Should Business Blog Posts Come in Transparent Packaging?

/0 Comments/in /by

I love “reading around” for this Say It For You blog – I learn so many useful tidbits about so many different everyday things. Listen to this one, from the American Marketing Association Journal:  When food is packaged in transparent wrappings, two very interesting things tend to happen, as Ohio State University marketing professors Xiaoyan Deng amd Raji Srinivasan discovered.

First of all, when the food in the package is visible, that tends to increase buying, the researchers found.  They called that the “salience effect”. No mystery here–customers know exactly what they’ll be getting when they open the package. Seeing is believing that it’s time to buy stuff, at least when it comes to food, apparently.

Transparent packaging has an “opposing” effect when it comes to food consumption, the professors found.  The transparent package enables consumption monitoring. In other words, customers now had the food home and could see how much they still had left in the package. That tended to make them "save" more and consume less.

Some of these insights about food packaging can be applied, I think, in our work as blog content writers.

 First of all, an increasing number of eyeballs are scanning our blog “packages”. 61% of global Internet users research products online, with 44% of online shoppers beginning the process using a search engine. Let’s think of the post’s title and opening lines of the blog post (the things that appear on Google or other search page) as the “packaging”.

The reader takes the next step in the “consumption” process by clicking on a selection on the search engine page, meaning the title of the blog post. Like transparent packaging on a food item, the title must make clear what readers can expect to find in the article.

One of the main motivators for having a marketing blog in the first place is to “get found” by the ‘right people, meaning those already interested in what you have to sell, what you know, and what you know how to do, and who need confirmation that they’ve come to the right place.

All they need to do now is open the packaging and begin consuming all the information and guidance you have to offer!
 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

The Bliss List for Business Blogs

/0 Comments/in /by

Three tips to remember in revamping your resume, advises J.P Hansen in The Bliss List, include:

Explain, don’t list.  Write three full sentences about your current or previous job with three to five bullet points highlighting your achievements.

One point I mention in corporate blogging training sessions is that bullet points in general are a good fit for blogs. Yet using only telegraphic style  (brief, omitting “an”, “and”, “the”) in blogging would take away from the natural, conversational flow that marks the most successful blogs.
 


Limit activities.  List just two hobbies to showcase your interests without seeming preoccupied.

The better blog pages give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ interests and core beliefs. In other words, one function of blog writing is to reveal the people behind the business.

Use active language. Opt for strong, positive verbs like sold, earned, and developed. in writing for business – more verbs makes for more dynamic blog content.

Especially for smaller companies, “verbification” of the business brand should be an actual goal of blog marketing strategy. As Bits.blogs.nytimes points out, "There is a strong positive marketing value from verbing, because verbs connote activity and excitement."

“Powerful writing is focused,” says Dustin Wax of lifehack.org on the same note. “Good writing has a point, a goal that it is intended to achieve.  That goal might be to sell something, to convince someone of something, or to explain how to do something, but whatever the point, informs every line.”

“Our society tends to value abstract thinking…but this tends to lead to particularly limp and empty writing…..Powerful writing doesn’t just show, it shows in real-world ways that are easily approachable."

One tip for Indianapolis blog content writers: Keep the Bliss List next to your content writing calendar!

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Don’t Add the Subtraction Principle to Your Business Blog

/0 Comments/in /by

Does it matter whether the sale price is displayed to the left or to the right of the original price? Which of these formats is more likely to make consumers believe they’re getting a good deal:

$349.00, now on sale for  $239.99    or      Now $239.99, was $349.99

Four marketing professors published a study on that very subject in the July issue of the Journal of Marketing, calling the mental evaluation customers would perform in deciding whether to buy “the subtraction principle”.

There are two conclusions we Indianapolis blog content writers can draw from this marketing study:

“To the extent that location of the sale price makes the subtraction task easier (or alternatively, more difficult) to initiate, perceptions of the offered discount…vary.”  In other words, the more thinking and calculating customers need to do, the less likely they are to appreciate the advantage of buying now.

  • If your blog site makes it difficult for online searchers to navigate, that makes it easy for those them to “bounce” and go to a different site.  How pleasant and satisfying a first experience a visitor has is directly tied to how much “calculating” they need to do to get where they want to go on the site. Conversely, the smoother the process is for readers to get around your blog site to  learn more, submit comments, request information, or buy, the more effective your SEO marketing blog is likely to be in terms of converting lookers to buyer.
     
