Painting a Blog Post in Two Lines

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One way to bring a character to life in your story is to paint that character “in two lines”, Writer’s Digest Editor-in-Chief Jessica Strawser suggests to authors of stories and novels. You can reveal a character as seen through another character’s eyes or through dialogue, and even through “voices” or thoughts going through a character’s mind, Strawser adds.

What we’ve found at Say It For You is that a big, big part of providing content marketing is helping business owners formulate and then tell their “stories”. Certainly, online visitors to a company’s or a practice’s blog want to feel that the owners or practitioners understand them. But those prospects want to understand who those service and product providers are as well, and it is through character-revealing stories that an emotional connection can form between provider and the buyer.

While blog marketing can be designed to “win search”, once the searchers have arrived, what needs winning is their hearts, and that is precisely what content writers can achieve best through “painting” the character of the business or practice, showing why the owners are passionate about delivering your service or products to customers and clients.

As seen through another character’s eyes…
The history of the company and the values important to its leaders are story elements that create ties with blog readers. The best content writing client testimonial I ever received reads as follows: “Say It For You helped me, a numbers guy, put into words what I knew in my heart but couldn’t verbalize…”

As seen through dialogue…
We all love to eavesdrop just a little and any good narrative should contain some dialogue, including character-revealing quotes from the business owners. Anecdotes and customer testimonials help readers sense “character” through dialogue.

As seen through thoughts going through a character’s mind…
At Say It For You, we recognize what I’ve dubbed the “training benefit” of blog content creating. In the process of verbalizing positive aspects of a business or practice in a way that people can understand, leaders are constantly providing themselves with training about how to tell their business story!

Blog content writing is a way of “painting” the character of a business and its owners.

 

 

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It’s Your Rant, But It’s All About Them

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A “rant”, (venting a complaint in an angry, loud voice), is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a “a high-flown, extravagant, or bombastic speech or utterance, a piece of turgid declamation, a tirade.” While oral tirades are still with us, Daniel Seidel writes in Slate, the last decade or so has seen more and more written rants, “a form that has blossomed on the Web.” A good rant, Seidel thinks, expresses a real passion, often one enflamed by a feeling of powerlessness. Still, many rants are humorous, with a tongue-in-cheek tone. Whatever the tone of aa particular rant, he adds, there is neither the expectation nor the desire for a response. “It would be simplistic to think of blogging as a kind of sublimated ranting,” Seidel remarks, “but blogs do form a part of our cacophonous culture.”

Not all blog posts are rants, of course. There are, however, three “rant”- like content piece types that our writers at Say It For You have found useful:

  1. An “if only” best business practice that you wish everyone with whom you do business would adopt. The content makes the point that doing things in a certain way would make the lives of both the provider and of the customer so-o-o much easier and business dealings so much more efficient!
  2. A device, program, or source of information that the owner wants t make sure everyone knows about, something that would make doing business s much smoother and more efficient
  3. A mistake that you see others making over and over that you believe is a big barrier to their success.

(To be most effective, even if a rant post is focused on a single idea, the content should be broken down or “chunked” into bullet points or numbered steps to make the concept easy to remember, as demonstrated above.)

Needless to say, rant blog posts can elicit strong reactions on the part of readers (either because you’ve touched a nerve (what you’re complaining about may be their pet peeve, as well), or because they totally disagree and want to prove you wrong. Worse, your rant risks rubbing readers the wrong way, making them feel as if they are incompetent or uninformed.  People generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they come to your blog seeking information on what you sell, what you do, and what you know about!

If you’re moved to include a rant or two in your content marketing, the cardinal rule to remember is that it’s all about the readers, not about you. How will they experience your rant?

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Great Attributes of Great Financial Advisors and Great Blog Posts

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Business blog content writers, I couldn’t help thinking, would do well to focus on developing those great attributes that dimensional.com believes are signs of great financial advisors.

Purposeful – they have a clear mission to serve clients and help them reach their goals.
Particularly in the opening lines of a business blog post, it’s important to be purposeful, leaving no doubt in searchers’ minds that they’ve come to the right place to find the information, products, and services they need.

Authentic – they reveal their true selves to clients.
Use emotional content to evoke feelings that drive people to share and to act. Reveal your own cherished beliefs, creating a feeling in your audience of being connected with you and the people in your business or practice.

Empathetic – they know they cannot effectively serve clients without genuinely relating to them.
Researchers at the University of Bath created a measurement for ads called the Emotive Power Score to gauge if the ad is going to change feelings about the brand. Readers of bogs seeking iformation to support their hobbies, interests, and beliefs will seek “empathetic” content.

Intellectually curious – they continue to learn and to search for solutions, are open to new ideas and committed to honing their own knowledge and skills.
How can we ghost bloggers write for business owners and professional clients without being trained in those fields ourselves? The answer is constant curiosity and learning.
As content writers, we offer our clients’ blog visitors a more personal and even a more analytical perspective on the information they might find on the company website.  Often, precisely because we’re industry “outsiders”, learners, we are actually better able to approach the subject in ways online searchers will understand.

