Posts

More Content Sips and Tips

/0 Comments/in /by

 

 

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 Jan.-Feb. 2024 issue of the magazine).

Offering everyday advice
“Everyday Moments” recommends “smart buys” for weeknight dinners, movies at home, Sunday brunches, “and all the daily occasions in between”.
There’s a reason “how-to” and “advice column” content works – readers have a sense of immediate benefit. Create content readers can put to use right now, using statistics to document both the problem and the proposed solution.

Using a celebrity connection
Celebrity chefs Jose Andres, Eric Ripert, and Emeril Lagasse are shown taking part in the Chefs’ Challenge, an annual pairing showdown covered by a Wine Spectator editor.

“Tweak” material so that the content is tied to the doings of popular figures that audiences love to hear about.

Putting questions in readers’ mouths and minds
“Why do red wines give some people headaches?” Mitch Frank answers his own question by citing a University of California study showing that the polyphenols in red wine may keep some people from quickly metabolizing alcohol.

In content marketing, you’re often providing answers to questions that your potential customer might ask. The specific genius lies in forcing readers to recognize their own uncertainties and need for answers.

Keeping readers up to date on industry news
In “Duckhorn to buy Sonoma-Cutree for $400 Million”, Daniel Marsteller keeps Wine Spectator readers in the know about an important corporate takeover.

Showing that you are keeping abreast of the latest thinking and developments in your field is the key to earning “expert power”, showing readers that you are in a good position to spot both threats and opportunities.

Offering Opinion Pieces
In “the Necessary Luxury”, senior editor Mitch Frank shares his perceptions of the relationship between value and luxury. Good wine, he points out, helps us thrive, enhancing the meal on our plate, easing the shyness of guests, and sparking the sharing of stories and ideas.

We must be influencers, I advise clients and content writers alike. Whether it’s business-to-business or business to consumer writing, the content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.

No, becoming a wine connoisseur may not be the future you have in mind, but these “sips” from Wine Spectator can offer valuable insights for creators of marketing content.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Grounding Yourself in Purpose

/0 Comments/in , , /by

 

“Some ideas just stick,” Laura Spence-Ash tells writers in Poets & Writers magazine. It’s important for writers to pay attention and find patterns and concepts that they themselves find pleasing, using those patterns to “find a way forward” in expressing ideas to their readers, the author explains.

“Sticky” ideas are important in content marketing, because they help the different elements – social media posts, blog posts, web pages and newsletters – “fit together” as components in an ongoing strategy. At Say It For You, we use the musical term leitmotifs. “The leitmotif is heard whenever the composer (of, say, an opera) wants the idea of a certain character, place, or concept to come across,” Chloe Rhodes explains in A Certain “Je Ne Sais Quoi.

In planning content marketing strategy for your business or professional practice, one important step, we explain to our clients, is to select four or five themes that are important to your point of view. As their marketing consultants, we will then make sure those themes appear and reappear in all their marketing communications.

Not to be confused with “keyword phrases”, themes express desirable outcomes resulting from successful use of a product, a service, or a methodology. For example, a residential air conditioning firm might use keywords such as “air conditioning”, “HVAC”, and “air conditioning repair”. The recurring themes, in contrast, might be “comfort” and “a healthy home environment”.

When owners express doubt about their ability to keep generating new content, I often remind them of late CEO of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs. Biographer Walter Isaccson noted that Jobs owned more than a hundred black turtlenecks.  Not only was this convenient, but it conveyed Jobs’ signature style. For much the same reason, defining “sticky” concepts about your industry, your products, and your services, helps, not only in keeping content focused and targeted,  but keeping it going! 

“Grounding yourself in purpose” means focusing on the ideas and the phrases that you find “stick in your mind”, on principles so valuable to you that you feel compelled to share them with your audience.  Use those “sticky” word patterns and concepts to “find the way forward”, feeling compelled to share those ideas with readers.

 

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Watch Your Tone of Content Creation

/0 Comments/in , , /by

“Sometimes we have no choice but to implement rules,” my speaker friend Todd Hunt admits, but we may have a choice as to how we present those rules. While one hotel at which Hunt stayed posted a notice reading “Breakfast buffet food not allowed beyond breakfast area”, another facility took a different approach, saying “We request our guests to have breakfast only in the lobby area to maintain the food safety standards on our property.”

“Tone of voice plays a crucial role in effective communication. It allows us to express emotions, convey meaning, establish rapport, and influence others’ perceptions,” everydayspeech.com explains. “One element of communication stands out — tone,” Tracy Brower, PhD, writing in Forbes, agrees, citing data from Grammarly and the Harris poll showing that working remotely increases the need to be a better communicator.

