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Some Simple Truths About Blog Marketing

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“Proverbs are brief, well-known sayings that share life advice or beliefs that are common knowledge”, preply.com explains. “Proverbs can also provide a shortcut for explaining or imparting information, adds grammarly.

In terms of offering advice to our business and practice owner clients about their content marketing “habits”, two particular proverbs come to mind:

1. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
After years of being involved in all aspects of content creation for business owners and professional practitioners, one irony I’ve found is that consistency and frequency are rare phenomema. There’s a tremendous fall-off rate in posting content, with most efforts abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. The oh-so-important lesson here is that blog marketing is no sprint.  A long-term, drawn-out effort is required in order to “build equity” in keyword phrases, gather a following, and gain – and sustain – online rankings.

2. Out of sight, out of mind…
Adhering to a posting schedule is crucial. Whether it’s once a week or once a month, consistency helps build trust with your audience and improves a blog’s search engine ranking.
Sharing your blog posts on social media and through email helps keep you “top of mind”.

When marketing online – whether it’s a product, a service, or even a concept, several proverbs seem particularly apropos:

1. Birds of a feather flock together…
To be an effective marketing tool for your business, your blog must to be the result of a well-planned strategy aimed at a specific segment of the market.  Your business or practice can’t be all things to all people, so your content must focus on things you know about your target market – their needs, their preferences, their questions – and where they “flock” – what social media sites do they frequent? At which community events, rallies, and celebrations are they to be found?

2. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst…
One of the goals of content marketing is to “humanize” a business, creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame the odds and went on to succeed. But what about negative comments that readers make about a business or practice? When those concerns or complaints are recognized and dealt with “in front of other people” (in blog posts), it gives the “apology” more weight. Go ahead and “let the client tell his story,” which then gives you the chance to offer useful information to other readers and to explain any changes in policy that resulted from the situation.

The simple truth about blog marketing is that it brings owners and customers together through the sharing of wisdom.

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Be a SME, Not a Salad

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Both of this week’s Say It For You blog posts represent my reaction to Ryan Law’s very provocative piece “The Four Forces of Bad Content”. The first big negative “tell” of poor quality content, Law asserts, is a “bait-and-switch” approach, in which product Calls to Action are ‘smuggled” into an ostensibly informational article…. 

The Think eBiz Blog agrees with Law’s point about CTAs. “The blog should not be sales oriented… Provide good useful information and establish trust and credibility – sales will follow.” In this Say It For You blog, I keep coming back to the idea that business writing needs to be conversational and informational, not sales-y. Readers understand you’re writing for business purposes. Ironically, the very reason they have made their way to your site in the first place is that what you sell or what you do is a good match for their needs. It is not necessary – in fact, it will defeat your purpose as a content marketer – to punctuate the text with a “salad” of Calls to Action – either overt or disguised.

According to About.Com, “a Subject Matter Expert is an individual who understands a business process or area well enough to answer questions from people in other groups who are trying to help.” Actually, the term SME (pronounced “smee”) is not new to me.(When I was a developmental editor for Pearson Education, the course writers would turn to the SMEs for specialized knowledge to put into student textbooks.)  At Say It For You, “SME development” is all about presenting our business owner and professional practitioner clients as experts in their respective fields, a way of translating the bad advertising “noise” to which Ryan Law refers into well-considered courses of action for readers.

The “salad” concept, on the other hand, need not be considered a “force for bad”. “Cutting” or “chunking”, breaking down information into bite-sized pieces so the brain can more easily digest new information is a very good teaching technique, as e-learning coach Connie Malamed explains. Still, Ryan Law is absolutely correct in that a “salad” garnished with poorly disguised CTA s represents a bait-and-switch approach doomed to fail.

In their fact-finding mission, online readers have arrived at a particular site, looking specifically for information about what that business or that practitioner does and knows about. The tone of the blog content should assume that with complete information, readers will translate that information into action.

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Proving Readers Right

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A “History Facts” piece I came across yesterday made me aware that the word “Pennsylvania” is written with a missing “n” on the Liberty Bell!  Prepared for yet another “gotcha!” – type article, I was pleasantly surprised when the authors explained that the “mis-spelling” was not a typo at all. In fact,  back in the 18th century, “Pensylvania” was a legitimate spelling of the colony’s name.

At Say It For You, we’ve often touted myth-busting as a tactic content writers can use to grab online visitors’ attention. At the same time, we caution, it would be a tactical mistake to prove readers wrong. As writers, we want to showcase our business owner and professional practitioner clients’ expertise without “showing up” their readers’ lack of it!

The golden rule in content marketing, corporate travel advisor  Qahir Chipepo agrees, is to create fans first, then introduce your solution. Educate, entertain, and inspire is what you want to do, he says. 

