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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All You Have to Do is Blog

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According to the 1-800-GOT-JUNK commercial, when you want something removed from your home or yard, “All you have to do is point” As a blog content writer, I love that commercial.

“Persuasive ads are advertisements designed to elicit a desired action,” Mary Lister writes in Wordstream. Ad campaigns for products or services are designed to communicate two main ideas:

  1. Problems your product or service solves
  2. Ways your product or service does that better/quicker/cheaper than that of your competitors.

Confession – for me as a consumer, there’s always been a third piece. I’m not handy. And, since I don’t know how to assemble, much less fix, mechanical devices or pieces of furniture, I’m always looking for what’s going to be required of me in the process of achieving a solution to my problem or fulfilling my need.

The 1-800-GOT-JUNK motto must have been made for people like me. Right up front, they’re assuring me that they will handle the issue, do the dirty work, figure it out. All I have to do is identify the problem.

All business owners and practitioners have products and services to sell. But sometimes, the marketing and advertising skips over the convenience factor.

A little over ten years ago, an editorial cartoon in the Indianapolis Business Journal showed a harried lady returning a gadget to a merchant’s Returns window. “It’s not that I don’t like the product,” she said – “I just can’t get it out of the package!”

  • Yes, you understand your target audience and the specific problems they’re facing.
  • Yes, your product or service provides a way to solve those problems.
  • Yes, your product/service compares favorably to others on the market.
  • Yes, but…but…but, just how much effort am I going to need to expend to “get it out of the package”?

Put yourself in the shoes of your online visitors:

How easy is it for them to navigate your website? Follow your Calls to Action? Set up an appointment with you? Pick up the phone and call if they choose to? (Is your phone number clearly displayed on the page?)

How easy is it going to be for a prospect to: get started on that program you’re touting? Start on the diet plan? Install the app or get the device to function?

Let them know – “all you have to do is…….._!

Borrowing the line from 1-800-GOT-JUNK, blog marketers’ new mantra might well be this:

All you have to do is blog!

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Send Yourself a Rejection Blog

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“Nobody likes receiving rejection letters. But one way to reduce their sting, and perhaps even avoid one altogether, is to pre-empt the rejector by writing the letter yourself,” Daniel Pink suggests in the book To Sell is Human. In the letter, list the reasons your prospect is turning you down. “When you read your letter, you’ll probably laugh,” the author says, but more important, “the letter might reveal soft spots in what you’re presenting, which you can then work to strengthen”.

Because our team at Say It For You is involved in blog marketing, I was especially interested in what Daniel Pink had to say about “non-sales selling”. That consists of convincing others to exchange their resources (their expertise, time, effort, and attention) for something they want. Today, he explains, instead of product pushing, we must move people into action“. That’s because, whereas in the “old days”, sellers had more information than buyers; today’s buyers have almost equal access to information. Effective selling today, therefore, is no longer about being persistent and aggressive, but about being transparent and empathetic, helping buyers make sense of available facts and options.

So, in your rejection blog post to yourself, what reasons will you give for not sticking around to enjoy your content?

  • Your blog was very slow to load and then, to make matters worse, you annoyed me with pop up ads.
  • Your blog posts have “a wall of text” with long paragraphs – they appear to be a pain to get through.
  • Despite the fact that your title was a match for my search, I quickly realized you were not addressing me – just providing the same information I’d heard many times before. In short, you quickly managed to bore me with same-old, same-old.
  • You didn’t show me who you are – your reason for being in your business and your strong beliefs about how what’s going on could be make better.

After closing your self-rejection blog with the classic line – “After careful consideration, I did not select you for further consideration,” stop selling. Instead, get to work on helping buyers make sense of their available options.

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