Use questions to better understand needs before suggesting action.
While in a blog post, you’re often providing answers to questions that your potential customer might ask, the very fact that it’s in the form of a question allows readers to feel you’re helping them form them form their own opinions.

Honest – set reasonable expectations about outcomes.
Blogging honestly about your business’ capabilities and “incapabilities” helps set reasonable expectations tha prospects appreciate.

Disciplined – they don’t let media messages or market swings drive impulsive actions.
Drill sergeant discipline is required for content marketing, with web rankings are based at least partially on frequency of posting new content.  And, while successful marketing blog content writers don’t aim for “trendy”, they can tie blog content to current events.

Great attributes of great business leaders make for really great business blog posts!

 

 

 

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Using the Power of the Imperative Tense in Your Blog

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In a tutorial article “Make the Most of Your Gatherings”, Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan make the most of the power of the imperative tense: “Go in with a game plan,” they advise. “Set up a drink station.” “Layer the lighting.” “Build a charcuterie board.” “Encourage play.” Even their party planning advice is offered in the form of “orders” – ” Personalize a playlist.” “Turn off your tech.” ” Keep the menu simple.” “Send a sweet follow-up.”

“The imperative mood in English is generally used to give an order, to prompt someone to do something, to give a warning, or to give instructions,” the American & British Academy explains. By its very nature, an imperative is directly addressed to someone, grammarphobia.com adds. Tanya Trusler of ellii.com lists five common uses of imperative verbs:

  • parents telling children what to do
  • teachers giving instructions to students
  • employers giving instructions to employees
  • people in authority, such as policy officers, telling other people what to do
  • rules, guidelines, and laws

Since, at Say it For You, I’m fond of saying that teaching is the new selling in blogging for business, presenting how-to-lists and tutorials has become an important aspect of content creation. With no apparent end to the technical information available to consumers on the internet, our job is to help readers understand, absorb, buy into, and use that information.  One way to empower customers to make a decision is to help them understand the differences between various industry terms, as well as the differences between the products and services of one business compared to those offered by another. The Property Brothers’ article demonstrates how using “soft” imperatives to offer valuable tips can be a skillful way to serve up advice.

One tip for using the power of the imperative without creating “who-are-you-to-tell-me-what-to-do” resentment involves explaining the reasoning behind the “order”. In an article in USA Today, George Hobica discusses the exhortation given to airline passengers to “Place the mask over your mouth and nose”. If the reasons behind instructions given to passengers (to receive enough oxygen flow, both mouth and nose need to be under the mask) were made clear, Hobica says, people would listen more.

Use the power of soft imperatives in your blog!

 

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Blogging Unwelcome News

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“Breaking bad news to customers is not an easy task,” Susan Berkley admits in zenbusiness.com. To do this in a compassionate and professional manner, she advises, “Give as much as you can about the who, what, when, where, and why,” Take charge, outlining a specific plan of action that you and your company will take, and what actions you recommend customers take.

While agilelaw.com advises never delivering bad news via either a voice mail or email (clients may not be able to reach you right away to ask questions or obtain additional information), a blog post may in fact be the best way to keep all readers informed of general developments which may apply to them. (Customers may also be informed via letter; individual issues should be dealt with off-line.)

Acknowledge the facts rather than sugarcoating the unknown and unknowable, focusing on options for the future, says Jennifer Kahnweiler, Ph.D. “Small people shun responsibility. However, strong peoples shoulder it.” Her five-part grid for organizing a bad-news message:

  1. Start on either a positive or neutral note.
  2. Elaborate on the current situation or your criteria/reasoning for making the negative decision.
  3. State the bad news (as positively as possible).
  4. Offer an alternative to meet the person’s goals, when possible.
  5. End with a goodwill statement focused on the future.

As is true of newspapers, business blog content writing can balance feature stories with news. In general, the word “news”, when it comes to blog marketing, can mean two entirely different things.  The first type centers around you and your company or practice, with the second type of news relating to your community, your city, your country, even worldwide events. If, as blog writers, we can go right to the heart of any possible customer fears or concerns by addressing negative assumption questions (before they’ve been asked!)  we have the potential to breed understanding and trust.

There’s no question that negative news can have a huge impact on consumers’ opinions of your business, but truth is that the more your business grows, the more difficult it is to escape negative publicity, statuslabs.com admits. The best way to combat the larger potential impacts of negative news coverage is to have a strong online presence. Then,
addressing negative news early on before it grows into a larger story is good advice.

But, it’s when your “bad news” consists, not of a bad review or an accusation, but of an unpalatable fact (you’re discontinuing a favorite product; you’re raising your hourly rates; you’re changing a long-standing policy, etc.), that breaking the news in your blog is going to require digging into your content writing reserves with honesty and skill..

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