Give your Brain and Theirs a Workout in Your Blog

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“Most of us have lived with the belief that we lean left brain or right brain in all capacities – from our hobbies to career to the movies we love,” Hope Clark explains in the latest issue of Writer’s Digest. In reality, Clark points out, there isn’t a defined spot for many tasks we do, and, it takes both right and left hemispheres of the brain’s cerebellum to write. Our left brain chooses words and phrases, constructing sentences, and calculating the “plot”. The right brain, meanwhile, is the “impulsive” side, putting imagination to work in the “story”.

Reading for the left brain
Strong writers are voracious readers, Clark says. First of all, reading takes reasoning and analysis, drawing on your left lobe. Since word choice is left-side behavior, reading diverse sources increases your vocabulary.

One of the principles I stress at Say It For You is that, in order to create a valuable ongoing blog for your business, it’s going to take equal parts reading and writing At least half the time that goes into creating a blog post is reading/research/thinking time!  Business content writing in blogs is the result of a lot of reading and listening on the part of the blogger.

Feeling and sensing for the right brain
Unexpected twists in books, plays, and art “feed” the right side of our brains. Writers can “lock themselves” into their usual ways of using words and the words can become stale, Clark explains. In blog marketing’s race, as Jeremy Porter Communications teaches, “those who make the most emotionally persuasive argument win.”  While blog posts can be informative, filled with myth-busting proof, it’s the emotional impact that keeps readers engaged.

Why change?
If you have a dominant style that’s worked for you, why change? Going against the current strengthens you and gives depth to your writing, Clark is convinced. Maybe your story seems dull or too predictable. Maybe you have lots of ideas but have trouble meshing them into a tale. Don’t be satisfied with “who you are” – be who you can become, she urges her readers.

Combine right brain and left brain in blog marketing
Clark’s message to writers is one all content marketers need to hear. Remember, online searchers arrive at a blog on a fact-finding mission, looking for information about what the owners do, sell, and know about. Posting fresh content that relates directly to the purpose of the reader’s search is exactly how to reassure search engines – and ultimately searchers – they’ve come to the right place to get the facts. But data itself may not be the best way to persuade and to overcome skepticism. The marketing message needs to be emotionally persuasive as well.

Blog to put both sides of your brain – and theirs – to work!

 

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How Not to Write a Letter or Blog Post

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“When you write a business letter to a stranger, never keep to the point,” is Anna Stevens Read’s tongue-in-cheek advice to authors. “Indulge in lengthy discussions – for all you know, the person may not have the average amount of intelligence.”

While dripping in sarcasm, Read’s piece actually emphasizes a number of important points which content writers of every ilk would do well to heed:

Keeping to the point
In a sense, focus is the point in blog content writing. At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the “Power of One”, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience. Decide up front what your point it, then stick to it, is our advice to content creators.

Respecting readers’ intelligence
Over-explaining is symptomatic of authorial insecurity, K. M Weiland tells book authors.  As a corporate blogging trainer, I agree. We have to assume our online readers are a) intelligent and b) by definition, interested in our subject. The University of North Carolina’s Writing Center is saying much the same thing, telling students to write their essays in a manner that treats their instructors as an intelligent but uninformed audience.

Addressing “what they want to hear”
“Do not ask yourself what your friend wishes to hear. If her interest is in clothes, describe your houseplants.” Uh-uh. At Say it For You, we teach that, in addition to having a focused topic for each blog post, writers must have a specific audience in mind, choosing the best evidence for that target audience.  Smart blog content marketers know there are many subsets of every target market group, and that not every message will work on every group. Is the viewpoint you’re presenting relevant to a current need or conversation or trend?

Providing variety
“Never think of variety or of what kind of letter you last sent in that direction,” Reads quips.
In blogging, as we continue to write about our industry, our products, and our services, we’ll naturally find ourselves repeating some key ideas. But it’s the different examples we use – of ways our company’s products can be helpful or the ways problems are solved using our services – that lend variety to our blog posts. In addition, variety can be offered in sentence and paragraph length, and in the layout of the post itself.

Careful use of humor
“These directions, faithfully followed, will soon save you from the nuisance of writing letters,” Reads humorously summarizes. As a blogging trainer, I admit to having mixed feelings about humor in business blogs.  While I’ve no doubt about the power of laughter to forge connections, humor has to be handled with care not to offend.

No, it’s not funny…..Keeping to the point, respecting readers’ intelligence, and providing variety – those are the very skills successful content creators must master.

 

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Guest Post: 5 Best Ideas for Driving Organic Traffic through Blog Posts

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Are you wondering if blogging is actually worth it for your business? Blogs may seem time-consuming to create, especially for a small business owner, but they have shown to be extremely beneficial for driving traffic.

Why are blog posts important for online businesses?

Obviously, this article is all about encouraging more organic traffic through blog posts but what other benefits do blogs bring?

Firstly, the more articles your website has published, the more keywords you are likely to rank for. Increasing keyword ranking will contribute to your website’s SEO rankings and authority within your niche. With a blog, you’re able to address more questions and thoughts that your target audience is looking for and are therefore more likely to rank higher within their search results.

Secondly, blog posts are essential to the educational part of your funnel, the top entry level. People come to blogs for answers to their queries and will start pushing them through your funnel. Helping to create warm leads by getting them to sign up to your email list or explore and purchase your products and/or services.

Thirdly, unlike social media posts that have a short life span, results from blog posts can get better with age. Over time, your articles may attract more links, more shares, and gain higher SERP positions. Blogging will provide long-term results and ensure a continued flow of traffic, leads and potential sales.

This is only a touch on all of the potential benefits you will find from blogging. So, what are the best ways to start?

5 best ways to boost organic traffic with blog posts

1. Writing List Posts
Our first recommendation is to write list posts, exactly like the post you are reading right now. Want to know the specific data behind the success of list posts? In a recent study reported by Conductor, a global SEO agency, 36% of the participants noted that they were more likely to click on list posts and list headlines.

Here are some examples of good list headlines that are sure to increase traffic:

  •  10 ways for using the Pomodoro technique in everyday time-management
  •  3 open-source alternatives to Adobe Photoshop
  •  5 free workout programmes for busy people and their benefits

If you want to increase your search rankings, your list posts have to offer something unique and valuable. This is typically done by following these  recommendations:

  • Offering expert advice based on your personal experiences. Referring to existing case studies and data.
  • Sharing valuable anecdotes and tidbits relevant to your topic.
  •  Including practical recommendations addressing topical issues.

 

2. Sharing Third-Party Resources and Links
When blogging, it’s easy to see other bloggers as your rivals. This attitude, however, is destructive and unhealthy if you’re planning to blog professionally.

Collaborating with other bloggers is one of the most effective means of growing organic traffic and is a cornerstone of white-label link building. A great way to achieve this aim is by writing and curating a resource page.

A good resource page should do all of the below.
? Include links to respectable blogs, and third-party products and services.
? Disclose if you’re partnered with other blogs or are sponsored by the companies that you are linking to.
? Be topical; you should update your resource page at least once a month to keep track of the latest issues and provide value to your readers.
? Include your remarks and comments about the content you’re linking to.

Some platforms (e.g., Hubspot) are so large that their entire resources page only includes links to their own resources and tools. This is simply not feasible for smaller bloggers. Because of this, don’t worry if your resources page needs to link to other popular blogs. Other blogs are not out there to ‘steal’ your readers. Your readers will appreciate you trying to provide as much value as possible and will return to your blog for more. In addition, resource pages can be a great place to connect with other bloggers and perhaps gain links back to your blog and grow your rankings.

