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Things About Consumer Behavior Blog Content Writers Need to Know

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consumer behavior
This month’s issue of the Journal of Financial Planning included a description of two experiments designed to explore the way consumers make investment decisions. Since success in blog marketing is designed to assist in consumer decision making, I’m devoting this week’s Say It For You blog posts to discussing the insights those researchers share with Journal readers…

Who is investing in ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds)? Using an investor survey, researchers investigated the relationship between financial knowledge of an investment product and consumers’ choice to actually invest in that product. Their hypotheses going in –given that ETFs are still a relatively new product with benefits still not fully understood by the full investment community, increasing investor knowledge would be a significant variable when predicting ETF ownership.

Interestingly, the authors divided “knowledge” into two categories:

  1. Subjective knowledge (how much an investor SAYS they know on the subject)
  2. Objective knowledge (how successful that investor is answering knowledge questions on the subject)

Their hypotheses going into the experiment was that both subjective and objective investor knowledge are positively associated with ownership of the product itself. The findings? Both subjective and objective investor knowledge do have a positive association with ETF ownership.

Researchers’ advice to financial advisors? To increase ETF adoption among clients, engage in education efforts to pave the way for greater acceptance. Significantly, the authors stressed that “supporting investors’ confidence in their own financial knowledge may be as important as educating those investors.”

Now retired from my career as a CFP®, I stay interested in behavioral finance, which is using science to move individuals in the direction of better decision-making. In fact, I see my present work as content writer for business blogs as very similar – helping readers gain access to – and process – the information they need to make good buying decisions.

In blogging for business, teaching is the new selling. Since customers have access to so much information, they want to know that you and your organization have something new to teach them. Even more important, you need to help readers absorb, buy into, and use the information you provide through your blog.

At the same time, (recalling the Journal researchers’ advice about supporting consumers’ confidence in their own financial knowledge), even when it comes to myth debunking in blogs, our content has the potential of rubbing readers the wrong way. People generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they came to a website seeking information on a particular subject.
As a blog content writer, then, you want the provider (vendor or practitioner) to be perceived as a subject matter expert who is offering usable information and insights in addition to readers’ own knowledge level…

To the extent you’re successful, the blog content itself constitutes a Call to Action!  Once readers feel assured that you’re “meeting them where they are”, they might be ready to take action before they even read all the way into the blog post!

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There’s More Than One Way to “Skin” a Blog Post

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skinning a blog post
The proverb “There’s more than one way to skin a cat” certainly applies to blog content marketing.

Darren Rouse of Problogger.com, for example, lists no fewer than twenty types of posts, including instructional and informational posts, reviews, interviews, and case studies. Interestingly, Rouse mentions collation posts; the term describes many entries in this Say It For You blog, in which I gather content creation advice from others, presenting that helpful information to my readers.

Maurice of Tasklabels.com offers a combination of review and collation posts, in “The Essential List of 8 Productivity Blogs with Different Approaches to Efficiency”, compiling a list of experts in the time management field, explaining each author’s approach, and commenting on who might find that author a good source of advice.

I found two types of posts included on the Problogger list especially interesting and worth a try:

Prediction posts
The blog writer looks ahead, predicting what new developments in their niche might occur over the next year.

Hypothetical posts
These are ‘what-ifs”, about something that might happen in your field and what the implications would be if it did.

Some eight years ago, I examined the blogs of five companies that had been recognized on Forrester’s Top 15 Corporate Blogs list, noting the reasons reviewers had liked the way these companies presented their information. Favorable comments included these:

  • “rarely blogs about their products, instead devoting their blog content writing t sharing advice about business….”
  • “…blogs with a personal touch….”
  • “…employees share insights on technology,, hiring, and consulting…”
  • “…writes fun posts…”
  • “…posts advice on understanding the market…”

Rex London singles out the Awkward Situations for Girls blog, calling it a “masterpiece” because the author “catalogues disasters, embarrassments, and truly awkward situations that she finds herself in on a fairly regular basis”. London’s choice brings out a point I believe every business owner and content writer ought to keep in mind: writing about past failures is important. True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business.

There’s certainly more than one way to “skin” a blog post!

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Educating Wasps and Readers

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Not only are wasps smart, but they might also be even better at deducing logic than some humans, recent research at the University of Michigan reveals. The intriguing experiment involved educating wasps on the sequence of five colors assigned an alphabetical hierarchy by the researchers, and to avoid an electric shock, the wasps needed to learn which of two colors was “better”.

The kind of “reasoning” required of the insects is known as “transitive inference”, in which the insect need to take two separate pieces of information and draw conclusions. How did that work? One the wasps understood that colors higher up in the letter ranking were associated with the shock (choosing B over D or A over E avoided a shock), they needed to extrapolate that knowledge and apply it to other pairs of letters.

As a blog content writer, I was very interested in this quirky piece of Mental Floss content on several counts. At Say It For You, I often remark that in blogging for business, teaching is the new selling. Since customers have access to so much information, they want to know that you and your organization have something new to teach them. Even more important, you need to help readers absorb, buy into, and use the information you provide through your blog. Given the lack of time and the enormous competition for eyeballs, business bloggers need to help readers do that “transitive inference” bit, showing them ways in which individual pieces of information are related, perhaps in ways they hadn’t considered.

