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In Each Post, Remember the Raison D’Etre

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“The first thing I do when I create a magic effect is forget about the method,” says Joshua Jay in How Magicians Think. “How it works comes later.” In fact, the last part of developing the trick will be the hardest, Jay says: its raison d’etre (reason for being). Why am I doing this in the first place? “I’ll cut this rope in half and put it back together…I’ll float this silver ball in front of a cloth.” Why? Who cares? The best magic, Jay says, has an emotional hook: “I’ll show you how to win when you play blackjack.” (Now they’re interested!)

Sure, the overall purpose of performance magic is to entertain. But what fascinated me as a Say It For You blog content writer was Joshua Jay’s central thesis: Each trick (each blog post) must have its own reason for being or raison d’etre.

What’s more, “great magicians don’t leave the audience’s thought patterns to chance,” Jay says. You might not suspect that he has a pigeon tucked into his right sock, but then again, why would you? In this sense, the author explains, magic is a collaboration between the magician and the audience. When it comes to blogging, Dan Roam’s book for speakers, Show and Tell . is helpful. As presenters, the author says, we need to ask ourselves: for this topic, for this audience, and for myself, which truth should I tell?. Roam suggests presenters ask themselves the following question: “If my presentation could change them in just one way, what would that change be?”

As blog content writers approaching our reader audience, what are we trying to accomplish in this one blog post? Is it:

1. changing their information, adding new data to what they already know?
2. changing their knowledge or ability?
3. changing their actions?
4. changing their beliefs, inspiring them to understand something new about themselves or about the world?

As you begin each blog post, forget about the method. What’s the raison d’etre?

 

 

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Don’t Blog Only From a Front Row Seat

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Financial professionals often have a “front row seat”, getting to see up close the how clients transition into retirement, Robert Laura writes in Financial Advisor Magazine. “We get to see how they accumulated their savings, and what their plans are for life after work.” Problem is, Laura points out, like people sitting too close to a high stage in a theatre, many advisors have a partially obstructed view, missing scenes playing out in the background. Just as a good play transports you into another world and into other lives, Laura tells advisors, you must be willing to look at more than what is on “center stage” and notice the backdrops.

“Buyers are 48% more likely to consider products and services that address their specific business and personal issues,” uplandsoftware.com stresses. In practice, the authors point out, most companies don’t dive deeply enough into the concerns and needs of their target customers. Instead, most marketing is based on a “front row” view, using demographics such as age, role, and location. The result is marketing materials that simply don’t resonate with the target audience. Hootsuite summarizes the marketing challenge blog content writers face in an almost brutally “in-your-face” way: “You can’t speak directly to your best potential customers if you’re trying to speak to their kids and parents and spouses and colleagues at the same time.” In other words, you need to go narrow and deep rather than using a broad brush.

I’m fond of thinking of ghost blogging as an art, but, truth be told, there’s quite a bit of science to it as well. Since your blog can’t be all things to all people, any more than your business can be all things to everybody, the blog must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who will want to do business with you.  Everything about your blog, we stress at Say It For You, should be tailor-made for your target customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry – all of it. In short, you’re giving up your “front row seat” and mingling with the audience members in the “cheap seat”, offering cues that you understand the situations and challenges they face.

Don’t blog only from a front row seat!

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Letting Them Know You Hear Them

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“As you listen to people, let them know that you hear them, value them, and understand them,” Ron Willingham writes in Integrity Selling for the 21st Century. You can offer feedback by nodding approval at key points, giving verbal responses, and through your body language, the author adds.

All well and good for in-person selling, but what about blog marketing? After all, content writers can’t “nod approval” at key points or use body language to cement connection with online searchers. Yet, “the buying process is in the hands of the customer, and marketers must create targeted, personalized experiences for people,” as marketingevolution.com stresses.

Even in face-to-face selling situations, it may be too easy to assume you know the customer’s needs and then move on to offer them solutions or recommendations, Willingham cautions. The pros must not only be willing to talk to you about a solution, but have a sense of urgency about seeking a solution. Of course, the very fact that searchers found their way to your page indicates their interest in the subject of your blog, but now the content writing challenge is to create those “targeted and personalized experiences”.

