Do “Huh-Oh” Titles Work for Marketing Blogs?

/0 Comments/in , /by

 

One important purpose of marketing blog titles is attracting online shoppers. So, catchy and engaging as a title might be, it won’t serve the purpose if the words in it don’t match up with those searchers used.

After all my “reading around” – magazines, books, blogs, textbooks – you name it, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two basic title categories: the “Huh?s” and the “Ohs”. The “Huh?s” need subtitles to make clear what the article is about; “Oh!’s” titles are self-explanatory.

“Huh?-Oh!” combo titles seem to be increasingly popular, I concluded after a recent visit to my local Barnes & Noble the other day. Here are just a few of the dozens of Huh?-Oh! titles I found on the shelves in the sections on business, psychology, and self-help:

  • Seeing Around Corners (Huh?): How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Oh!)
  • The Communication Clinic (Huh?) 99 Proven Cures for the Most Common Business Mistakes (Oh!)
  • Getting to Yes (Huh?) Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Oh!)
  • When (Huh?) The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (Oh!)
  • The Storyteller’s Secret (Huh?) Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t (Oh!)

We blog content writers, of course, don’t have the luxury of using such long subtitles, as the search engines will use only a limited number of characters for ranking. Still, the beauty of the “Huh?” is that it’s a grabber, so the compromise might be to include category-based keyword phrases early in the subtitle.

The other way to “sneak” in the “Oh!” material is the meta-tag, the 160 character snippet of text that describes a page’s content. The meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, but readers can see them on the search engine page and they are scanned by search engines.

Huh? In writing engaging business blog content, it can pay to try two-tiered titles.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Words of Wisdom for Blog Content Writers – Part B

/0 Comments/in , /by

reading around for blog writing

 

This week, at the start of a new blogging year, I’m looking through my bookshelves at all the business writing-related books I’ve collected over the year 2019. What would I do without these “reading around” gems with their different sorts and shapes of advice and reflection?….

The audience is the hero.
“You are not the hero who will save the audience; the audience is the hero,” Nancy Duarte advises public speakers in the book Resonate. Audience insights and “resonance” can occur only when a presenter takes a stance of humility, the author and coach explains, placing the audience in the center of a story, so it becomes meaningful to them..

Since one important function of any marketing blog is converting lookers to buyers, and since I train Indianapolis blog content writers, this concept of resonance really piqued my interest. When readers arrive at your business blog, it’s because they already have an interest in your topic and are ready to receive the information, the services, and the products you have to offer. However, the focus of each blog post must be on the end results from the readers’ point of view. Help readers know how good they’ll feel in terms of security, savings, recognition, or basic need fulfillment – make them the heroes.

Don’t get steaming mad.
Blowing off steam may seem like a good idea for heart health, explains Mandy Oaklander in a special Time Magazine edition on living longer, but angry outbursts have been proven to result in increased heart risks.

In the real world, many blog content writers focus on appealing to consumers’ fear or greed, making them “angry enough” to take action. At Say It For You, our approach has been that blogging for business is just one aspect of any company’s overall marketing strategy.  The entire tone of the blog, therefore, needs to be consistent with the kind of positive image the company wants to project. Can and should a single blog post appeal to customers’ anger about the poor service, shoddy workmanship, or exorbitant charges they’ve experienced in the past? Definitely! Overall, though, a positive slant will win the day.

What we measure, we can improve.
Improvement in anything happens not all at once, but over time, Michael Hill explains in Measuring Ourselves. When Benjamin Franklin decided he wanted to become proficient at writing, he found examples of writing clearly superior to his own, then would do writing – and rewriting – daily, measuring himself against both others and against his own earlier efforts.

As a corporate blogging trainer and content writer, I find that it’s not always possible to associate a specific ROI measurement to blogging without regard to social media, traditional advertising, events, word of mouth marketing, and sales. Yet, what we’ve learned through working with Say It For You clients, is that the very process of continuously producing and making available quality content (either content they write themselves or content they co-author through interaction with a content writer) helps demonstrate that they care about effectively expressing to customers and colleagues their unique “slant” on their industry.

Writers, as the new year begins, make – and keep – the perfect New Year’s resolution: “Read around” to find gems like these and then – share those gems with your readers in the form of improved blog content!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Look-Ahead Words of Wisdom for Blog Content Writers – Part A

/0 Comments/in , , /by

imagery in blogs

 

Last week, by way of kicking off a new blogging year, I’ looked through my bookshelves at all the business writing-related books I’ve collected over the year 2019. What would I do without these “reading around” gems with their different sorts and shapes of advice and reflection? . This week, with an eye to the year to come, I’ll be sharing even more words of wisdom from ”my shelves”, along with the links to the wonderful authors…

Paint a verbal picture for your followers.
“The successful articulation of a leader’s vision may rest on his or her ability to paint followers a verbal picture of what can be accomplished with their help,” says presentation coach Carmine Gallo.

Imagery helps make marketing blogs more engaging.  True, in business communications there may be times when technical, precise language is in order. Still, you want readers to visualize themselves successfully using your products and services. In a way, you want visitors to “see” as well as hear what you’re saying.