  • “Placement” matters in business blog content. – it’s not just what you say, but in what order that counts. As a corporate blogging trainer, I can’t help but see a strong parallel between the placement of the price tags in the marketing study and the placement of content in blog posts.. Readers come online searching for information, products, or services, and they are not going to take the time to read your “manuscript” (the full text of your blog post) without assurance that they’ve come to the right place.


Consider the subtraction principle. Make it easy for readers to find the information they need!
 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blog Content Writing Can Promote a Purse or a Person

/0 Comments/in /by

“We see potential everywhere, whether it’s a purse or a person,” declares the Goodwill Guy in the TV ad, referring to the fact that donations of goods are turned into cash that goes to help train workers.  

With my ear always to the ground, alert for interesting word tidbits, I thought about that phrase “purse or person”.  As a professional blogger and corporate blogging trainer, I help business owners market tangible products (the “purses”).  In addition, I offer business blogging help to professionals such as attorneys, insurance agents, and physicians (the “persons”). Like the Goodwill Guy, I’ve helped realize the potential in both those marketing situations.

“Tangible products are goods that a buyer can see, touch and feel. Intangible products, or services, are solutions that offer benefits such as convenience, efficiency or expertise but no hard goods,” explains Neil Kulkemuller of Demand Media. “Selling tangible and intangible benefits requires distinct strategies and different persuasive tools,” he adds. A high-quality tangible product can often be witnessed directly by the buyer,Kulkemuller goes on to say, while an intangible solution relies more on the levels of trust and confidence.

At Say It for You, we’ve come to realize, it’s the job of us Indianapolis business blog writers to  “flesh out” the intangibles of both purses and persons. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?” 

Whether a business owner is composing his/her own blog posts or collaborating with a professional ghost blogger, it’s simply not enough to provide information to online searchers who’ve landed on a company’s SEO corporate blog. The facts. which are the raw ingredients, need to be “translated” into emotional terms that compel reaction – and action – in readers. That’s true, I find, for both tangible products and professional services.

“Blogging,” says Practical eCommerce’s Paul Chaney, “consists of one person – or one company – communicating directly with consumers in an unfettered, unfiltered manner.” That “one person”, I explain to newbie freelance blog content writers, might be a giant corporation or a  mom-and-pop operation, and might be selling either a tangible good or a service. With blog writing for business, we see potential everywhere!
 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Why-Should-I Business Blog Writing

/0 Comments/in /by

Asked to do something, I’ll probably oblige, but I want to know why.  Just after our plane had landed in New York City, the flight attendant instructed us to please pull down all the window shades.  No explanation accompanied her request. A worried thought first crossed my mind (What’s going on out there you don’t want us to see?), then a stab of resentment (Isn’t that your job? Did you go through the TSA scanning machine for me?)

On the return flight, I came across the answer to my first question in the USAirways Magazine:

“Once a plane arrives at a gate, its systems are often shut down to save on fuel, conserve energy, and keep the engines cool.  This means that in the summer months, it can get pretty warm in the cabin when the plane is parked at the gate.  Lowering your window shades helps keep the cabin several degrees cooler. And when the plane’s cooling system is restarted before departure, it doesn’t have to work as hard or consume as much fuel to bring the cabin temperature to comfortable levels.”

Recalling that little travel episode, it occurs to me that, as freelance blog content writers, we’re often the ones doing the asking.  Even when we’re careful to keep in mind that blog posts aren’t sales pieces or advertisements, more like advertorials, in the Calls to Action we incorporate in SEO marketing blogs, we need to avoid sparking reader resentment or puzzlement. In other words, we need to address all those” why-should-I” thoughts before they have a chance to develop.

Let’s face it – in the effort to convert searchers to buyers, the sort of “because-I-said-so” tactics we all recall from childhood simply just won’t cut it. And whether we’re asking readers to click through to a client’s shopping cart, download a white paper, participate in a survey, or like us on Facebook, our blog content had better answer readers’  “What’s-in-it-for-me?” questions before they’re even thought of!
 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail