Take Care of Your Shoes

/0 Comments/in , , /by

 

As many as four buyers will intentionally take note of the condition of your shoes during a sales call, Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman of the Sandler Sales Institute caution. If prospects see worn or broken shoelaces, or worn heels and soles, they’ll lose confidence that you’ll pay proper attention to the details of their order. For blog content writers, there’s a lesson here…..

Realistically, online searchers who land on your blog are already interested in and have a need for the type of products or services you offer. The opening lines of your blog content then can offer “signs” to those readers that they’ve come to the right place:

  • You and your employees have the training and expertise to be able to deliver the desired advice, service, and products.
  • You’ve kept up with what others are saying on your topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing in your industry.
  • As a business owner or practitioner, you’ve stood by your work.
  • Your blog has used images, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos to add interest and evoke emotion.
  • The layout is targeted towards your target audience (Are they deal seekers looking for bargains on products and services they already use? Are they enthusiasts looking for information to support their hobbies and beliefs?).

But what about your blog’s “shoes”??

As a corporate blogging trainer, my favorite recommendation to both business owners and the freelance blog content writers they hire to bring their message to customers is this: Prevent blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions”, including grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors. As Writer’s Digest Yearbook points out, unconventional or incorrect grammar may be seen as an indication of carelessness or ignorance. The result? Readers may take the content itself less seriously. At its worst, failure to use proper punctuation and sentence structure in blog posts can make content difficult to comprehend.

“It’s one thing to lose a sale because you can’t solve the buyer’s problem,” Deep and Sussman stress. “It’s quite another to fail because you didn’t fit the image of a professional salesperson.”

The message for content marketing professionals? Take care of your “shoes”, meaning the details of your blog posts!

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

The More We Blog, The More We Learn

/0 Comments/in , , /by

 

The secret of good writing, according to Richard Harding Davis, is to say an old thing in a new way or a new thing in an old way. For us blog content writers, “saying old things in a new way” means that each time we’re preparing to compose content for a blog, rather than asking ourselves whether we’ve already covered that material and how long ago, we ought to plan content around key themes. That way, we can be using the same theme while filling in new details and illustrations. This precise thing is a concern, I’ve found over the year, of many business owners and professional practitioners. Even if they understand the marketing value of the blog, their concern is that, sooner or later, they (or their writer) will run out of things to say. I need to explain that it’s more than OK to repeat themes already covered in former posts. The trick is adding a layer of new information or a new insight each time.

When saying new things in an old way, conversely, introducing new information or suggesting a new attitude towards an issue, behavioral science tells us to create a perspective of “frame”, presenting new data in a way that relates to the familiar. Perhaps some information you’d put in a blog post months or even years ago isn’t true any longer (or at least isn’t the best information now available in your industry or profession). Maybe the rules have changed, or perhaps there’s now a solution that didn’t even exist at the time the original content was written.

“Links – you need ‘em,” writes Amy Lupold Bair in Blogging for Dummies. On a blog, the author explains, links are part of the resource you are providing for readers.  Collecting links around a topic or theme helps to inform or entertain your blog’s readers. If you’re not only providing good content yourself, but also expanding on that content by using links, she adds, “you’re doing your readers a service they won’t forget.”

Thing is, as long as I keep learning, I stay excited and readers can sense that in my blog. Being – and staying – a lifelomg learner means “reading around” – reading other people’s blogs and articles, plus “listening around” paying attention to everything from broadcasts to casual conversations,

The more we keep learning, the better we blog, and the more we blog, the more we learn.

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Being Heard, Not Only Seen, in Your Blog

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

 

In this week’s Say It For You blog posts, I’m sharing insights from the October issue of Poets&Writers magazine. An insightful profile of CelesteNG’s new book, Our Missing Hearts offers valuable concepts for business blog content writers. Poet Maggie Smith believes NG’s book should be required reading for all, “grappling with big questions such as art, freedom, and ethics”, but there is one particular line in the book that resonated with me as a content writer: “We talk a lot about being seen, but I think we also want to be heard. Everybody has stories inside them but not always someone to tell them to.”

Social media maven Neil Patel agrees, One sure way to sabotage your own brand on social media, he says, is talking without listening. “Users want something real. They want real people, real interactions, and real, unbridled human connection…The real human essence of the brand is what users want to see come through loud and clear.”

