Describing Simply in Content Marketing

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“If you understand something but can describe it only in complex or jargony language, you’ll reach just the subset of people with expertise in the topic,” Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss write in Harvard Business Review. Instead, they advise corporate leaders, “When your organization needs to make a big change, stories will help you convey why it needs to transform but also what the future will look like in specific, vivid terms.”

The authors go on to detail four steps involved in moving the constituents to take positive action. Each of these, I find, is applicable to content marketing through blogs.

1. Acknowledge the good parts of your history.
As I teach at Say It For You, history has an important place in blogs. “History-of-our-company” background stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings admiration for business owners or practitioners.

2. Reckon with the not-so-good parts of your history.
Publishing content about past failures can actually prove to be a success, with the stories eliciting feelings of empathy and admiration by readers for entrepreneurs who recognize their own missteps.

3. Provide a clear and compelling mandate going forward.
At Say It For You, we know that, when searchers arrive at your blog, they already have an interest in (and probably some core knowledge about) your subject. Blog marketing reality is that, in order to move searchers to the next step, you need to “prove your case” with statistics showing you know a lot about the problem you’re proposing to solve, and that your and your staff have the experience, training, and degrees needed to solve that problem.

4. Get into the “weeds” of your plan with specific recommendations.
Smart buyers want clear, specific recommendations that tie back to solving those problems.. Since, other than the clues offered through the words searchers have chosen to type into the search bar, their individual needs are as yet unknown to you, include anecdotes as examples of common issues that have been solved using your products and expertise.

Blog marketing is all about describing – the past, the problem, the solutions – simply!

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Clear Explanations Beat Vague Cultural Allusions

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“Even if you’re not a man of words, you probably agree that plumbing slogans can make a huge difference in advertising your business and attracting customers,” Or Rozenberg writes in Workiz.com. Among the examples Rozenberg offers are “Let us do your dirty work”, “Don’t let your money go down the drain”, and “Got a leak? We’ll take a peek!”. Good plumbing slogans, he says, are memorable, with the “kind of rhythm that gets stuck in your head”.

So far, so great, I thought – good content marketing advice. I appreciated “making the flow go” and caught the reference to “all systems go” in “all cisterns go.” But, when I got to “Because a good flush beats a full house”, I got lost. (Call me old fashioned, but the only card games I know are euchre and gin rummy, and I just didn’t understand the play on words.)

Interesting – almost seven years ago, in this Say It For You blog, I cautioned: “Know your reader when using allusions in business blogs.” It’s not that allusions themselves aren’t useful. In fact, they can:

  • get readers thinking about your subject in a new way
  • get a point across without going into a lengthy explanation
  • cement a bond between writer and readers based on shared experiences and
    knowledge

However, if a reader doesn’t know the underlying story, literary tale, or other reference point (just as I don’t know poker), the result is frustration, not illumination. It’s as if the writer expects the reader to possess certain knowledge and grasp its importance and – well some just don’t. I get it – you want to liven up your blog content. But be reasonably certain that the reference is obvious and that your target readers are likely to be familiar with the concept you’re trying to convey (among other things, we as content writers need to gauge our readers’ level of education).

Whether or not you’re in the plumbing business, be careful when using allusions. After all, the last thing you want is for your online visitors’ interest and trust in you “go down the drain”!

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Blogging About Other Ways to Reach the Goal

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“The MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) is just one of many ways to develop voice and skill as a writer,” Emma Komos-Hrobsky explains in Poets and Writers Magazine. In fact, the author goes on to name no fewer than 21 educational opportunities in the form of writing classes and seminars offered by organizations around the country.

“There’s one common mistake we often make when it comes to setting goals,” James Clear writes in blog.idonethis.com: We set a timeline, but not a schedule. “We need to focus on the practice, not the performance,” he adds.

How do these lessons about reaching a goal apply to content writing? “If you’ve ever googled instructions for how to perform a specific task, then you know the importance of high-quality how-to content,’ Julia McCory writes in seachengineland.com. By giving them content that’s actually helpful, you prove your expertise and building trust and affinity with your readers, McCory explains.

However, she cautions, it’s important to realize that a teaching mindset is entirely different from an information-sharing, entertaining, or analytical mindset. To be successful, you need to:

  • use detailed explanations
  • give step-by-step instructions
  • offer lots of examples
  • put yourself in the readers’ shoes

    At Say It For You, we’re always conscious that readers of our business or practice owners’ blog posts have many alternatives from which to choose. For a health coach focusing on weight loss, for example, potential clients might choose diet meal delivery, cosmetic “fat freezing” procedures, or personal trainers. One of the main challenges of content marketing is differentiating the product or service from alternative choices open to the prospect.

While the Poets and Writers Magazine article is valuable is that it reassures readers that a number of viable educational avenues exist, one point I often stress in blogging training sessions is that you need to do more than present a list of alternatives; it’s important that you voice an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers.

By all means, blog about alternative ways to reach a goal, but, by suggesting questions readers can ask themselves when choosing among many options, you can help them arrive, on their own, at the conclusion that the solution you’re marketing is the optimal choice.

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Does it Cost More to Make a Blog Post Than a Blog Post is Worth?

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“Does it cost more to make a penny than a penny is worth?” is just one of the many questions asked in Great American Trivia, by Publications International. Ltd. The answer – yes, in fact, it does! But don’t look for the penny to disappear anytime soon, the authors predict- more likely it will “change with the times”….

Introduced to our economy in 1792, the penny started out as all-copper coin. Beginning in 1857, it has been an alloy of copper and zinc. In 1982, the mix changed to 97.6% zinc with 2.4% copper plating. For awhile, that made economic sense, but with zinc and copper prices having increased,” U.S. taxpayers are still not getting their money’s worth, the authors note.

What about the costs of blogging?

“You might be surprised to hear this, but you can start a blog for nothing through several different blogging platforms,” writes Neal Schaffer of the Rutgers Business School.” Even if you decide to pay for a custom website, domain name or photography, these costs are relatively nominal compared to the amount of money you can potentially generate from your content,” newbie entrepreneurs are reassured in a Forbes Advisor piece. “That being said, many people aren’t exactly enamored with doing all of that on a personal basis,” Schaffer explains, and “you might need hire some professionals to help out, whether through editing your content or evaluating and working to improve Google analytics scores.”

Blogs have grown into a new and effective marketing strategy, Woman Entrepreneur writes:

  • Offering tips, updates, and other new content gives people a reason to come and to return to your website.
  • A blog improves your search engine ranking.
  • A blog allows you to show your expertise and to gain trust and credibility

The downsides:

  • Creating new content takes a significant amount of time and a constant stream of ideas.
  • It can take time to see results.

At Say It For You, we suggest a very practical “litmus test” be used by prospective clients: What is the number of new customers that would need be attracted to you – and what is the resulting amount of money in new sales – that it would take for your business or professional practice to cover the costs of our content marketing services for one year?

Companies that blog get 97% more links to their websites, and 77% of internet users read blogs, optinmonster reports. Does it cost more to make a blog post than a blog post is worth?

Like the U.S. penny, don’t look for content marketing blogs to disappear any time soon….

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Blog Content By and For the Unquenchably Curious

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts are based on the book What Makes Flamingos Pink, by Bill McLain, “a colorful collection of Q & A’s for the unquenchably curious”…

One thing it’s always a good idea to include, I tell content marketers, is interesting information on topics related to their business or professional practice. If you can provide information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, we explain at Say It For You, all the better. So long as there’s a real “back story” demonstrating valuable lessons learned and why that information should matter to the web visitor, tidbits can prove to be enormously useful tools….

The color of most birds is a matter of genetics, McClain explains in the book. Bluebirds are blue by nature, cardinals red for the same reason – their inherited genes. Famingos are different – they are pink because their diet is heavy in natural pigments called carotenoids. Wisely, the author is quick to show readers the relevance of that information – “When we eat carrots or beets, we are also eating carotenoids,” he explains. ” But no matter how many beets and carrots we eat, the only way we can turn pink is to blush or get a sunburn,” he adds.

One big goal of the writing we do for our business owner and professional practitioner clients is positioning them as experts in the eyes of both their existing clients and their web visitors. While good blog post content can and should be entertaining, it’s important to remember that most online searchers are not pursuing a recreational activity, but instead are on a fact-finding mission. You can hook them, we teach at Say It For You, with humorous and fascinating trivia tidbits, but the material you serve up needs to be meaningful to that audience and – actionable.

The factoid about flamingos’ pink coloring is an example of how trivia can be used in content marketing to accomplish a variety of initiatives: defining basic industry terminology, sparking curiosity about the subject, putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective, and explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way.

Always remember, though – they may be “unquenchably curious”, but online visitors are rarely unquenchably patient. Structure the content so as to address the two questions “So what?” (why it might matter) and “Now what?” directing them to the next step.

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