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Put Some First-Person Impact in Your Business Blog

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“You thought I was just brewed leaves and nothing more, but I’m the most consumed drink in the world next to water. I have launched ships and started wars, and I helped birth your country.” So begins a three page article by Kate Lowenstein and Daniel Gritzer about the history of tea.

We know what it feels like to be human and write from the perspective of a human. But, what does it feel like to be a shoe or a pencil or a dictionary? The point of view in a story, is “the narrator’s position in the description of events,” explains Pamela Hodges in thewrwitepractice.com. 

Looking for unconventional, potentially striking ways to explore what it means to be human in your writing?  It may seem counterintuitive, but personification—ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects—can open new avenues to plumb the depths of human experience, writes Katherin Quevedo of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Whether you’re representing an inanimate object or a very human business owner or professional practitioner, first person writing has a certain power. Admittedly, nobody likes people who speak of nothing but themselves, but in blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

  • “At —— Dry Cleaners, we believe….”
  • “At ——— Heating & Air, we always…..”
  • “Despite the widely held belief that….., I’m convinced that……”

In blogging, of course, different posts serve different purposes. First person (“I”, “I’m”,” we”, “we’re” packs emotional punch. Second person pronouns (“you”, “your”, and “you’re”) can be a good fit for how-to blog posts, while third person (“he”, “she”, “they”) pronouns may be the choice for news items.

Whether you as owner or practitioner are doing the writing or using the services of a blog content writer, your perspective can be provided only by you, in first person, straight to the readers:  In the blogosphere, the more personal, the better.

On the other hand, all content writing for marketing blogs needs to be based on the “you”s who are the targeted readers, and about their wants and needs. Bottom line? Keeping your target audience (the “you”) in mind, put some first person impact in your business blog!

 

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How Sharp is Your Blog Content Axe?

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“This year, consider closing the gap between your actions and objectives,” writes Chip Munn in financialplanning.com. Harking back to Abe Lincoln (who reportedly said that if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend five of those hours sharpening his axe), Munn believes it’s time for financial advisors to follow that advice in their practices.

As a “financial planning emerita” I find several of Munn’s practical suggestions relevant for our work as blog marketers:

Document your processes
New opportunities present themselves when they’re in front of you on paper, Nunn observes.

The secret weapon for us blog content writers takes the form of an “idea folder”. That folder could be an actual folder in which newspaper and magazine clippings are collected, a little notebook you carry around, or take the form of a digital file on a phone or tablet.  We “load up” with content for future posts and stay current in the “now” by reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to each of our clients’ business fields.

Embrace technology
There are exciting graphic design tools and email platforms that have improved the speed and ease of client-facing interactions, the author adds.

The blog platform (in the case of this Say It For You blog, WordPress®) takes care of formatting the content in the form of text and images, and provides a framework for getting it onto a website. The blogging platform also makes it easier for a search engine to categorize the blog entries. Content writers do well to take full advantage of the capabilities of each client’s chosen platform.

Focus on your ideal client
How are you making yourself visible to your ideal clients in the community? What are you delivering tangibly to clients that demonstrates your value? asks Nunn.

If what freelance blog writers do is help business owners build their brand, then the process of deciding what to include in the corporate blog becomes one of the writer helping the owner with self-discovery and of discovery of their ideal client profile.

Leverage your cooperation with people
Build collaboration with other professionals and with your own team, the author counsels.

To be effective content writers, we must engage with not only the business and practice owners who hire us, but with their employees and customers. In fact, in order for our content to appeal to a “better kind of customer” (one who buys for the right reasons and remains loyal,), we can incorporate “learning questions” in the blog posts, relying on readers’ ability to arrive at intelligent answers once we’ve provided intelligent questions and options through the blog content.

Engage your unique wisdom and abilities
Delegate or outsource activities that drain you and focus on those that give you energy and excitement, Nunn advises.

With blog marketing becoming such an indispensable customer acquisition tool, ghost blogging becomes an outsourcing solution for busy business owners who have long-long business goals but who are short-short on time.

Financial planning or blog content writing – old Abe was onto something, I agree. Sharpening our content writing “axe” is advice we try to follow at Say It For You!

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Embracing the Encouraging Side of Blogging

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Corbett Barr, writing in thinktraffic.net, encourages blog writers to “embrace your encouraging side.” There’s plenty of cynicism and negativity in the world, Barr says, and sometimes readers just want to be encouraged. I heartily agree. In fact, one of the things we tell content writers is that the last thing you want to do in a blog is to be downbeat or attempt to “scare” readers into taking action.