Claiming credit is adding insult to injury.
“Claiming credit is adding insult to the injury that comes with overlooked recognition. We’re not only depriving people of the credit they deserve, but we are hogging it for ourselves. It’s two crimes in one.”
Marshall Goldstein, who coaches global leaders, is referring to corporate employees in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, but the principle is the same for blog writers when it comes to properly attributing content to its original authors.

Is quoting others in your blog a good thing? As I’m fond of saying in corporate blogging training sessions – it depends! On the positive side, when you link to someone else’s remarks on a subject you’re covering, that can reinforce your point and add value for readers by aggregating different sources of information (just as I am doing in this very Say It For You blog post). On the other hand, as is true of all tools and tactics, “re-gifting” content needs to be handled with some restraint and using proper protocol by attributing each piece of content to its author.

Every negotiation has two kinds of interests: the substance and the relationship.
“The ability to see the situation as the other side sees it is one of the most important skills a negotiator can possess,” Roger Fisher and William Ury explain in the book Getting to Yes.

By offering more than one point of view, we blog writers can actually showcase our knowledge of the latest thinking in our field, while at the same time clarifying our own special expertise and slant.

No question – I’m a convert to “reading around”. Gems like these are all around, just waiting for you to add your unique twist before sharing with your blog readers.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Can “Blog-folding” Increase Engagement?

/0 Comments/in , , /by


Proteins designed by humans competing at solving “foldit” puzzles turned out better than those from a design algorithm, it was found in studies chronicled in AARP Bulletin.

What does “foldit” involve? Foldit is a citizen science puzzler game. Since proteins are part of so many diseases, they can also be part of the cure. Players can experience intellectual challenges and have fun, while helping predict which new proteins might help prevent or treat important diseases such as HIV / AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. The term “foldit” comes from the fact that proteins are born as long-chain molecules, but then bunch up, or “fold” into complicated shapes.

Should we blog content writers be taking a lesson from the fact that the involving the brain power of people resulted in better outcomes than those produced by computer algorithms? If there is, it’s about engagement.

The term “engagement” describes how involved and “tuned in” readers are. Marketer Jason Amunwa thinks so: “At the end of the day, engagement is thinking less about ‘increasing traffic and instead learning how to do more with the traffic you already have!” he writes.

Indicators that readers are “engaging” with the content (in addition to converting to buyers) include reading all the way to the bottom of the post, subscribing to the blog, sharing the content on social media, and commenting.

Foldit.com puzzlers have a powerful stake in the outcomes of their “games” (Who wouldn’t want to help prevent cancer and Altzheimers?) When it comes to blogs designed to develop buyers of products and services, it pays to remember that blog readers tend to be curious creatures.  What’s more, that curiosity factor is highest when readers are learning about themselves.  I’ve found that “self-tests” tend to engage readers and help them relate in a more personal way to the information presented in a marketing blog.

Readers, whether they are new clients, repeat customers, other companies’ clients, or potential clients, are always thinking: “So what?  So what’s in it for me?” Posing qualitative survey questions (questions that can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”) in a blog post can help engage the reader through interaction. Reader engagement also results from an “I never knew that!” response to content that compares the way things were and the way they are today. What’s more, “folding” can consist of photos, graphs, clip art, and videos, all of which tend to boost reader engagement and response.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blog Content Parhelions

/0 Comments/in , , /by

parhelions in blogs
Earlier this week, we devoted a Say It For You blog post to a term from the field of psychology (Just Noticeable Difference); today’s post explores a term from meteorology…

You might say a “sun dog”, or parhelion, as it is known in meteorology, is an atmospheric optical illusion. The phenomenon consists of bright spots, or halos, that appear at one or both sides of the sun, when ice crystals in the atmosphere refract sunlight.

While as blog content writers, we’re hardly aiming for illusion, optical or otherwise, the work we do presents a number of important parallels with the parhelion effect:

  1. If you ask the question, most business owners and professional practitioners will tell you they have more than one target audience for their products and services. What can be done with a blog is to offer different kinds of information and advice in different blog posts. Just as the parhelions showcase, rather than obliterate the sun, blogging allows coming at the same topic in different ways, still highlighting the central message.

  2. Just as parhelions showcase, rather than distract from the central figure of the sun, doing so through a visual phenomenon, engaging blog posts need visual elements to enhance and showcase the the information, advice, and “slant” of the written content.
  3. Different consumers are going to process our content in different ways. In order to make clear that this business or professional practice has chosen to carry on in a certain way, but that there were other options, the “parhelion effect” can highlight the business owner’s or professional’s “slant” through contrasting that approach with other views.

  4. The parhelion effect can be achieved in groups of blog posts, not only within one article. Readers are different, with different “rules” and needs. We blog content writers need to keep on telling the story in its infinite variations, knowing that, to a certain extent, the blog content readers who end up as clients and customers action have self-selected.
  5. Sentence length can create a parhelion effect. Writers can weave in short sentences with longer ones. Surrounding one “naked” (extremely short) sentence between two longer ones creates, to create a parhelion-like contrast.

By varying the format, the images, the opinions, the sentence length, images and sentence length, writers can create blog content parhelions!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail