Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

Calls To Action, or CTA’s, are a vital component of business blogs. Future’s Now Brendan Regan says business owners’ marketing outreach needs to extend from the driving point through to a "conversion". 

On a blog page, the CTA can be on the right margin (Call 1-800……, Contact ———, sign up for RSS, etc.).
Or, the Call To Action can be in the body of the blog post (To buy now, click here…).

To me, though, each whole blog post is in itself a Call To Action. I was thinking about that after hearing Julie Reed of Miller’s Health Systems talk about managing productive conversations with employees. Reed suggested using the formula "When you do X, Y happens. I prefer Z". (This approach avoids any hint of personal criticism of the employee, but explains why the outcome of certain behaviors is nonproductive, and then suggests a better way of doing things.)

Myth-busting is a very good use for blogs, because you’re opening the eyes of readers to a new way of thinking about your product or service. Addressing misinformation is one way of shining light on business owners’ expertise.  At the same time, people generally don’t like to have their assumptions challenged.  The Julie Reed formula can come in handy here.

When you do X:  When you, the blog reader (hasten to assured readers many people have the same misunderstanding or are making the same natural mistake) do a certain thing…

Y happens: Describe the problems that can arise from that course of action, that type of shortcut, that product, etc.)

Suggest Z: Describe a better way of using the product you sell, or a better solution your company offers for their problem.

Whatever your "Z"  is, it will become the Call To Action for your blog post!

I was attending a convention a couple of weeks ago when the inevitable happened – equipment failure. One of the main presenters was using Power Point with a video embedded in it, and, just as he was trying to make an important point, the sound system hookup malfunctioned. Of course, we in the audience were unable to understand what the people in the video were saying.

So what happened? Rather than just going on to deliver his message without benefit of A/V, the distressed speaker put the audience "on hold" while the hotel’s technicians fiddled unsuccessfully with the controls for a long ten minutes. Needless to say, the momentum of the presentation was lost. ("Winging it" without the Power Point would have been s-o-o much more powerful!)

That little mishap started me thinking about different forms of presentations, and, since I’m a professional ghost blogger and blogging trainer, I came around to pondering the differences between business blogs and traditional websites. Websites are typically more formal, with a lot more thought and planning devoted to headlines, content, graphics, and layout. In that sense, websites are like the Power Point presentation the speaker had prepared.  Not that I’m implying that websites "break down" – it’s just that they tend to be more static than blogs.

Blogs, by contrast, are more nimble.  The content changes frequently (ideally several times a week), and that content is presented in a tone that’s conversational and informal. The comparison that occurred to me during that 10-minute awkward wait for the Power Point to be restored is this: Websites are ongoing. Blogs are for the here-and-now.

If business owners thought of blog posts as conversation, simply sharing a tip, discussing something in the news, explaining how their products work – just "winging it", in other words, I can’t help thinking that there’d be a whole lot more blogging going on, with a lot more engaged online searchers!