Tone and language are tricky to deal with when it comes to written communication, universalclass.com explains. A speaker’s body language, voice, intonations, eye contact, and general demeanor  offer essential clues about what the speaker is feeling; with print content, this instant give-and-take of nonverbal signals is not possible.”  Still, written messages can take a conversational, a cajoling, or an apologetic tone.

In the case of the two hotel signs Todd Hunt saw, the second message had a more positive tone in that it explained “the why” (the reason guests were to keep all food within the breakfast area). In content marketing, calls to action (CTAs) often use imperative verbs to provoke readers to take positive action, from requesting further information to actually signing up for a newsletter, to actually making a purchase.  But online visitors who’ve found themselves at your blog want to know why they ought to keep reading and why they should follow your advice. Why the urgency about the specific solution you’ve proposed?  Why this price point?

Even couched in a polite, rather than bossy tone, it’s simply not enough for content creators to provide information to online searchers who’ve landed on our client’s corporate blog. The facts need to be “translated” into relational, emotional terms that compel reaction – and action – in readers.

For positive marketing results, pay close attention to the “tone” of your content!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blogs Give a Quick Take

/0 Comments/in , /by


Every half year, Bloomberg puts out a mini-magazine called “Quick Take”, designed “to give readers and even-handed explanation of the context behind the latest developments in economics, finance, geopolitics, and society”. Examples of the rather weighty topics include”

  • Can central banks tame inflation without triggering recession?
  • Why It’s Hard for Europe to Rearm
  • Why Copper is the New Must-Have Metal

In presenting its streaming video business network (also named “Quicktake”),Bloomberg explains that its purpose is to help viewers “make sense of the stories changing your business and your world”.

“When you think about your ideal reader, you may naturally think about demographics (age, gender, geography) and psychographics (beliefs, values, goals)—and those qualities are important to understand so you can connect with your readers,” Karin Wiberg writes in clearsightbooks.com.But also consider their current knowledge level about your topic.

The marketing team for the book Moneyless Society, Wilberg explains, identified two main audiences:

  1.  people who are interested in but relatively new to the topic
  2. people who are familiar with the topic and want to share the ideas but struggle to explain them to others

A useful tip she mentions is that, If you are writing for an audience well-versed in the topic, it may be appropriate to jump right into using professional jargon. But, if you define a term early on and then don’t use it for awhile, consider repeating the definition or putting it in a “callout box”.

According to the Writing Center at The University of North Carolina, “In order to communicate effectively, we need to order our words and ideas on the page in ways that make sense to a reader”. Assume your readers are intelligent, the authors advise, but do not assume that they know the subject matter as well as you. Using familiar words and word combinations gives readers a sense of comfort and “wellness”.

When it comes to blog marketing, the goal is to attract the “right kind” of readers (those with an interest in our topic and who will value our products and services and be willing to pay for them), In creating content, we remember that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions to dilemmas they’re facing. It’s all about them as potential customers and clients, never about the business owners and professionals for whom we’re posting.

As the Bloomberg editors so clearly understand, our purpose is to help readers “make sense of it all”.

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blog Posts are Ideas-in-Brief

/0 Comments/in , , /by


“To help busy readers quickly absorb and apply the concepts, the feature-length articles in these collections also include short ‘Idea in Brief’ summaries,” the editors of Harvard Business Review’s Special Issue explain, referring to the “text box” found in each long article..

What are text boxes?
As the Style Manual teaches. in technical or long-form content, text boxes, which sit on the page close to the text they support, are short articles that support the main body of the text. The content in the text box might contain a summary of the topic, examples, or an expansion of ideas in the main text. People tend to scan text boxes before they read the body of the text.

Blog posts as text boxes:

A blog post can summarize the topic:
Lawyerist.com teaches lawyers how to create powerful introductions when arguing a case in court, advising that an opening line must put the motion in the larger context, besides giving the judge a reason to keep reading.

A blog post can give examples illustrating the main message of a business or practice:
The “mapping method” of taking notes on paper can be adapted for blog series, where the content writer explores different aspects of the same topic in a group of three to four individual posts.

A blog post can expand on the ideas within the topic:
Blog content lets you go deeper than your website permits, creating a big, expanding brochure of practical, persona-optimized web content targeted to your market niche. Milie Oscar explains.

Text boxes and “callouts” are not just gimmicks – the main message in an article and the information in the text box must be directly related to one another. In the same way, whichever content an online searcher might encounter first, whether it happens to be the business website itself or an individual blog post, the core two purposes is the same – imparting understanding and forging connections.. “Before you include a text box or callout in your content, consider how it will help people understand or use the information,” Style Manual cautions.

Blog posts are nothing more than “Ideas-in-Brief”.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail