Sharing Wisdom from the Greats in Blogging for Business

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How did Chrysler, which not too long before had needed government-backed loans in order to survive, transform itself into a partner coveted by Daimler (the gold standard of European car makers), becoming the most profitable car company in the world? In his book Guts, Robert A. Lutz, Chrysler’s product-development genius answers these questions and many, many more.

For us blog content writers, there are several valuable lessons to be gleaned from this book by a business “great”:

The power of being personal:
Lutz lists his own credentials in the following order: parent, citizen, taxpayer, employer, alumnus. Guts is about Lutz himself as much as it is about his company, and that’s precisely what lends power to the narrative.

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.  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, but even more so, when they relate emotionally to the people bringing them the message.

  • The power of recounting past struggles
    The very name of Lutz’s book, Guts, speaks to past struggles, to hardships overcome. At Say It For You, I recommend including some How-I-Did-It posts in the blog marketing plan. There are several reasons that sharing secrets and failures helps readers relate to a business or practice:

    True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business or practice.

  • Stories of struggles and failures can be used as a means to an end, using the special expertise and insights you’ve gained towards solving readers’ problems.
  • Blogs also have a damage control function.  When customer complaints and concerns are recognized and dealt with publicly (there’s nothing more public than the Internet!), that gives the “apology” – and the remediation – a lot more weight in the eyes of readers.

    Does it help to share wisdom from leaders in your own industry or profession in your blog?
    When you link to someone else’s accomplishments or remarks on a subject you’re covering, that can have two important positive effects: reinforcing a point you want to make and showing you’re in touch with trends in your own field. Obviously, as with all tools and tactics, “re-gifting” content needs to be handled with restraint.

To me, though, the biggest advantage of sharing others’ wisdom in your own content, is that you’re showing that you’re excited by the insights you’ve gained, and you want your readers to benefit as well.

Sharing wisdom? Go ahead, I say. We can never have too much inspiration.

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Put Some First-Person Impact in Your Business Blog

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“You thought I was just brewed leaves and nothing more, but I’m the most consumed drink in the world next to water. I have launched ships and started wars, and I helped birth your country.” So begins a three page article by Kate Lowenstein and Daniel Gritzer about the history of tea.

We know what it feels like to be human and write from the perspective of a human. But, what does it feel like to be a shoe or a pencil or a dictionary? The point of view in a story, is “the narrator’s position in the description of events,” explains Pamela Hodges in thewrwitepractice.com. 

Looking for unconventional, potentially striking ways to explore what it means to be human in your writing?  It may seem counterintuitive, but personification—ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects—can open new avenues to plumb the depths of human experience, writes Katherin Quevedo of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Whether you’re representing an inanimate object or a very human business owner or professional practitioner, first person writing has a certain power. Admittedly, nobody likes people who speak of nothing but themselves, but in blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

  • “At —— Dry Cleaners, we believe….”
  • “At ——— Heating & Air, we always…..”
  • “Despite the widely held belief that….., I’m convinced that……”

In blogging, of course, different posts serve different purposes. First person (“I”, “I’m”,” we”, “we’re” packs emotional punch. Second person pronouns (“you”, “your”, and “you’re”) can be a good fit for how-to blog posts, while third person (“he”, “she”, “they”) pronouns may be the choice for news items.

Whether you as owner or practitioner are doing the writing or using the services of a blog content writer, your perspective can be provided only by you, in first person, straight to the readers:  In the blogosphere, the more personal, the better.

On the other hand, all content writing for marketing blogs needs to be based on the “you”s who are the targeted readers, and about their wants and needs. Bottom line? Keeping your target audience (the “you”) in mind, put some first person impact in your business blog!

 

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Rubber-Banding the Information in Your Blog

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“Let’s say you need to drink nine glasses of water a day, wear nine rubber bands on your left arm. Every time you drink a glass, move one rubber band to your right arm…Your goal is to get all of the rubber bands onto your right wrist by the end of the day,” womensrunning.com advises.

Hitting precisely the right “advertorial” note is the big challenge in corporate blog writing.  In fact, one point I’ve consistently stressed in these Say It For You blog content writing tutorials is how important it is to provide valuable information to readers, while avoiding any hint of “hard sell”.  Well, providing practical, actionable tips and helpful hints is a way to accomplish that very goal. 

Networking colleague Beth Stackhouse, owner of Stackhouse Interiors in Columbus, Ohio, offered a practical tip for home décor: To add color (as well as spices for the pantry) use indoor plants. Beth’s own peppermint, basic, and parsley plants add oxygen, color and texture to her living. Large plants make a room stand out, and are a great option for those on a budget who want to elevate their interior design.

Leadership coach and author Dow Tippett offers a practical tip for improving mental health – creating a gratitude ledger.

So, as a business blog writing trainer, how would I advise adapting that “helpful hint” strategy to marketing your business or practice?

1. Find complementary businesses or practices.  Ask the owners (or cite their blogs) for tips they can offer your readers.  Pet care professionals can share tips from carpet cleaning pros – or the reverse! If you’re a carpet cleaning pro, you can share tips from allergists. If you’re an insurance advisor, offer tips from car dealers about accident prevention.

2. Of course, you’re going to want to add some tips related to your own products and services. your own.  Fellow network board member Steve Rupp offers tips on cleaning windows as well as tips for buying a house.  A restaurant’s blog might offer hints on tipping etiquette or the temperature of “rare”, “medium” and “well-done” steaks. Whatever the product or service, readers will be hungry for information that helps them gain maximum advantage for buying and using it.

“Rubber-band” your blog content along with your water consumption. Helpful hint blog writing can be very useful to your business or practice!

 

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Blogging to Make Them Want to See Things the Way You Do

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Communicating with pictures and words is what Dan Roam’s little book for speakers, Show and Tell: How Everybody Can Make Extraordinary Presentations is all about. The purpose, the author says, of creating and delivering a report pitch, or story, is t make it s captivating that our audience wants to see things the way we do.

That’s a very hard thing for speakers to accomplish, Roam admits. (Blog content writers don’t have the advantage of facing the audience in person, using eye contact and gestures, which makes the task even more challenging!).

Dan Roam’s 3 Rules of Show and Tell can help, though, even if video clips are not part of the blog:

  • When we tell the truth in a presentation, we connect with our audience and we have self-confidence.
  • When we tell a story, complex concepts become clear, and we include everyone.
  • When we tell a story with pictures, we banish boredom and people see what we mean.

There are actually three kinds of truth, Roam points out, and as presenters, we need to ask ourselves: for this topic, for this audience, and for myself, which truth should I tell? I particularly like that observation, because at Say It For You, we emphasize the “power of one”, with each blog post having a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of the business or practice. Roam suggests presenters ask themselves the following question: “If my presentation could change them in just one way, what would that change be?”

There are really only four ways to move an audience, Roam adds:

  1. changing their information, adding new data to what they already know
  2. changing their knowledge or ability
  3. changing their actions
  4. changing their beliefs, inspiring them to understand something new about themselves or about the world

Which one of those four goals we choose determines the structure of our storyline in the content of the speech – or blog post.

Truth, story, and pictures – If we get those things right, Dan Roam assures fearful speakers, everything that follows will be a breeze. “When we trust our ideas and are confident, we will help our audience change.”

Change is what it’s all about, Roam says of presentations, and that’s certainly what it’s all about in blogging for business!

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Blogs to Inform and Lead

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts are based on Brant Pinvidic’s powerful little book The 3-Minute Rule….

The A part of a WHAC presentation (Are you sure?) has a very important job to do – answering the questions that are on readers’ minds about the validity of your claims, Brant Pinvidic teaches. In keeping with my own idea of spreading content over a series of blog posts, rather than presenting your entire “case” in one long piece, I appreciated the list of questions Pinvidic says he often uses to help ramp up the thinking process in planning a presentation.

Each one of these questions relating to the A can serve as the inspiration for an individual blog post:

  • What have you said that someone might not believe?
  • Has a third party verified your claim?
  • How do you know there’s a need for this?
  • How have people succeeded in this before?
  • When and how did you realize you were on to something?
  • Why is this not “too good to be true”?
  • Why can’t your competition do this better?

One particularly fascinating piece of selling advice offered in this book is this – “Don’t open with the hook”. Many sales books and coaches teach that the hook is precisely what you open with, Pindivic says. (In terms of blog content, many believe the hook should be in the title.) This is called, Pinvidic explains, the state-and-prove method – you get someone to desire the outcome, then convince them your statement is true. What you want to do instead, he suggests, is start with the facts, allowing the audience to reach the conclusion that this is a good deal and form the “hook” for themselves rather than trying to poke holes in your assertions. Rather than state-and-prove, the author teaches, use the inform-and-lead approach.

At Say It for You, when our Indiana freelance blog content writers are sitting down with business owners or professional practitioners who are preparing to launch a blog, one important step in that launch is to select 1-5 recurring themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts. The themes may be reflected in the keyword phrases they use to help with search engine optimization. Individual posts can focus on just one aspect of a theme (which might center around one of those questions under the A category of their WHAC).

Looked at in isolation, each blog post is designed to have one central focus. Yet, as blog content writing continues over weeks, months, and years, there will be a cumulative inform-and lead effect. And, yes, you can be sure of that.

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