ETDBW Blog Content Writing

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“An important driver of customer loyalty is how little effort the customer has to expend to do business with you,” Dixon, Toman, and Delisi point out in the Effortless Experience. Identify the customers’ biggest hassles and look for ways to be their hero by making that piece of the process easier for them, the authors advise.

There are ways to be Easy To Do Business With, says Ted Stahl, and each of these can be implemented through blog marketing:

  • Be proactive. Stay in touch with customers on a regular basis, Stahl emphasizes.
    At Say It For You, after years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that business owners who “show up” with new content on their websites are rare. There’s a tremendous fall-off rate, with most blogs abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. You might say the first job of a blog content writer is to help a business or a professional practice “get its frequency on”, so that they keep “running into” their readers.
  • Simplify your packages. We live in a culture of information saturation. Consumers today are highly distracted, which is why your blog posts need to include very focused, well-written calls to action. Often I remind practitioners and business owners getting ready to launch a marketing blog that the only people who are going to notice their blog are the ones already interested in that topic. The Call to Action is simply giving those readers a simple way to act on the information you’ve provided, I explain.
  • Say YES to any reasonable request for personalization. I like to remind both the blog content writers at Say It For You and the clients who hire us that the goal of a business blog is to bring in customers “of the right kind”, customers who have a need for and who will appreciate the services, products, and expertise being showcased in the blog. Anecdotes and testimonials are each ways of using your blog to show how personalized your service can be.
  • Answer the phone on the first ring. “You’d think website visitors would be more than willing to click through to your Contact page to find your phone number, but the truth is, many times they’re not,” the Bright Orange Thread blog points out. Websites – and blog sites – that make it difficult for online searchers to navigate make it easy for those searchers to “bounce away”.  If the content makes the reader want to call your company, is the phone number in plain sight? If the reader wants to submit a question or comment, or request further information, how easy is that to do?

Your blog is an excellent way to show you are here and Easy-To-Do-Business-With!

 

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Bloggers and Advisors Seek Ways to Get Discovered

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“Why did you choose me?” That’s a question one California financial adviser asks new clients. Bryce Sanders, in Financial Advisor. suggests nine ways financial advisors can “get on people’s radar”. Since, at Say It For You, that’s the very goal of the blog marketing work we do, I was interested in what Sanders had learned from his advisor friend…

Four of the ways prospects “found” the financial advisor, I realized, involved no outreach or specific effort on his part, evolving naturally out of his ongoing presence in business and social circles and his work with existing clients.

  • word of mouth
  • family connections
  • same faith or beliefs
  • referrals

In the same way, of course, prospective buyers might find their way to any service provider or vendor of a product line. In today’s world, though, a visit to the website will generally come next, as the prospect “checks out” the referral or the community connection. That’s precisely where e recently posted blog information has the power to move the prospect closer to taking the next step.

politely persistent – the advisor treated prospects as friends, “dripping” on them with postcards and informational notes. Staying regular in posting blog content helps both readers and search engines come to “rely” on regular bursts of information.

awards won – “People want to do business with the best,” Sanders says. Although at Say It For You, I remind owners and practitioners that blogging is not boasting, it’s good to offer “credentializing proof”, alluding in blog posts to your years of experiences, weaving into the text mention of your degrees, quoting articles you’ve written – and even citing awards you’ve won.

community involvement – People tend to be comfortable associating with professionals and business owners who give back to their community. Blog content can focus on personal anecdotes and on the personal values of the business owners and of the people delivering professional services. But, taking it further than that, the content should actually reflect and even allude to current community happenings and concerns.

advertising – When your face or firm name is on bus shelters and shopping cards, Sanders points out, when they need a specific product or service, you are the one who comes to mind.. When we bloggers enter conversations that are trending at the time and tie our blog content to current events, that serves the dual purpose of “playing off” already existing popular interest while possibly earning search engine “Brownie points” as well. Did we attend a performance or rally? How does what we heard and saw tie in with our own work in the community?

Like financial advisors, other professional practitioners and business owners seeking ways to get discovered can bring their message to attention through blog marketing.

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Blogging About Sisters Erica and Maria

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“Erica and Maria are both red-blooded Americans, born in the USA to parents from Pueblo, Mexico. They have worked with us for over a half decade…Virginia has worked with us over twenty years. She and the ten people in a t-shirt team made $153.45 in 8 hours. That is $19.18 per hour.” In just this way, Los Angeles Apparel invites its online shoppers to “Know the people who make your clothes,”

Most websites contain an “Our Team” section, but Los Angeles Apparel’s, I thought, was a true grabber, with the kind of personalization and emotional appeal we need to include in blog content writing. A team page adds a personal touch to the company and can lend trust to visitors, Cameron Chapman points out in Smashing Magazine. “Meet the Team is all about introducing your visitors to your employees, providing transparency and a sort of personal touch,”, Bluleadz.com explains.

In Creating Buzz With Blogs, veteran business technology consultant Ted Demopoulos explains, “Blogs create buzz because people will feel like they know you, and people like to do business with people they know.”  Blogs represent people talking to people, and blogging is the business manifestation of what Barbra Streisand meant when she sang about people who love people being the luckiest people in the world.

So, should the employees themselves be required to write blog posts? After all, Marcuss Sheridan points out, one goal of content marketing is to produce as much content as possible, so the more hands are put to the task, the better. And, since content that answers consumers’ questions is the most valuable, and since those employees are typically the ones dealing with the consumers every day, stands to reason they should be committing that experience to print.  Still, Sheridan admits, most employees don’t want to participate.

Whether employees, owners, or professional content writers – or a combination of all three – create the blog posts, the more personal they are, the better, we teach at Say It For You. The focus should be on personal anecdotes and the personal value of the business owners. Blog marketing may be about business, but it had better be about people as well, including both buyers and sellers, writers and readers.

Los Angeles Apparel is onto something with their content about sisters Erica and Maria, inviting their web visitors to know the people who make their clothes..

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Putting Blog Readers in Possession of the Truth

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Blog content writing was unheard of when philosophers Aristotle and Confucious, or even John Locke, were alive, but it’s interesting how very apropos their sayings are today:

“The great art of learning is to understand but little at a time.” (Locke)
It’s easy to become overwhelmed, these days, by the sheet amount of information available to us on any given subject. Blogs offer information in bite-sized pieces. In creating bog content, we need to exercise “portion control” in the length of paragraphs, of blog titles and of entire blog posts, focusing on one central idea in each post.

“It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.” (Locke)
I’m a firm believer that myth debunking is a great use for corporate blogs.  That’s because in the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or service often surface in the form of customer questions and comments. Addressing misinformation in a company’s blog shines light on the owner’s special expertise, besides offering information that is valuable to readers. De-mystifying matters can make your blog into a “go-to” source for readers seeking information in your field. On the other hand, people generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, so even as you’re debunking, do it in a way that respects readers’ desire for new, little-know information.

“Even while they teach, men learn.” (Seneca the Younger)
At Say It For You, I call this the “training benefit”, meaning that when you blog, you are constantly providing yourself with training about ways to talk effectively about your products and services.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” (Aristotle)
Every time you write a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your website, plus it’s a cue to the search engines that your website is active and they should be checking in frequently to see what content you’ve published.

“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” (Confucius)
Whether your blog posts are composed by you as the business owner or professional practitioner or by a content writer, the key is to continue to implement your plan until it becomes totally part of your new way of life and work.

 

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For Business Bloggers, the First things is Finding New Things to Say

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Gerald Ford must have had blog marketing in mind when he stated, “When a man is asked to make a speech, the first thing he has to decide is what to say”.

Copyblogger’s Liz Fulghum knew that, too. Back in 2008, Fulghum suggested that blog platforms come with a warning notice:

Blogging is not easy. You may experience unexpected droughts of inspiration, difficulty maintaining a schedule, or succumb to the  pressure of always needing fresh content.

Business bloggers often confide they have trouble continually coming up with fresh ideas for their blog posts and finding new ways to talk about the products and services they offer.  In this, the #1898 of the Say It For You blog, we have several blog “starter kit” models to offer:

Kit #1 – “Interview questions”
How did you arrive at the name for your business? For services or “packages” you offer? What do the names say about the outcomes you hope to bring for your clients and customers? What’s the biggest mistake you feel you’ve made in starting your business and what have you learned from that mistake?

Kit #2 – “Collating”
Collect information from different sources on a specific topic related to your business and organize the information in a new way. Use content from your own former bog posts, newsletters, and emails, adding material from other people’s blogs and articles, from magazines and book, summarizing the main ideas your readers are likely to find useful.

Kit #3 – “Curating”
Find opinion pieces that relate to your industry, quoting from those and then expressing your own unique perspective on that topic.

Kit #4 – “Listicles”
Listicles round up existing content pieces and present them in the form of numbered lists – of tactics to try, alternatives for solving a particular problem, or “best of…” compilations.

Kit #5 – “Changes of heart”
Go back and read your own past blog posts – the further back the better. Has experience – or have outside factors – caused you to change your mind on any of those statements? How? What factors caused your change of heart?

Kit #6 – “In the now”
Enter trending “conversations” about topics in the news. Scour the daily news and pay attention to talk shows, finding “hooks” to promote your products or services by weighing in on current concerns.

Blogging wasn’t yet around in the Gerald Ford era, but the former U.S. President was certainly right about this one: When a man (or woman!) is asked to make a speech (or compose a blog post!), the first thing to decide is what to say.

Keep your blog starter kit stocked and ready to wow!

 

 

 

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