At our Say It For You content marketing company, we absolutely agree. Stories of all kinds help personalize a business blog. Even if a professional writer is composing the content, true-story material increases engagement by readers with the business or practice. Case studies are particularly effective in creating interest, because they are relatable and “real”. The content must speak to “our shared experience”. I tell newbie blog writers: “Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry – all of it.” Since we, as ghostwriters, have been hired by clients to tell their story online to their target audiences, we need to do intensive research, taking guidance from the client’s experience and expertise dealing with actual customers.

Online visitors to your blog need to find an experience along with information.  Word tidbits, unique points of view, special how-to tips, links to unusual resources, and humorous touches – all these things make your blog post special. Stories – testimonials, real-life successes and failures, help translate corporate messages into people-to-people terms. Metaphorically, at least, the stories in your blog posts can represent nods of approval and understanding.

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Asking Discomfiting Questions in Your Blog

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I have to say the questions “Would you recognize your primary care physician if you saw her on the street?” and “Could you pick your dentist out of a lineup?” got my attention a whole lot faster than any trite reminder of the importance of medical and dental checkups. In fact, AARP Magazine writer Kimberly Lankford eschewed polite nudging in favor of in-your-face retirement planning questions – “Would you like your neighborhood if you couldn’t drive” “When was the last time you tired yourself out?:”

Blog readers tend to be curious creatures and, as a longtime blog content writer, I’ve found that “self-tests” tend to engage readers and help them relate in a more personal way to the information presented in a marketing blog. Popular magazine editors appear to agree as well, because current issues are full of tests, games, and quizzes.

Kimberly Lankford’s questions to AARP readers, though, fall into a whole ‘nuther category, provoking not curiosity but introspection. “Picture your grandparents living in your home – would you worry about them getting around safely?” Often in blog content writing, it’s effective to present what I call “startling statistics” to incentivize readers to take action. “Every 11 seconds, an older adult is treated in an emergency room for a fall,” Age Safe America tells us. While statistics such as these can certainly serve as Calls to Action in blog posts, the AARP Magazine approach uses discomfiting questions to drive readers to action.

We’ve all read (heck, for 21 consecutive years, I wrote) articles that focus on the financial aspects of retirement. “Retirement planning should include determining time horizons, estimating expenses, calculating required after-tax returns, assessing risk tolerance, and doing estate planning,” cautions Investopedia.com.

The AARP article, in contrast, enters readers’ consciousness from an entirely different direction:
“OK. You’re retired. What will you be doing next Monday?” This very discomfiting question forces readers to look at themselves, not just their finances.

Are there any discomfiting questions you can pose to blog readers to forcing them to come to grips with the very need with which you’re in a position to help?

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Blog to Help Them Feel Smart

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“What will I tell my friends?” “Why will I tell them?”

It’s never the case that people will tell their friends about you and the products and services you offer just because you want them to, or because you asked them to, Seth Godin points out in This is Marketing. Please-give-me-a-favorable-review-on-Yelp isn’t how it really works now, Godin cautions. Give them a reason for sharing, he advises.

During my 25 years’ writing a financial advice column (long before Say It For You was born), I learned that people like to sound smart when they’re in conversation with others at their tennis club, on the golf course, or while out with friends at an eatery. In addition to offering valuable advice, I came to realize, a second function of content writing was “arming” readers with tidbits of information they would enjoy sharing with others.

Half a dozen years ago, the Business Insider published a semi-humorous piece titled “14 Meaningless Phrases that Will Make You Sound Like a Stock-Market Wizard”. The authors listed market phrases that “sound intelligent but don’t mean anything”, such as “The easy money has been made.” “It’s not a stock market. It’s a market of stocks.” “Stock are down on profit-taking.”

That sort of smart-sounding but meaningless information is not at all what I mean when I talk about using blog marketing to “arm” your readers with shareable nuggets. Nor is it what Seth Godin is alluding to when he describes the “people like us do things like this” phenomenon. For most of us, Godin says, our decisions are primarily driven by one question, “Do people like me do things like this?”

In blog marketing, accentuate the practical, we teach content writers at Say It For You. Go ahead and teach readers “secrets” of how to do what they want to do – better, faster, and more economically. Since people like helping one another, your practical, useful (not merely useful-sounding) “secrets” are likely to be shared at the dinner table, across the tennis net, or on the green.

“What will I tell my friends?” By providing ongoing, relevant, and useful information in your blog, you will have provided the answer to that question. “Armed” readers will want to share, because, after all, that’s what “people like me” do!

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