Writing About What Almost Never Was

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Long before the Masters golf tournament became what it is today, Augusta National overcame serious financial woes. Although co-founders Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones had had extensive plans, many never panned out, David Owen explains in Golf Digest. In three years of trying to build membership, the pair had sent out thousands of postcards, had hired salesmen to travel the country, and had bought membership lists from country clubs. Despite all those efforts, when the first National Invitation Tournament was held in 1934, the club had enlisted only 76 members. Then, just as, in 1939, they were beginning to realize some modicum  of success – the country was entering a war!

As a content marketer, I absolutely loved reading this “failure-turned-success” story. There’s an important lesson here for content creators for business or practice owners:  Writing about past failures is important. In fact, true tales about past mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the enterprise. What tends to happen is the stories of failure create feelings of empathy and admiration for those who overcame the effects of both outside forces and of their own errors.

 

Because the Masters Golf Tournament story relates to people no longer living, the story is told in third person by the club’s historian In posting marketing content today,  I recommend using the personal pronouns “I”  and “we”.  As Brandon Royal explains in The Little Red Writing Book, first person is personal and specific.  Readers appreciate knowing how a situation relates to the business owners or practitioners in terms of their personal experiences.

There’s another important aspect to recalling past failures, I explain — demonstrating that you understand the problems the online searcher is dealing with. To the extent you can truthfully say, “I know how frustrating the problem is, and that’s why I’m devoted to solving that problem through my business or profession,” you are infusing your content with more power.

 

While our Say It For You content writers are often the voice behind the “I” or “we”,  we know that “writing about what almost never was” can help make things happen for our clients – and for their readers!

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Keep Readers in Touch With Trends

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The Old Farmer’s 2025 Almanac offers a variety of pleasures, with information ranging from astronomy to folklore, and from pets to sports. Since, at Say It For You, we focus on creating marketing content for blog posts and newsletters, I was particularly taken by the Almanac authors’ focus on current farming trends…

“By understanding the latest developments and technologies in your field, you can ensure that your skills and knowledge remain relevant and in demand,” Baris Bingol of sertifier.com advises the career-minded. “Keeping up”, she explains, includes staying informed about:

  • new products or services
  • changes in regulations
  • shifts in consumer behavior
  • emerging technologies

In farming, Almanac readers are informed,

  • Scientists are using “bee vectoring”, in which special hives allow bees to transport trace amounts of pest control powders blueberries, apples, and tomatoes.
  • Farmers are teaming up with restaurants, growing heirloom crops for sale to local chefs, who then create dishes featuring them.
  • There is increased demand for microgreens, as people embrace a lifestyle that values freshness.
  • Gardeners are interested in growing herbs for medical use.

Our readers, whether or not they’re inclined towards the “trendy”, like to feel they’re keeping up with the trends. But what I’ve learned over the years of developing content for clients in different industries, is that customers expect their service and product providers to do the work for them, keeping them up-to-date and putting all that information into perspective.

 

There are two positive sides to wiring about what’s “trending”, I explain to business and practice owners:  While your content keeps your readers savvy about what’s trending, it helps establish you as a thought leader in your field!

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The Convenience Factor in Content Marketing

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This week, in our Say It For You blog, we’re sharing insights from the book Prove It, in which authors Melanie Deziel and Phil M. Jones teach readers how to use content as a tool to earn audience trust… 

Even before you get to the “proof” stage in your marketing, according to RevLocal, there are five pieces of primary information that consumers use to either learn more about a business, or reject it out of hand. These include price, products and services offered, the availability of both, customer service, and (for services in particular) – location. Coupons and special offers may be important, the authors add, as are testimonials and reviews.

“Claiming to be convenient is making a promise that customers’ interactions with you will be frictionless,” Deziel explains, quoting statistics from the National Retail Federation showing that 9 out of 10 customers choose a retailer based on convenience, with that observation holding true for groceries, electronics, personal care items, and pet supplies.

As head of a team of content marketers at Say It For You, I found those observations about convenience especially important. Creating a steady stream of content takes time and patience, which is precisely the reason many entrepreneurs employ ghost writers. “Winning back time” is the way Doug Karr and Chantelle Flannery, co-authors of the book Corporate Blogging for Dummies describe the big advantage for business owners, or professional practitioners in “hiring it done when it comes to composing, researching, and editing content”.

 

On the other hand, what I’ve experienced over the past eighteen years is that, if the content is to succeed in demonstrating that the business owner or practitioner is staying in touch with what’s happening in the community, as well as in his or her field of expertise, the process  of creating content cannot be a matter of  “do-it-for-me-and-wake-me-up-when-it’s-over”. Even as they offer maximum convenience to their customers, the owners themselves should not expect to enjoy the “convenience” of non-involvement in the process of creating content.

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Basing Content on What You Want Buyers to Believe

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“What do you want your buyers to believe?”  That is the question online marketers need to ask themselves when creating content, David Meerman Scott stresses in the 9th edition of his book The New Rules of Marketing & PR.  What are your customers really going to be buying from you — is it great customer service? The safe choice? Luxury? Different buyer personas buy different things from your organization.

A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer that you create from audience and market research, Flori Needle writes in Hubspot.  (A negative buyer persona, in contrast might include customers too advanced for your product or service or who are engaging with you only to gain knowledge, not to buy.)

Content marketing, however, is not about “forcing” prospects to believe. As Meerman Scott explains, customers tell themselves stories that define them and the way they relate to the products and services they use. Only if the story you tell your prospects and customers matches the story they’re telling themselves will your content be effective in appealing to them.

At Say It For You, we’ve learned over the years, content marketing will succeed only if two things are apparent to readers: a) You (the business owner or professional practitioner) understand online searchers’ concerns and needs and b) you and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs.

What we’ve discovered, for example, in business blogging is that, whether it’s the owners or practitioners themselves doing the writing or whether they’ve hired us to do the job on their behalf, the language used must give readers the right impression in order to create that “belief connection”

At the same time, it’s important to remember that “the system” (search algorithms) appears to value cumulative content, offering the opportunities for us content marketers to build buyer belief over time.

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The Three Dimensions of Content Marketing

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“Researchers looking for strategies and solutions for increasing financial literacy have identified three dimensions,” Jalene Hahn explains in the Indianapolis Business Journal, consisting of knowledge, attitude, and awareness.

The goals of content marketing, it occurred to me, are the same as those named by Hahn:

Knowledge:

When it comes to content marketing, teaching is the new selling. With so much ready access to so many sources of information, visitors to your site want to know that you and your organization have something new to add. At the same time, people generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they’ve arrived seeking information on a particular subject. As content writers, we want our vendor or practitioner clients to be perceived as subject matter experts offering usable information and insight in addition to readers’ own knowledge level.

Attitude:

In the book Stop Hiring Losers , when authors Minesh and Kim Baxi  talk about hiring and retaining good employees,  they name six defining attitudes, or things that motivate different people. These include learning, money, beauty/harmony, altruism, power, and principle. When it comes to content marketing, the secret is knowing your particular audience and thinking about how they (not the average person, but specifically “they”) would probably react or feel about your approach to the subject at hand.

Awareness:

Social media can be used to raise awareness about social issues and encourage users to make changes in their own lives, a University of Plymouth professor explains. Online search can’t create awareness of something people don’t know exists. Once awareness is raised, readers are ready to learn more from reading content and become more engaged.

As is true of helping consumers gain financial literacy, content marketing is a way of helping business owners and professional practitioners use the three dimensions of  knowledge, attitude and awareness to appeal to their online audiences.

 

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