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Blog Content Writing – Up For the Count

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word count for blogs

One “fake fact” included in Alex Palmer’s book Alternative Facts is that part of the reason Charles Dickens’ novels ran so long is that he was paid by the word. Truth is, while his novels’ length was often dictated in advance, Dickens’ earnings were pegged to the number of novels sold.

Today, some professional writers for hire choose to charge based on word count or page count, while other ghostwriters prefer to charge flat project rates or hourly fees, varying by experience, subject matter and location, Brafton, a leading UK content marketing company explains.

As much as we all wish for it, there is no simple answer to the question “What is the right length of a blog post?” A longer blog post doesn’t necessarily rank better than a short one. The reason search engines generally appear to favor longer posts is because they are detailed, hence considered to be providing more information to readers. But, when writing blogs, one needs to consider the topic, the goal, the target audience, the industry, and the competition to find which length works best. Focus should be on quality, not quantity.

You know your business and your customers better than anyone else, so why would you hire a ghostwriter to take over such an important task as blogging? There are plenty of reasons, Shandra Cragun of BKA Content explains:

  • You lack the time to write lengthy, informative blog posts.
  • Writing isn’t your strong suit.
  • The content creation process overwhelms you.
  • You want to elevate your brand’s story with well-written and highly engaging content.

In terms of word count, Cragun observes, there are some topics for which only so much can be said, while there are others about which a lot more can be said. Don’t give a ghost blogger a word count request that far exceeds the collective information on the subject, she cautions.

Opinions have always differed on the optimal size for a blog post. Having composed blog posts (as both a Say It For You ghost writer and under my own name) numbering well into the tens of thousands, I’m still finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!”

Chip and Dan Heath’s book The Power of Moments describes research that found that when people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length, instead rating the experience based on the “peak” (best or worst moment) and the ending. My conclusion about word count? As Albert Einstein famously said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

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ETDBW Blog Content Writing

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“An important driver of customer loyalty is how little effort the customer has to expend to do business with you,” Dixon, Toman, and Delisi point out in the Effortless Experience. Identify the customers’ biggest hassles and look for ways to be their hero by making that piece of the process easier for them, the authors advise.

There are ways to be Easy To Do Business With, says Ted Stahl, and each of these can be implemented through blog marketing:

  • Be proactive. Stay in touch with customers on a regular basis, Stahl emphasizes.
    At Say It For You, after years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that business owners who “show up” with new content on their websites are rare. There’s a tremendous fall-off rate, with most blogs abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. You might say the first job of a blog content writer is to help a business or a professional practice “get its frequency on”, so that they keep “running into” their readers.
  • Simplify your packages. We live in a culture of information saturation. Consumers today are highly distracted, which is why your blog posts need to include very focused, well-written calls to action. Often I remind practitioners and business owners getting ready to launch a marketing blog that the only people who are going to notice their blog are the ones already interested in that topic. The Call to Action is simply giving those readers a simple way to act on the information you’ve provided, I explain.
  • Say YES to any reasonable request for personalization. I like to remind both the blog content writers at Say It For You and the clients who hire us that the goal of a business blog is to bring in customers “of the right kind”, customers who have a need for and who will appreciate the services, products, and expertise being showcased in the blog. Anecdotes and testimonials are each ways of using your blog to show how personalized your service can be.
  • Answer the phone on the first ring. “You’d think website visitors would be more than willing to click through to your Contact page to find your phone number, but the truth is, many times they’re not,” the Bright Orange Thread blog points out. Websites – and blog sites – that make it difficult for online searchers to navigate make it easy for those searchers to “bounce away”.  If the content makes the reader want to call your company, is the phone number in plain sight? If the reader wants to submit a question or comment, or request further information, how easy is that to do?

Your blog is an excellent way to show you are here and Easy-To-Do-Business-With!

 

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Blogging About Sisters Erica and Maria

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“Erica and Maria are both red-blooded Americans, born in the USA to parents from Pueblo, Mexico. They have worked with us for over a half decade…Virginia has worked with us over twenty years. She and the ten people in a t-shirt team made $153.45 in 8 hours. That is $19.18 per hour.” In just this way, Los Angeles Apparel invites its online shoppers to “Know the people who make your clothes,”

Most websites contain an “Our Team” section, but Los Angeles Apparel’s, I thought, was a true grabber, with the kind of personalization and emotional appeal we need to include in blog content writing. A team page adds a personal touch to the company and can lend trust to visitors, Cameron Chapman points out in Smashing Magazine. “Meet the Team is all about introducing your visitors to your employees, providing transparency and a sort of personal touch,”, Bluleadz.com explains.

In Creating Buzz With Blogs, veteran business technology consultant Ted Demopoulos explains, “Blogs create buzz because people will feel like they know you, and people like to do business with people they know.”  Blogs represent people talking to people, and blogging is the business manifestation of what Barbra Streisand meant when she sang about people who love people being the luckiest people in the world.

