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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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5 Marketing Strategies Your Business Needs to thrive in the COVID-19 Era

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       Today’s post was contributed by guest Amy Collet, creator of Bizwell.org, a website that helps professionals and entrepreneurs build and strengthen their personal brand. She is also the author of the upcoming book, You, Exemplified: The Role of Personal Branding in Your Professional Life. 

While thousands of companies have had to pause or close their businesses during the COVID-19 lockdowns, many have opened those doors back up. As exciting as this is, there are still a lot of challenges ahead.

Small businesses have been asking: How do I keep my customers safe? How can my business stay afloat if we encounter another round of lockdowns? How can I re-engage my customers now that we are back in business?

Of course, let’s not forget the most important question of all: How can I boost my business on a budget? Even with grants and stimulus checks, many businesses had to tap into their cash reserves to survive. Here are five budget-friendly marketing strategies to keep business flowing during the pandemic.

Hire marketing help.

If your business closed at all during 2020, then you may need to start your marketing efforts from scratch. Say It For You has been providing traffic-driving content and marketing strategies for businesses for years. You stand to benefit when you partner with such a professional — who can revamp your website, deliver quality blog content, kickstart your social media campaigns and engage your customers with paid social campaigns. Keep all these within a smart budget by hiring small businesses, freelancers, contractors, or interns looking to build their resumes.

Be sure your legal ducks are in a row.

A lot has changed with regard to business legality since the pandemic first hit. Sadly, some people have discovered that they weren’t able to apply for grants and loans because their businesses weren’t properly filed. Prevent that from happening to you by forming a limited liability company (LLC). Not only will that give you access to any future COVID-19 relief funds, but it also qualifies you for tax breaks and other benefits. Regulations vary from state to state, so do thorough research or enlist the help of a formation service to guide you.

Reward your loyal customers.

The customers who stuck with you or came back deserve a little extra TLC. Most business owners know that retention and loyalty are the foundation for successful business growth. Customer Service Magazine suggests doing something simple, like delivering loyalty rewards to their email inbox.

You can also go the extra mile by opening up your store for solo shopping or offer them sneak peeks of new merchandise. If you provide a service, offer how-to webinars to help them advance their own livelihoods with your insider knowledge.

Keep your customers confident.

If you have a brick-and-mortar building or meet clients face-to-face, be sure to follow all of the CDC’s guidelines for safety. While COVID-19 is not a deadly illness for most people, it can shut down entire communities if all aren’t careful and cautious. Remember that the sooner we beat this, the sooner we can get back to normal — and we all have a part to play.

Don’t give up.

Things have been hard — that’s an understatement. You may have to act differently or think broadly about what you do and how you do it, but a little creativity can go a long way. The point is to persevere. There are no easy answers these days and the business world has a long way to go to recover. You’ll have to do some long-term planning in the face of uncertainty, which is hard, but not impossible. When all else fails, turn to your customers — ask them how they are feeling and how you can better meet their needs — then go from there.

Small businesses have a long road to recovery ahead, but it’s also very hopeful. Businesses are opening back up and many are thriving from the support of their communities. Take the time to explore some of these tips to launch your business back into success.

 

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Are You Putting Red Lipstick on Your Blog?

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts feature more helpful advice based on Brant Pinvidic’s powerful little book The 3-Minute Rule….

“Brant, are you putting on red lipstick?” TV producer and sales coach Brant Pinvidic remembers his mom (herself president of a global organization). asking him whenever she sensed he had been emphasizing presentation over substance in his work.

“Your pitch is a path of information to follow,” Pinvidic cautions, and it’s vital to let that information take the lead. Too much emphasis on style and personality muddies the message. You don’t want to pull your audience out of the story and remind them they’re being sold to, he adds.

It’s true that readers’ first impressions are design-related, as some British researchers found when analyzing online health sites. Those researchers found that readers judged a website by its design, print size, look and feel, and use of color. Simple and familiar page design was the best received. Great design gets people to trust the source and to stick around, writes Peep Laja of the CXL optimization Agency. As Neil Patel points out in hubspot.com, articles with images get 94% ore total views than those without images.

So how does that relate to Brant Pinvidic’s mother’s advice about the lipstick? “When my mom sees me trying to spice up elements of a presentation to overshadow the lack of clarity, “he explains, that’s when she cautions me to get the information and the story at its highest level first, and only then add a little flair.

Keep in mind, Neil Patel writes in Hubspot.com, your blog is a reflection of your company. If there are any issues with the blog, it impacts how people view your product. It’s important that any statistic you state can be verified. Many blog posts will link right to the statistic and the source. Accuracy builds trust with readers.