So true… Business blogs are wonderful tools around facts, and that’s why we writers can use content as a way to not only dispense information, but to address misinformation. At the same time, when we aggressively refute existing opinions or beliefs – or “dis” the competition, we risk alienating our clients’ audiences, turning our content into a “turn-off”. 

Every industry, every profession has its myths, ideas that sound true but simply aren’t.  Content marketing is actually the perfect vehicle for defusing false news, correcting misunderstandings, and protecting readers from word traps. Presenting the actual facts and statistics in your content is meant to have the same effect as the windshield defogger on your car. Once the mist is cleared off the glass, you reason, readers will see for themselves what’s out there – they won’t need to be either told or sold!

Realistically, though, our clients’ competitors represent viable alternatives for their prospects and customers, and readers will resist being “made wrong” for having checked out what the competition has to offer. That means that, rather than starting with what “they” are “doing wrong”, the content  should emphasize the way “WE” believe it’s best to deliver value.

Prove readers right, knowing that, armed with the facts, they will make the right decision every time!

 

 

 

 

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Filling Your Content Marketing Out of Three Buckets

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“All presentations are composed of just three elements,” Dan Roam writes in his book Show & Tell: 

  1. my idea – impressions, anecdotes, data, concerns.
  2. my self – goals, hopes, beliefs, insights
  3. my audience – demographics, aspirations, abilities, skills, uncertainties

Effective content marketing, we’ve learned at Say It For You, makes use of the same three buckets. We share ideas, adding information to things our audience members already know, fill their aspirations by showing best ways to  accomplish their goals, and, having understood their needs, inspire and empower them to take action.

To pick the right storyline for an article or presentation,  we need to answer the following question, Roam explains: “After we’ve finished presenting, how do we want our audience to be different from when we started?” Reports that tell the audience what they already know, then add a few things they don’t are not very memorable or actionable, he cautions.  If we’re doing it right, we make the audience care.

In content marketing, this is where the “my self” bucket comes in. Personal stories and opinion pieces showcase the unique slant of the business owner or practitioner. Dipping into that second bucket, you reveal how you arrived at the name of your business, even revealing the biggest mistake you made in starting that business or practice and what you’ve learned from that mistake.  Precisely because it is so very human to act inconsistently, revealing seemingly out-of-character aspects of yourself and of the people involved in your business or practice is a way to create buzz.

At the same time, Dan Roam reminds presenters to never, ever apologize for any anxiety.  Telling them you’re nervous will make them worry, too,” he advises. “When we are confident, we will help the audience change,” he tells newbie speakers. At Say It For You, we know how important it is to remember that third bucket – it’s our audience’s uncertainties we’re out to change!

When it comes to content marketing, readers visit  our web pages and blog for answers and for information they can trust.  In fact, the success of our marketing efforts will be very closely aligned with our being perceived as  SMEs (subject matter experts).

Show and Tell is the perfect guide for content marketers. To the extent we understand the demographics of our audience, realizing that our readers are those looking for information, products, or services that relate to what we know, what we have, and what we do. Those visitors are literally inviting us to share our ideas, our “selves” and our skills

We need to fill our content marketing out of all three buckets!

 

 

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Time For the Long View

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In my last Say It For You blog post, I shared insights to the way investors tend to invest the majority of their money in domestic equities, ignoring the benefits of diversifying into foreign companies. As content marketers, I explained, using consistent posting of valuable information, we can position our clients as SMEs, giving them a better chance at overcoming their prospects’ home biases….

A second insight into investor behavior that can prove valuable in content creation is what Sam Savage dubs “the Flaw of Averages” (a play on “Law of Averages”.  The S&P 500 stock market index is a good example of the way statistics can be misunderstood, Savage explains.

The US stock market has delivered an average annual return of around 10% since 1926, Dimensional points out. But short-term results may vary, and in any given period stock returns can be positive, negative, or flat. Over the years 1957 through the end of 2023, the S&P Index has returned an annualized average return of 10.26%. But, what is the proper way to view those results?

  • On a daily basis, the index was up 52% of the time.
  • The S&P 500 was up in 73% of the individual years over that time frame.
  • The S&P 500 was up in 95% of the ten year periods of its existence.

At Say It For You, we’ve learned over the years that in content marketing, nothing speaks quite as loud as numbers. Statistics dispel false impressions, grab web visitors’ attention, and demonstrate the extent of the problem the business owner or practitioner can help solve.

At the same time, ethical marketing means promoting products or services in a manner that is both honest and responsible, Nathan Neely points out in the LinkedIn article “Doing the Right Thing”. That means providing accurate information about pricing, ingredients, including being transparent about how data is collected.

In creating content, we want to:

  1. position our business owners or professional practitioners as Subject Matter Experts
  2. provide visitors to our clients’ websites with valuable information and a positive experience
  3. use statistics to both educate readers and stimulate them to action.

Throughout the process, though, we need to demonstrate to prospects the value of taking a long view in their buying decisions.

 

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