So, should the employees themselves be required to write blog posts? After all, Marcuss Sheridan points out, one goal of content marketing is to produce as much content as possible, so the more hands are put to the task, the better. And, since content that answers consumers’ questions is the most valuable, and since those employees are typically the ones dealing with the consumers every day, stands to reason they should be committing that experience to print.  Still, Sheridan admits, most employees don’t want to participate.

Whether employees, owners, or professional content writers – or a combination of all three – create the blog posts, the more personal they are, the better, we teach at Say It For You. The focus should be on personal anecdotes and the personal value of the business owners. Blog marketing may be about business, but it had better be about people as well, including both buyers and sellers, writers and readers.

Los Angeles Apparel is onto something with their content about sisters Erica and Maria, inviting their web visitors to know the people who make their clothes..

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Laws of Likability for Bloggers

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In her rare downtime, Michelle Tillis Lederman confesses in her book The 11 laws of Likability, her guilty pleasure is watching TV reality shows. The characters she’s most drawn to, she realized, are being real. Contestants who accept themselves and have a sense of humor about their faults are the most likable, she concluded.

How does that insight apply to networking? Lederman asks. Being authentic is not a permission slip to be rude, obnoxious or inappropriate, but what it does mean is letting your true self show through so that others can connect with you, she concludes.

Can this insight be applied to online content marketing? In-person communication, Lederman explains, is based on three components – verbal (the words you choose), vocal (the tone and animation of your voice), and visual (facial expression and body language). In web-based marketing, we realize at Say It For You, words become our primary tools for transmitting the “true you” of our business owner or professional practitioner clients.

Lederman offers four pieces of practical advice about word-based communication:

  1. Start with the positive.
  2. Choose strong, actionable verbs.
  3. Focus on what can be done.
  4. Translate your own ideas into knowledge and opportunity (for them)

Nothing is more real – and more “likable”, our blog content writers have learned, than citing the real-life obstacles the business owner needed to overcome and the wisdom she’s gained in the process.

A connection is something that requires two, Lederman reminds readers. In the world of blog marketing, it is the visitors who’ve initiated the “conversation” by virtue of searching online for answers to a question they have or a product or service they are seeking. The blog content is there to do what Lederman calls “meeting them where they are – almost”. As bloggers, we’re validating the readers’ “energy state”, showing them we “heard” what they are saying and that they’ve come to the right place.

In relationships, Lederman realizes, when you give freely to others, you increase your likability. Still, you don’t always get something in return. A favor, she reminds readers, is only a favor when someone wants it!

In pull marketing (of which blogging is an important part, you have advice and valuable information to offer freely to all visitors to your site. Yet “what one person finds valuable may be another person’s spam,” the author remarks ruefully. Just be yourself and be there, she concludes. The rest is up to them.

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Blog Reader Checklist

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blog checklists

“Restaurants have a lot on their plate to keep diners safe this winter,” Kelsey Ogletree observes in the AARP Bulletin. We all know the basics already, Ogletree admits: staff wearing masks, hand sanitizer clearly available, special setups for takeout. “But what else can you do,” she asks readers, to make sure the venue is doing all it can to protect you?

The AARP restaurant safety checklist serves as an excellent example for blog content writers, because it provides actionable advice in a well-organized format:

  • Check the restroom (clean?)
  • Check the menus (disposable? QR code-based?)
  • Check servers’ hands (gloved?)
  • Check the kitchen (masked cooks? gloves donned before plating food?)
  • Check certifications (ServSafe Dining Commitment?)
  • Check the website and social media (does it detail safety measures?)

Offering readers this list of restaurant safety checks is hardly likely to make those readers decide to do-it-themselves (meaning stay home and cook).Oddly enough, the chance of inspiring readers to do it themselves seems to be a concern of many business owners and professional practitioners when it comes to blog marketing.

Blog content writing, I believe, is at its best on the middle ground between over-simplification and mastery. In reading business blogs about a product or service, online searchers want to:

  • find out what they’ll get if they buy
  • discover whether the product is a good match for their needs
  • gain perspective about how the pricing and the quality stacks up against the competition

Of course, in the AARP article, the author is not trying to market any one restaurant, and is coming at the subject from the readers’ point of view. As content marketers, on the other hand, even while offering useful advice to readers, we are representing a particular business or practice. Still, the goal is to present the business or practice in a very personal, rather than a transactional way. As we present advice on how to best use the product or service, the tone should be one of “sharing” a useful insight or tip, rather than “handing down” advice.

Your unique selling proposition or USP must be unique, with an emphasis on something competitors cannot claim or have not chosen to emphasize. One way to “lead” readers towards a judgment in your favor is an AARP-style checklist of things to look for when shopping for the most satisfying solutions to their own needs.

Can you think of a useful checklist leading directly to your own USP?

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