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In Blog Marketing, It’s Not Okay to Quit

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“It’s okay to quit sometimes,” observes Seth Godin in his book the Dip, and, he assures readers, quitters do win. But quitting doesn’t mean giving up and abandoning your long-term strategy, only quitting the tactics that aren’t working. In fact, Godin admits, most people do quit. Problem is, he observes, they don’t quit successfully or at the right time.

Blogging is a perfect example, I realized, reviewing this powerful little book, of a long-term strategy that is too often abandoned due to short-term discouragement. The strategy itself is well-proven and documented, and many business owners and professional practitioners embark on blog marketing in recognition of its power to generate interest in their products and services. It’s the tactics, the week-after-week work of creating new, relevant, interesting, and results-producing…blog posts. Those abandoned blogs belong to those who don’t recognize what Seth Godin describes as the “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”.

It’s not that blog marketing is an unproven strategy…

“Content is still king, and it is the fresh, customized, customer-centric content that gets the attention. Those that create more of it will certainly see positive returns for their efforts. Content marketing generates at least three times more leads than conventional marketing techniques,” says Digital.com. People love engaging with businesses in particular, and they tend to look positively on a company that releases custom content…Over the long run, you can expect 87% more inbound links, compared to companies who don’t blog at all.”

“Know for a fact that Google and other search engines tend to give more weight and SEO boosts to websites that update their content regularly over those that aren’t so frequent. “ BlogPanda explains. “The more you blog regularly about your product, business or industry, the more it increases your search keywords which further helps your website rank better for those keywords on Google and other search engines.”

Amazing, but true: In the face of all these compelling reports demonstrating the value of blog marketing, Caslon Analytics tells us that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month!, 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days. The average blog, Caslon remarks ruefully, “has the lifespan of a fruitfly”. No lack of starts, though: blogtyrant.com reports that there are over 1.7 billion websites on the internet today, and more than 600 million of those have blogs.

“A blog usually starts with a bang,” observes Antonio Canciano of technicalblogging.com. Then life gets in the way, postnig becomes less frequent and ore sporadic until the blogger pretty much gives up on their site entirely. That’s the usual path to blog despair, Canciano says. However, blogging is a river, not a lake, he cautions, and the constant stream of new content is what gives blogging its edge over other forms of content publishing.

Sure, it may be okay to quite sometimes, as Seth Godin observes, but not if you’re after those extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to keep posting blogs!.

 

 

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In Blogging for Business, Answer the Question: “Compared to What?”

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Always “reading around” for background materials for this Say It For You blog, I learned two different startling statistics about the travel industry. First, at a recent networking meeting, I heard from presenter Gloria Thomas of Eight Streams Wealth that travel represents $9.25 trillion worth of business here in the U.S. Then from reading Tourism Review News, I learned that tourism has generated 20% of total world employment since 2013. Conclusion: Travel is a big, big deal.

Same message, just in different words? Yes and no.

Both presentations offered attention-commanding statistics. From Tourism Review, I learned that, in a single year, there are 1.4 billion international arrivals registered across the globe and that fully 20% of the jobs generated worldwide between 2025-2019 were in travel and tourism.

What lent Gloria Thomas’ presentation extra “oomph”, in my opinion, was the “compared to what?” element. That $9.25 trillion in U.S. travel business? Our oil & gas industry generates $330 billion. Our auto industry? $500 billion. Hollywood? A “mere” $300 billion.

It’s been a long-held belief of mine: nothing speaks quite as loud as numbers, which is why, in teaching how to create content for blog posts, I stress the power of using statistics. Real numbers dispel false impressions people have about an industry and can be used to demonstrate the extent of a problem before you set about showing how you help solve that problem. From a customer acquisition standpoint, statistics relate to the theory of social proof – humans are more willing to do something other people are already doing.

The thing about numbers, though, is they’re tricky. Statistics are a valuable form of information, to be sure, and, as my friend Gloria proved, answering the “compared to what?” question invests those statistics with more power. But in blog marketing, I’ve come to realize, there’s even more needed. For every statistic about the company or about one of its products or services, even with the addition of comparisons, the content writers needs to address every reader’s unspoken question – So, is that good for me (compared to what I am doing or using now)?

Bottom line: The raw ingredients of blogging for business need to be “converted” into relational, emotional terms that compel reaction – and action. In describing your products, your services, your business credo, don’t forget to answer the question: Compared to what??

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All I Want for the Holidays is Blogging

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You can hardly refer to gift-giving as a modern custom. In primitive cavemen culture, the giving of gifts was fairly common, the Popcorn for the People website explains. During the Egyptian era, gifts were given to pharaohs; in Roman times people would present each other with good luck gifts. In the Medieval age, gifts were used to show allegiance in times of war. “Today, gift giving is still part of our everyday culture…’, the authors continue.

That sentence might be an understatement, because gift giving is so much a part of our winter season these days – Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza – all involve the custom of giving gifts. Since blog content writing is all about learning new things, I learned even more about today’s gift giving customs in different countries and cultures:

  • Shin Buddhists celebrate Bodhi Day in December with candles and gifts.
  • In India, gifts of cash should be given in odd numbers (1 signifies a new beginning…)
  • Chinese people give one another gifts of red envelopes filled with money.
  • In Thailand, gifts in sets of nine are considered lucky.
  • In Egypt, it’s traditional to wrap gifts twice in different-colored paper.

Gifts for Bloggers
Surfing the web, I even found a blog about gifts for bloggers. The author suggested editorial planners, notebooks, laptop stands, photo subscriptions, blogging courses and books, even housecleaning services (so the blog content writer can use dusting and mopping time creating content). ….”

Actually, you needn’t send me any of those gifts, and here’s the reason why not:: One of my very favorite songs of the season, is Mariah Carey’s All I want for Christmas is You.

I don’t want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don’t care about the presents
Underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you

Although my family celebrates Chanukah, that Christmas song perfectly expresses my own feelings when it comes to blog content writing… This career is a gift in itself, with new things to learn every day, and the chance to constantly experiment with new ways to use words. All I want for the holidays….is blogging!

 

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Shakespeare Could Teach Bloggers a Thing or Two

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Spacehuntr, Brussels’ fastest growing platform for scouting and booking event spaces in European cities, is apparently in the process of recruiting a content creator. If you feel Shakespeare could learn something from you, the company teases, you’re the candidate we’re seeking. (Myself, I am much too busy copywriting at Say It For You to be looking for a job, thank you. Still, that line got me thinking about the Bard and what he might have to teach today’s generation about content marketing…)

Meanwhile, one of Spacehuntr’s own recent blog posts caught my interest: Know your target audience: 10 ways to understand your people. When building a persona (a semi-fictional representation of the people with whom you’re attempting to connect), don’t consider only basic stats such as age gender, and nationality. Think ‘psychographic’, advises author Gareth Platt. Techniques for gaining insight into this audience, (many of which we have been incorporating in our Say It For You blog marketing for years), include:

1. running focus groups
While even the largest of my Say It For You blog clients is probably tiny compared to the largest of European corporations, I think blogs can perform a focus group function. Blog readers would weigh in on their own time in the form of responding to surveys, offering ideas or ratings – all good techniques to stimulate interaction with target customers.

2. using social media (posting opinions, asking questions, using hashtags)
As a freelance blog content writer and corporate blogging trainer, I find there’s some confusion about what distinguishes blogs from other social networking tools. Blogs, I believe, are a little more focused. The blogger serves as a “keynote speaker” in control of the discussion, yet still allows for questions and comments from the audience. I would agree with Spacehuntr’s focus on gaining insight into your audience, which means finding out where they “hang out” online and showing up there.

3. studying the competition

Regular readers of this Say It For You blog will recall that I advise business bloggers to read ten articles or other blogs for every blog post they write, and I follow that advice myself. We cannot position ourselves within the marketplace without studying our surroundings. And, for blogs to be effective, they must serve as positioning and differentiating statements. Each “visit” should conclude with readers understanding exactly what your unique philosophy or mission is, and why your approach can be beneficial to them.

So… were I inclined to apply for that copywriting position at spacehuntr, I’d be sure to mention that my college major was English and that I studied Shakespeare’s plays in detail. I’m sure the Bard would be properly impressed with the speed of digital communication today. I’m not sure I could teach him anything about understanding people, because his plays are full of the same humor, romance, tragedy, and insight we look for in good writing today. In fact, I suspect Shakespeare could teach us blog content writers a thing or two!

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Blogging B2B in 2020 and Beyond

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There’s more than one way to reach out to B2B customers, explains Callum King of American Image. In fact, he suggests companies consider using no fewer than 24 different marketing strategies for 2020 and beyond. In that spectrum, blogs constitute one of the five types of content marketing, King points out, along with white papers, webinars, infographics, case studies, and white papers.

In addition to those different forms of content marketing, King reminds readers, there are other ways to reach B2B target customers, including social media, paid online advertising, conferences and trade shows, being interviewed for trade publications, and automated email campaigns. On a whole other level, brand awareness can even be enhanced through affiliate marketing and the use of influencers.

“The most important thing to do when implementing marketing strategies,” the author reminds B2B marketers, “is to do it with purpose,” meaning based on knowledge of your target audience — who they are, how and when they shop.

While at Say It For You, our primary focus is on web page content and content marketing through blogs, I found several of Callum King’s observations particularly relevant to our work with business owners and professional practitioners:

This new buyer likes to be informed. More than two-thirds of their buying process is completed before they approach a seller.

The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate. The better websites give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for us?” 

“Pick another company or business person to co-host or collaborate on the broadcast.” 

Linking to someone else’ remarks on a subject you’re covering in your blog can reinforce your point, adding value for your readers while showing you’re in touch with trends in your field. Curating others’ work – bloggers, authors, speakers – is a wonderful technique for adding variety and reinforcement to your own content. 

“79% of B2B buyers read case studies and find value in them.” 

Stories of all kinds – customer testimonials, famous incidents from the news, Hollywood doings, folklore – you name it – help personalize a business blog. Case studies are particularly effective in creating interest, because they are relatable and real, “putting faces” on problems and solutions.

* Share your thoughts on big events in the business world and “establish the company as thought leaders with your fingers on the pulse”.

B2B blog content writers can “enter conversations” that are trending at the time, tying blog content to current events.

Business owners should find Callum King’s overview of the many tools available for B2B marketing encouraging to say the least, offering an opportunity to craft a mix to taste. At Say It For You, we like to recall a piece by Corey Wainright of Hubspot: “Every time you write a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your website, which means it’s one more opportunity for you to show up in search engines and drive traffic to your website in organic search”.

Blogs may be just one of 24 or more possible approaches to B2B marketing in 2020 and beyond, but we believe blog content writing will be at least share center stage!

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