose the content

As blog content writers, we would do well to heed the reminder which authors from Ecclesiastes to Michael Breus so aptly offer –  it’s not only what we do, but when!

 

 

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What Does it Take to be a Sophisticated Blog Marketer?

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arrogant blond sexy girl. red dressThe original meaning of the word “sophisticated” was quite different from the way we think of it today, author Bill Brohough teaches in The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use .  To “sophisticate” something was to adulterate it by mixing it with something inferior, so being sophisticated meant the opposite of genuine.

When it comes to online marketing – even using the description “sophisticated” as we understand that word today (meaning cultured and refined) –  what qualities set that level of marketing apart? “What is a ‘sophisticated marketer’, anyway?” asks Alex Rynne of LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions blog, gathering responses from various marketers.

Some different “takes” on the question include:

  • one who focuses on results over marketing tactics and activities
  • one whose marketing is not elitist and complicated
  • someone who takes both old and new marketing techniques and executes them in a calculated hybrid of strategies
  • one who delivers the right kind of information to buyers across the entire customer lifecycle.
  • one who questions each premise and considers alternatives

To sell a product or service, you must market it differently depending on what stage of sophistication your market is in at the time, Todd Brown shares in his blog post “The Greatest Marketing Lesson I Ever Learned.”

Often, sophistication means simplification, I teach newbie Indianapolis blog content writers. Matching our writing to our intended audience is part of the challenge we business blog content writers face. After all, we’re not in this to entertain ourselves – we’re out to retain the clients and customers we serve and bring in new ones, so we try to use words and sentences to which our target readers can relate.

 

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More About Using Skeletons to Bring Life to Your Blog

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In the delightful little book Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use, you can find a treasure chest of fun ideas for livening up business blog posts. Author Bill Brohough alerts readers to the fact that many of the words we use daily used to have very war-related, sexually oriented, or even disgusting meanings.

Last week in this Say It For You blog, I suggested several ways in which that collection of verbal “skeletons” which Brohough put together can be used to enliven blog marketing content for different types of businesses and professional practices,. skeletonThose word “skeletons” can be use, I explained:

  • to define basic terminology or give basic information to readers
  • to explain why this practitioner or business owner chooses to operate in a certain way:

After all, every business blogger faces the challenge of creating material about the same subject over long periods of time, and anything we can use to deepen and broaden and generally “freshen up” the topic tends to be a good thing.

Two words we’re used to seeing in marketing content, terms used to describe everything from clothing to home décor to autos, for example, are “sophisticated” and “luxury”.  Today, Brohough points out, if you call something or someone “sophisticated”, you mean cultured and refined.  The original meaning of the word was quite different.  To “sophisticate” something was to adulterate it by mixing it with something inferior, and being sophisticated meant the opposite of genuine. The word “luxury”, Brohough adds, has a similarly shady past. The Old French word meant “indulging in abundance”, lacking in taste, or even lecherous.

In corporate blog writing, the target audience dictates the nature of the content, including the writing tone and style, the length of the posts, which keyword phrases to include, and what the Calls to Action will be.  But, even with all those preparations made and research done,  writers need to maintain a full content “quiver” (with the arrows pointing in the right direction!).

Trivia such as those in Unfortunate English can add a dash of humor and a whole lot of new interest to business blog marketing content!

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Does Your Blog Have Skeletons in its Verbal Closet?

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You’ll find skeletons in verbal closets, Bill Brohough says, and he devotes an entire book to helping us do just that in Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use. Brohough alerts readers to the “improprieties, disgusting notions, licentiousness, and other foul thoughts” we speak daily without realizing it.

  • I love “reading around and learning around”, as I call it, and advise all blog content writers to do the same. Ideas are all over the place, all of the time, but we’ve got to see and hear those ideas, learning everywhere and from everyone, making connections between our own experience and knowledge and Other People’s Wisdom.  There are several ways in which I think Brohough’s collection of verbal “skeletons” and his caution to writers about using words can be used to improve blog marketing content for different types of businesses:1.  to define basic terminology or give basic information to readers: The expression “caught red-handed”, Brohough explains, originated in the 1400’s and meant caught with blood on one’s hands. Another speculation, he says, is that the term traces back to 800 B.C., when guilt or innocence was tested by putting the accused’s hand on a red-hot axehead.

A nutrition company or health practitioner might use this piece of trivia to discuss the importance of including various colors of food in the diet, so as to include different phytonutrients advising blog readers to include strawberries as a source of folic acid and cherries which are high in fiber..

2. to explain why this practitioner or business owner chooses to operate in a certain way: A printer or web designer might discuss the way red brings text and images to the foreground, and stimulates buying decisions.  A fashion clothing business or professional makeup salon might offer advice on using red accessories as an accent color for basic black or brown business suits..

As bloggers, we face the challenge of churning out creative writing over extended periods of time, and word “histories”offer fresh ways to approach our subject.

It’s worth searching your blog “closet” for skeletons!

 

 

 

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People Who Don’t Even Like You Are Reading

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Microphone on standLearning that someone had posted a negative remark about him on social media, WIBC radio talk show host Tony Katz quipped, “People who don’t even like me are listening!”

Now, there’s an observation we blog content writers would do well to keep in mind.  Granted, Katz is “out there” in terms of his content, and you may think your content, by comparison, is tasteful and non-offensive.  Truth is, anybody who’s posting content on social media is putting themselves and their business “out there” – (isn’t that the point?).

Online entrepreneur Mike Filsaime coined the moniker “cowboys”, referring to people in online forums who don’t like something you’ve posted and make it a personal mission of theirs to attack you in public forms, negative comments, or blogs.

“As your blog becomes more popular,” writes Yaro Starak in Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, you’ll receive more comments. Some people are going to be negative, argumentative, or not agree with what you’ve written in your blog, Starak warns. There are four possible ways to respond, he says. You could:

  • delete the comment
  • censor it by deleting parts
  • respond in anger

The best course of action, Starak advises, is to use negative comments to demonstrate your own credibility, using a calm, “your-side-of-the-story”, response.

Editor Esther Schindler, writing in Forbes, agrees. Treat the commenter with respect, she advises. Acknowledge the point he makes, then point to the data that led to your differing conclusion. “Always keep the discussion about the subject of the article, not the people.”

In fact, I remind newbie business bloggers, one of the special things about blogs is that they’re available not only for reading, but for acting and interacting.  Good blogs invite readers to post comments and encourage them to subscribe to your blog.

Marketing online begins with attracting eyeballs to our content. It’s a good sign, as Tony Katz reminded us through his on-air quip, when people who don’t even like us are reading our blogs!

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