“Who doesn’t want a personal fortuneteller?” Tom Searcy writes in Inc.com. Customers are looking for people who “hear” their concerns about upcoming regulations, technology trends, mergers and acquisitions, and modern day issues. “Remember,” Searcy says,”When you talk to the buyer about the buyer, you increase his or her engagement.” Potential customers want great products, outstanding service, and a competitive price. But, according to According to research from HubSpot, there’s something else they want even more: listening.

Over these years creating Say It For You blog content for different business owners and professional practitioners, I’ve come to realize that, in addition to wanting to be heard, blog readers actually want to “hear”. Unfortunately, I came to realize, most blog writing was being devoted to describing “what we do”, describing all the services and products the company or organization offers. Too little space seemed to be devoted to “what we believe” and to “who we are” as citizens of the community. For that very reason, when I’m offering business blogging assistance, I emphasize that the best website content – and the best corporate blogs – give online readers a feel for the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs about their industry and the way they want to serve their customers.   Those “we believe” statements can turn out to be the business’ most powerful calls to action.

A provider’s blog may not, at least not on a level similar to CelesteNG’s book.”grapple with big questions such as art, freedom, and ethics”, but the content must clearly demonstrate that the owners “hear” their customers’ concerns, and that, in return, their prospects and customers are able to “hear them!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

White Meat or Dark? Carving Up Blog Content

/0 Comments/in , , /by


Uncle Ned prefers a thigh, while your sister Julie has first dibs on a drumstick. Very much like your Thanksgiving turkey, any blog content topic can be approached in a variety of ways.  Like guests at the Thanksgiving table, within your target market, each reader’s need for information, products or services was born in a slightly different space and has traveled a different path. Not every approach is going to work for every reader.

In fact, in order to add variety, at Say It For You, we like blog content writers to experiment with:

  • different formats – how-to posts, list posts, opinion pieces
  • different vantage points, “featuring” different employees and different departments within the company.
  • different segments of the customer base

In fact, what I’ve learned over the years of freelance blog content writing, is that most business owners have more than one target audience for their products and services. And, while there may in fact one market segment or demographic that has proven to yield the greatest number of raving fans for them, they also have “outliers” who bring in just enough revenue to matter. What can be done with a business blog, then, is to offer different kinds of information in different blog posts. There is, of course, one over-arching topic (just as all the guests are around your thanksgiving table), but there’s something on your blogsite to satisfy each one’s tastes.

Just as, at most Thanksgiving dinner tables, relatives “catch up” on each other’s doings, on their opinions about what’s going on in the world, and about what they’ve been doing, reading, and thinking – a business blog is a forum of sorts. Providing information about products and services may be the popular way to write corporate blog posts, but blog visitors want to know what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers. And, just as Dad might tell those gathered at the table about a great documentary he’s seen or a book he’s just read, you can “borrow” the wisdom of others to reinforce your point and add value for readers by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog.

White meat or dark? At your thanksgiving table or in your blog, carve up the content to offer something for everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Opening Up Options in Your Blog

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

 

In his business book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that his favorite opening question when meeting a prospect is “Where are you from?” That opener allows the other person to respond in a myriad of ways, the author explains. The prospect might talk about her hometown or country – “I grew up in Berlin”, or about her employer – “I represent Fidelity Bank and Trust”, or reveal that she’s originally from LA, but has been living in the Midwest for most of her adult life. The concept is, as Daniel Pink mentions in his own book To Sell is Human, when talking to prospects, open things up rather than shutting them down by making people think you’re passing judgment on them.

When it comes to converting readers into customers, our job as blog content writers is to present choice, we stress at Say It For You. Given enough “space” to absorb the relevant and truthful information we present over time, consumers are perfectly able to – and far more likely to – decide to take action. Defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. But showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience in providing solutions to very that problem can help drive the marketing process forward.

But what I don’t mean in advising you to present a variety of options is the “Swiss army knife” approach – you don’t want your blog to be an all-in-one marketing tool that forces a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 57 wonderful services your company has to offer!. What you can do with the blog is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts.  I often remind business bloggers to provide several options to readers, including “read more”, “take a survey”, “comment”, or “subscribe”. On websites with no e-commerce options, of course, “Contact” might be  the ultimate reader “compliance” step.

I think the important take-away from Collins’ “Where-are-you-from?” approach is that people are different. Action-oriented readers will want our best recommendations from among the choices. Idea-oriented persons will want to know about the business owners’ core beliefs underlying the way that business is structured. A process-oriented reader will want to know how the process of purchasing and using the product or service works.

To sell what you do and how you do it is human, but be sure to open up a variety of options in your blog!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail