Don’t Promulgate the Histogens in Blogging for Business

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My friend and fellow blogger Karl Ahlrichs, as usual, is offering excellent advice to employee benefits professionals, and, as usual, I’m finding that his advice works for blog content writers.

“People want the answer in a few, short, well-thought-out words, with a long answer to follow if requested.”

Karl complains that he’d sat in a workshop on voluntary benefits trends that went on for the first five minutes without speaking plain English. “We need to promulgate the histogens and project profitability based on actuarial calculation….yadda, yadda” sort of thing is what he heard.

I’ll tell you – after six years writing blogs and web page content for businesses and professional practitioners of every type, I’ve come to conclusions very similar to Karl’s.  Simply put, our challenge as content writers lies in finding the sweet spot between the informative and the yadda yadda.

“We need to get good at the power of summary,” says Karl. He used to think the average adult attention span was three minutes, but then learned from a presentation coach that he had a mere six seconds to make his point with a modern business professional before they mental shut him off. “Yikes!” was Karl’s reaction, shortening the phone message he leaves for prospects to the following: “Hi, I can explain all of Obamacare in 30 seconds.  Call me, and I’ll do it for you.”

Given that Karl was making an outgoing “cold call”, while our blog marketing draws inbound traffic based on an already existing interest in our topic, we Indianapolis content writers don’t need to keep our posts to 30 seconds’ worth of reading..

Still, let’s keep reality in mind: people want their answers in a few, short, well-thought-out paragraphs, with longer answers to follow if requested (that’s why we have CTA’s or Calls to Action as part of business blog writing).

Thanks, Karl!  We promise not to promulgate the histogens in blogging for business!
 

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Blogging to Describe Life Fully Charged

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It’s a mattress commercial, for heaven’s sake! But the message isn’t about the mattress.  No, it’s about waking up better, about “living life fully charged”.  It’s about how you feel after a night’s sleep on a Beautyrest®.

A year or so ago, I blogged about what I dubbed “the Sensa® Rule for SEO marketing blogs”.  See, the Sensa® billboard ads are all focused not on the product, but on a result, an outcome, on the What’s-In-It-For-Them. I think that radio commercial I heard about Beautyrest is another good example of that rule.

Business owners often share with me how frustrated they become when they’ve done a truly  top-notch job for one of their clients, and that client doesn’t realize just how top-notch it was! That’s because customers lack the expertise or background knowledge for comparison. But customers do know when they achieve the results they were expecting.

What that means is that, even after your blog content has succeeded in terms of helping people find you, it still needs to convey to those readers a “feel” for the desired outcomes of using your products and services. Carmine Gallo in Businessweek.com explains it well: Don’t sell products; sell an experience.

The really interesting thing about selling experiences is that even if online searchers come across your business blog post in a search for general advice or information on a topic related in some way to your business (rather than having the intent to buy anything), the feelings and the experiences you describe may be so “on target” for them that they actually turn into buyers in order to experience those results.

"Truly successful marketers use reverse branding,” blogger Ryan Karpeles emphasizes. "People rarely think of your actual brand first. They think about what they want. Then they decide who, specifically, can fulfill that desire.

Are you telling your blog readers how to “wake up better”?
 
 

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Outsourced Blog Content Writing – It’s Not Evil if It’s Not Abdicated

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“Is outsourcing your content marketing evil?” asks ducttapemarketing in a post forwarded to me by friend Damon Richards.  (Since my business, Say It For You,  depends upon corporations and professional practitioners outsourcing many of their inbound marketing content creation to us, Damon knew I’d want to weigh in on just how much “evil” I was perpetrating by doing freelance blog content writing!)

To kick of the discussion, ducttapemarketing’s John Jantsch points out that 74% of small businesses surveyed recently said they were, in fact, using content marketing, with three quarters of them saying they planned to do more of it going forward.  61% of those surveyed claimed they did all their own content writing, with the rest using what Jantsch calls “hired guns”.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I want to encourage readers to take a closer look at two of Jantsch’s key statements:

“Outsourcing content creation is an essential tactic, especially for small businesses.”

My Say It For You website lists some key reasons content creation is so essential. Your content attracts new customers and keeps your regulars coming back. Content gets you noticed online and makes your business stand out from the competition.  Your content presents the benefits of your products and services, the history of your business and your own journey, successful case studies and testimonials, news of importance to your customers, and your perspective on trends in your industry.

“Outsourcing is not the same as abdication. You need to maintain tight control on themes, voice, message, and specific topic needs”.

Blog content writing actually bestows a “training benefit”.  What I mean by that, is when you blog, you’re verbalizing the positive aspects of your business or practice, putting your recent accomplishments into words, and reviewing the benefits of your own products and services. So, are those “training benefits” are lost to business owners or professionals who hire freelance blog content writers to be their “voice”? Really, the answer is “no”, at least not if things are done right, with your blogger becoming a true part of your marketing team. The very process of choosing themes, sharing strategies, and planning for content creation involves both the owner and the writer, creating a 2 + 2 =5 synergy effect.

Jantsch, though, is onto something when he cautions owners against totally abdicating the process of content creation.  The more involved the owner can be in discussing the messages to be conveyed in the company’s or practice’s blog, the more effective those messages are going to be.

A professional blog writer’s mission is to create content based on understanding you, your business and your message.
 

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Icon-to-Person Business Blogging

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"They join you for breakfast every morning – shouldn’t you get to know them better?" asks Mental Floss Magazine.  Iconic characters, including the Quaker Oats man, Buzz the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee, Tony the Tiger, and the Pillsbury Doughboy have become part of our culture, and there’s a reason for that.  Mental Floss titles its write-up “You Are What You Eat”, but as a corporate blogging trainer, I think the message here is that we buy where we see ourselves in the picture and where we relate to the person (at least to the creature) bringing us that message.  

Of course, part of the power of the Cheerios and Pillsbury commercials comes from the human voice (Billy West for Buzz or Paul Frees for the Doughboy), but blog content writers can use “voice” as well. In fact, one interesting perspective on the work we do as professional ghost bloggers is to translate clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms with which target audiences are most likely to relate. That’s exactly why I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting”, setting a tone of We’re here and we’re talking with you”.

“Authority” is an important term in SEO marketing blog writing. For one, Google’s algorithms are sensitive to authority when selecting which content to match with a reader’s search in any given category. Perhaps even more important, readers visit your blog for answers and for information they can trust. The success of your blog marketing efforts will be very closely aligned with your being perceived as an expert in your field.

But it’s not authority that draws buyers to Cheerios” Buzz or to Doughboy – it’s “personality”, and that’s what needs to jump off the screen for blog content readers. The content has to showcase the people behind the posts. Using first and second person pronouns gives a sense of revealing the personality and the beliefs of the business owner or of the team standing ready to be of serve.

 

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There’ll be Little Reader Patience for Rambling Blog Posts

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Ramblers drive everybody crazy, sales strategist Jill Konrath reminds us.  There are two sorts, she says:

  • Flounder-for-my-niche ramblers share everything they do, hoping something piques interest.  All they end up doing, says Konrath, is projecting a sense of desperation.

  • I-love-my-subject ramblers don’t stop talking, never focusing on what is relevant in their sales pitch to that specific prospect.

It’s precisely because ramblers drive online readers crazy that, in corporate blogging training sessions, I introduce the concept of The Power of One:

One message: Blog posts have a distinct advantage over the more static website copy, because you can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business in today’s post, saving other topics for later posts.

One desired outcome:  Each business blog post should impart one new idea or call for a single action. Focused on one thing, your post has greater impact, since people are bombarded with many messages each day. The idea is that respecting readers’ time produces better results for your business.

One audience: Blog content writing can have several different purposes, but make no mistake—blogging for business is marketing. The more focused a blog is on connecting with a narrowly defined target audience, the more successful it will be in converting prospects to clients and customers, I teach.

Although the “flounder-for-my-niche” expressions wasn’t used, students at Butler College of Business seminar on resume building were instructed not to ramble or “flounder”, but to  keep sentences short, using clear forceful language that stresses achievements rather than duties.

The “I-love-my-subject” rambling problem was addressed as well in that Butler seminar:  “Since most employers skim resumes rather than read them, your resume cannot be an exhaustive list of everything you’ve ever done.”

Ramblers of either type drive everybody crazy, from human resource directors reading resumes to prospects listening to sales pitches.  Be forewarned:  there will be little online reader patience for rambling business blog posts!
 

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