How-I-Learned Blogging for Business

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“All authors improve their writing skills the more they write,” Mark Shaw reassures book writers in the Author Learning Center, including learning how to connect with their audiences. Meanwhile, writer Madeline Sharples offers tips on how to choose a different perspective for your story. Terry Doerscher tells new writers to ask themselves “Why am I writing this book?” to gain clarity on length and writing style. Meanwhile, in Writer’s Digest, journalist Alison Hill shares “10 Dos and don’ts of Writing a Piece of Journalism”., including some fundamental rules such as: Be truthful. Be objective. Use multiple sources. Human interest stories, Hill explains, emphasize entertaining, educating, and engaging the audience. “After being an independent poet touring the world the better part of a decade, I’ve decided it’s time to give back to this magical art form and the broader community that has carried me so far. It’s my turn to provide some of the life-changing opportunities that spoken word has gifted to me,” Sierra DeMulder writes at the Jason Taylor Foundation. 

These quotes are all examples of How-I-Learned sharing of information and tips freely offered by “pros” for the benefit of “newbies”. In blogging for business, sharing your experience is a great way to build an audience, the wordpress.com team explains. “If you’re an expert on a subject or know something that others might find useful, you can attract a sizable following.” At Say It For You, we’ve learned, addressing real-world challenges that readers face is a path to success in blog marketing.

One point I’ve consistently stressed in these blog content writing tutorials is how important it is to provide valuable information to readers, while avoiding any hint of “hard sell”.  It’s helpful to collate helpful hints from a variety of experts, offering those as a “gift” from the business owner to blog visitors. Even more impactful, though, is sharing valuable lessons learned by the professional practitioner or business owners based on their own hard-won experience and expertise. In fact, in business blogs, it’s a good idea to actually write about past mistakes and struggles, blogger Beccy Freebody posits, because it’s much easier to connect to someone who has been where you are.

How-I-learned content can be how-you-connect blogging!

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Opening Up Options in Your Blog

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In his business book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that his favorite opening question when meeting a prospect is “Where are you from?” That opener allows the other person to respond in a myriad of ways, the author explains. The prospect might talk about her hometown or country – “I grew up in Berlin”, or about her employer – “I represent Fidelity Bank and Trust”, or reveal that she’s originally from LA, but has been living in the Midwest for most of her adult life. The concept is, as Daniel Pink mentions in his own book To Sell is Human, when talking to prospects, open things up rather than shutting them down by making people think you’re passing judgment on them.

When it comes to converting readers into customers, our job as blog content writers is to present choice, we stress at Say It For You. Given enough “space” to absorb the relevant and truthful information we present over time, consumers are perfectly able to – and far more likely to – decide to take action. Defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. But showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience in providing solutions to very that problem can help drive the marketing process forward.

But what I don’t mean in advising you to present a variety of options is the “Swiss army knife” approach – you don’t want your blog to be an all-in-one marketing tool that forces a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 57 wonderful services your company has to offer!. What you can do with the blog is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts.  I often remind business bloggers to provide several options to readers, including “read more”, “take a survey”, “comment”, or “subscribe”. On websites with no e-commerce options, of course, “Contact” might be  the ultimate reader “compliance” step.

I think the important take-away from Collins’ “Where-are-you-from?” approach is that people are different. Action-oriented readers will want our best recommendations from among the choices. Idea-oriented persons will want to know about the business owners’ core beliefs underlying the way that business is structured. A process-oriented reader will want to know how the process of purchasing and using the product or service works.

To sell what you do and how you do it is human, but be sure to open up a variety of options in your blog!

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The E Test for Blogs

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Since the 1980s, Daniel Pink lets us know in his book To Sell is Human: the Surprising Truth About Moving Others, psychologists have used the E test to measure “perspective-taking”. Asked to, with the index finger of their dominant hand, draw the letter E on their own forehead, some will draw the letter “backwards” (so that they themselves can read it), while others will draw the E correctly, with the spokes to the right, (so that others can read it). When confronted with an unusual or complex situation, will that person examine it from only his/her own point of view, or step outside and view the situation from another’s perspective? What’s being tested is the ability to “attune”, bringing one’s own outlook into harmony with other people. When it comes to sales, there’s an important additional element in attunement, the author goes on to explain. Individuals don’t exist as single units; their reactions are connected to groups, situations, and contexts.

