Aiming for the “Me, Too!” Effect in Blog Marketing

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“All salespeople present themselves as problem solvers yet most never ask clients to vividly describe the problems they are experiencing,” Paul Cherry maintains in the book Questions That Sell. An outstanding salesperson, the author teaches, will offer clients the opportunity to open up and vent their frustrations. “You will have success building a relationship with your potential customers only when you can get into their world and identify the forces at work in their lives.”

In blog marketing (where prospects are meeting you before you’ve had the chance to meet them), as Jeremy Porter Communications teaches, the goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message. He names seven emotions and their opposites that marketers can tap into to get an audience “from where they are to where you want them to be”:

  • anger/calmness
  • friendship/enmity
  • fear/confidence
  • shame/shamelessness
  • kindness/unkindness
  • pity or compassion/indignation
  • envy/emulation

At Say It For You, we understand that, in blogging for business, face-to-screen is the closest we blog content writers will come to our prospective buyers of our clients’ products and services. On the other hand, we’re conscious that behind every decision, there is always a person, a being with feelings. One of the most direct access paths to prospects’ feelings is through stories. “Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his book All Marketers Tell Stories.

The thing to remember is that people are online searching for answers to problems or solutions for dilemmas. If, in encountering a blog post about a customer who went through a sort of pain and suffering akin to theirs (and who has now come out the other side), readers’ natural and highly emotional reaction might well be “Me, too!”.

Far sooner and more directly than descriptions of features and benefits of your offer, an emotionally charged story of suffering solved might well result in a “me, too” sale!

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Blogging for Window Shoppers and Tire Kickers

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“Many of the folks who come to see me aren’t necessarily looking for a new plan or a new planner,” financial advisor Zach Fox, AAMS®, says. “They may just be looking for confidence in their existing plan.”

Diane Wingerter, certified grantwriter and owner of GrantWriting for Goodness™, agrees. “Yes”, “no”, “maybe”, or “not now” are all possible responses by people who are seeking funding – or, indeed, by funders themselves, she notes.

Blog marketers need to approach readers with a similar mindset. Will blog marketing “close deals” in the same manner as a face-to-face encounter between a prospect and a sales professional? Of course not. Hubspot blogger Corey Wainwright lists some of the indirect selling benefits of blogs and their place in the sales process:

  • If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes.
  • Prospects that have been reading your blog posts will typically enter the sales process more educated about your place in the market, your industry, and what you have to offer.
  • Salespeople who encounter specific questions that require in-depth explanation or a documented answer can pull from an archive of blog posts.

Blogging is what marketing firm pardot.com calls stage-based, meaning that prospects move through different stages of the sales cycle. In one study, Pardot found that B2B consumers started their research with Google, then returned two or three times for more specific information. For prospects at the top of the “funnel”, the most effective content will be light, educational and product-neutral. Later in the cycle, readers who are already sold on your industry, just deciding among vendors or providers, need more specific information.

The “maybes”, the “not nows”, and readers looking only to bolster their confidence in their existing plans or product choices will come away with a positive experience and valuable information. On the other hand, readers who have reached the final decision-making stage might just be ready to consider your unique value propositions and to follow one of your Calls to Action.

In blog marketing, don’t ignore the window shoppers and tire-kickers!

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All You Have to Do is Blog

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According to the 1-800-GOT-JUNK commercial, when you want something removed from your home or yard, “All you have to do is point” As a blog content writer, I love that commercial.

“Persuasive ads are advertisements designed to elicit a desired action,” Mary Lister writes in Wordstream. Ad campaigns for products or services are designed to communicate two main ideas:

  1. Problems your product or service solves
  2. Ways your product or service does that better/quicker/cheaper than that of your competitors.

Confession – for me as a consumer, there’s always been a third piece. I’m not handy. And, since I don’t know how to assemble, much less fix, mechanical devices or pieces of furniture, I’m always looking for what’s going to be required of me in the process of achieving a solution to my problem or fulfilling my need.

The 1-800-GOT-JUNK motto must have been made for people like me. Right up front, they’re assuring me that they will handle the issue, do the dirty work, figure it out. All I have to do is identify the problem.

All business owners and practitioners have products and services to sell. But sometimes, the marketing and advertising skips over the convenience factor.

A little over ten years ago, an editorial cartoon in the Indianapolis Business Journal showed a harried lady returning a gadget to a merchant’s Returns window. “It’s not that I don’t like the product,” she said – “I just can’t get it out of the package!”

  • Yes, you understand your target audience and the specific problems they’re facing.
  • Yes, your product or service provides a way to solve those problems.
  • Yes, your product/service compares favorably to others on the market.
  • Yes, but…but…but, just how much effort am I going to need to expend to “get it out of the package”?

Put yourself in the shoes of your online visitors:

How easy is it for them to navigate your website? Follow your Calls to Action? Set up an appointment with you? Pick up the phone and call if they choose to? (Is your phone number clearly displayed on the page?)

How easy is it going to be for a prospect to: get started on that program you’re touting? Start on the diet plan? Install the app or get the device to function?

Let them know – “all you have to do is…….._!

Borrowing the line from 1-800-GOT-JUNK, blog marketers’ new mantra might well be this:

All you have to do is blog!

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Create Tension in Blogging for Business

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“Even a small amount of tension in your writing can move it from flat to fascinating,” Mary-Kate Mackey tells writers in Write Better Right Now. Just as bending a flat metal rule into an arc, she advises, think “arc” in setting up questions in readers’ minds. In a well-written paragraph, each sentence launches from the last, with paragraphs positioned along the larger arc of the whole piece.

Because our Say It For You team focuses its writing on blog marketing, I particularly appreciate one marketing example Mackey offered. The assignment – a travel agency pitching the town of Lily Pond, Arkansas.

The first version lacks tension:
“The small town of Lily Pond offers much for anyone willing to leave the interstate.” That’s a yawn, Mackey says – lots of places have lots of amenities to offer.

A better version, one with tension:
“FUN THIS WAY – That sign doesn’t exist on the interstate exist for Highway 58. But it should.”

Richard Anderson’e Powerful Writing Skills makes the same point about conveying a sense of enthusiasm through your writing. “Don’t be satisfied with putting down data and results or observations and opinions,” Anderson says.“ Find a way to make this information meaningful to your reader.”

But, really, can that be done? Can we, over months and years, continue to “have something to say” related to our field, keeping our blog posts relevant over long periods of time without losing reader excitement and engagement?  The answer (extraordinarily simple, yet extraordinarily difficult): We have to keep learning, constantly adding to our own body of knowledge – about our industry or professional field (and in the case of our content writing team, about those of our clients).

One interesting parallel is found in ballroom dancing, my own beloved hobby over the years. “Dancing would be impossible without a certain amount of tension,” explains danceforums.com. “In time and with practice you will learn to match your leader’s arm tension: when it’s relaxed you will be relaxed, when he is increasing his tension, you will fill it, you’ll match it, and you’ll know he’s up to something,” an instructor explains to females..

In blogging for business, a simple arc gets readers to want to know – What’s the consequence of this tension? What is the business owner or practitioner leading me to? What’s at the end of the arc?

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The First Blog Post Shows the Palette

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There’s an exercise artists can do to break through their equivalent of “writer’s block,” my friend Phil read in an urban sketching book about using watercolor. Deciding what to put on the first page of your sketchbook is the hardest, the author understood. A new artist might experience inhibitions about opening the paint wrappers. But if the first page is used to give the artist a better idea of what the colors will look like on paper, the rest will follow naturally.

Beginnings are hard in any field. The first day of class, for example, gets a lot of attention from pedagogues, because what happens on that day shows students what to expect from your instruction, Alicia Alexander and Elizabeth Natalle explain in a text on interpersonal communication.

A second friend, book writing coach Myra Levine, says that each author’s first question should be “whose eyes do we see through?” Point of View, Levine says, determines every word you write. In Levine’s webinar offers writing “prompts” to help writers envision the “palette”.

Business owners and professional practitioners launching their blog often experience the same feel of “opening the paint wrappers” or putting the first words to web page. At Say It For You, we explain that the opening post will set the tone for the ongoing blog series, letting readers know:

  • They’ve come to the right place – this blog promises to be a good source for the type of information I want and need?
  • They can tell the author/company/practice is likeable, resonating with their own belief system.
  • They understand there’s a reason you’ve decided to use a blog as an ongoing communication tool.

Fear of flying is an anxiety disorder, and some of the elements of that fear have nothing to do with the actually risks associated with flight. In Fear of Blogging, David Meerman Scott says many business owners fear:

  • looking silly
  • not having important things to say
  • lack of computer savvy
  • blogging “won’t work” for their industry

Of course, from a business standpoint, fear of blogging can be a fearsome business mistake, since, in the time it’s taken you to read this far into my blog post, thousands and thousands of new blog posts have been introduced, some by your competitors!

So, go ahead – open up that new sketchbook. Peel the plastic off the paint tubes. Try writing the answer to this question:

If you had only 10 words to describe just how you ended up in – and why you’re
still in- your present industry or profession, what would those words be?

There’s your business blog “palette”!

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