3. Writing Detailed Reviews
Let’s face it, everybody likes reading a good review. But what exactly should you review? Well, practically anything goes. Book reviews are incredibly popular right now as reading is seen as a highly prestigious and thoughtful hobby in a world that is overwhelmed by information. The average time spent reading books in the US has remained consistently around 15 minutes per day since 2014.

Other great review options are online platforms, tools and courses. Online learning is experiencing a huge boom right now due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, a lot of people simply don’t know what courses or online universities they should choose. You could (and should) become a very valuable guide in a rapidly expanding industry.

Reviews of products are also encouraged. There are always new and emerging products and brands within every niche. Product reviews will always have a place in blogging and gain organic traffic from the people looking specifically for reviews before purchasing anything. This can also easily lead to affiliate sales and sponsored review posts in the future.

If you want to write a captivating review, follow the below guidelines:

  • Include links to respectable sources of secondary data.
  • Clearly mark your own subjective opinions.
  • Don’t be afraid to share personal stories and anecdotes.
  • Always remain critical but don’t nitpick.

4. Using a Keyword Ranking Tool
Two of the most widespread mistakes made by bloggers are failing to integrate new keywords into their posts and not getting rid of keywords that are no longer valuable. You’ve already made the same mistakes if you’ve done at least one of the following things:

  • Only use a single spreadsheet including all your keywords.
  • Do not check the keyword statistics for your older posts.
  • Do not use any third-party tools to monitor the rankings of your current keywords.

If you’ve recognised your blogging practices in the above list, then it’s time for a change. Luckily, two of the best keyword ranking tools that are available to bloggers are completely free.

  •  Ahrefs provides free monthly updates to its keyword database and can search keyword popularity across different domains. The tool also focuses on non-conventional metrics such as keyword difficulty and the estimated organic traffic provided by each new keyword
  • MOZ can be used to easily generate infographics about specific keywords and is a great daily tracker of keyword popularity.

Make a habit of spending at least 10-15 minutes per day to check the status of your keywords and update your SEO spreadsheets and documents. This is not only a great time management exercise but is practically a guarantee of achieving solid organic traffic figures.

5. Guest Posting Featuring Opinion Leaders
We’ve already discussed that bloggers become stronger by cooperating and writing extensive resource pages. The same principle also applies to guest posting and inviting opinion leaders to give valuable tips on a specific subject.

A good guest post:

  • is written by a well-known personality and includes the distinct features of this personality’s style.
  • offers a unique perspective on a topical issue (e.g., new updates to the Google algorithm).
  • credits all contributors and details why these people are considered experts in a given field.
  • includes links to the guest contributor’s other publications.

We know that guest posting might seem a bit scary. After all, you’re willingly relinquishing creative control to a person you might not have met before. Nonetheless, it’s a great way to grow traffic and increase the authority of your web page.

You can also provide high-quality, guest post content to other websites yourself. This helps to establish you and your business as an authority in your niche and can bring organic traffic from other blogs.

Another way to collaborate with opinion leaders is by creating interview-type posts or list of snippets from multiple personalities. The wealth of information in these posts can attract a lot of attention from potential visitors and links from other bloggers.

Conclusion:

In our opinion, the optimal time to start growing your organic traffic is right now. With the rise in teleworking and similar digital services, more and more people turn to bloggers to adapt to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. If you follow the above strategies, you’re sure to become a valid opinion leader in your own right and strongly grow your loyal following.

Author Bio
           

 Catherine Smith is an online Marketing Manager at PhD Centre, specializing in PhD thesis writing. She is passionate about researching and writing on various topics, including Education, Marketing, and Technology.

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Speaking English in Content Marketing

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“This big fat notebook makes all the stuff you learn in school sink in,” the editors of The Complete Middle School Study Guide to English Language Arts promise. “Words don’t exist in a vacuum out in space, the authors explain. Sometimes we can only understand what they mean because of the other words around them..”As a content writer, I found the author’s list of word relationships might serve as a checklist of ideas for different ways of presenting information in blog posts (adapting the sophistication level, of course, to the target audience)

Cause/effect
“I wanted a new bike because I saw the one Carlos had.”‘

A small business owner’s or a professional practitioner’s business blog marketing can have a disproportionately positive effect on results – IF those efforts are kept up. On the other hand, spelling and grammar errors in emails and blog posts will have a negative effect on readers’ perception of your company.

