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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In Business and in Blogging, Differentiation is the Key to Success

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“There are many ways to differentiate yourself,” writes Michael Hill in Measuring Ourselves. “Become the idea guy, the best manager, the highest-producing sales-person. Find your passion and use it,” he advises.

“Blog differentiation is one of the best ways to get more attention for your brand, Dave Taylor agrees. Starting a blog these days is easy, he admits. However, with millions of blogs that are already popular, it’s difficult to stand out from the crowd. Taylor lists several aspects of blog differentiation, including topic, demographic target and content style.

Collectivedge.com offers a number of differentiation suggestions that, at Say It For You, I’ve found to be very effective in blogging for business:

“Connect with your readers by always writing in the first person” 
In blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

Don’t be afraid to be controversial.
In any field, there will always be controversy – about best business practices, about the best approach to providing professional services, about acceptable levels of risk, even about business-related ethical choices. Rather than ignoring the controversy, bloggers need to comment on the different views and “weigh in”.

Borrowing from successful writers allows you to pick up handy techniques and tricks.
Business bloggers, I teach, need to spend at least as much time reading as writing, in order to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing. Plus, when you link to someone else’s remarks on a subject you’re covering, that can not only reinforce your point, but add value to readers by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog.

Make it pretty – blog posts with images get twice as many shares.
No doubt about it, the story line is paramount in blogging for business.. Where visuals come in, whether they’re in the form of “clip art”, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos, is to add interest and evoke emotion.

As content writers, we help business owners and practitioners differentiate themselves. In fact, blog content is the ideal vehicle for adding explanations, offering more details and updates, telling stories, and expressing owners’ beliefs about what’s most important to them in serving clients and customers.

 

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The First Blog Post Shows the Palette

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There’s an exercise artists can do to break through their equivalent of “writer’s block,” my friend Phil read in an urban sketching book about using watercolor. Deciding what to put on the first page of your sketchbook is the hardest, the author understood. A new artist might experience inhibitions about opening the paint wrappers. But if the first page is used to give the artist a better idea of what the colors will look like on paper, the rest will follow naturally.

Beginnings are hard in any field. The first day of class, for example, gets a lot of attention from pedagogues, because what happens on that day shows students what to expect from your instruction, Alicia Alexander and Elizabeth Natalle explain in a text on interpersonal communication.

A second friend, book writing coach Myra Levine, says that each author’s first question should be “whose eyes do we see through?” Point of View, Levine says, determines every word you write. In Levine’s webinar offers writing “prompts” to help writers envision the “palette”.

Business owners and professional practitioners launching their blog often experience the same feel of “opening the paint wrappers” or putting the first words to web page. At Say It For You, we explain that the opening post will set the tone for the ongoing blog series, letting readers know:

  • They’ve come to the right place – this blog promises to be a good source for the type of information I want and need?
  • They can tell the author/company/practice is likeable, resonating with their own belief system.
  • They understand there’s a reason you’ve decided to use a blog as an ongoing communication tool.

Fear of flying is an anxiety disorder, and some of the elements of that fear have nothing to do with the actually risks associated with flight. In Fear of Blogging, David Meerman Scott says many business owners fear:

  • looking silly
  • not having important things to say
  • lack of computer savvy
  • blogging “won’t work” for their industry

Of course, from a business standpoint, fear of blogging can be a fearsome business mistake, since, in the time it’s taken you to read this far into my blog post, thousands and thousands of new blog posts have been introduced, some by your competitors!

So, go ahead – open up that new sketchbook. Peel the plastic off the paint tubes. Try writing the answer to this question:

If you had only 10 words to describe just how you ended up in – and why you’re
still in- your present industry or profession, what would those words be?

There’s your business blog “palette”!

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Terms to Drop in Blogging for Business

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“Most important business decisions are made with incomplete information and under conditions of uncertainty,” Marketing professors Kim and Todd Saxton write in the Indianapolis Business Journal. Uncertainty permeates decisions about products/technology, market, people and funding. For that reason, the Saxtons believe, we need to change some of the terms commonly used in business planning.

