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Blogging for Window Shoppers and Tire Kickers

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“Many of the folks who come to see me aren’t necessarily looking for a new plan or a new planner,” financial advisor Zach Fox, AAMS®, says. “They may just be looking for confidence in their existing plan.”

Diane Wingerter, certified grantwriter and owner of GrantWriting for Goodness™, agrees. “Yes”, “no”, “maybe”, or “not now” are all possible responses by people who are seeking funding – or, indeed, by funders themselves, she notes.

Blog marketers need to approach readers with a similar mindset. Will blog marketing “close deals” in the same manner as a face-to-face encounter between a prospect and a sales professional? Of course not. Hubspot blogger Corey Wainwright lists some of the indirect selling benefits of blogs and their place in the sales process:

  • If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes.
  • Prospects that have been reading your blog posts will typically enter the sales process more educated about your place in the market, your industry, and what you have to offer.
  • Salespeople who encounter specific questions that require in-depth explanation or a documented answer can pull from an archive of blog posts.

Blogging is what marketing firm pardot.com calls stage-based, meaning that prospects move through different stages of the sales cycle. In one study, Pardot found that B2B consumers started their research with Google, then returned two or three times for more specific information. For prospects at the top of the “funnel”, the most effective content will be light, educational and product-neutral. Later in the cycle, readers who are already sold on your industry, just deciding among vendors or providers, need more specific information.

The “maybes”, the “not nows”, and readers looking only to bolster their confidence in their existing plans or product choices will come away with a positive experience and valuable information. On the other hand, readers who have reached the final decision-making stage might just be ready to consider your unique value propositions and to follow one of your Calls to Action.

In blog marketing, don’t ignore the window shoppers and tire-kickers!

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In Blogging, Don’t Be “Leo the Lip” – Ask for Actiion, but Explain Why

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In my Mensa Bulletin, there was a interesting piece about kindness and meanness, recalling former Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher’s famous quip, “Nice guys finish last.”

The article’s author, Garrison Klueck, thinks the Durocher quote stuck because its meaning is consistent with the general belief that strength and authoritarianism is the most efficient way to run things. Authoritarian parenting involves a “because I said so” approach; authoritative parents, in contrast, explain to children the reasoning behind the rules, Klueck adds.

In blog marketing, calls to action (CTAs) often use imperative verbs designed to provoke immediate positive action: find out more, call now, provide contact information, etc. The concept, Tara Horner explained in “Writing a Better Call to Action”, is to show consumers how to take the next step and to create a sense of urgency around the offer.

At Say It For You, I must admit, we agree with Klueck, advocating a nice-guys-finish-first, authoritative parenting-type approach. Of course content writers must create a sense of  urgency, but, the way we figure it, searchers who’ve found themselves at your blog want to know why they ought to keep reading/foll

Durocher, nicknamed “Leo the Lip” did win games, But, as Garrison Klueck pointed out, so did Tony Dungy, the “universally-embraced- as-a nice-guy football coach” who led the Indianapolis Colts to their 2007 Super Bowl win.

“Whenever you tell someone they’re wrong, your mind goes through a series of specific mental steps to come to that conclusion. In doing so, you are actually harming yourself and your relationship with the others, and you’re killing any chance of anyone bettering themselves from the situation,” advises careerconservatory.com. “Stop telling people they’re wrong.”

As a professional blog copy writer, when I’m working with a new business client, our task is to find just the right “tone” and direction for the series of blogs. Today, the challenge is producing high authority content without sounding authoritarian. Nice blog content writers, we convinced at Say It For You, finish first!

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Briefs for Blog Posts and Blog Posts as Briefs

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Leafing through the Harvard Business Review Special Issue on digital intelligence, I noticed a very helpful formatting detail – in the corner of each first page of an article, there was a box titled “Idea in Brief”. There were three bullet points for each article summary:

  • the problem
  • the root cause
  • the solution

The magazine editors explain that they’ve provided those summaries to “help busy leaders quickly absorb and apply the concepts”.

