Blog Using Presentational Coloration

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In How Magicians Think, author Joshua Jay explains that, when he borrows a coin from you and makes it disappear, the words he uses during the disappearance “can radically change the experience in your mind”. .Jay might say, for example, “Watch as your coin fades away slowly, dissolving into the air.” Alternately, he might say “And just like that…pow! The coin is gone.” In fact, Jay adds, neuroscientists have shown that most of our experiences are shaped as much by an impression rather than by the event itself.

In blog marketing, we realize at Say It For You, an online searcher’s impressions will have a large role in shaping the outcome of the visit. Since we, as ghostwriters, have been hired by clients to tell their story online to their target audiences, we need to do intensive research, taking guidance from the client’s experience and expertise The goal – conveying the relationship between the visitor and the business owner and their shared experience. But no matter who is responsible for creating the blog content, remember this: Readers who visit your blog are judging their experience in learning about the business owner or practitioner behind the blog.

As part of offering business blogging assistance, I’m always talking to business owners about their customer service.  The challenge is – every business says it offers superior customer service! (Has any of us ever read an ad or a blog that does not tout its superior customer service? But the words you use in saying it are part of the presentational coloration that can make the difference in demonstrating that your customer service exceeds the norm.

Actual color is very important in presentation, as the Zoho blog brings out, because colors affect us at a subconscious level, and “can make the difference between someone liking an idea or rejecting it.” Interestingly, the advice Zoho gives about choosing only one primary color for each slide is in keeping with my own blog content writing advice about the Power of One.

Precisely because an online searcher’s impressions will have a large role in shaping the outcome of the visit, it’s important to blog using presentational coloration.

 

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Blog Writing Begins with Answering the Question

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In order to grab and keep readers’ attention, writers must answer the questions every reader asks as a story begins – questions that need to be answered if the reader is to relax and enjoy the ride,” the authors of The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings explain. After all, if readers don’t care what happens next, they won’t read on.”

The “big idea” of any story is the “hook” that sells that story to agents and editor, (and, in the case of blog content writing, to online searchers), has to be compelling enough to get your story off to a great start. “The most important thing your opening needs to do is this: Keep the reader reading,” author Paula Munier teaches. “In truth,” she admits, “it doesn’t matter how good your opening scene is if the idea on which your story is based is flawed, either in storytelling terms or marketing terms.”

Making messages deliver impact is, of course, “our thing” as business blog content writers. As both Munier’s book and one by Chip and Dan Heath, Made to Stick, teach, we  can’t succeed if our messages don’t break through the clutter to get people’s attention. Opening your blog post with a startling statistic can be one way to grab visitors’ attention, I often point out to content writers for Say It For You clients.

Just as consumers would not be searching for the right auto shop/ jewelry store/ plumber/ healthcare provider, etc. unless they already felt the need for that service or product type, searchers who land on your blog are already interested in and have a need for what you offer. Now, as Paula Munier cautions, the essential questions on searchers’ minds need to be answered as they decide whether to read on or click away.

Blogs, as I so often stress to business blog writers, are not advertisements or sales pieces (even if increasing sales is the ultimate goal of the business owner).  Whatever “selling” goes on in effective blogs is indirect and comes out of business owners sharing their passion, special expertise and insights in their field.  When blog posts “work”, readers are moved to think, “I want to do business with him!” or “She’s the kind of person I’ve been looking for!”

Before that ultimate “Ah, yes!” effect can take place, readers newly arrived after clicking on a blog title link need reassurance that the title and the actual blog post content are congruent. In other words, readers have arrived at the right place for finding the answers they were seeking.

In a very real way, blog writing begins – and ends – with answering that very question.

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Aiming for the “Me, Too!” Effect in Blog Marketing

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“All salespeople present themselves as problem solvers yet most never ask clients to vividly describe the problems they are experiencing,” Paul Cherry maintains in the book Questions That Sell. An outstanding salesperson, the author teaches, will offer clients the opportunity to open up and vent their frustrations. “You will have success building a relationship with your potential customers only when you can get into their world and identify the forces at work in their lives.”

