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Hater-Hugging Content Marketing

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When customers complain, the last thing you feel like doing is giving them a hug. But that’s precisely what Jay Baer recommends in his book Hug Your Haters. In fact, Baer teaches, openly embracing and dealing with complaints can turn bad news into very good news for your business, because complaints can help you:

  • create advocacy
  • gather insights
  • differentiate you from your competitors

When Baer talks about dealing with complaints, he means all complaints, all clues that a customer’s experience with a business or practice hasn’t been up to expectations. That means paying attention to in-person and phone conversations. Most “haters”, though, complain “offstage”, rather than directly confronting an owner or customer service rep via phone or in persona, they use e-mail , texts, and post negative reviews, Baer explains in a podcast hosted by Kerry O’Shea Gorgone.

 

An Inc. Magazine review of the book emphasized a startling observation by Baer – Complainers fall into two camps – those seeking help and those merely seeking attention. The first category of complainers actually want and expect a response;  while the complainers don’t expect a response, when they do receive one, they are twice as likely to recommend that company in the future.

Too many business owners shy away from regular posting of articles and blogs for fear of receiving negative comments, we’ve found at Say It For You. Of course, if you don’t create and publish content frequently, you may not receive as many negative reactions, but neither will you attract the attention of search engines or of readers! In fact, “getting in front” of complaints by demonstrating in your content how you remedied a negative customer situation is probably the most positive kind of publicity you can ask for!  Don’t be afraid of showing your err-is-human side.  Your blog, I emphasize, gives you a chance to turn a “failure” into a success story.

 However, unlike working to amass “piles” of compliments in the form of reviews and survey responses, look for opportunities to create content telling “the whole story” – what the issue, problem, or complaint was, how you worked to solve it, and why the solution worked better than what the customer had ever experienced before.

 

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No Explosion Needed – Just Information

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“There was a time when we were taught to start with the explosion, the crisis, the murder, the detonation of the bomb, then go back and show the reader how we got to this terrible situation. I’ll explain why you might want to avoid this approach,” says book writing coach Myra Levine.

As content creators for business owners and professional practitioners, it’s tempting to be enigmatic in order to arouse curiosity, but at Say It For You, we agree with Levine that it’s not always the best idea.  After all, it’s essential for us to assure readers that they’ve come to the right place to find the information that satisfies whatever needs brought them online to find answers. In other words, the opening lines can set the tone and arouse curiosity, but it’s best not to sustain the mystery very long.

In terms of satisfying readers’ need for information, Brightedge.com comments that many types of content simply do not need very long blog posts to provide value for readers. On the other hand, articles with only a cursory treatment of the topic may not be deemed high-quality content.  “You will want to dive deeper and provide more information.”

One technique used in comedy is exaggeration, which, as humor speaker Jeff Fleming explained to me years ago at a National Speakers Association meeting, can emphasize points you want the audience to remember. In content marketing, however, while we sometimes aim to engage readers and show empathy regarding their dilemma and problem, it’s crucial that we be seriously “factually correct” in describing the extent to which our products and services can be of help.

Should your book start at the beginning or in the middle of the trouble? “These are decisions, and they’re not easy ones to make,” admits Myra Levine.  In creating  marketing content, while we’re out to engage online readers, no “explosions’ are needed, just valuable information with a personal touch.

 

 

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A Taste of Wine and Content Cues

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts are inspired by items in issues of Wine Spectator which I think offer clues to the most attention-grabbing and impactful ways of marketing a product or service through content……(Today’s quotes come from the March 2024 issue of the magazine).

Using unlikely comparisons
Looking for an acoustic guitar, Bruce Sanderson writes, “It occurred to me that tone woods are to an acoustic guitar what grape varieties are to wine.”

Turns of phrase catch readers by the curiosity,” I realized years ago. Putting ingredients together that don’t seem to match is not only an excellent tool for creating engaging marketing content, but also a good teaching tool. Going from what is familiar to readers to the unfamiliar area of your own expertise, allows your potential customers to feel smart as well as understood.

Introducing “insider” terminology
If you’re a wine lover, you’ll want to check the UGA on the label, pinpointing the region in Italy from which the grapes originated..The designation is brand-new, with 2024 vintage wines the first to be allowed to display the “credential”,  Alison Napjus explains…

In marketing content, once you’ve established common ground, reinforcing to readers that they’ve come to the right place, it’s important to add lesser-known bits of information on your subject, which might take the form of arming readers with new terminology, serving several purposes:

  • positioning the business owner or professional practitioner as an expert in the field
  • adding value to the “visit” for the reader
  • increasing readers’ sense of being part of an “in-the-know” grouphttps://www.sayitforyou.net/using-tidbits-of-information-in-blogs/allow-me-to-introduce-new-terminology

Using the power of story
“When I was embarking on my first trip to Europe as a young trumpeter, the great saxophone player Ben Webster pulled me aside and gave me some of the best advice a 19-year old who had never traveled outside of the country could ever receive: “Wherever you go, eat the food the real people eat.”

