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Blogging for Business with Sympathy and Service: 4 “Amens”

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“Instead of selfish mass marketing, effective marketing now relies on sympathy and service,” Seth Godin posits in the book This is Marketing. What marketing is, the author explains. “the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.” “Getting discovered”, “getting found”, and “getting the word out” are no longer the first things to consider, but come last. As marketers, Godin is firm, it’s our job to watch people, figure out what they dream of, than create a transaction that can deliver that feeling.

In planning how to market your product or service, Godin suggests, start by filling in the blanks in this sentence: “My _________ will be exactly the right choice for people who believe that_______ and who want to feel_________.”

Four Say It For You “Amens”:

  1. Belief and trust, we have found at Say It For You, are in large part a function of familiarity Precisely because blogs are not one-time articles, but conveyers of messages over long periods of time, they serve as unique tools for building a sense of familiarity (and ultimately trust) in readers.
  2. In blog content writing, ask yourself: Which psychological fulfillment does your brand support most? Exactly as Godin is expressing, blog readers will self select and become buyers only to the extent your content has focused on creating experiences that align with their values. Business blogs should never be rated “E” (intended for everyone).
  3. As content writers, we’ve also come to understand over the years that face-to-screen is the closest we will come to the prospective buyers of our clients’ products and services. Even when it comes to B2B marketing, we know that behind every decision, there is always a person, a being with feelings they have and feelings they want to have.
  4. Through the pandemic we became familiar with the phrase “social distancing”, which is the precise opposite of what we must try to do in blog marketing, which is to create connections with our audience and make them feel supported and in turn receptive to our message. As writers, we must present the business or practice as very personal rather than transactional.

In blog marketing, aim for sympathy and service!

 

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Advice-Column Blogging for Business

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You wouldn’t imagine consulting the Farmer’s Almanac for tips on blogging for business, but, hey, ideas are everywhere, as we assure readers of Say It For You. In fact, the two articles “7 Ways to Water Wisely” and “8 Top Water-Saving Tips” might serve as perfect models for what I call “advice-column blogging”.

  1.  Both these articles are in “listicle” format, with titles heading up paragraphs explaining how to use that tip. The listicle visually organizes the page, making the information easy to digest. Under the heading “Create a sprinkler-friendly lawn”, for example, the author advises adjusting the lawn’s shape so the sprinkler waters the lawn without dampening the driveway, porch of bare ground.
  2. An odd number of tips is presented. As Blue Orchid Marketing explains, studies have shown that odd-numbered lists trigger better responses from readers, perhaps because they’re perceived as more ‘decisive”.
  3. The tips are practical and doable by readers, with no direct tie to product “pitches”.
    There’s a reason “how-to” blog post titles work, marketing gurus Guy Kawaski and Peg Fitzpatrick show in the Art of Social Media. The best “How-to’s, they explain, are neither too broad nor too limited. They have a “news-you-can-use” feel. At Say It For You, we sometimes encounter resistance from business owners when it comes to starting a blog. Owners of personal service businesses, in particular, voice fears of giving away valuable information “for free”. (What happens in the real world is that readers don’t want to do it all themselves and turn to the source of the advice they’ve been offered.).
  4. The language is personal and direct: “You can….” “Your garden… “Select hoses for your needs.” “Good soil is your partner….”
  5. Both articles are compact, with well-organized information confined to a single page.
    Opinions differ on the optimal size for a blog post, with one “rule” I have read being to keep the post short enough so that the reader needn’t scroll down the page. Unlike purchasers of Farmer’s Almanac issues, online searchers tend to be scanners more than readers, and it’s important to engage attention quickly.

In creating advice-column blog posts, you might want to start with the Farmer’s Almanac!

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Blog What the Best Have in Common

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“We’ve become experts in identifying what draws a person’s eye to a cooking space,” Sarah Weinberg writes in delish.com, and we’ve noticed that the best ones have things in common.

  1. Smart and accessible storage
  2. Countertops that are easily cleaned and that don’t absorb food particles and odors
  3. Smart appliances
  4. Attractive, bright lighting

Quality is always defined in the eyes of the customer, Simple-PDH.com notes. Different groups of customers might define “best” in different ways, and we can group customers into “target markets” to better understand their needs and preferences. “Quality is defined by two elements: customer satisfaction and customer expectations.” Meeting customer expectations is what defines success.

