Blue Man Group as a Model for Blog Content Writers

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As Chip Munn writes in Financial Planning magazine, financial advisors can take several tips from the Blue Man Group entertainment act, begun in the 80s, which incorporates comedy, music, and humor performed by three men, with heads and faces painted blue, who speak not a single word in the course of their stage performances. There are valuable business lessons for financial planning practices Munn believes, which can be derived from the Blue Man business model. For blog marketers, there are lessons as well:

You need to understand what people you’re looking for on your team and in your audience. (In addition to being skillful stage performers, Blue Men performers need to be of fairly uniform height and build.)

In blog marketing, the bottom line is knowing your target audience. Intelligence about your reader base needs to influence every aspect of the blog – its look, its style, its length, its frequency. As Seth Godin points out in his book All Marketers Tell Stories, “great stories are rarely aimed at everyone”.

You need to own your image and your equipment. (Blue Man group created their own unique instruments.)

One of the very important purposes of any business blog is to demonstrate “only-ness” to readers. To have any hope of engaging readers’ interest, blogs must provide fresh, relevant content, a challenge due to the sheer volume of information on the Web. Two strategies include bringing in “unique instruments” – less well-known facts about familiar things and processes, and suggesting new ways of thinking about things readers already know. Taking a stance, using the blog to express a firm opinion on issues, is a way to leverage your uniqueness.

Stay close to your clients. (Blue Man founder Chris Wink would periodically leave the executive suite to perform and remain involved.)

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, alluding to current community happenings and concerns.

Plan growth in small increments. (Blue Man group began in Chicago, and scaled to become a global entertainment force, ultimately purchased by Cirque du Soleil.)

The people who find your blog are those who are already online looking for information, products, or services that relate to what you know, what you have, and what you do! Your online marketing challenge is not to seek out the people, but to help them seek you out! In blog marketing, keep telling your story consistently and frequently, honing it all along the way, and allowing time for your “reach” to grow.

Blue Man Group can be a model for us blog content writers!

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Blogging the Way things Used to Be

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Whether or not you’re into home remodeling and décor, the new “Reveal” magazine by two of my own favorite reality show personalities, Drew and Jonathan Scott, is a great source of ideas for blog content writers. Last week in this Say It For You blog, I noted that the brothers had offered no fewer than five full articles about, of all things, tile, each one informative and imaginative.

Even the advertisements are uniquely creative in  “Reveal”, I discovered to my delight. A painting of a 19th century woodsman sitting in his shop with his dog’s face turned towards him takes up the bulk of the page, with an art-museum-style plaque that reads “Things dogs used to smell- their owners”. At the bottom of the page is a second plaque reading “Things dogs smell now: chicken”, positioned over a box of Cesar dog food.

“When it comes to business, trends come and go. This is particularly prevalent when it comes to marketing strategies,” Metova posits, noting that as technology becomes increasingly available to the general public, people are more receptive to marketing tactics when the material is formatted directly for them.

One really important point Metova stresses is that today, product comparison is an outdated and unnecessary marketing strategy. With trust in U.S. companies in general having dropped to 50% this year, now is not a great time for brands to be making lofty claims or taking potshots at competitors. Instead, Metova says, now is the time to be building trust and relationships.

This takes me back to the “Reveal” magazine ad for dog food. While making comparisons with competitors’ products and services may be passé, comparisons of “now” with “then” always hit the spot. Sharing memories of the “good old times” that weren’t really so good in terms of efficiency and convenience, you have the ability to share with blog readers a sense of look-how-far-we’ve-come togetherness.

The Business Dictionary definition of the term “product innovation” is “the development and market introduction of a good or service that is:

  • new
  • redesigned
  • substantially improved

What that means is that if you have taken something already there and made it better, that “innovation” is the most powerful thing you have to share in your blog marketing. After all, Drew and Jonathan Scott didn’t “invent” tile, and the Cesar company didn’t invent dog food. It’s probably true, we tell Say It For You clients wondering how they can come up with new ways to present their products and services through content marketing, that you can’t claim to have “invented” those products or services “from scratch”!

On the other hand, history-of-our-company background stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame adversity. Most important, tracing the “then” calls attention to the modern solutions that grew out of those past attempts and failures.

Blogging “the way things used to be” is a great way to help prospects and clients savor the way things are!

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For Humor and Allusions in Blogs, Make Sure Readers Don’t “Huh?”

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“Know your audience. Not everyone will think every joke is funny,” advises Michael Strecker in the book Young Comic’s Guide to Telling Jokes. Strecker’s advice applies to blog content writing, as we’ve learned through experience at Say it For You.

One reason certain jokes fall flat with certain audiences, I’m convinced, is not that those jokes are offensive or unfunny. It’s that many jokes are based on a cultural allusion that is simply not familiar to that audience.

A cultural allusion is an indirect reference to a person, place, or idea that is not directly described. Here are a few of Strecker’s jokes that will be funny to you only if you happen to recognize the allusion to history, literature, mathematics, geology, or the Bible…….

