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Writing About What Almost Never Was

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Long before the Masters golf tournament became what it is today, Augusta National overcame serious financial woes. Although co-founders Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones had had extensive plans, many never panned out, David Owen explains in Golf Digest. In three years of trying to build membership, the pair had sent out thousands of postcards, had hired salesmen to travel the country, and had bought membership lists from country clubs. Despite all those efforts, when the first National Invitation Tournament was held in 1934, the club had enlisted only 76 members. Then, just as, in 1939, they were beginning to realize some modicum  of success – the country was entering a war!

As a content marketer, I absolutely loved reading this “failure-turned-success” story. There’s an important lesson here for content creators for business or practice owners:  Writing about past failures is important. In fact, true tales about past mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the enterprise. What tends to happen is the stories of failure create feelings of empathy and admiration for those who overcame the effects of both outside forces and of their own errors.

 

Because the Masters Golf Tournament story relates to people no longer living, the story is told in third person by the club’s historian In posting marketing content today,  I recommend using the personal pronouns “I”  and “we”.  As Brandon Royal explains in The Little Red Writing Book, first person is personal and specific.  Readers appreciate knowing how a situation relates to the business owners or practitioners in terms of their personal experiences.

There’s another important aspect to recalling past failures, I explain — demonstrating that you understand the problems the online searcher is dealing with. To the extent you can truthfully say, “I know how frustrating the problem is, and that’s why I’m devoted to solving that problem through my business or profession,” you are infusing your content with more power.

 

While our Say It For You content writers are often the voice behind the “I” or “we”,  we know that “writing about what almost never was” can help make things happen for our clients – and for their readers!

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Tossing Around the Terms to Tease Interest

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Their dad, Neil Krieger, had made up a word and had been using it ever since college to describe what happens when a grapefruit or orange squirts juice in your eye.  After he died, his children launched a digital marketing campaign to get the word “orbisculate” officially recognized in dictionaries.  Never having heard the word before, I definitely had a “squirt-in-the-eye” experience upon reading the title “Warning – This Fruit May Orbisculate!” in my copy of Reader’s Digest….

“Without a captivating, attention-grabbing title, Dale of bloggingherwy.com cautions, readers are less likely to click on your blog post.”   “People are always searching for comparisons between different things, whether it is products, software, ways of doing something, etc.”, she suggests.  At Say It For You, we do like using the “strange and unusual”, in both titles and content, to help spark readers’ curiosity.  On the other hand, we know, strange and unusual simply isn’t enough. Unless the information is somehow tied to the reader’s problem or need, unless the content makes clear why the writer cares about that information or why that information could make a difference to the reader, there can be no Call to Action.

In blogs or LinkedIn posts, as we teach at Say It For You, even the tone of the title constitutes a promise of sorts, telling the searcher whether the content is going to be humorous, satirical, controversial, cautionary, or simply informative. For SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes, the title needs to contain keyword phrases. At the same time, an important purpose of the title is to induce searchers to read the post, and for that to happen, the title must arouse curiosity and interest.

In the case of that tantalizing title in my Reader’s Digest , two factors played a role in  the words quickly capturing my attention:

  • The word “warning!” itself served as a “grabber”.
  • The absurdity of the implication that a fruit could cause deadly harm spiked curiosity
  • The almost dire-sounding term “orbisculate” (Was this deadly fruit going to orbisculate me??)

While content writers’ ultimate mission is to address the needs visitors had typed into their search bars,” tossing around the terms” in order to tease interest can be an effective content marketing move.

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The Power of After-the-Fact Forecasting

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This week , in our Say It For You blog, we’re sharing  content marketing insights  triggered by content in the Old Farmer’s 2025 Almanac …

“How accurate was our forecast last winter?”, managing editor Robert Thomas asks, revealing that, overall, they had predicted  “precipitation departure” (the occurrence of more or less rain/snow than had been anticipated) with a bit over an 83% accuracy rate. A chart on page 204 of the Almanac shows, for eighteen different cities, just how much the Almanac‘s prediction had differed from the actual amount of rain or snow each location experienced. Interestingly, the weather predictions for the coming winter begin on page 205. (It’s as if the editors are keeping readers’ expectations realistic by preceding their predictions with a -” hey-we’re-not-perfect” admission.)

 

Even when the numbers reveal a much worse than 83% “success”, honest “look-backs”, are a good thing in content marketing. In fact, including stories of past mistakes and failures in posts and newsletters, I teach content writers, can help evoke readers’ empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame not only adversity, but the effects of their own mistakes!