For that very reason, it’s a very good idea to blog about “what the best have in common” when it comes to your category of product or service. Learning about these “commonalities” helps prospects define their expectations of you and of what you have to offer them.

In working with Say It For You business owner and practitioner clients to create blog content for them, I often encounter resistance to the what-the-best-have-in-common model. Reluctant to suggest that they have things “in common” with some of their competitors, they prefer to focus only on aspects that prove they (and only they). are “best”!

” An informed consumer is capable of making sensible decisions by gaining an insight about a product prior to its purchase.” Based on that belief, one of the primary objectives of the European Union has been the provision of information to consumers. The opposite effect happens with “choice overload”, which can lead to behavioral paralysis, KelloggInsight points out.

At Say It For You, we know that consumers know: whatever your business or practice, there are other out there, and realize that some of those are worthy competitors of yours. But, when visitors to your website find answers to their questions, updated information about your type of product or service, and social proof offered by clients and customers, you won’t need to be “the only one” to be “the one” with whom they choose to do business..

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Blogging to Share Your Process

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If you do something unknown, unfamiliar, or unexpected, your clients are going to feel their security is in jeopardy, Luke Agree cautions financial advisors. And, no matter how you slice it, Agree adds, that’s not good for business.

Financial advisors who share their process with their clients are able to avoid that risk. Sharing must include not only your value proposition (what makes you different or better than other professionals in your field), but also your process of operating the business and delivering client services.

What are your “habits”? How frequently do you report progress? Do you prefer email, phone calls, texts, or letters? What updates will you be providing and how frequently? How will you provide continuing education – seminar? Podcasts? Newsletters? A blog? How responsive is your office set up to be to inbound inquiries?

In sharing your process, Agree makes clear to his audience of financial advisors, you’re really sharing promises.

Blog marketing is also a matter of making – and keeping – promises, we teach at Say It For You. Over my years as a freelance blog writer, I’ve seen many companies launch a blog marketing strategy with great expectations, but poor implementation. Just as in the world of finance, value is based on a the market’s perception of whether a company is likely to keep its promises about future growth, it is essential for any practitioner, product or service provider to keep promises and deliver predictable and consistent results.

In creating a content marketing plan, I like to begin by challenging the owner of a business or professional practice to answer the following question: “If you had only eight to ten words to describe why you’re passionate about what you sell, what you know, and what you do, what would those words be?” In other words, whether the business owner him or herself is doing the writing, or whether they’re collaborating with a writer, the first steps I creating blog content involve clarifying, and then sharing, the “process” and the promise to follow that process.

Blog to share your process!

 

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Aiming for the “Me, Too!” Effect in Blog Marketing

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“All salespeople present themselves as problem solvers yet most never ask clients to vividly describe the problems they are experiencing,” Paul Cherry maintains in the book Questions That Sell. An outstanding salesperson, the author teaches, will offer clients the opportunity to open up and vent their frustrations. “You will have success building a relationship with your potential customers only when you can get into their world and identify the forces at work in their lives.”

In blog marketing (where prospects are meeting you before you’ve had the chance to meet them), as Jeremy Porter Communications teaches, the goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message. He names seven emotions and their opposites that marketers can tap into to get an audience “from where they are to where you want them to be”:

  • anger/calmness
  • friendship/enmity
  • fear/confidence
  • shame/shamelessness
  • kindness/unkindness
  • pity or compassion/indignation
  • envy/emulation

At Say It For You, we understand that, in blogging for business, face-to-screen is the closest we blog content writers will come to our prospective buyers of our clients’ products and services. On the other hand, we’re conscious that behind every decision, there is always a person, a being with feelings. One of the most direct access paths to prospects’ feelings is through stories. “Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his book All Marketers Tell Stories.

The thing to remember is that people are online searching for answers to problems or solutions for dilemmas. If, in encountering a blog post about a customer who went through a sort of pain and suffering akin to theirs (and who has now come out the other side), readers’ natural and highly emotional reaction might well be “Me, too!”.

Far sooner and more directly than descriptions of features and benefits of your offer, an emotionally charged story of suffering solved might well result in a “me, too” sale!

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