Blogging, Like Design, is About Creatively Solving Problems

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“Design is often misconstrued to be a luxury. Yet, at its core, design is about creatively solving the problems we all face at any scale,” Tom Gallagher writes in the Indianapolis Business Journal. “…practitioners often downplay the importance of beauty, but aesthetic must not be dismissed”. In urban design, Gallagher continues, fashion addresses who we are and how we respect others. The quality of materials speaks to our shared values.

“What we see has a profound effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are,” Mike Parkinson of Billion Dollar Graphics asserts. Parkinson quotes famed psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who demonstrated that no less than 93% of communication is nonverbal. “

In fact, the aesthetic element must not be dismissed in blog content creation, either. Images are one of the three “legs” of the business blog “stool”, we teach at Say It For You, along with information and perspective or “slant”. Not only is it true that articles containing images get more total views and higher ratings, images help explain and emphasize concepts. The visual presentation of a blog post – the type font, the bolding, italics, spacing – all the details work to support the words and ideas and contribute to the general impression left with online readers.

So, if design is so important, does all that mean video blogs are going to supplant text content?

As a Say It For You blog content writer and trainer, I appreciated a 2017 fourdots.com blog post discussing that very question, and making a four-point case for textual content as a primary driver of online communication:

  1. Text gives you the option to stop exactly where you want to, wrapping your mind around a certain piece of information.
  2. Text can be easily updated and upgraded.
  3. B2B buyers consume informational pieces and case studies, looking for industry thought leadership.
  4. Text stimulates the mind and is more focused.

Just about ten years ago, I published a blog post titled “Shoes and Business Blogs – Some People Care if They’re Shined”. The post touched on aesthetics, advising marketers to “dress your blog in its best” by preventing “wardrobe malfunctions” such as grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors, avoiding redundancies, and tightening up those paragraphs.. Avoid redundancy; tighten up those paragraphs, I cautioned.

Yes, blogging, like design, is about creatively solving problems, but aesthetics must not be dismissed!

 

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Guest Post: CMO Skills Essential for Marketing

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Since our Say It For You writers often work under the direction of a company’s Chief Marketing Officer, this insightful guest post about effective CMOs is of interest. Author Dana Harris is a writer and a freelance marketing specialist. She has been writing articles on marketing tips and strategies for over five years.

CMOs are invaluable members of any company. However, their role constantly grows and transforms due to the continuous evolution of the marketing world. From new tactics to the latest trends, there’s no shortage of skills and tools for marketers to master. But which strengths are truly essential for a chief marketing officer? This blog discusses what you need in a good CMO.

This Chief Marketing Officer resume guide details the top five common traits of a competent CMO:

  • good leader
  • quick adapter
  • customer-centered
  • great communicator
  • excellent data analyzer

A CMO needs each of these fundamental skills to fulfill all of the responsibilities of their position.

However, these are not the only desirable traits. A CMO’s role is so influential that it can make or break a company’s brand image, sales, and overall profit. It’s critical to prevent a decline in any of those areas. Here are five more skills your CMO should possess to boost your marketing efforts and impact.

Goal Setting

Knowing how to set goals is a significant marketing skill. As the leader of a company’s marketing department, it’s certainly a must-have skill for a CMO. They should know how to implement marketing tactics that align with the company’s goals. Not only that, they should continually aim for a stronger brand and a greater product reach. Even the best marketing strategy risks failure with no guiding goals in mind.

Understanding of UX & UI

Technology is a critical element for a marketing campaign to reach its full potential. This reason is why a company’s CMO and technical team must work together. However, a CMO with knowledge of basic UX/UI design skills is extremely valuable. These skills allow the CMO to build a consumer experience that supports a company’s marketing goals and strategies. Also, the technical team can achieve much more when the CMO has a basic working knowledge of their design skills.

Creativity and Innovation

The ability to be both creative and innovative is essential in the marketing field. Marketers should constantly look for new methods and inventive ways to execute marketing plans to keep up with the latest trends. A creative CMO has a better understanding of consumers and can deliver a valuable experience to them. The combination of data-driven insight and creative thinking is the perfect recipe for actionable campaigns.

Content Management

Did you know that 94% of consumers go to the internet to research products? People often go to Google to look for information and resources during the purchasing process. This fact shows the importance of content marketing. Content marketing covers the constant development and optimization of blog posts, videos, eBooks, whitepapers, and other content pieces. Content management skills have become essential with so much centered on the internet.

Excellent Storytelling

Every effective marketer should be a good storyteller. They should be able to use data to weave a compelling story and put the company’s name on top. Customers typically buy products based more on emotion than logic. A CMO must appeal to the audience’s emotional side and compel them to buy into the brand. Powerful storytelling speaks into the lives of customers and connects a product directly to a solution. It’s a balance of both emotion and logic.

Wrapping Up

Indeed, a chief marketing officer is a very complex and diverse role that is constantly evolving. Companies seeking a capable CMO shouldn’t overlook these essential skills, and neither should those seeking to be the next CMO. Regardless of marketing or technological advances, these skills will take both the CMO and the company confidently into the future.

 

 

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Yips and She-Cessioning for Blog Content Writers

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One would be hard-pressed to view the Coronavirus as a positive development, but in one way, the pandemic has added a lot to our lives – via the dictionary. The new term “doomscrolling”, for example, refers to the practice of obsessively checking online news for updates. Just the other day, in Employee Benefit News magazine, I was fascinated a headline using the coined phrase term “she-cession”, alluding to the fact that, during the pandemic, nearly three million American women exited the workforce, accounting for more than half the overall job loss in the country.

According to Merriam-Webster, the term “yips” was referenced by many journalists to describe a state of nervous tension affecting an athlete during the no-spectator Olympics. In fact, the Coronavirus has led to an explosion of new words and phrases, and new vocabulary helps us cope, the conversation.com comments. WFH (working from home) is disorienting (isn’t today “blursday”?).

Since for us blog content writers, words are our tools, we want to use words that capture attention, and often coined phrases do the trick nicely. One reason for this is that people are always look for new things, Neil Patel explains – new software, new techniques, new ways to make and save money. New phraseology commands attention.

Writeonline.io actually compiled a list of “grease-slide phrases” that help create smooth transitions between sentences and between paragraphs. One type of grease-slide is a conjunct. “Similarly”, “first off”, “for starters”, “to top it all off”, and “needless to say” are all grease slide conjuncts that keep the momentum going. “Here’s the scary part” and “It all boils down to this” are phrases that lead to the conclusion…

Prior to the pandemic, word combinations such as “contact tracing” and “essential businesses” weren’t part of our vocabulary, Miami University points out. “Bellyfeel” (blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea) and the verb “blackwhite” (accepting what one is told) are both part of “Newspeak” vocabulary, deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language.

While, at Say It For You, we use words to clarify and edify, never to confuse or mislead, we know that the ways in which people express themselves is constantly changing. When a newly minted expression captures a mood or a concept, using that phrase to make readers overcome their “yips” and take notice of your content – all I have to say is “Yippee”!

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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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