Blogging, Like Design, is About Creatively Solving Problems

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“Design is often misconstrued to be a luxury. Yet, at its core, design is about creatively solving the problems we all face at any scale,” Tom Gallagher writes in the Indianapolis Business Journal. “…practitioners often downplay the importance of beauty, but aesthetic must not be dismissed”. In urban design, Gallagher continues, fashion addresses who we are and how we respect others. The quality of materials speaks to our shared values.

“What we see has a profound effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are,” Mike Parkinson of Billion Dollar Graphics asserts. Parkinson quotes famed psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who demonstrated that no less than 93% of communication is nonverbal. “

In fact, the aesthetic element must not be dismissed in blog content creation, either. Images are one of the three “legs” of the business blog “stool”, we teach at Say It For You, along with information and perspective or “slant”. Not only is it true that articles containing images get more total views and higher ratings, images help explain and emphasize concepts. The visual presentation of a blog post – the type font, the bolding, italics, spacing – all the details work to support the words and ideas and contribute to the general impression left with online readers.

So, if design is so important, does all that mean video blogs are going to supplant text content?

As a Say It For You blog content writer and trainer, I appreciated a 2017 fourdots.com blog post discussing that very question, and making a four-point case for textual content as a primary driver of online communication:

  1. Text gives you the option to stop exactly where you want to, wrapping your mind around a certain piece of information.
  2. Text can be easily updated and upgraded.
  3. B2B buyers consume informational pieces and case studies, looking for industry thought leadership.
  4. Text stimulates the mind and is more focused.

Just about ten years ago, I published a blog post titled “Shoes and Business Blogs – Some People Care if They’re Shined”. The post touched on aesthetics, advising marketers to “dress your blog in its best” by preventing “wardrobe malfunctions” such as grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors, avoiding redundancies, and tightening up those paragraphs.. Avoid redundancy; tighten up those paragraphs, I cautioned.

Yes, blogging, like design, is about creatively solving problems, but aesthetics must not be dismissed!

 

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Comparative Marketing for Blogs

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“As long as the value of one product or service is being communicated through its comparison to another product or service, it qualifies as comparative advertising,” Conor Bond writes in Wordstream. The goal, as with all advertising, is to communicate value, but in the case of comparative advertising, that value is conveyed not only from quality, but from the disparity in quality between one product or service and another. The other company or provider serves as an anchor, Bond explains, something concrete to use as a reference point.

Bond offers examples of comparative advertising, including:

  • Mac portraying its own users as immune to the viruses that commonly attack PCs
  • Verizon portraying its own customers enjoying online games and YouTube videos on their phones while ATT&T customers suffer lack of access
  • Wendy’s tweeting about MacDonald’s beef patties still being frozen
  • Popeye’s “dinging” chick-fil-A for being closed on Sundays

Two companies that choose to compare themselves against an amalgam of others rather than a specific rival, Bond notes, are Dove (treats your skin with care, unlike the others who treat it harshly), and Allstate using Mayhem to show that they outdo competitors in preparing customers to deal with unpredictable events.

Can comparative marketing work for blogs? At Say It For You, we teach, negatives against competitors are a basic no-no. It’s almost axiomatic that, in writing for business, we want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition.  In getting the point across that readers should want to choose this business or this practice, or these products and services over those offered by the competition, staying positive is still important. In fact, sometimes knowing what not to include in your business blog writing makes you a better blog content writer.

The “Golden Rule” advice Advisor Today gives to financial planning practitioners applies here: “say only those kinds of things about specific competitors that we’d want them saying about us!” The high road in blog marketing strategy and tactics development is what Bing Crosby used to croon, “Accentuate the positive…latch on to the affirmative.”

One format I’ve found useful is the “Some……but we….”

  • “Some stylists are in the practice of ……, but at Shirley’s Salon, we believe …….. is best.”
  • Some housecleaning companies require you to provide your own products, but at ABC, we supply our cleaning staff with green products.”

    In other words, accentuate the positive. Comparative blog marketing means explaining why you do things the way you do, letting readers draw their own conclusions.

 

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Guest Post: CMO Skills Essential for Marketing

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Since our Say It For You writers often work under the direction of a company’s Chief Marketing Officer, this insightful guest post about effective CMOs is of interest. Author Dana Harris is a writer and a freelance marketing specialist. She has been writing articles on marketing tips and strategies for over five years.

CMOs are invaluable members of any company. However, their role constantly grows and transforms due to the continuous evolution of the marketing world. From new tactics to the latest trends, there’s no shortage of skills and tools for marketers to master. But which strengths are truly essential for a chief marketing officer? This blog discusses what you need in a good CMO.

This Chief Marketing Officer resume guide details the top five common traits of a competent CMO:

  • good leader
  • quick adapter
  • customer-centered
  • great communicator
  • excellent data analyzer

A CMO needs each of these fundamental skills to fulfill all of the responsibilities of their position.

However, these are not the only desirable traits. A CMO’s role is so influential that it can make or break a company’s brand image, sales, and overall profit. It’s critical to prevent a decline in any of those areas. Here are five more skills your CMO should possess to boost your marketing efforts and impact.

Goal Setting

Knowing how to set goals is a significant marketing skill. As the leader of a company’s marketing department, it’s certainly a must-have skill for a CMO. They should know how to implement marketing tactics that align with the company’s goals. Not only that, they should continually aim for a stronger brand and a greater product reach. Even the best marketing strategy risks failure with no guiding goals in mind.

Understanding of UX & UI

Technology is a critical element for a marketing campaign to reach its full potential. This reason is why a company’s CMO and technical team must work together. However, a CMO with knowledge of basic UX/UI design skills is extremely valuable. These skills allow the CMO to build a consumer experience that supports a company’s marketing goals and strategies. Also, the technical team can achieve much more when the CMO has a basic working knowledge of their design skills.

Creativity and Innovation

The ability to be both creative and innovative is essential in the marketing field. Marketers should constantly look for new methods and inventive ways to execute marketing plans to keep up with the latest trends. A creative CMO has a better understanding of consumers and can deliver a valuable experience to them. The combination of data-driven insight and creative thinking is the perfect recipe for actionable campaigns.

Content Management

Did you know that 94% of consumers go to the internet to research products? People often go to Google to look for information and resources during the purchasing process. This fact shows the importance of content marketing. Content marketing covers the constant development and optimization of blog posts, videos, eBooks, whitepapers, and other content pieces. Content management skills have become essential with so much centered on the internet.

Excellent Storytelling

Every effective marketer should be a good storyteller. They should be able to use data to weave a compelling story and put the company’s name on top. Customers typically buy products based more on emotion than logic. A CMO must appeal to the audience’s emotional side and compel them to buy into the brand. Powerful storytelling speaks into the lives of customers and connects a product directly to a solution. It’s a balance of both emotion and logic.

Wrapping Up

Indeed, a chief marketing officer is a very complex and diverse role that is constantly evolving. Companies seeking a capable CMO shouldn’t overlook these essential skills, and neither should those seeking to be the next CMO. Regardless of marketing or technological advances, these skills will take both the CMO and the company confidently into the future.

 

 

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Blog Posts and Bradford Hill Criteria

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blog metrics

Back in 1965, Sir Austin Bradford Hill published a paper about the dose-response relationship. If X causes Y, the more of X you have, the more Y will result, is the concept.. While Bradford Hill’s original work related to disease causation, his methods are often used to evaluate cause/effect links in other fields.

Why is causation such an important research activity? “Causation influences decisions related to prognosis, diagnosis and treatment,” researchers found, and “findings also teach us about the functioning of healthy systems”. The authors point out that even though a condition may be found to respond to a certain treatment, that does not necessarily uncover the cause. Of that your headache!)

At Say It For You, our blog content writers know that consistently posting content that is accurate, dependable, and actionable attracts new customers and clients and keeps them coming back. But knowing whether, and how well, your tactics are doing in terms of accomplishing these goals involves verifying the “dose-response relationship” between the content and the results.

Three of the nine criteria Sir Bradford Hill proposed are:

1. Strength (effect size).
2. Consistency (reproducibility)
3. Specificity: (Causation is likely if there is a very specific population at a specific site)

Sometimes, Chief Marketing Officers forget to use the techniques they rely on with other forms of marketing when it comes to blogs, Heidi Cohen of the Content Marketing Institute observes. Metrics are needed to determine whether you’ve achieved your goals. Things worth “counting” include:

  • Visitors (where do they come from? Where specifically do they go on your site?)
  • Page views (where do visitors click to and where do they leave?)
  • Time on site (shows how engaged they are)
  • Signups for an RSS feed or newsletter

Different topics and different blog formats (even days of the week for publishing your blog) can then be tested Bradford Hill-style for strength, consistency and specificity.

To what extent, exactly, is your marketing blog “causing” marketing results? Bradford Hill can help you be in the know!

 

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In Blog Post Titles, Beware of Anchor Bias

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Anchoring bias causes us to rely heavily – often too heavily – upon the first piece of information we receive. Whether we’re setting plans, making estimates about something – or reading a blog post – we interpret newer information from the reference point of our “anchor”, thedecisionlab.com explains. What’s the problem? The “anchor” idea gets stuck in our heads, making us reluctant to accept information that follows, information which might cause us to change our minds.

For business blog content writers, the first piece of information readers are going to receive is obviously the title of the post. We want the searcher to “drop anchor” by clicking on the link, and of course want search engines to offer our content as a match for readers seeking information and guidance on our topic.

When it comes to blog marketing, titles that seem clever are often not effective. The name of the blog post must make clear – to both searchers and search engines – what the post is about. Search engine optimization aside, 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 discussing the topic mentioned in the title
  • you’ll be led to a post that explains how to reduce an undesirable effect
  • you’ll be led to a post that explains how to achieve a desirable effect
  • you’ll obtain information on how to do something

The tone of the blog post title also implies a promise:

  • this content is going to be humorous or satirical
  • this content is going to provide a list
  • this content is going to be thought-provoking and/or controversial
  • this content is going to be cautionary or even frightening

As blog content writers, we also need to beware anchoring. As Decision Lab explains, “Anchoring is so ubiquitous that it is thought to cause a number of other thinking fallacies, including the planning fallacy. The planning fallacy describes how we tend to underestimate the time we’ll need to finish a task. Since researching and composing an excellent blog post for a business is labor-intensive, including “reading around”, researching, composing, illustrating, and sharing, both commitment and time management need to be part of the expectations from the get-go.

On a basic level, maintaining consistency – beginning with blog post titles, then to blog post content, and ultimately to delivering quality products and services to customers – is the only way for any business to become, and remain, valued in its marketplace.

Use blog post titles as anchors, but beware of causing anchor bias!

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