Your Blog Comes With Bragging Rights

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Yeah, it’s more than OK to brag on yourself in your blog. Remember, online visitors searching for a product or a service typically have no idea what it takes to do what you do and how much effort you put into acquiring the expertise you’re going to use to their benefit.

Hold on a moment – What I am not telling content writers to do is to “wave their credentials” around. What I do think needs to come across loud and clear in business blog writing is what preparation and effort it takes – on your part and on the part of your employees – to be able to deliver the expert advice, service, and products  customers can expect from you.

As a business owner in today’s click-it-yourself, do-it-yourself or hire-a-robot world, your content needs to demonstrate to online searchers that, in your field, you are smarter than Google Maps, or eHow, or Wikipedia. (A recent Digital Trends article criticized ChatGPT, saying that the chatbot has “limited knowledge of world events after 2021, and is prone to filling in replies with incorrect data if there is not enough information available on a subject.”)

Understanding your target market is different from just making assumptions about it. Instead, it’s about really trying to figure out its needs and motivations, squareup.com observes. “You should also consider who your customers are as people. What do they value? What is their lifestyle?”

Where “bragging rights” enter into the equation, we’ve learned at Say It For You, is that, in order for you to connect with those customers, the marketing content must make clear that you are part of their community and that therefore you share their concerns and needs.

Adboomadvertising.com agrees. “Don’t be modest, BRAG!! Bragging is vital for sales survival, so “brag about the results, and the value you were able to give clients who trusted you to handle their business.” Suggested tactics include:

  • case studies
  • testimonials
  • press clippings
  • awards and honors

In addition to all those “third-party” tactics, though, your blog content should provide readers with real insight into “what it took” and what keeps you and the people at your company or professional practice stay motivated to continue learning and serving. “It’s not bragging if it’s true,” says the rdwgroup. “Be confident but not conceited. Flaunt your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses.”

So, yeah, it’s more than OK to brag on yourself in your blog!

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Making Your Blog Bed Every Day

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In an interview with AARP Magazine, William McRaven (the Navy Seal admiral who oversaw the Osama Bin Laden raid) talks about the wisdom of doing small things right. “When I was training to become a SEAL, we got inspected every morning. The instructor would invariably pull out a quarter and flip it into the air to see if you’d pulled the blanket and sheet taut enough to make the coin bounce.” The chief petty officer had explained why. “If you can’t even make your bed to exacting standards, how are we ever going to trust you to lead a complex SEAL mission? Learn to do the little things right and you’ll learn to do the big things right.”

Nice to know I’m not the only one who thinks paying attention to detail is important , in my case, referring to the process of creating  marketing content for blogs.

Yes, blogs are supposed to be less formal and more personal in tone than traditional websites. But whenever content is posted in the name of your business (or in the case of Say It For You writers, in the name of a client’s business), the business brand is being “put out there” for all to see.

Formatting of blog content is very, very important, including the appropriate use of:

  • bolding and italics
  • short, concise sentences and paragraphs
  • bullet points and numbered lists
  • white space

Just as an unmade or poorly made bed is a sign of lack of standards and attention to detail, blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions” convey the kind of message you do not want going to readers. Be fastidious about grammar and spelling errors, avoiding run-on sentences and redundancy. Tighten up those paragraphs, giving them “hospital corner” impact.

True, most readers will merely scan your content and won’t pay very close attention to details like those. Some might, though. Can you afford to have potential customers noticing your lack of care in making your “blog bed”?

 

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Creating Contnt as Far as Your Headlights

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Content writers can take comfort in a quote by the editor of the Writer magazine of advice offered to novelists by E.L. Doctorow:

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. You don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.”

At some point, the process of writing a single novel is “completed”. In contrast, the process of creating content for a blog is never done. As with planning a novel, at the outset of planning a business blog, the content writer defines the basic story lines and themes. With the power of content marketing itself well-proven and documented, many business owners and professional practitioners embark on the strategy in recognition of its power to generate interest in their products and services. It’s the week-after-week work of creating new, relevant, interesting, and results-producing blog posts that has many sitting in the driver’s seat while the car stalls, feeling unable to muster strength for the long journey ahead. The resulting sad statistic – 90% of all bloggers for business neglect or abandon their efforts.

The Writer contributor Emma Sloan describes procrastination as “a blank mind and an even blanker Word document, the inability to just start gnawing at the back of your brain even as you open yet another unrelated tab online.” The most useful advice Sloan offers: Just start. Set a timer for just five minutes to see what you can get done today.”