In creating content for business, I recommend including anecdotes about customers, employees, or friends who accomplished things against all odds. That shifts the focus to the people side of things, I explain to clients, highlighting the relationship-basedaspects of your practice, plant, or shop.

Educating prospects and customers
“In 2019 the Guigals opened their wine museum in Ampuis, which introduces visitors to the history of vineyards and winemaking in the Rhone dating back to Roman Times.”

Content writers need to include information that can continue to have relevance even months and years later, material that is evergreen and which adds to readers’ knowledge of the subject.,

While becoming a wine connoisseur may be furthest from your mind, these “sips” from Wine Spectator can offer valuable insights for creators of marketing content.

 

 

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Content Statement Ceilings

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“Look up to be wowed!”, a piece in Haven Magazine about “statement ceilings” begins. After all, plain, flat ceilings are just…well, passé, and, for a home that inspires “oohs” and “aahs”, you need a cool structural element. Added height, uplighting, combining different materials, can all enhance your dining room, great room, or entryway, home buiilders explain. .

There’s a parallel here for content marketers: Grabbing readers’ attention is one of the most important lessons, as Marcia Hoeck of copyblogger emphasizes, because “no matter how brilliant your ideas are, you can’t offer them to your prospect unless you’ve made her look in your direction first.” What’s more, Hoeck adds, human focus is limited; the brain has to focus on specific information, choosing which input will enter and stay. We can’t succeed if our messages don’t break through the clutter to get people’s attention, Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, agree.

As content writers, our “ceilings” are obviously article titles. Are there certain words in blog post titles that are more likely “win attention? In fact, curiosity-stimulating words (or set of words) need not be the keyword phrases used to “win search”. Some examples out of one recent issue of a popular news magazine:

  • Finding….
  • How…
  • Could…
  • A new….
  • Things just….
  • The best…
  • The impossible…
  • The hidden…
  • Is it O.K if….
  • Don’t…
  • Who is….

What these subtle attention-commanding phrases do, I explain at Say It For You coaching sessions, is set expectations. The title words “finding”, “the hidden”, and the “impossible” might engender the expectation of discovery or of gaining a new insight. “Things just”, “could”, and “the impossible” hint at an opinion piece, even a rant. “The best”, “how”, and “don’t” imply that valuable advice and cautions will follow. “How” hints that information about the way a certain process works is to follow, while “Is it O.K if” suggests readers might be asked to weigh in on an ethical dilemma of some sort.

Making space both beautiful and functional is the challenge facing home builders. And, in a way, the challenge in blog content writing is  not only capturing readers’ attention, but maintaining it. We need to search for “sticky” ideas and concepts that have the power to maintain interest over time – and to propel action.

Statement ceilings are great for capturing attention, but but be sure the rest of the home lives up to that attention-getting promise!

 

 

 

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Variety is the Spice of Blogging

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“Variety is the spice of life, and of reading,” Diana Pho writes in Writer’s Yearbook 2023. “Watch how you balance dialogue, narration, and exposition on the page….Break up your sentence structure to keep your reader’s attention,” the fiction editor advises. “Break up your sentence structure to keep your readers’ attention.” While you’re at it, a second Writers Digest advisor, Steve Almond, suggests, “Why don’t you consider a new POV (point of view)?”

In business blogging, it’s generally a good rule to keep sentences short. Short sentences have power, we teach at Say It For You, and, particularly in titles, can more easily be shared on social media sites. However, not every sentence should be kept, and long sentences can be woven in with shorter ones. Then, once in a while, it’s a good idea to add an extremely short statement to add “punch” to the post. What’s the definition of a long sentence? According to thejohnfox.com, any sentence of more than 100 words is “almost guaranteed to be complex, complicated, and enormous”.

“The purpose of paragraphs is to break up an article into its logical divisions so that readers can easily grasp the thought,” explains freelancewriting.com. Each paragraph contains a single phase of the subject. Paragraphs in journalistic writing are usually shorter than in other kinds of writing. While varying the paragraph size in each post is a good idea, long paragraphs can be perceived as off-putting “wall of text”. “Start with a sentence that makes the reader ask a question, Wayne Schmidt suggests. (People hate unanswered questions.) It doesn’t have to be a literal question, just something that piques the reader’s curiosity.”

In blog marketing, variety is important not only in terms of sentence and paragraph length, but also in terms of the layout of the post itself. Different Layouts, writing coach Tony Rossiter explains, fulfill different purposes, including saving space, attraction attention, and raising questions. When it comes to business blogging, the placement of Calls to Action needs to be varied. Variations in the way the content itself is presented include beginning with the conclusion, then using the remainder of the blog post to prove the validity of that assertion. Bolding and bullet points add variety to the visual; impression.

Variety is the spice of blogging!

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