Getting Out the Vote in Your Business Blog Content Writing

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 “Boosting voter turnout could be as simple as making individuals see voting as part of who they are rather than as something they do,” writes Janelle Weaver in Scientific American Mind.

 

As a corporate blog marketing trainer, I was very interested to learn that this statement came as a result of a 2008 survey. Of registered voters asked the question, “How important is it to you to vote?" there was an actual 82% turnout at the polls.  Of those asked “How important is it to you to be a voter?” by contrast, there was a 96% turnout.

We freelance blog writers in Indianapolis need to pay attention to the conclusion published by Christopher Bryan of Stanford University about that 96%:

“We offered people the prospect of claiming a desirable
 identity,” he said. “That’s a very powerful thing.”

In offering business blogging assistance to business owners over the past five years, I’ve had many express hesitancy about being too “sales-y” or about appearing too self-serving in their SEO marketing blog. At the same time, of course, business owners require a return on their marketing investment dollars..

The sweet spot may lie in the creation of just the kind of “desirable identity” for customers to which researcher Bryan was alluding. First, I tell business owners, the blog content writing effort should aim to offer readers a feeling of what it would be like to have you working alongside them to help with their challenges and issues.

Even more important, though, is leading potential customers and clients to view themselves as part of the bigger picture your company is working to create – better health, more convenience, greater safety, financial security, or increased energy savings.

Writing for business should help you, as my friend and fellow marketing blogwriter Tony Fannin likes to say, “BE somebody to your clients!”
 

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Business Blog Reading Right After Breakfast

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 If you’re not sure, in doing corporate blogging for business, which content is best placed at the beginning of your blog post, you might consult researchers in Israel.

In the course of a study of Israeli rulings on convicts’ parole requests, scientists discovered there were more parole approvals at the beginning of a session than at later points in the day.  They attributed the difference to the breakfast or snack the judge ate just before starting!

From my vantage point as a professional ghost blogger and corporate blogging trainer, my conclusion about these research results is simple: We blog content writers need to pay attention to them.

The author of the Scientific American Mind article explains: “Judges often organize their cases according to the time they are likely to require. Shorter cases are often dealt with first, to allow busy prosecutors and defense attorneys… to leave court and get on with the rest of their day.”

In offering business blogging help, I’d offer the same sort of advice, and for the same reason.  Online searchers want to “get on with the rest of their day”. When it comes to SEO marketing blogs, business owners and those doing corporate blog writing for them must heed Peter Guber’s advice: “Capture your audience’s attention first, fast, and foremost.”

While those providing business blogging services need to create valuable content throughout each post, it’s important to place key information, including Calls to Action, in the opening paragraph. It appears that “right after breakfast” (meaning right after the blog’s opening lines) might be the best time for customers to make your cash register ring!


 

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Business Blogs are Positioning Statements

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In their new book Branding Yourself, fellow Indianapolis bloggers Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy observe that the starting point of a personal brand campaign is the “positioning and transaction statement”. This statement, they explain, is basically a tagline, a catchy or memorable phrase or sentence that expresses the uniqueness of your brand.

In corporate blogging training sessions, I like to talk about leitmotifs or recurring core themes to which blog content writers can refer again and again.  The five-question exercise that Decker and Lacy suggest for setting up the P&T (positioning & transaction) statement can be perfect for pinpointing such central themes for any SEO marketing blog:

   Positioning:
   Who is your competition?
   How are you different (3 reasons per competitor)?
   How are you similar (3 reasons per competitor)?
  
   Transaction:
   What does the transaction look like?
   What is the end goal?

Just such a thought process leads to what I’ve nicknamed “the training benefit” business owners can derive from corporate blog marketing. (This holds true, I’ve found, whether owners do their own blogging or collaborate with a professional ghost blogger.)  The very exercise of answering the questions and thinking about your own business practices helps train you to articulate those things to clients and customers.

While the Branding Yourself authors are guiding business owners towards a one-phrase or one-sentence statement, the very same five questions they pose can be of business blogging help. In fact, the big advantage business blog writing has over ads, billboards, brochures, and even static website content is that blogs are, by definition, a work in progress.  Using blogs, the corporate mantra or professional practitioner’s message can continually be honed.

Blog posts, as we see them at Say it For You, are continuous-run positioning and transaction statements!

 


 

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Getting Downright Personal in Your Business Blog

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“People are more important than ever before,” remarks fellow blog content writer Michel Fortin. That’s because, he explains, “The internet is cold and impersonal.”

What Fortin calls “taking the human element out of the sales process” is actually the polar opposite of what freelance blog writers aim to accomplish, and getting personal is a huge element in the success of any SEO marketing blog.

Practical eCommerce’s Paul Chaney agrees. “Blogging,” he says, “consists of one person – or one company – communicating directly with consumers in an unfettered, unfiltered manner….blogs are a more personal form of communication.”

As a corporate blogging trainer, I liked the specific blog Chaney pointed to as a great example of getting personal: “How Differences With Your Spouse Can Make Your Marriage Stronger”, written by publishing company CEO Thomas Hyatt. “It’s that type of transparent self-disclosure that has made Hyatt both a popular blogger and a respected leader," Chaney observes.

If people are to be more important than ever before, that means Indianapolis blog content writers must focus on personal anecdotes and on the personal values of the business owners and the people delivering professional services.
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“Be intimate.  Be ego-driven.  Above all, be emotional.” Is Fortin’s advice to online marketers. SEO marketing blogs may be writing about business, but it had better be about people as well, and that includes both online searchers and online blog content writers, both buyers and sellers. The message: You’ve gotta get down and personal!

 

 


 

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Can You Do Brainwriting Through Your Business Blog?

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“We are what we write,” professional speaker and handwriting expert Theresa Ortega handwriting analysisshared with me almost three years ago, explaining that “all writing is brain writing”. I learned, to my amazement, that amputees who hold a pen their mouths or even between their toes form their letters precisely the same way they used to before their accident!

Of course as an Indianapolis blog content writer and corporate blogging trainer, I use the word “writing” in a context broader than just penmanship.  Still, as Ortega and I concluded about personal branding by business owners as expressed through business blog writing, we are also what we blog.

Just this month, as I shared with my Say It For You freelance blog writers, Theresa Ortega was featured in the Indiana State University Magazine. As part of a study, the school’s recreational sports department compared Ortega’s analysis of the writing by newly hired staff members to results of those same staff members’ assessment tests.

Ortega found one handwriting sample that set off alarm bells, and she enlisted the help an FBI friend, who confirmed her suspicions that the individual’s writing revealed traits found in serial killers. The university was alerted, so that the person’s behavior could be closely monitored.

To a certain degree, all of abusiness’ marketing materials reveal the owners’ attitudes and beliefs.  But as I’ve continued, over the years, to offer business blogging help to corporate owners and professional practitioners, it’s become apparent to me that blogs are most “telltale” of all forms of marketing. That’s partly because of blogs’ conversational, personal tone, and also because business blog content writing continues over weeks, months, and even years.

It doesn't matter whether you’re doing all the writing yourself or collaborating with a professional ghost blogger like me. As the story unfolds, blog post after blog post, about what you sell, what you do, and what you know, the clearer it becomes  to readers who you ARE!

 

 


 

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