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Blogging Starts and Grows Because of Trust

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“In business, we need our customers and potential customers to trust us….otherwise they simply won’t want to invest time and resources into us and our business,” Safarz Ali writes in the Business Influencer. How do you prove that you are trustworthy? Ali suggests the biggest three ways:

1. Show, don’t tell. Live up to your promises and use client case studies to prove it.
At Say it for You, we emphasize that case studies chronicle a customer or client who had a problem or need, taking readers through the various stages of using the product or service to solve that problem.

2. Practice honest communication, brushing no issues under the rug.
Problems with customer service are going to arise, but those very situations offer you an opportunity to shine by making things right. Empower Then use writing for business as one excellent vehicle to tell about your own mistakes and the way you offer outstanding customer service by making things right.

3. Prove you know your customers.
Your blog can’t be all things to all people, any more than your business can be all things to everybody.  The blog must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who will want to do business with you.  Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for that customer  – the words you use, how technical you get and how sophisticated your approach..

The top five best communication traits of a successful leader, Rebecca Weintraub and Stan Lowes think, are these:

1. walking the talk
The typical online searcher is leery of hype and unrealistic claims, and honesty in content writing has power.

2. authenticity (understand yourself first)
To demonstrate that you’re unique, you need to explain what you care about and what it’s like to work with you.

3. embracing a communication culture
Use your blog to demonstrate your full engagement and concern for your customer’s welfare, and allow real-time feedback from your target audience.

4. storytelling
You have to have a point, conveying the reason you’re sharing the story.

5. listening
When I’m ghost-blogging for a business, I need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, on what’s in the news, and about what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my client sells and what it does for its clients.

Blogging starts and grows because of trust!

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Elevate Your Word Game in Blogging for Business

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“I learned the hard way that my marriage was on the edge of collapse – again” and “The Bitter Truths I learned About My Eating Disorder – After Being Pregnant” are both decent titles for a pitch, says Estelle Erasmus, who, in Writer’s Digest this month, teaches writers tactics for capturing the attention of an editor. (The expression “the bitter truths” is quite cliché, Erasmus noted, but having an eating disorder rear its head during pregnancy is different enough to catch attention. She suggested changing the title to “Getting Pregnant Spiraled Me Into an Eating Disorder”.)

Tips offered by Erasmus that are remarkably relevant for business blog content creators include:

Clarity is key, more important than beautiful language.
Titles represent crucial elements in capturing the interest of both search engines and online searchers. But, aside from Search Engine Optimization considerations, the title of a blog post constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors that if they choose to click on the title, it will lead them to a blog post with information on the topic named in that title.

Find the emotional implication behind what you’re writing about. There has to be a transformation that takes place, one to which readers can relate.
In blog marketing, those who make the most emotionally persuasive argument win. The goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message.

Active verbs work best, helping to paint a picture for readers.
The very purpose of the blog content is to showcase the accomplishments of the business and products and services it brings to customers. That’s why using the active voice makes so much sense in corporate blog writing.

Focus on a small moment in time, not a a broad all-encompassing saga.
At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the Power of One, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience.

Elevate your word game, learning to think in sound bites by watching TV with the captions on.
Blogs, unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, are short and concise, more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces.  That’s what makes it so feasible to use blogs to achieve the frequency that’s needed to win online search engine rankings.

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Valentine’s Day Inspires Loving Blog Content

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Valentine’s Day offers the perfect opportunity for business owners or practitioners to show the love by offering a customer appreciation giveaway, Seray Kesin advises in her drip.com blog. Misfit.com takes a different approach – “it’s all about the self love”. Rather than asking buyers to spoil their Valentine, the company reframes the day into one of self-love. Estee lauder uses free shipping to upsell during Valentine’s day, Kesin notes. Of course, she adds, certain kinds of products and services lend themselves to a Valentine theme; others require extra creativity, and Kesin cites a few examples::

  • an herb garden (“There’s hardly anything as satisfying as foraging for your own food and fixing a meal for two together….”
  • a heart-shaped package of meats from Man Crate
  • (Gal)entine’s Day, where ladies celebrate ladies

Wordstream.com offers some industry-specific Valentine’s Day promotional ideas:

  • Fitness centers can host a special class for couples.
  • Masseurs can run a couples massage class.
  • Restaurants can run a couples cooking class and add heart-shaped items to their menu.
  • Photographs can do half price quick sessions for couples.
  • Service-based business can offer deals for showing love to your carpet/ computer/car.
  • Panera took things to the extreme, offering to cater a wedding for couples who got engaged at one of their restaurants.
  • Meeting venues can host a free singles event.

    Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to send out a message that lets your existing customers know that: You appreciate their business. You wouldn’t have a business if it weren’t for them, Copyblogger’s Sonia Simons suggests. “Go on a bit of a rant about why you do what you do. Make it personal, and make it your own. It doesn’t need to be long or complex, but it should be from the heart,” she advises. Simons isn’t crazy about the idea of offering discounts (that can put you into the “bargain” category, when where you really want to be is the “valuable” category).

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Using the Power of the Imperative Tense in Your Blog

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In a tutorial article “Make the Most of Your Gatherings”, Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan make the most of the power of the imperative tense: “Go in with a game plan,” they advise. “Set up a drink station.” “Layer the lighting.” “Build a charcuterie board.” “Encourage play.” Even their party planning advice is offered in the form of “orders” – ” Personalize a playlist.” “Turn off your tech.” ” Keep the menu simple.” “Send a sweet follow-up.”

“The imperative mood in English is generally used to give an order, to prompt someone to do something, to give a warning, or to give instructions,” the American & British Academy explains. By its very nature, an imperative is directly addressed to someone, grammarphobia.com adds. Tanya Trusler of ellii.com lists five common uses of imperative verbs:

  • parents telling children what to do
  • teachers giving instructions to students
  • employers giving instructions to employees
  • people in authority, such as policy officers, telling other people what to do
  • rules, guidelines, and laws

Since, at Say it For You, I’m fond of saying that teaching is the new selling in blogging for business, presenting how-to-lists and tutorials has become an important aspect of content creation. With no apparent end to the technical information available to consumers on the internet, our job is to help readers understand, absorb, buy into, and use that information.  One way to empower customers to make a decision is to help them understand the differences between various industry terms, as well as the differences between the products and services of one business compared to those offered by another. The Property Brothers’ article demonstrates how using “soft” imperatives to offer valuable tips can be a skillful way to serve up advice.

One tip for using the power of the imperative without creating “who-are-you-to-tell-me-what-to-do” resentment involves explaining the reasoning behind the “order”. In an article in USA Today, George Hobica discusses the exhortation given to airline passengers to “Place the mask over your mouth and nose”. If the reasons behind instructions given to passengers (to receive enough oxygen flow, both mouth and nose need to be under the mask) were made clear, Hobica says, people would listen more.

Use the power of soft imperatives in your blog!

 

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There Are More Than One Boy-Meets-Girl Blogging Arcs

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“At its very heart, I believe that there is only one story arc in the world,” writes Sonali Dev. “There’s a character in an uncomfortable situation and they must find a way to resolve it.” The narrative arc refers to the structure and shape of a story, the sequence of occurrences in the plot. A good arc is vital if you want to engage your readers from start to finish, advises reedsy.com. Boy meets girl, boy fails girl, boy gets girl again is one classic example, the author says. Adding complexity to a basic story arc is part of what differentiates one story from another, even when they’re ostensibly dealing with the same ideas.

In fact, in creating blog content at Say It For You, we often use a softer version of the “hurt and rescue” story arc author D. Forbes Ley suggests salespeople use to close deals – identifying ways in something valued by readers might be in jeopardy, and then emphasizing two points::

  1. The business owner or professional practitioner understands readers’ concerns and needs.
  2. The business owners or practitioner has the experience, information, products and services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs.

Using those two points as basic content building blocks, there are a number of ways bloggers can follow Sonali Dev’s advice and “add complexity” to the story arc:

  • debunk a “myth” or false impression relating to your field
  • tie the content to a front-page news story having to do with a problem your company or practice helps solve
  • share a true story
  • use statistics to prove the extent of the problem
  • relate a celebrity story that illustrates the problem – or the solution you propose

Whichever of these “arc” tactics you select for any one blog post, a tip offered by Writer’s Digest contributor Estelle Erasmas should be kept in mind: “Focus on one specific point in time rather than on an entire life story.” Yes, your readers may in fact be seeking a way out of an uncomfortable situation, but might also be in search of information on how to perform a certain task, or looking to satisfy their curiosity on a particular subject.

There are more than one boy-meets-girl blogging arcs!

 

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