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If You Want Them to Listen, Watch Your Language

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With now 60 countries of the world naming English as their official language, English comes out on top by a large margin, Paul Anthony Jones writes in Mental Floss. (There would be 61, but, while English is the national language of United Kingdom law, government, business, and education, it’s never been made official. In fact, English became official in the U.S. just this year!)

Within the United States itself, people in different regions use not only unique pronunciations, but unique vocabulary. In Texas, a laundromat is called a washeteria; in Ohio you’d refer to a vacuum as a sweeper.  In the Northwest, something expensive is “spendy”, Cassie Wright points out in Lingoda.

When it comes to content marketing, keeping it basic means using understandable, clear language. “In order to write an effective sales page, it’s absolutely critical to speak the language of your target market,” Joey van Kuilenburg writes in Linkedin, paying attention to the terminology they use, including phrases and word choices. At Say It For You, our message to the business owner and practitioner clients who hire us is this:

Your business or practice can’t be all things to all people. Everything about your content should be tailor-made for your ideal customer – the words we use, how technical we get, how sophisticated the approach to a subject, the title of each blog entry – all must focus on what together we learn about your target market – their needs, their preferences, their questions.

There are certain “Americanisms”, which are sayings we take for granted, but often don’t realize make no sense to foreigners, even to those who speak English.  That’s because foreigners don’t share our cultural memories and understandings.  As content marketers, we can actually turn that “outsider puzzlement” to our advantage, allowing readers to feel they are in our “inner circle” when we share those language “secrets”, I’ve observed over the years working with Say It For You clients from many different industries and professions.

The guiding principle in creating content is that, if you want them to listen, watch your language!

 

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Basing Content on What You Want Buyers to Believe

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“What do you want your buyers to believe?”  That is the question online marketers need to ask themselves when creating content, David Meerman Scott stresses in the 9th edition of his book The New Rules of Marketing & PR.  What are your customers really going to be buying from you — is it great customer service? The safe choice? Luxury? Different buyer personas buy different things from your organization.

A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer that you create from audience and market research, Flori Needle writes in Hubspot.  (A negative buyer persona, in contrast might include customers too advanced for your product or service or who are engaging with you only to gain knowledge, not to buy.)

Content marketing, however, is not about “forcing” prospects to believe. As Meerman Scott explains, customers tell themselves stories that define them and the way they relate to the products and services they use. Only if the story you tell your prospects and customers matches the story they’re telling themselves will your content be effective in appealing to them.

At Say It For You, we’ve learned over the years, content marketing will succeed only if two things are apparent to readers: a) You (the business owner or professional practitioner) understand online searchers’ concerns and needs and b) you and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs.

What we’ve discovered, for example, in business blogging is that, whether it’s the owners or practitioners themselves doing the writing or whether they’ve hired us to do the job on their behalf, the language used must give readers the right impression in order to create that “belief connection”

At the same time, it’s important to remember that “the system” (search algorithms) appears to value cumulative content, offering the opportunities for us content marketers to build buyer belief over time.

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Titles With Long Tales and Long Tails

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I found lots of “food” for content creation thought in the May/June issue of Reader’s Digest; it struck me that this May/June 2025 issue has even more than usual to teach us about choosing titles….

Surprises: These piqued my curiosity – What hadn’t I heard?

  • Unexpected/ purposely mistaken word use: Have You Herd? (on the topic of the great elephant migration)
  • Simile with a twist: A Tight-Knit Community (on the topic of crafters finishing abandoned knitting and crocheting projects to raise charitable dollars)
  • Slow Your Roll: expecting an article on driving or working out in the gym, instead I found data about how Americans prefer to install toilet paper rolls!
  • Paying Attention to ADHD: Clever juxtaposition – “paying attention” to attention deficit disorder

Sound tracks:

Models, Mistresses, & Muses is an example of alliteration; The Sad Tale of the Soft Sale illustrates both alliteration (repeated consonants)and assonance (repeated vowel sounds)

“Huh”/”Oh!” Titles
Using the element of surprise to lure readers’ attention is a favorite technique of book authors, I’ve found. While titles that pique curiosity can entice readers to open the book, in order to clarify what the subject matter is, authors often use what I call “Huh/Oh” titles. The “Huh?s” need subtitles to make clear what the article is about; “Oh!’s” titles are self-explanatory. For example, one title that caught my eye at a bookstore display was “The Invisible Kingdom”. It might have been about mythology, ESP, or geography, for all I knew. The “Oh!” subtitle read “Reimagining Chronic Illness”, shedding light on the real subject.