In blog marketing (where prospects are meeting you before you’ve had the chance to meet them), as Jeremy Porter Communications teaches, the goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message. He names seven emotions and their opposites that marketers can tap into to get an audience “from where they are to where you want them to be”:

  • anger/calmness
  • friendship/enmity
  • fear/confidence
  • shame/shamelessness
  • kindness/unkindness
  • pity or compassion/indignation
  • envy/emulation

At Say It For You, we understand that, in blogging for business, face-to-screen is the closest we blog content writers will come to our prospective buyers of our clients’ products and services. On the other hand, we’re conscious that behind every decision, there is always a person, a being with feelings. One of the most direct access paths to prospects’ feelings is through stories. “Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his book All Marketers Tell Stories.

The thing to remember is that people are online searching for answers to problems or solutions for dilemmas. If, in encountering a blog post about a customer who went through a sort of pain and suffering akin to theirs (and who has now come out the other side), readers’ natural and highly emotional reaction might well be “Me, too!”.

Far sooner and more directly than descriptions of features and benefits of your offer, an emotionally charged story of suffering solved might well result in a “me, too” sale!

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Blogging for Window Shoppers and Tire Kickers

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“Many of the folks who come to see me aren’t necessarily looking for a new plan or a new planner,” financial advisor Zach Fox, AAMS®, says. “They may just be looking for confidence in their existing plan.”

Diane Wingerter, certified grantwriter and owner of GrantWriting for Goodness™, agrees. “Yes”, “no”, “maybe”, or “not now” are all possible responses by people who are seeking funding – or, indeed, by funders themselves, she notes.

Blog marketers need to approach readers with a similar mindset. Will blog marketing “close deals” in the same manner as a face-to-face encounter between a prospect and a sales professional? Of course not. Hubspot blogger Corey Wainwright lists some of the indirect selling benefits of blogs and their place in the sales process:

  • If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes.
  • Prospects that have been reading your blog posts will typically enter the sales process more educated about your place in the market, your industry, and what you have to offer.
  • Salespeople who encounter specific questions that require in-depth explanation or a documented answer can pull from an archive of blog posts.

Blogging is what marketing firm pardot.com calls stage-based, meaning that prospects move through different stages of the sales cycle. In one study, Pardot found that B2B consumers started their research with Google, then returned two or three times for more specific information. For prospects at the top of the “funnel”, the most effective content will be light, educational and product-neutral. Later in the cycle, readers who are already sold on your industry, just deciding among vendors or providers, need more specific information.

The “maybes”, the “not nows”, and readers looking only to bolster their confidence in their existing plans or product choices will come away with a positive experience and valuable information. On the other hand, readers who have reached the final decision-making stage might just be ready to consider your unique value propositions and to follow one of your Calls to Action.

In blog marketing, don’t ignore the window shoppers and tire-kickers!

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Introduce Referral Partners in Your Blog

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“By establishing yourself as a source of assistance, you train others to come to you with referral opportunities,” Chuck Gifford and Minesh Baxi advise in the book Network Your way to $100,000 and Beyond. “Learning to promote to those in your sphere of influence is hundreds of times better than buying from a referral partner. You must learn to talk about your referral partners often, asking questions to uncover leads.”

At Say It For You, I’ve always taught that reading competitors’ blog posts is a great form of market research for business owners launching their own blogging strategy.  Even repeating what established bloggers have said (of course in each case properly attributing the material to its source) forces “newbies” to think about what they might add to the discussion.

But, rather than merely summarizing what others are thinking, or ways competitors have chosen to handle problems, why not invite “thought competitors” to express their ideas on your blog site? That can be a way to use blog content to present conflicting views about a particular subject (your guest blogger’s view and your own), leading readers to think more deeply about a topic.

A guest blog post, of course, needn’t be about a controversial topic, but might serve as enrichment content for the host’s readers. A realtor might invite an interior designer to comment on “staging” a home for sale. An estate planning attorney might invite a long term care insurance agent to contribute content. “Guesting” can take the form of interviews or of actual content by the referral partners themselves.

“The most powerful phrase in marketing,” Gifford and Baxi assert is “I have a friend in that business. Would it be okay if I have them give you a call?” It’s interesting to note that the book was published in 2007, a year before Say It For You was started. Fourteen years later, it could be that one of the most powerful forms of referral marketing is introducing your referral partners to your audience of blog readers!

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