The “press release” aspect of blogging for business dictates that the first sentences of any post must engage interest (with the “or else” being that visitors click away). Different tactics include raising questions in readers’ minds or describing a provocative scene or situation. Your post might play off a topic currently trending in the news, especially one relating to your profession or industry. Now, having gathered information, using it to demonstrate how readers can use that information in their own lives, remember to present the material in reassuring and encouraging words.

As a retired financial planning practitioner myself, I really appreciated what financial psychologist William Marty Martin advised financial planners: “How you communicate can serve to eliminate, decrease, or exacerbate panic experienced within yourself, your family, your team, and your clients…Words have the power of providing comfort, or generating panic, or even helplessness.”

One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional blog content writers is that we are interpreters, translating clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms.  That’s the reason I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting”. (I think people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.)

The idea that little things can mean a lot when dealing with difficult circumstances is reinforced in an article in Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge newsletter. “Even as COVID vaccines begin early deployment, pressure on leaders continues to mount to engage in ‘Big C’ change.” But, “instead of questioning everyone and everything I a crisis, leaders should create an atmosphere of trust and confidence.”

“Empathy is the key to gaining readers and followers in all kinds of writing, says Karen Hertzberg of grammarly.com. “from blogging to marketing to social media.”

Embrace the encouraging side of blogging!

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Blogging to Make Them Want to See Things the Way You Do

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Communicating with pictures and words is what Dan Roam’s little book for speakers, Show and Tell: How Everybody Can Make Extraordinary Presentations is all about. The purpose, the author says, of creating and delivering a report pitch, or story, is t make it s captivating that our audience wants to see things the way we do.

That’s a very hard thing for speakers to accomplish, Roam admits. (Blog content writers don’t have the advantage of facing the audience in person, using eye contact and gestures, which makes the task even more challenging!).

Dan Roam’s 3 Rules of Show and Tell can help, though, even if video clips are not part of the blog:

  • When we tell the truth in a presentation, we connect with our audience and we have self-confidence.
  • When we tell a story, complex concepts become clear, and we include everyone.
  • When we tell a story with pictures, we banish boredom and people see what we mean.

There are actually three kinds of truth, Roam points out, and as presenters, we need to ask ourselves: for this topic, for this audience, and for myself, which truth should I tell? I particularly like that observation, because at Say It For You, we emphasize the “power of one”, with each blog post having a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of the business or practice. Roam suggests presenters ask themselves the following question: “If my presentation could change them in just one way, what would that change be?”

There are really only four ways to move an audience, Roam adds:

  1. changing their information, adding new data to what they already know
  2. changing their knowledge or ability
  3. changing their actions
  4. changing their beliefs, inspiring them to understand something new about themselves or about the world

Which one of those four goals we choose determines the structure of our storyline in the content of the speech – or blog post.

Truth, story, and pictures – If we get those things right, Dan Roam assures fearful speakers, everything that follows will be a breeze. “When we trust our ideas and are confident, we will help our audience change.”

Change is what it’s all about, Roam says of presentations, and that’s certainly what it’s all about in blogging for business!

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Knowing What They Want Lets You Give it to Them in Your Blog

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Persuasive presentations move smoothly through four stages, called the AIDA pattern: (A= attention, I= interest, D=desire, and A=action), explains Kenneth R. Mayer in his book Well Spoken.

Calls to Action in persuasive blog posts, as we know at Say It For You, can succeed only if the content writer has tapped into an underlying need or “desire” on the part of the reader. Mayer provides an extensive list of possible “wants”, or persuasive appeals, as he calls them, that might help presenters help listeners be willing to move forward and take the desired action: .

  • appreciation/approval by others
  • beauty/attractiveness
  • cleanliness/comfort
  • convenience
  • health
  • good reputation
  • peace of mind
  • protection/safety
  • savings

“The call to action is where your blog makes money,” asserts crazyegg.com. “All your idea generation, research, writing, editing, posting — it all boils down to a call to action — a CTA.” Blog CTAs are different, the author concedes, but they are still important, and the best ones are unobtrusive, although noticeable.

Neil Patel cites Modernweb, who realized unusual success in their blog because:…”They identified their audience, understood what they were struggling with, then presented them with content that explained how similar individuals handled the same problem.” But in order to understand which of those “persuasive appeals” is most likely to appeal, you have to know your target audience.

No blog – and certainly no blog post – can be all things to all people. Each post must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who are most likely to want to do business with you.  That way, the appeals, as well as the way they are presented, can be chosen specifically for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, even the title of each blog entry.

Knowing what they want lets you give it to them in your blog.

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