Leave readers with questions, Patel adds. This doesn’t mean to have an incomplete post, but rather to include questions that make readers reflect on how they can implement the knowledge you provided. When possible, add a story to your blog post. It will make it more engaging and may also help the reader

What Mrs. Pinvidic is reminding her son – and what we teach blog content writers at Say It For You –  is that the meat comes first, then the sauce. The core content of the program – the article, the blog post – comes first, the “showmanship” second.
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Use Titles to Accentuate the Point, Not Make It

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts feature more helpful advice based on Brant Pinvidic’s powerful little book The 3-Minute Rule….

You need bullet points to accentuate the point, not make it for you, observes TV producer and sales coach Brant Pinvidic. You don’t need full sentences, either, he says – the slides function as “Post-it” notes. Even Robert Gaskins, co-creator of Power Point itself, says the technology was never intended for show an entire proposal, just a quick summary.

From a blog marketing point of view, there are several similarities between blog titles and individual bullet points in a Power Point presentation. Titles matter a lot in blogs for search: key words and phrases help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or practice has to offer. Equally important, once your post has been “served up” by the search engine, the reader needs to be encouraged to click on the link in order to read the content. True to Pindivic’s advice, if the title gives away too much of the content, readers wouldn’t need to progress to the content itself!

In terms of using bullet points in blog posts themselves, it seems content writers either love or absolutely abhor those little dots. From what I’ve been told, search engines like bullet points – a lot. Myself, I like bulleting for breaking down complicated information into digestible form. I try to follow the Reuters Handbook of Journalism guidelines for using bullet points, using no fewer than two and no more than five at a time, and keeping them in active voice and present tense.

Going back to blog titles, in a very real sense, a blog post title represents a promise. Of course, since business blogs should resemble advertorials more than ads, the title is “promising” the reader a benefit in exchange for progressing to the next step. If you click on this title ( the implication is), it will lead to you obtaining some desirable result – more savings, more actionable knowledge more confidence, more beauty, more health, more job security, more safety more peer approval, more wealth…..Alternately, the implied promise might relate to reducing an undesirable effect – pain illness, hassle, dirt, risk, fear, harassment, debt….

The skill, of course, lies in Brant Pinvidic’s caution to do all that in a title that somehow manages to accentuate the point without serving it up – prematurely – with all the trimmings.

To me, one aspect of blog marketing is that blogs – beginning with their titles – have to convey a feeling of getting closer to the actual human beings running the business or practice, closer than the feeling readers might get from brochures, billboards, or even websites. If the blog post title can somehow accentuate that concept – it will be a winner.

 

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Blogs That Go WHAC

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Write less,” advises Seth Godin in the preface to his book The Dip. Now Brant Pindvidic, in his book The 3-Minute Rule, tells us to “say less to get more from any pitch or presentation”.

At Say It For You, I teach the principle of “reading around”, emphasizing the point that business bloggers are going to need to spend at least as much time reading as writing. Even after almost a decade and a half creating blog content for business owners and practitioners, I feel the need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my clients offer. But now, both these business authors are making the case for less, not more, when it comes to sales pitches, speeches, and blog posts.

It seems this “reading around” habit of mine has presented me with a dilemma: Godin’s and Pinvidic’s advice to write and say less seems to fly in the face of the latest trend towards long-form blog posts with a word count numbering in the thousands.

Brant Pinvidic’s advice is based on the science of approach motivation. “Every time you make a pitch, presentation, or proposal to try to influence anyone to do anything, your audience’s first impression will be fully formed in less than three minutes”. And it’s not that we’re all dumbed-down, he says, but that people today focus more intensely and efficiently, he explains. The WHAC outline helps organize the key information you need to impart – and dictates the order in which you present that information:

W – What is it? (What is your offer?)
H – How does it work?) work? (Why are the elements of your offer and why are they valuable or
Important?)
A– Are you sure? (This is a fact or figure that backs up your information and establishes
potential.)
C – Can you do it? (Your ability to execute and deliver.

In the first two stages, the W and the H, the audience will conceptualize. In the A stage, they will contextualize, judging whether your offer is true real, and right. In the C stage, the audience will be asking whether this could actually happen in the way being described.

Transferring this model to the arena of blog marketing, I’d suggest that the WHAC sequence could be employed over a series of blog posts rather than using it all in one. One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that blog posts can stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the corporate website or the content in white papers. What helps the separate posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy are the blog “leitmotifs” or themes.

Whether Godin’s “Write less” advice is suited for us blog content writers remains a matter of debate. On the other hand, “Read more” continues to be a requirement for imparting bog posts with WHAC!

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