Long tail keywords
In online marketing, long-tail keywords (longer, more specific phrases), are used in search engine optimization to attract niche customers. Because “long-tails” often have lower competition, they help make it easier to rank higher in search results.

As marketers, we know that titles, along with their tales – and/or tails – are the way to convey to readers that we’d like to have them “c’mon in”!

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The Importance of Specificity in Content Marketing

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“Many writers rely on generalities rather than absolutes as they craft an article; this is both a cheat and disrespectful to the reader, who is left without the kinds of supporting details that can turn a good article into a great one,” Don Vaughan advises in a recent issue of Writer’s Digest.”There’s a meaningful difference between ‘a couple of centuries’ and ‘215 years’.”

Asked where writers might go to find those supporting details (other than a simple Google search), Vaughan suggests checking:

  • government agencies
  • military agencies
  • universities
  • data resources, both U.S. and overseas,

but also just talking to as many people as you can, expressing curiosity about their knowledge and opinions on the topic.

“Specificity can be your weapon of mass effectiveness,” Jason Cohen once wrote in “A Smart Bear”. Whether for marketing copy, blogging, a sales pitch, be specific. “Generic words are a sure sign of lazy writing.”

In content marketing, we’ve learned at Say it For You, the more specific you are in describing the shortcuts and solutions, the more engaging that content will be. Web searchers are on a fact-finding mission, looking for information that relates to what you do, what you sell, and what you know about.  The more specific the key words and phrases in the title and in the body of the blog post, the greater the chance search engines will direct those searchers to your blog. Then, the more specific the examples you provide and the terminology you use, the more impact you’re likely to have on readers of your content.

As “ghost writers’ for our clients, (our Say It For You contract guarantees that we will not write content for their competitors), we often find ourselves creating content on topics in which we have no prior experience or training. Don Vaughn’s advice about finding supporting details from agencies, universities, and specialty magazines is very apropos. “You don’t have to be a subject matter expert to write on specialty topics,” he says – “all you need is an innovative idea specific to the topic”  – and the willingness to delve into:

  • aspects of the topic’s history
  • profiles of prominent people who’ve benefitted from the product or service
  • news about developments in the industry
  • different opinions on the topic
  • human interest stories.

In content marketing, specificity can turn out to be a weapon of  creative effectiveness.

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Add the Power of the Photo to the Power of the Words

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“Consider the power of a simple photo,” Bill Shapiro writes in Entrepreneur Magazine. “Those few inches of paper, those few drops of ink — or, you know, those few hundred thousand pixels – have an almost magical ability to transport you back in time, to connect you to your deeply held values, to inspire, to motivate, to thrill…”.

A study carried out by PR News found that content with good images get 94% more views than those without, Bernard Schroeder points out in Forbes. But it’s not good enough to use just any photos, he cautions. The sheer number of images being displayed on product packaging, websites, billboards, ads, and social media can be overwhelming to consumers, so it’s important to select quality and impactful images for your business, he stresses.

At Say It For You, we certainly don’t need to be sold on using images in content marketing. (This very post is actually #2140 of this blog, and in every single one of those, you’ll find a photo or image of some kind.) As Debbie Hemley observed years ago in her post about blogging, pictures have the power to pique interest, aid in learning, and evoke emotions. In any written (or oral, for that matter) presentation, there are three elements – information, “slant” or opinion, and visuals.

To use images and media to their best effect, a Harvard article advises, don’t use them to “spice up” a page; include only those that support or add to the concepts in the text. (Years ago, I chose the image shown above to illustrate the point that the way we dress broadcasts who we are and how we respect others – I felt that image reinforced the opinion I’d expressed in the text of the blog post.)

Side notes: There are technical advantages to consider in using images, in that the “alt text” identifies to search engines what the image is about (formal man dressing for a celebration, event, job interview or wedding on a wooden hanger); incorporating keyword phrases aids in SEO (search engine optimization). There are concerns as well – the use of AI-generated images poses ethical concerns and the danger of copyright infringement.

As content marketers, we can add the power of the photo to the power of our words.

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