Focus 2 Blogging for Business

Focus™2, a career and education planning system for college students that we use with our students at Butler College of Business, talks about three types of people:

Helpers
People with a social orientation enjoy helping people and are very interested in human relationships. They are often described as patient and idealistic.

Persuaders
Persuaders like to influence others, and enjoy working with people and ideas, rather than with things. They are adventurous and ambitious.

Organizers
Organizers like to follow set procedures and routines, and to work with data and details.

What this suggests for us business blog content writers is that, for each post, we target one of  the three types of readers.  Over time, we can address all three types of readers.

For example, Rich Brooks of socialmediaexaminer.com lists different types of blog post formats, including:

– How-to’s and tutorials
– Resources and link lists
– To-do’s
– Reviews
– Controversial posts
– Interviews
– Series
– Case studies
– Stats
– Daily roundups
– Breaking news
– Personal stories

I can see where “Organizers” would love the to-do’s, the how-to’s and tutorials, the resources lists, and the stats. The “Persuaders” might like the controversial posts and the reviews.  The “Helpers” might like the personal stories and interviews the best.

Our task as blog content writers is to signal to target customers that we understand their needs and are dedicated to helping them. Our knowledge of who our target audience is must influence every aspect of our blog –from the words we use in the title, how technical we get, to how sophisticated we try to be in our approach.

But, since, no matter how skillful our analytics, we don’t really ever know who will be reading our blog post on any one day, let’s target the helpers, persuaders, and organizers in turn!