When it comes to blog marketing, achieving “attunement’ is all about finding the right timing, along with the right context. Back in 2009, with Say It For You in only its second year, I shared an insight gained from the late advertising marketing guru Eugene Schwartz: As the same promise is made over and over by different providers, the market progresses to a new level of sophistication, and it becomes necessary to market through unique value propositions. And, as prospects achieve the highest levels of sophistication,  Schwarts went on to say, marketers must use prospect-centered tactic (AKA attunement).

Blog marketing itself, of course, is inherently prospect-centered – the only people who are going to notice your blog posts are those who are searching for the kinds of information, products, or services that relate to what you do. Having said that, it’s still crucial to keep your blog posts “attuned” to the frequency and sophistication level of your target audience, not to mention to those of the others in their “context”.

As content writers, we need to ask ourselves – would our blog posts pass the E test?

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Creating Hormonal Blog Content

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Hormones affect choice, Jeanette Maw McMurtry explains in Marketing for Dummies. Neurotransmitters affect the actions we take related to finding joy and avoiding fear and pain.

  • Dopamine makes us feel infallible and euphoric.
  • Oxytocin gives us a feeling of connection and validation.
  • Cortisol makes us feel threatened and fearful.
  • Serotonin makes us feel calm and upbeat.

Marketers of products and services, McMurtry stresses, must learn to develop ESPs (emotional selling propositions), rather than the much-touted USPs. How will what you’re offering help buyers feel glamorous, confident, secure, superior, or righteous?

Research by psychologist Daniel Kannemann found that when people are faced with risking something in order to gain a reward, they will most often choose to avoid the risk. As a blog marketer ,then, consider how your product or service helps users avoid loss/ embarrassment/ risk.  Identify the fear that drives your customer, McMurty says, then diminish it, presenting a visible solution to the problem.

Know your target audience, the author urges. Think about which aspect of their personality best predicts their behavior and which form of “hormone” or psychological fulfillment your brand helps support. Should you be focusing on:

  • “scarcity” (only a limited supply of a product is available, the introductory price for a service is about to end; supplies are dwindling)
  • “purpose and mission” (socially responsible, environmentally responsible, charitable purpose)
  • “prestige” (feelings of superiority associated with the ownership of luxury goods)
  • “health and fitness” (appealing to fear of illness and a desire for longevity)

“Ask yourself key questions about the psychological fulfillment your brand helps support,” McMurtry recommends.

Creating “hormonal blog content” means perceiving – and then presenting/seeing your product’s value in the light in which your customers’ subconscious minds will!

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How-I-Did_It Business Blogging

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Again, in this week’s Say It For You blog posts, I’m sharing valuable content writing tips from current magazine issues. Reading through the September 2022 Inc. Magazine, I was struck by the effectiveness of the “How I….” series of business leader stories:

  • how I persuaded my mom and dad to let me run our home-grown beverage brand (Boolyte)
  • how I re-imagined the farmers’ market to deliver local food everywhere (MarketWagon)
  • how I built a home care company during a healthcare labor crisis (BarbaraKares)
  • how I got sweaty and muddy and made non-alcoholic beer cool (Athletic Bravery)
  • how I took on the immigration system to help thousands get their green cards (Boundless Immigration)

    “History is something very important, and fundamental even in the way we communicate as humans. Tell a great story on your blog and you can capture the attention, distract, enlighten, and even persuade… and all this in just a few minutes,” explains Paul Kellin of BlogPasCher. Every great story needs a hero who is transformed as the story unfolds, Kellin says. Ultimately, he explains, it’s your customer who is the hero, who will be transformed by your products and services.

Authenticity is powerful in blog marketing. Through how-we-did-it stories, readers can be provided an intimate view of your journey and what went into developing your products and services. In fact, a survey quoted by Sprout Social showed that 72% of consumers want to learn more about the people behind their favorite brands. How-I-did-it marketing needs to also include how-I-failed stories, we teach blog content writers at Say It For You – writing about past failures is important. Remember that true stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business. Ironically, I often find that business owner and professional practitioner clients of mine are so close to the subject matter of their own business battles, they don’t realize that these stories can actually be used as marketing tools.

How-I-did-it business blogging can prove to be a very effective way to “get it done”!

 

 

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