My Mother Was a Sneaker

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sneakersBlogs are not ads, as I am careful to emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions. That’s not to say, though, that we blog content writers can’t learn a lot from ad writers.

I love the Samuel Hubbard.com ad for men’s dress shoes, for example. “My mother was a sneaker. My father was a dress shoe. … I can’t help it. I was born this way.  Insanely comfortable and ready for a day in the office.”

You shouldn’t try to give searchers information about everything you have to offer, all in one blog post.  With each post, stress just one major aspect of your company or practice, I teach. On the other hand, you want your blog to stand out, to be unusually interesting, so that readers will want to stay awhile and maybe even move on to your business’ website.

And when you put two things together that don’t seem to match – that can be a good technique to capture people’s interest. Having the shoe “talk” to the reader, and suggesting that a comfortable shoe is the “offspring” of sneaker and a dress shoe is just different enough to startle and engage.

The “nucleus” around which business blog posts are formed is their topic, the expertise and products that business offers. The key words and phrases around that topic are what bring readers to the blog posts. But, even though the overall topic is the same, there is endless variety that can be used to make each blog post special. The technique used by Samuel Hubbard Shoes is metaphor – making an unusual comparison – in this case between parents and shoes.

If you place a ripe banana next to a green tomato, the tomato will ripen, too, explains Brian McMahon in Mental Floss Magazine. Interesting facts such as this can always be of business blogging help, but that advice comes with two provisos:

Your reason for including the fact in your post must be apparent early on in the blog post, and the new information should relate to something with which readers are already familiar.

What “different” metaphor or comparison can you include in your blog that catches readers’ attention but still stays true to your message?

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Things-You-Can-Buy Business Blogging

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Luxury Cruise Ship in Port

Yes, I admit it – I tried for the $1.5 Powerball jackpot and lost. Have to add, though, that I really couldn’t relate to that big a dollar figure – couldn’t even imagine dollars in the billions. Billions. Until, that is, I read the USA Today list of “5 Things that $1.5 Billion Powerball Jackpot Can Buy”:

  • A fleet of 23 Gulfstream 6650 jets
  • 42,000 nights’ stay at the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah Hotel in Dubai
  • A flotilla of five “super yachts”
  • A parking lot full of Tesla Model S electric cars, one for each of your 21,097 closest friends.

Ah, NOW, I got it!  And, while I’m not sure Dubai would be my destination of choice, just seeing that list made that humongous number come alive for me.

That same concept applies to blogging for business, I’m convinced.  Each claim a content writer puts into a corporate blog needs to be put into context for the reader, so that the claim not only is true, but feels true to online visitors and in such a way that readers can picture themselves using the product or service.

It wouldn’t be exaggerating for me to say, based on my own experience reading all types of marketing blogs, that very few manage to convey to visitors what the information means to them. Imagine those readers asking themselves “How will I use the product?  How much will I use? How often? Where? What will it look like?  How will I feel?”

$1.5 billion wasn’t real to me until that enterprising USAToday journalist Charisse Jones helped make it real by translating the dollars into stuff those dollars could buy.

Try focusing your blog posts on the results your readers can have as a consequence of using your product, your service, or your know-how:

  • things they could buy
  • things they could enjoy
  • things they could accomplish
  • ways they can feel
  • looks they can achieve

Put your readers in that “Gulfstream jet” of anticipation of wonderful results!

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What Do Blog Visitors Want?

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“What do interviewers want?” asks John Kador in “201 Best Questions to Ask on Your Interview”. Ideal qualities for job candidates fall into four main categories, Kador explains:

  • Thinking
  • Planning
  • Interacting
  • Motivation

Business blogs, I’m fond of saying in corporate blogging training classes, are nothing more than extended interviews.  Just as in a face-to-face job interview, searchers who read your blog evaluate the content, judging whether you’re a good fit for them. And those visitors, I’m convinced, are “testing” your company or practice for the same four ideal qualities job interviewers use:

Thinking:
Can you (the “candidate” in this scenario) quickly and effectively solve challenging problems?
Kador advises candidates to be prepared to demonstrate past successes; bloggers should use testimonials and case studies.

Planning:
Can you plan projects without missing deadlines, executing with precision?

Interacting:
Can you demonstrate genuine support and concern and be persuasive in a low-key manner? Whatever your business or profession, there’s no end to the technical information available to consumers on the Internet. Our job then, as business blog content writers, becomes to help readers absorb, buy into, and use that information.

Motivation:
Will you be flexible and frequently suggest improvements?
The overriding message a successful interviewee will convey to a prospective employer is the same message business owners and professionals must convey to their prospective clients: “I understand the challenges of the job, and I have the experience to take them on. I would very much like to start doing this important work.”

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Price Point Blogging?

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???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????“Be specific when it counts,” advises Robin Ryan in the book 60 Seconds & You’re Hired!, referring to salary discussions during job interviews. “Try this,” she suggests: “According to all the salary survey data, someone with my ten years of experience would be in the upper 70s…I was thinking $78,000 is what I’d accept.”

Many business websites fail to address the subject of pricing, observes Marcus Sheridan of socialmediaexaminer.com. Instead of addressing the number-one consumer question up front, they decided to wait until the initial phone contact, or worse, the first sales appointment in the home. But, although this “hidden approach” may have worked in marketing five or ten years ago, today’s consumers don’t like their core questions to be left unanswered, Sheridan states firmly.

From my point of view as a corporate blogging trainer, the topic of “price point blogging” fits in nicely with the overall concept of putting information into perspective for clients. The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate, and the better ones give visitors at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”

Pricing is one of those sets of facts. With the typical company or practice offering many different product feature and service benefits, pricing must be put into perspective. There might be dozens – or even hundreds – of factors that dictate the ultimate pricing any consumer would pay.  Because of this, says Sheridan, “it’s best to offer ranges, not definitive numbers, allowing potential clients to get a feel for the cost and know if they’re at least in the ballpark.”

Karen Greenstreet, writing about Self-Employed Success, offers nine reasons you should – and then ten reasons you shouldn’t – put pricing on your website or in your blog. On the negative side:

  • Your competition can find out what your pricing is
  • You’re worried about “price fixing”
  • You want the chance to establish rapport before talking pricing
  • You want to stay away from tire-kicking, price shopping customers and clients

Reasons Greenstreet found in favor of discussing pricing upfront include:

  • Honoring customers’ time constraints
  • Positioning your brand as, for example, a low-cost leader or the expert who people pay more for
  • Many customers will not do business with a company who is not forthcoming about pricing and fees

Whatever you decide, make sure your decision based on what’s helpful to your customer and right for your marketing plan, not based on your fears about what “might” happen, is Greenstreet’s parting advice.

Think about offering perspective through price point blogging!

 

 

 

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Getting Personal in Blogging for Business

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Those who tell the stories rule society - Quote by Plato

As someone who helps clients communicate via the internet, I got a thought-provoking kick out of the anecdote Nancy Clark from West Point, Virginia submitted to Readers’ Digest:

      I’ve given up social media for the new year and am trying to make friends outside Facebook     while applying the same principles.  Every day I walk down the street and tell passersby what I’ve eaten, how I feel, what I did the night before, and what I will do tomorrow. I share pictures of my family, my dog and my gardening….I also listen to their conversations and tell them I love them.  And it works. I already have three people following me – two police officers and a psychiatrist.

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

“Getting down and human” in business blogs is so important that it becomes a good idea for a business owner and professional to actually write about past mistakes and struggles. Blogger Beccy Freebody posits that it’s much easier to connect to someone who has been where you are.

So just how personal should your business blog be?” asks mavenlink.com.  Many businesses and business people struggle to find that fine line between adding a personal touch and shocking or boring their readers to death with overly personal, trite information,” the authors observe.

On a business blog, you will be rewarded for having a unique and authentic voice, but that doesn’t mean you have free reign to swear or otherwise be rude. Your unique voice should fit nicely within the brand’s larger personality, mavenlink wisely adds.

Important to the Readers’ Digest dilemma, the authors state that “while business bloggers may benefit from discussing past and current struggles as a tool for connecting emotionally with readers, such stories are best used as a means to an end, with the end being solving readers’ problems.

“Business is personal, so is a blog,” writes Ty Kiisel in Forbes. “Over the years,” Kiisel says, “my readers have gotten to know me because I share with them some of the details of my life.”

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