Posts

Personalizing Blog Content – on Both Ends

/0 Comments/in /by

We need to update the definition of the word “personalize”, Stu Heinecke insists in his book Get the Meeting. Why? To differentiate between the two forms “wide” and “deep”. Wide personalization, Heinecke explains, applies readily available data across an audience, while deep personalization applies individualized research findings to produce unique outreach elements, one by one.

Can blogging do both?

Personalizing on the audience end:
At Say It For You, I teach that 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. And since we content writers are hired by clients to tell their story online to their target audiences, we need to do intensive research, as well as take guidance from the business owner’s or practitioner’s experience and expertise.

Now, since blogging is part of inbound marketing, it cannot involve researching each individual’s hobbies and preferences, creating and shipping unique gifts in order to “get the meeting”.

On the other hand, as Mo the Blog Coach explains, having an abstract audience in mind when creating content is ineffective, causing you to ramble on, trying to help ALL the people. Instead, she advises, “humanize your reader, singling them down to one specific person experiencing one specific problem.

Personalizing on the blog marketer’s end with I-you language:
In blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

It was apparent the editors of Flea Market Home & Living magazine had latched onto this exact secret. Each page featured a designer – or homeowner – statement beginning in first person:

  • “I make things out of what most folks consider garbage and get an inordinate amount of pleasure from it.”
  • “I try not to follow any rules. I really try not to copy anyone and I try to avoid trends.”
  • “I believe your sense of color is like a muscle that needs to e exercised.”
  • “I feel good supporting the local Goodwill. Plus, with the money I save, I feel better about the occasional splurge.”

In blog marketing, customers might be asked for statements like these – sharing stories of unique ways they used your product or service, or describing a problem you helped them solve. On marketers’ end, “I” and “we” statements give readers the feeling that the providers of the services and products are speaking directly to them. In fact, in business blogging, one goal should be to present the business or practice as very personal rather than merely transactional, reminding readers that there are real life humans behind the content on the website.

Blog content with the greatest chance of success is personalized on both ends!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blogging to Make Them Want to See Things the Way You Do

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Communicating with pictures and words is what Dan Roam’s little book for speakers, Show and Tell: How Everybody Can Make Extraordinary Presentations is all about. The purpose, the author says, of creating and delivering a report pitch, or story, is t make it s captivating that our audience wants to see things the way we do.

That’s a very hard thing for speakers to accomplish, Roam admits. (Blog content writers don’t have the advantage of facing the audience in person, using eye contact and gestures, which makes the task even more challenging!).

Dan Roam’s 3 Rules of Show and Tell can help, though, even if video clips are not part of the blog:

  • When we tell the truth in a presentation, we connect with our audience and we have self-confidence.
  • When we tell a story, complex concepts become clear, and we include everyone.
  • When we tell a story with pictures, we banish boredom and people see what we mean.

There are actually three kinds of truth, Roam points out, and as presenters, we need to ask ourselves: for this topic, for this audience, and for myself, which truth should I tell? I particularly like that observation, because at Say It For You, we emphasize the “power of one”, with each blog post having a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of the business or practice. Roam suggests presenters ask themselves the following question: “If my presentation could change them in just one way, what would that change be?”

There are really only four ways to move an audience, Roam adds:

  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

Which one of those four goals we choose determines the structure of our storyline in the content of the speech – or blog post.

Truth, story, and pictures – If we get those things right, Dan Roam assures fearful speakers, everything that follows will be a breeze. “When we trust our ideas and are confident, we will help our audience change.”

Change is what it’s all about, Roam says of presentations, and that’s certainly what it’s all about in blogging for business!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

In Blog Marketing, Is Timing Everything?

/0 Comments/in /by

“You’ve probably already seen a lot of tricks and tips about the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of success,” says Michael Breus, author of a book on Circadian science. “But there is another crucial question that must be addressed,” he posits. In fact, Breus claims, the question When? “ is the very foundation of success.”

Is timing, in fact, “everything”, when it comes to blogging for business? Dr. Breus writes about the best time to eat lunch, ask for a raise, write a novel, and take meds. Depending on the chronotype of the writer, there may well be a “best” time for creating  blog content. The question is, since there’s no way to know the chronotype of each blog visitor, is there a best time to publish blogs?

Over the years, blogtyrant.com relates, various studies have analyzed data to find out the best time to publish a blog post. Each study has a different slant, measuring social shares, comments, or clicks. Several studies found Monday to be the best day for maximum traffic (pageviews). On the other hand, Saturday appeared to be the best day for comments, keeping in mind that 80% of the U.S. population is found in the Eastern and Central time zones. For B2B marketing, the hours of 7-9 AM and then again from 4-6 PM seem to draw the greatest number of eyeballs. When promoting your posts on social media, the best time to get noticed appears to be around 5PM, bluleadz.com adds.

A sort of contrarian view on the subject is offered by trackmaven.com: “While planning your blogging strategy and schedule, you want to avoid busy times, when a lot of brands are posting to their blogs and there is increased competition for readers’ attention.”

At Say it For You, we tend to agree with this blogtyrant statement: “Creating consistently high-quality content is more important than the time you publish your blog post….Remember, once a blog post is published and indexed by the search engines, it can be found.”

The issue for many business owners and practitioners is often less that of choosing the optimal posting time and more about finding the time to create content to post! Because blog content writing takes considerable time and effort (two scarce commodities in business owners’ lives), writing for business too often is put on – and too often stays on – the back burner.

Research continues apace on the “when” of blog post publishing. Dan Zarrella of Hubspot comes to one important, albeit rueful, conclusion: “It is “increasing publishing frequency that leads to more traffic and incoming links.”

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Best Blog Content Writers Read Around and Toggle

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

“Dreams, I’m convinced, are just one more dimension of our minds,” writes Sylvia Browne in her best-seller, Book of Dreams...

At Say It For You, I teach the principle of “reading around” in order to attain “go-to industry authority”.  In fact, I stress, business bloggers are going to need to spend at least as much time reading as writing. Even after almost a decade and a half creating blog content for business owners and practitioners, I continue to need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my client sells and what it does for its clients. At least half the time that goes into creating a post is reading/research/thinking time, I’ve found. The writing part can flow only after prep time is complete.

Just last month, I quoted Carina Rampell of the Content Marketing Institute, who explains that our reading needn’t be limited to the subject of our blog content.  Poetry, she explains, can teach us clarity and precision, while the classics can teach us compelling storytelling structure. Browsing through the Sylvia Browne book on dream interpretation (hardly my usual choice of reading topic!) made me realize the truth of Rampell’s statement that “reading helps us get away from our subject or product expertise and unlock our creativity”.  

Every dream experience, Browne posits, is one of five kinds:
  • the prophetic dream
  • the release dream
  • the wish dream
  • the information or problem-solving dream
  • astral visits
“Knowing what type of dream I’m trying to interpret, Browne explains, “is always my first step in unlocking its mysteries.”

Business blog posts also come in different varieties.  From the content writers’ point of view, I’s generally a good idea to toggle back and forth among those varieties over time, keeping returning visitors engaged, but also in order to appeal to different types of reader. There are “how-to” tutorial posts, resources and link lists, reviews, opinion pieces, interviews, case studies, breaking news, and personal story posts. But, precisely as Sylvia Browne observes, knowing what type of post you are presenting helps unlock its “success”.

The best blog content writers have learned to read around and then – toggle among the types!
Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

The Memo Meme for Blogging

/0 Comments/in , , /by


Memos are usually written for one of the following reasons, explains Tony Rossiter, author of Effective Business Writing in Easy Steps:

  • to provide a written record
  • to give the reader background information for a specific visit or event
  • to make a suggestion or proposal
  • to give advice or make recommendations about a particular issue or problem

Interesting – I couldn’t help reflecting: the key characteristics of a good memo which Rossiter lists are remarkably similar to the key characteristics of good blog posts:

  • they’re short
  • they’re clear and concise
  • they’re reliable, with information that is 100% accurate
  • they’re reader-friendly
  • they’re easy to read

To be effective, both blog posts and memos must clarify the issue (explain the need for action), provide “arguments” in favor of taking that action, based on essential facts surrounding the issue or topic.

You might like to do several things in your memo, Rossiter suggests (every one of these, our Say It For You content writers know, can apply to effective blog posts):

  1. draw attention to a track record of successful involvement in similar actions or projects
  2. acknowledge the expertise of the people who will be heading up the project
  3. suggest next steps (perhaps a planning meeting or further information-gathering)

In the case of a marketing blog post, that next step might be signing up for a newsletter, subscribing to the blog, downloading a paper, or clicking on a link to a landing page showing various product or service options.

A printed or emailed memo typically begins with a “to” (“to: managing director”, “to: all technical staff”, “to: all regional managers”… While a blog post relies on incoming online traffic, it’s crucial for the content writers to direct their message to a specific target audience.

When composing a blog post, it helps to remember the memo “meme”!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail