Your Blog is the Lobby to Where You Live

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At California’s Joie de Vivre Hotels, they care about the big and the little stuff, Gary Vaynerchuk explains in The Thank You Economy. That hotel company, the author explains is “doing its damndest to perfect the art of customization”. The message, from the moment travelers arrive at the front desk is this: “We love where we live and want you to love it, too.”

The home page of your website is like the lobby of a hotel, Enchanting Marketing observes. A simple headline should tell web visitors where they’ve arrived and what to expect. A photo helps humanize your business. In “How to welcome new visitors to your blog, Melissa Culberson names three things you must accomplish in welcoming first-time online searchers:

  1. Acknowledging the visitor (an About Blurb lets newcomers get a sense of who you are)
  2. Showing the visitor around with a Welcome or Start Here page
  3. Giving them something to do before they leave (liking you on social media, signing up for a newsletter, etc.)

The intent of most business tactics and advertising campaigns, Vaynerchuk asserts, is to entertain, inform, or scare the consumer into paying attention. The best tactics, though, benefit people who have already expressed an affinity for the brand, and are also designed to get those who work for the company “to think with their hearts as well as their heads.”

Blog content writers need to think with their hearts as well as their heads, as well. “In order to make people really like you, and really pay attention to your content, you need to give some of yourself – your emotions,” Kenneth Waldman writes in mention.com. Build the story, he advises, and only then add the product or service, not the other way around.

Online visitors to your blog want to feel you understand them and their needs, of course, but they want to understand you as well, I teach at Say It For You. The stories you tell in your marketing blog have the power to forge an emotional connection between readers and you as a provider of products, services, and experiences.

Your blog is the lobby to where you live!

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Stay Big or Go Small in Blogging for Business

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long vs. short content in blogs
Your chances of being attacked by a shark aren’t great – about one in 11 million, Jen McCaffrey reassures readers of Readers’ Digest. That said, to avoid being “that one”, McCaffrey advises, “Stay big…or go small”. In other words, if the shark looks aggressive, try to maintain a strong presence; if it appears to be merely “swimming by”, avoid causing a commotion.

When it comes to blog marketing, there is an ongoing debate about the relative benefits of longer vs. shorter articles for blog post content. Blogtyrant.com does a good job, I think, of presenting factors to consider:

Reasons to go small:

  1. Readers’ attention spans are shorter than in previous years and shorter articles are easier to digest. Copyhackers quotes a Forbes article that says, “Write short, pithy posts. After 750 words – or sometimes after only half that – you risk losing your reader’s attention.”
  2. It is easier to produce content regularly with shorter posts. “Successful short content is posted consistently, copyhackers remarks.

Reasons to go big:

  1. Longer posts cover a topic more deeply and may be more valuable to readers. Long form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives more shares and links than shorter form content, a study of more than a million posts revealed.
  2. Search engines have been favoring longer content. That same study showed that among the most compelling drivers of high rankings was longer content.

As a blog content writer and trainer at Say It For You, I was happy to read the  added BlogTyrant comment: “It’s not all about size.” What IS it about, then?

  • Uniqueness and usefulness. “Google wants a variety of solutions for readers.”
  • Accuracy and citations. Articles with links to authority articles are favored by Google.

Still, the long vs. short remains one of the “holy wars” of blogging for business. As a professional providing blog writing services, to what side of that “holy war” do I lean?  Both!  It’s definitely important, in each post, to offer enough information to convincingly cover the key theme of that post. Including links to other commentaries on the subject allows the reader the option to “go deeper”. “One message per post” is a mantra I pass on to every newbie blog content writer, with each post having a razor-sharp focus on one story, one idea, or one aspect of the theme.

No need to make one overriding decision when it comes to your blog. Similar to the judgment call required when a shark is approaching you, with each blog post you can choose to stay big or go small!

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Saint Patrick’s Blue Blog Content Writing

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Okay, so you wore that green tie or green jacket on St. Patty’s day and had yourself a good time, but now, almost two weeks later, I think you might be ready for the truth. Several truths, actually. Since at Say It For You, I teach that mythbusting is one very legitimate and important function of blog writing, I want to pass along a few super-busts straight out of one of my favorite sources – Mental Floss magazine.

For starters, St. Patrick wasn’t Irish. (He did introduce Christianity to Ireland back in the year 432, but the man himself was born in Scotland or Wales.) His real name wasn’t even Patrick – it was Maewyn (he changed it to Patricius after becoming a priest.) What’s more, though we’ve come to associate Kelly green with the holiday, the saint’s official color was St. Patricks blue. (The color green was linked to St. Patrick’s Day only later, during the late-18th century Irish independence movement.) Perhaps the most startling “bust” has to do with the fact that St. Patrick’s Day started out as a dry holiday; up until the 1970s, pubs were closed on that national holiday!

So, what’s the point of all this? Well, mythbusting can be used to counteract counterproductive thinking, and I’m a firm believer that a big function of business blogs is doing just that. In the normal course of doing business, you’ve undoubtedly found, misunderstandings about your product or service might surface in the form of customer questions and comments.  (It’s even worse when those myths and misunderstandings don’t surface, but still have the power to interrupt the selling process!) By myth-busting, blog content writing can “clear the air”, replacing factoids with facts, so that buyers can see their way to making decisions.

Myth-busting is also a tactic content writers can use to grab online visitors’ attention. The technique is not without risk, because customers don’t like to be proven wrong or feel stupid.  The trick is to engage interest, but not in “Gotcha!” fashion. Business owners and professional practitioners can use their blogs to showcase their own expertise without “showing up” their readers’ lack of it.

‘Course you’re still going to wear green, not blue, next March, but at least that decision will be based on the facts!

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Serving Up Myths, Signs, Tips, and Facts in Business Blog Posts

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To get started with what Neil Patel calls a “documented blogging strategy”, he says, you need to plan topic ideas. When he’s feeling light on those, Patel admits, he simply fires up Hubspot’s Blog Idea Generator.  When Patel wanted to write about link-building, for example the Generator suggested building blog posts around:

  • 20 Myths About Link Building
  • 10 Signs Your Should Invest in Link Building
  • 10 Quick Tips About Link Building
  • The Worst Advice We’ve Ever Heard About Link Building
  • The History of Link Building

In training business blog content writers, I call this kind of tactic “templating”. When you have several pieces of information to impart, consider ways to “unify” them under one umbrella or list category. In fact, at Say It For You, I’m always on the lookout for different “templates”, not in the sense of platform graphics, but in terms of formats for presenting information about any business or professional practice. The format lends variety to the different posts, and also helps readers organize their own thoughts on the subject.

Let’s take a closer look at each of those Generator templates:

Myths…Blog posts are the perfect medium for “mythbusting” to dispel counterproductive thinking about your industry or profession.

Signs you should….I like the subtlety of this implied Call to Action. It doesn’t order readers to take action, just creates an awareness of a possible reason to act.

Tips… When I’m helping new clients who are business owners or professional practitioners, I often find they feel some ambiguity about planning their blog post content.  In the beginning, many feel uneasy about giving away valuable information “for free”. But offering tips is a great way to selling yourself and your services to online searchers.

Worst advice…The fear of losing something, psychologists tell us, motivates people more than the prospect of gain something.  This template about “worst advice’ plays on that fear of losing out because of bad advice.

History of….History has an important place in blog content writing. History-of-our-company background stories have a humanizing effect, creating feeling of empathy and admiration for business owners or practitioners who overcame adversity to build successful careers and corporations.

A recent Reader’s Digest article sparked yet another “template” idea: 50 Health Facts Your Doctor Wants You to Know:

In a “stall” on your “documented blog strategy”? Try using templates to serve up myths, signs, tips, and facts.

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Tell Business Blog Readers: Review. Check. Evaluate. Consider.

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call to action

That entire two page spread in Crossroads, AAA Hoosier Motor Club’s magazine, I realized, constituted one big Do-It-Yourself Call to Action. There were actually seven CTAs in a row:

  1. Know your coverage.
  2. Think about what’s changed since your last checkup.
  3. Review your home inventory.
  4. Check your liability coverage.
  5. Consider natural disasters.
  6. Evaluate your auto coverage.
  7. Call your agent.

As a blog content writer, I was glad to see that the AAA magazine authors had remembered to answer the question “Why should I?” before it was asked: “Just as an annual physical is good for your health, taking time to regularly examine your insurance coverage can help ensure your financial well-being.”

Too obvious? Too pushy?  Just plain too many AAA Calls-to-Action?  Perhaps. “Your blog can be a powerhouse when it comes to lead generation and reconversion, but you have to know how to use it, Pamela Vaughan writes in Hubspot. “The CTA you choose can make or break the conversion potential of any given blog post you publish,” Vaughan adds. Consider the stage of the sales and marketing funnel your visitors are in and narrow down the list of CTAs to match.

Neil Patel of crazyegg.com talks about using end-of-content CTAs, which appear right at the end of the article.  The logic – “If a reader reaches the end of an article, they are engaged and ready to convert.”

Does directly asking for the customer’s business invalidate the good information you’ve provided in the piece? Not in the least. When people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or on different websites, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business. But as long as the material is valuable and relevant for the searchers, they’re perfectly fine with knowing there’s someone who wants them for a client or customer.

Content that provides value will indeed help readers:

  • review their own knowledge
  • check the information you’ve against what they already thought they knew
  • evaluate the current services and products they are using
  • (hopefully) consider what you have to offer.

But, for readers to follow seven different CTA’s is a bit much to ask, I’d advise. Better, in each blog post to focus on ONE message, ONE audience, and ONE outcome.  Business blogging, in fact, is ideal for using what I call the Power of One!

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