Compare/contrast
“You’re about to introduce your brother to a new friend. To give him an idea of what that friend might be like, you might say either ‘He’s just like Chris’ or ‘He’s nothing like Chris'”.

A unique selling proposition (USP) is a succinct, memorable message that identifies the unique benefits that are derived from using your product or service as opposed to a competitor’s, business coach Andrew Valley emphasizes.

Analogy
“A student is to a new topic like a detective is to a case.” “A tree is to a forest like a boat is to an ocean.”

As you set about explaining yourself, your business philosophy, your products and processes , to make the information you’re presenting in blog posts easy for readers to understand by comparing the unfamiliar with the familiar and the timely.

Contrasting characters in books and plays
“One way a writer develops characters is to contrast them so the reader can see their differences”

There’s something of a moral dilemma in content marketing . We want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition, but “Golden Rule” ethics dictate that we say only those kinds of things about specific competitors that we’d want them saying about us. The solution: accentuate the positive, explaining why you have chosen to do things the way you do,

The Little Fat Notebook is a good reminder to “Speak English” in your content marketing!

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Taglines and Blog Post Titles

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“Slogans and their accompanying campaigns are some of the best tools advertisers have to connect with their audiences,” according to theladders.com. Also known as catchphrases or tagline, slogans 1. grab attention and 2. build awareness around a product or brand.

As a content writer, I couldn’t help noticing that the well-known taglines listed in the article appear to fall into several different categories::

The actual brand name is included in the tagline:
State Farm – “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”
MasterCard – “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.”

The tagline emphasizes the benefit to users of the product:
M&M – “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands”
Energizer -” It keeps going and going and going”
Bounty – “The quicker picker upper”
Greyhound – “Leave the driving to us”
Campbell’s Soup – “M’m! M’m! Good!”
New York Times – “All the news that’s fit to print”
Maxwell House – “Good to the last drop”
FedEx – “When there is no tomorrow”

The tagline is largely motivational, appealing to consumers’ desire for significance:
Nike – “Just do it”
De Beers – “A diamond is forever”

The tagline needs a lot of further explanation:
McDonalds – “I’m lovin’ it”
Wendy’s – “Where’s the beef??
General Electric – “Imagination at work”
California Milk Processor Board – “Got milk?”

“You can’t be confused about your mission, the authors caution; otherwise you’ll create a slogan that lacks power and purpose.” (In creating blog post titles, content writers can take heed of three of the Ladder’s guidelines):

  1. Keep it short and sweet, ideally under eight words.
  2. Don’t get too fancy or sophisticated with your word choice.
  3. Be honest

Another of their suggestions, on the other hand, is less applicable to blog marketing: “Don’t give it an expiration date; you want it to transcend time, so don’t include references to current events…” Marketing content writers, we believe at Say It For You, should, in their posts and in the titles of those posts, make use of conversations trending at the time and of current happenings.

In content marketing through blogs, we want the searcher to click on the link to the post, and of course we want search engines to offer our content as a match for readers seeking information and guidance on our topic. More than that, though, a blog post title in itself constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors. In essence, you’re saying, “If you click here, you’ll be led to a post that in fact discusses the topic mentioned in the title. Catchy as the “I’m lovin’ it” and even the “Where’s the beef?” taglines just aren’t going to sere the purpose, since the words don’t match up with those the searchers used.

On the other hand, when titles succeed in appealing to target readers’ need – both for the benefits of a product or service and to satisfy their desire for motivation and significance, that’s nothing but M’m! M’m good!

 

 

 

 

 

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