  • What was the sea creatures’ strike called? Octopi Wall Street.
    (The allusion is to the protest movement against economic inequality that started in New York City and which was named Occupy Wall Street.)
  • Who invented the ball point pen? The Incas.
    (The allusion is to the ancient Incan empire in the country of Peru.)
  • Why was the precious metal so silly? It was fool’s gold.
    (The allusion is to the metal pyrite, which has no value, but which resembles gold in its appearance. Many treasure-seekers foolishly mistook pyrite for gold.)
  • How did the dentist pay for his vision exam? An eye for a tooth.
    (The allusion is to a passage from the Bible about punishing a man who injures another – “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…)
  • What do you do at a math party? East pi and square dance.
    (The allusion is to pi, which is the ration of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, approximately 3.14.)
  • What do you call a street where Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and James Patterson live? Writer’s Block.
    (The allusion is to three famous writers and to a psychological “block” in which a person represses painful thoughts of memories.)

In blog marketing, we might choose to use an allusion to get a point across without going into a lengthy explanation. Or, we might want to get readers thinking about our subject in a new way. We might even use allusions to cement a bond between our client and the blog readers, showing the business owner or practitioner has experienced some of the same problems and obstacles as their customers now face.

There’s only one problem – an allusion does not describe in detail the person or thing to which it’s referring – readers have to recognize the allusion. As content writers, we need to gauge our readers’ areas of interest and even their level of education. If they simply don’t know the underlying story, literary tale or other reference point, we could be leaving them scratching their heads, and asking “Huh?”

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Blogging a Surround Sound Effect

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The Guy Raz book, How I Built This is all about starting and building a successful venture, with insights and inspiration from the world’s top entrepreneurs. In one of my favorite chapters, Raz talks about creating what he calls a “surround sound effect”.

In actual surround sound, one or more channels are added to the side or behind the listeners to make it seem as if the sound is coming at that listener from all directions. Translated into marketing, Raz explains, the secret is to give the impression that you are “everywhere”, when in reality you’re getting your name out in the handful of places where your core customers spend their time.

To market successfully, Business News explains, “your customer can’t be everyone.” Instead, you need a targeted marketing strategy, the authors stress, to succeed. You must define your niche and target those specific customers.

In fact, Spider Graham writes in bizjournals.com, “the whole goal of all marketing is to get the right message to the right person at the right time”. Of course, Graham adds, we must make sure to do this at the best price possible. If you try to be everything to everyone, your message becomes less impactful, he emphasizes.

Learning about your target customers includes gathering intelligence about:

  • their gender
  • their average age
  • their marital status
  • their educational level
  • their employment
  • their outlook on life
  • where they get their news

OK, OK. But how can marketers help entrepreneurs achieve that “surround sound” effect while still carefully targeting their customers? For our content writers at Say It For You, the challenge is using blogs to inform, educate, and persuade. Where does the “surround sound” come from?

Just as your target market can’t be “everyone”, a blog isn’t –and cannot be – an all-purpose, Swiss-army-knife solution for all your marketing needs. In fact, blogging is just one piece of the general strategy you work on with your team (which might well include a blog copy writer, but which also might include the web designer, the business manager, the employees, loyal fans, even, sometimes, a franchisor).

All the pieces used to promote your business or practice must mesh – social media, traditional advertising, event planning, word of mouth marketing, community involvement. Together all those pieces create the “surround sound effect”.

 

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Slogans and Blogs – Sisters Under the Skin?

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While logos are visual representations of a brand, slogans are audible representations, Lindsay Kolowich Cox explains in a Hubspot piece. The idea, in both cases, is grab consumers’ attention and leave a key message in consumers’ minds. Earlier this week in this Say It For You blog, I highlighted the 1-800-Got-Junk slogan as an example of emphasizing convenience and ease-of-use.

Several of the ingredients which Kolowich-Cox thinks make for great slogans can contribute to the success of blog posts:

A great slogan includes a key benefit. The emphasis needs to be on key benefits of the product or service, not its features. Proctor & Gamble’s Bounty paper towels are “the quicker picker upper.”
Focus a blog post on painting either a “more” (glamour, time saved, comfort, money, miles per gallon) or “less” (pain, cost, waste, hassle) picture.

A great slogan differentiates the brand. How can one piece of chocolate truly stand out from another? M&M’s “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands” differentiates with an implied comparison with every other chocolate brand.
It’s almost axiomatic that, in writing for business, we want to clarify the ways we are better than the competition. But, rather than saying negative things about other companies or practitioners, explain the reasons you have chosen to do things the way you do.

A great slogan imparts positive feelings, possibly through nostalgia. MasterCard’s “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”
True stories about the mistakes and struggles that ultimately led to your success are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind a business or practice. 

A great slogan reflects the values held by the organization.
Whether business owners or professional practitioners are doing their own blog posting or hiring professional content writers to help, the blog is conveying the values and beliefs of the owners.  In fact, the content is an invitation to readers to become part of the process of bringing those values to life.

A great slogan conveys consistency. Kolowich-Cox cites Verizon’s “Can you hear me now? Good.” (Competitors may have better texting options or fancier phones, the implication is, but with Verizon you can always rely on service.
Consistency is the very backbone of business blogging success. high-quality stuff.  To satisfy a search engine, your blog material must be updated frequently. Most important, consistent posting of content shows readers that you are “present” and involved.

Blog posts, of course, are much longer than slogans. Still, the idea in both cases is to grab consumers’ attention and leave a key message in their minds, built around an unmet consumer need.

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