The report on the wasp-teaching experiment triggered a memory I have about a visit ten years ago to an indoor golf training center. Computer simulation technology was used to allow a player to consistently hit the ball straight. In contrast with traditional golf instruction’s focus on correcting a player’s faults and weaknesses, this training focused on having the student experience success. Compared to setting the learner up to learn through “transitive inference”, this style of teaching focused on offering a glimpse of a successful end result. When you’re composing business blog content, I tell writers, imagine readers asking themselves “How will I use the product (or service)?” “How will it work?” “How will I feel?” In your content, I teach, empathize with readers’ pain or problem, but give them a vision of a feel-better result.

There’s a lot to be gleaned from the teaching of wasps in teaching blog readers!

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Blogging to Bust Myths and Build Trust

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mythbusting

“Was the oldest woman a fraud?” asks Smithsonian.com, referring to French socialite Jeanne Calment, who appeared to be making history when she died in 1997 at the age of 122. (Later investigation revealed that Jeanne had actually died at the age of 59 in 1934. Her daughter had actually assumed Jeanne’s identity, later dying at the age of 99.) Valery Novoselov, assistant professor of the Department of Gerontology and Geriatrics of RUDN University, known for studying medical documents to investigate the deaths of famous Russians, was actually the mythbuster, revealing that the reason for the hoax had been to avoid the payment of inheritance taxes on Jeanne’s estate.

One of the bigger myths about trust, says Charles Green in trustedadvisor.com, is that trust takes a long time to create, but only a moment to destroy. That in itself is a dangerous myth, Green contends. Human emotions take roughly as long to get over as they take to develop in the first place. Trust formed quickly, Green agrees, can be lost quickly; trust formed at a shallow level can be lost at the same level.  But trust formed deeply, or over time, takes deeper violations, or a longer time, to be lost. Thinking of trust as something you can lose in a minute makes you cautious and unlikely to take risks. But the absence of risk is what starves trust, is the point Charles Green wants to make. There simply is no trust without risk – that’s why they call it trust.

Business blog posts are actually the perfect medium for “mythbusting”, I teach at Say It For You. Blog content writing has the power to clear the air, replacing factoids with facts, allowing readers to see their way clear to making decisions. Offering little-known explanations that explode common myths is a good way to engage readers’ interest. Done right, blogging about myths related to our own products, services, and company history can provide value-packed “verdicts” on each false claim or misunderstanding. Citing statistics that disprove popular myths gives business owners and practitioners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise.

There’s a proverbial fly in the ointment here, though. People don’t really like being proven wrong. And, since one of the purposes of any marketing blog is to attract potential customers to the business’ website, it would be a tactical mistake for blog writers to prove those online visitors wrong.  The skill lies in engaging interest, but not in “Gotcha! – I’m-the-expert-and-you’re-not” fashion. (Anyone might reasonably have come to the conclusion you did, should be the message, without knowing the facts I’ve researched and which am providing here.)

Many misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves in the natural order of business, in the form of questions and comments from readers and customers. Shining the light of day on that misinformation is one function of blogging, and, provided your blog post is well written, perhaps with a bit of tongue in cheek, it can offer enlightenment in a way that engages searchers and keeps them coming back.

The goal – blog to bust myths while building trust!

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Please Stop Blogging the Same Story

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storytelling in blogs
“Please stop telling that same story,” Elizabeth Bernstein begs in the Life & Arts section of the Wall Street Journal. Storytelling is supposed to be a bonding experience, she says, because, when we share our personal narratives, we disclose something about our values, our history, and our outlook on life. But the bonding benefits of storytelling only work if you’re good at it, she warns, and many of us aren’t. We simply tell tales we’re told before, tales that don’t have a point.

Bernstein offers some valuable “advice from the experts”:

  1. Have a point (the details of the story must convey the reason you’re sharing this story).
  2. Flesh out the characters in the story.
  3. Disclose something about yourself.
  4. Build tension.
  5. If you’ve told the story before, explain why you’re repeating it now.

As a professional blog content creator and trainer in corporate writing, I think storytelling is a perfect vehicle for blogging. While blog marketing can be designed to “win search”, once the searchers have arrived, what needs winning is their hearts, and that is precisely what content writers can achieve best through storytelling. The point? Showing why you are passionate about delivering your service or products to customers and clients.

The characters in the stories? They can be the people delivering the product and service, or they can be customers – what problems did they have that you helped solve? What funny things happened to them, to their kids, to their pets that relate to your product or service? Creating compelling business blog content can – and should – incorporate both people storytelling and product storytelling. In terms of disclosing, I recommend including anecdotes about customers, employees, or friends who accomplished things against all odds. That shifts the focus to the people side of your business, highlights the relationship aspects of your practice, plant, or shop.

To reach the point of building trust, there must first be some sort of “tension” or issue. Talking about industry issues and your strong opinion about those is a good path towards building trust through your business blog. Sharing your own failures helps others, Beccy Freebody writes. In business blogs, true stories about mistakes and struggles overcome are very humanizing, creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the entrepreneurs or practitioners who overcame the effects of their own errors. Award-winning sales training expert Tim Roberts agrees, saying there are two skills needed for an effective inquiry conversation with prospects: vulnerability and transparency.

Good business blogs, of course, offer valuable information to online readers. But, the fact is, people want to do business with real people. Blog stories, not the same old, same old story, but the ongoing story of you, your people, and the people you serve. 

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