That little “grid” is made-to-order for business blogging! People are online searching for answers to questions they have or for solutions for dilemmas they’re facing.  But my experience has shown me that defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. But showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience providing solutions to very that problem can help drive the marketing process forward. Still, searchers are unlikely to follow you into a “deep subject dive” unless they can anticipate that a “solution” to their problem will be forthcoming. For that reason, a “brief-in-a-box” is actually a visual could prove highly useful in longer content blog posts.

In corporate blogging for business, it’s important to offer enough information in each post to convincingly cover the one key theme of the post. At the same time, it can be very effective to compose a long, comprehensive article and then turn that material into several different blog posts relating to that one issue or problem. Ways to accomplish this vary:

– busting one common myth or misconception relative to the problem
– describing one possible solution to the problem
– updating readers on one new piece of research of one new industry development
– offering a unique opinion or slant on best practices

Inserting “Ideas in Brief” in blog posts is a great idea, but in a way, blog posts themselves are a form of “ideas in brief”!

 

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Starting – and Sticking With – Blogging for Business

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While launching a business blog is a fearsome thing for many, sustaining the process is even harder, as Seth Godin discusses in The Dip.

Too many business owners and professional practitioners embark on blog marketing in recognition of its power to generate interest in their products and services. What gets them down is the week-after-week work of creating new, relevant, interesting, and results-producing…blog posts.

In the face of all the compelling reports demonstrating the value of blog marketing, Caslon Analytics tells us that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month!, 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days. The average blog, Caslon remarks ruefully, “has the lifespan of a fruitfly”.

Problem is, as we well know at Say It For You, in blog marketing, it’s just not OK to quit. Those abandoned blogs belong to those who don’t recognize what Seth Godin describes as the “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”. Google and other search engines tend to give more weight to websites that update their content regularly and that “keep on keeping on.” In fact, it’s the constant, consistent stream of new content that gives blogging its edge over other forms of marketing.

After years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and corporate blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that blog content writers who do nothing more than “show up” are exceptional! That’s because business owners who are able and willing to maintain consistency and frequency in posting to their blog are so rare. Remember, a company or practice might be achieving exceptional results, but potential customers and clients don’t yet know that, and that’s the message that needs to come across in the blog (and the latest entry cannot be six months old!).

Readers and search engines each know to “expect” fresh content. Freelance blog content writers are helping their business owner and professional practitioner clients build equity in keyword phrases over time, helping clients achieve those “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”.

 

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Readers Remember Helpful Hints

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Sometimes a concept just keeps slapping you in the face with how true it is…. I’d been writing about offering helpful how-to hints as a way of engaging visitors to your blog. Find complementary businesses or practices, I advised, asking those business owners or practitioners for tips they can offer for you to pass along to your readers. The best tips and hints, I added, are related to some a topic currently trending in the news, especially one affecting your industry.

Just the other day, in the course of attending virtual networking meetings, I heard two wonderful examples of helpful hints.

First, fellow InfoConnect2 member Jim Badger (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimbadger/)  explained that, because COVID-19 has caused to many people to meet virtually rather than in person, the logo imprint on the apparel should be put on the collar or high up on the shoulder of the jacket or shirt, so that it will be visible within in the frameword of the Zoom image

  • Hours later, in a Happy Networking virtual room, Samuel Brown, CEO of PacketEx in South Carolina (https://www.linkedin.com/in/packetex/) offered a helpful tip about computers and cell phones. Should we turn those off every night? Yes, Brown explained. It’s not because the phone or PC or Mac needs to rest (those machines are made to run, he said.) Turning off the devices allows them to perform automated tasks, including combating viruses, he explained.
  • At Say It For You, we teach that everything about your blog should be tailor-made for your ideal customer’s needs and preferences. The content is there to raise readers’ awareness of solutions and to educate them about products or tactics they perhaps hadn’t considered. With all that having been said, how do you get your business or practice remembered?

Well, the “logo” has to be high enough on the garment so it gets seen on the Zoom image. The advice has to solve a real problem and be implementable.

Try jogging your blog visitors’ memories with your own “in the now”, “in the know”, trend-related, practical, helpful hints!.

 

 

 

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