Road Map
What would be more appropriate is a set of sailing instructions. There’s still a vision to motivate and inspire, but everyone aboard is also monitoring winds and currents that create challenges. The entire crew is involved in constant adjustment and adaptation to make sure the ship continues to make progress.

At Say it For You, where we specialize in creating blog content, I couldn’t have come up with a better metaphor for blogging than an ongoing set of sailing instruction adjustments. Unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, blog posts are more casual and conversational, hence most adjustable to what’s going on in the present moment. 

Think Outside the Box
Most businesspeople are used to thinking within constraints. Give people a new problem to solve inside a box: What’s the biggest hassle using our product and why? What customers use our product in the most unusual ways? Give people structure for their brainstorming, the Saxtons advise.

Very important to successful business blogging is addressing current issues readers care about. A prospect may have a need and not be aware there is a solution. Content marketing raises awareness of solutions and educates consumers about products they may not have considered before. A single blog post can help readers think outside their “box”.

Low-Hanging Fruit
Rather than taking the easy way out by isolating yourself from challenge and competition, embrace the hardest product-development and customer service challenges. Remember, the Saxton’s say, the low-hanging fruit is available to all your competitors as well – dare to be different.

A really important point all blog writers and business owners need to keep in mind is that, whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers. 

When working with business owners to arrive at the right tone and the right emphasis for their business blogs, I begin by challenging the owner of the business or professional practice to make clear their own opinions about best practices for their own profession or industry. Providing information about products and services may be the popular “low-hanging fruit” way way to write marketing blog posts, but in terms of achieving Influencer status – that takes opinion!

“Road map”, “Thinking outside the box”, and “Low-hanging fruit” may all need to be dropped in blogging for business!

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Blogging for Business in Leitmotifs and Thaumatropes

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Whenever company owners (or sometimes even the blog content writers they employ) express doubt about their ability to keep generating new content for their blog posts, I remind them about leitmotifs.

True, blog posts tend to be most effective when they focus on just one idea. For example, in different posts, a content writer might go about:

  • busting one myth common among consumers of their product or service they’re marketing
  • offering one testimonial from a user of that product or service
  • describing an unusual application for that product
  • describing one common problem their service helps solve
  • updating readers on one new development in that industry or profession
  • offering a unique opinion or slant on best practices

Focusing on one aspect of a topic at a time is precisely what helps blog posts stay much more flexible and impactful than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website. But it’s the leitmotif (a German term meaning “leading theme” often used in discussing music) that helps the separate posts fit together into an ongoing blog marketing strategy.

Just the other day, while waiting in line at CVS, I picked up a magazine named “The Complete Guide to Your Brain”,” intrigued by the title. Once I had the chance to browse the article, I realized that I was looking at a perfect example of the way business blogging can be sustained over weeks, month, and years. Using a “leitmotif”, content writers can continue providing content at once fresh and evergreen, content that is varied to appeal to different readers, yet readers who share a common interest.

Amazing, I found. In just one publication, Brain included more than twenty different approaches to one subject. For example:

  • “Your Brilliant Baby” explained the way in which newborns experience a 64% increase in brainpower during their first three months of life!
  • “Sexes and the Brain” debunks the popular myth that male brains differ greatly from female brains. In fact, “humans with only feminine or only masculine characteristics are extremely rare”.
  • “The Plastic Brain” describes ways in which making and listening to music involves information from all five senses. Listing other activities that can make one’s brain more plastic.
  • “Fuel for the Mind” discusses elements of a brain-healthy diet.
    “”Why We Need Friends” discusses the way social connections make us smarter and strengthen our brains.

A second term that applies to the way individual blog posts work together over time to convey content marketing “leitmotifs” is “thaumatrope”. Thaumatropes were Victorian-age paper toys consisting of a card with a picture on each side. The card would be attached to two pieces of string; twirling the strings made the two pictures appear to combine into a single image. That’s precisely the effect of different blog posts.

As blog content writing continues over long periods of time, there’s a cumulative leitmotif/thaumatrope effect, conveying one central message to readers in all its many permutations and details.

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