In practical terms, blog content writers need to keep on telling the business’ or the practice’s story in its infinite variations over long periods of time, knowing that, to a certain extent, the blog content readers who end up as clients and customers will have self-selected rather than having been persuaded, “recruited”, or sold. Capturing and focusing readers’ attention is the whole point of blog content writing. Still, it’s often the content creators who seem to lose their focus and their ‘drive”.

For the “right now”, when those ‘long periods of time” seem far too overwhelming, it’s good advice for blog writers need to focus on relaying to their readers a single concept – one “how-to”, one explanation, one benefit to web visitors – overcoming their own “stall” by driving only “as far as their headlights”.

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You Don’t Have To Be a Blog Content Writer to Write

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“A writer writes, always.,” says the grand-prize winner of the Writer’s 500-word essay contest Michelle Y. Green. She doesn’t have to be at her keyboard or scribbling in a journal to write, she explains, because simply being curious and paying attention to details are any writer’s greatest tools.

In fact, several of Michelle Green’s pieces of advice for those new to writing are a perfect fit for blog content writers.

  • Many writers add one sentence, then subtract two or three words. Instead, just let the words flow.
    Blog content writing should be conversational and informal. Are second drafts even needed? Yes, but later, after you’ve let the thoughts flow, we tell content writers at Say It For You. Even more important than checking for spelling and grammar errors, though, is visualizing your target readers, and making sure your blog post is addressed to them, in their language, and that you’ve addressed their concerns.
  • Read what others are writing.
    Reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to your business field goes a long way towards keeping the blog “quiver” stocked with content ideas. Blog marketing involves knowing what’s being said by competitors, what’s trending, what aspects of your field are being discussed..
  • Enjoy research.
    To deliver quality writing of any kind, you’ve got to keep educating yourself, reading everything you can get your hands on, citing sources by paraphrasing and hyperlinking back to the page where the information originated. You then “translate” that information by putting it into context of your primary topic.
  • Notice details.
    Successful blog content writing is all about the details. Websites provide basic information about a company’s products or a professional’s services, but the blog content is there to attach a “face” and lend a “voice” to that information by filling in the finer details about the people behind the business and the choices they’ve made.   .

You don’t have to be a blog content writer to write – just feed your own natural curiosity – and take notes!

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Did-You-Know Content Teasers

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Tidbits of information can turn into content marketing treasure, we’ve learned over the years at Say It For You. Did-you-know content “teasers” not only spark interest when used in blog post titles, but can be used to describe your way of doing business, clarify the way one of your products works, or explain why one of the services you provide is particularly effective in solving a problem. A recent edition of the Farmer’s Almanac Gardener’s Guide proves my point…

  • Heirloom varieties of kidney, navy, and pinto beans, once considered a subsistence food (what you ate when the cupboards were bare) are now considered “gourmet”. Do not add nitrogen to the soil, because legumes “fix” nitrogen from the air around their roots.

Business owners and professionals stay abreast of trends in their fields by subscribing to trade journals and consumer magazines, scouring websites and newspapers, and by talking to colleagues and customers about the “latest and greatest”. Content readers, on the other hand, largely expect their service and product providers to have done all that work for them, keeping them up-to-date on trends and putting the information into perspective.

  • White asparagus is simply green asparagus that has been grown in the dark (sometimes under black plastic), because plants turn green only when their chlorophyll is exposed to sunlight.

(There are actually three different varieties of asparagus – green, white, and purple, each with a unique flavor.) Offering little known facts and explanations related to your own topic can engage readers’ interest, enticing blog visitors to keep coming back.

  • “Stand-ins” include Mexican mint marigold (stand-in for tarragon), lovage stand-in for celery), Vietnamese coriander (stand-in for cilantro) and salad burnet (substitute for cucumber).

Offering helpful hints is a way of engaging visitors through your blog articles. Find complementary businesses or practices, I advise content writers, 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.

 

  • Hummingbirds need an enormous amount of food relative to their size, so it may not be so much a matter of variety of plants but the quantity that attracts them.

In content marketing, quantity counts. It is difficult to get “traction” with an inconsistent or slow content publication schedule,; the “frequency illusion” refers to the fact that the more times time readers are exposed to your message, the more of a presence you will have in their minds.

  • All plants have specific needs pertaining to the amount of sun and water, type of soil, and growing space. Poor placement causes problems.

Find the right niche for your blog. When you demonstrate your own passion for a topic, readers will be more invested in what you have to say, Semrush.com advises new blog content creators.

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