Just as the Almanac editors chose to take responsibility for the numbers they had generated last year, business owners can exercise control over the way the public might perceive any negative developments in the industry or even in their own operation.  In fact content writers can help owners directly confront whatever is happening, show that they are taking responsibility and implementing new measures to avoid mistakes in the future.

While past mistakes and failures can add value in content marketing, fear of making mistakes in the future cannot be allowed to cripple messaging power going forward. Besides including information, it’s crucial to incorporate opinion. Taking a stance on issues is how companies and practices can express their uniqueness and deliver “Subject Matter Expertise”. 

When blogging for business reveals your unique “slant” or philosophy within in your field, potential customers and clients feel they know who you are, not merely what you do, and they are far more likely to want to be associated with you.

“Hey-we’re-not-perfect. What we are is looking, listening, processing – and opining” is the message when you do “after-the-fact forecasting” content marketing. 

 

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How Do We Know What We Know and Let Them Know It?

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How do we learn to string words together into statements? How do we know to say “I don’t have much money”, but that the opposite is not “I have much money”? How do we know that “a picture of Paul” and “a picture of Paul’s” mean totally different things? In his piece in the March issue of the Mensa Bulletin, Richard Lederer ponders these language mysteries. Think about it, he urges. Why do we say “the bicycle is next to the building”, but never “the building is next to the bicycle”?

“In marketing, language is a key tool for influencing, persuading, and manipulating an audience,” writes Sambuno. Through language, marketers create messages that are tailored to the specific target audience in order to elicit a desired response.

  • a car company might use language that appeals to the emotion of safety and security when targeting parents who are car shopping for their families.
  • a fashion company might use language that appeals to the desire for self-expression when targeting young adults.

Marketers can craft a powerful emotional bond with the audience through carefully selected language. We may not know precisely why “I have much money” sounds funny, but grammar matters in content marketing. “When you publish content with grammar mistakes, you risk affecting your reputation, search engine rankings, and even conversion rates,” SEO.com explains. “While some grammar errors won’t affect communication, others will force people to re-read your content or guess what you’re trying to say.”

On the other hand…. (I enjoyed reading this dissenting commentary on the subject of perfect grammar): “Nobody cares how well-written it is, unless it solves a real problem, or who wrote the article, as long as it makes sense.”

While, at Say It For You, I reassure content writers that, if their marketing blog posts are filled with valuable, relevant, and engaging material, the fact they wrote  “a lot” when they should have said “many” or substituted “your” for “you’re” isn’t going to be a content marketing deal breaker.

We’re out to focus readers’ attention on the bicycle or the building, not on which is next to which!

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Commenting on Comments on Your Content

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 “If you are a business with a blog on your website, then I would lean towards NOT allowing comments on your blog,” Nathaniel Tower writes. Most of the comments on business blogs tend to be spammy attempts to direct your potential customers away from your site and to their own instead,” Tower says. “You aren’t going to sell anything in the comments.”

On the other hand, Tower observes,  sincere comments can promote community, and even be a source of ideas.  You can allow comments on some posts, but not on most, he advises. In fact, he suggests, you might write comments on other people’s posts or blogs, being sure your remarks are “thoughtful and promote discussion”.

There’s a reason many major marketing blogs don’t allow comments, Caroline Forsey of Hubspot points out,  confessing “we don’t either”. Her Hubspot colleague Dan Zarrella found that “blog conversations don’t lead to more views or links.” His conclusion: “With your blog, comments should not be a goal – They don’t lead to views or links.” Probogger comes at the question from a different point of view – removing comments doesn’t have to be a decisions you make once, for the first week or month the post goes live, but can be done at any point later on.

On the other side of the question, Fabrizio Van Marciano, on Magnet4Blogging,  uses a wry metaphor, asking us to think about eating toast in the morning cold with no butter or jelly (which Fabrizio likens to the blandness of a blog with no back-and-forth engagement).

In theory, I agree with Van Marciano – blogs should be available not only for reading, but for acting and interacting. Still, spam comment attacks are ubiquitous, typically  arriving in three forms (a. total nonsense, with links to sites the writer is promoting, b. comments totally unrelated to the topic of the blog post, and c. blatant advertising for web services.

At Say It For You, we don’t automatically accept comments, reserving the right to “check them at the door”.

 

 

 

 

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