Survival Tips for Blog Content Writers

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“I realize how depressing publishing survival tips can sound,” Bob Eckstein starts out his “Top 10 Survival Tips for Publishing” article in Writer’s Digest. but it’s essential for writers to realize that all writers experience struggles. As a blog content writer, I actually found Eckstein’s survival tips inspiring more than boring, especially the four listed here:

Show Up.
“Show up daily, happy and ready to work.” The same advice, seems to me, applies to business blogging. I’ve learned that trumping elements of success in blog marketing such as technical expertise and writing skill, is what I dub “drill sergeant discipline”, which involves the simple but very difficult exercise of continuing to “show up” online.

Keep Learning.
“Your work can always improve. Spend a few minutes every week familiarizing yourself with the news in your genre.” A true business  blog content writer never stops “learning the trade,” which, at Say It For You, we’ve found means getting ideas from everywhere and everyone, constantly looking to broaden our own experience and so as to share knowledge of our readers. “Content writers must expand their horizons to more challenging material than they typically read, paying special attention to sentence structure, word choice, and flow,” wordstream.com advises.

Don’t read reviews.
“Trust the experts among your inner circle and your inner monologue – there’s far too much negativity from critics.” Search engine optimization is the science part of the art-science mix inherent in blogging for business, and I frequently need to remind my clients (and often myself) that analytics are important, but they aren’t everything. As yoast.com (the WordPress plugin guide our blog content writers at Say It For You rely on) reassures us ” Above all, your blog post has to be a good piece of writing!

Be Ready to Pivot.
“Your book can be a movie script, Twitter feed, or animated series,” Eckstein tells authors. Of all marketing tactics, I’m convinced, business blogging is the best suited for implementing the lean startup concept of pivoting. In fact, that’s exactly what I love most about blogging as a communications channel. Each post can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business. With proper tracking, you quickly learn what’s working and what’s less effective; “pivoting” in the blog content does not involve any lengthy or costly new research.

Depressing? Far from it – survival on the internet is simply a matter of getting frequent, relevant, and passionate content “out there”!

 

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Using the Bizarre to make Things Plain

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Did you know? The first step on the moon by astronaut Neil Armstrong was with his left foot, The Book of Bizarre Truths reveals.
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In corporate blogging training sessions, I often recommend including interesting tidbits of information on topics related to your business (or, if you’re a freelance blog content writer, tidbits related to the client’s business). The tidbit not only serves as an attention grabber, but can be used to explain the way a product or service works. The left-foot item, for example, might be used in a podiatrist’s blog.  Psychology Today reports that, while the majority of professional soccer players are right-footed, those able to play equally well with both feet earned a substantial salary premium. Speaking of salary, the word comes from the word salt, which ancient Roman soldiers received as part of their pay. Career coaches might use that detail in their blog posts (in fact, the Zip recruiter blog does just that).

Celery was once considered a trendy, high-fashion food, served in its own vase and placed in the center of the table, Bizarre Truths tells us, and EatingWell.com tells readers how to make a “centerpiece you can eat”. Restaurants might use that tidbit in their blog, as might cooking schools. The OpenTable restaurant delivery company helps readers “elevate the ambiance” in setting the dining table. Dieticians can use the tidbit to emphasize the antioxidants and fiber contained in celery, and the fact that celery contains apigenin, which is an anti-inflammatory.

The shoe has been a symbol of fertility, Bizarre Truths tells readers and, in some Eskimo cultures, women wore shoes around their necks in the hope of getting pregnant. This tidbit might be featured not only in a shoe company blog, but even on the website of a fertility clinic! “Fingernails grow faster on your dominant hand” is a natural for a manicure salon blog, but could easily be adapted for a preschool discussing the importance of hand dominance in developing fine motor skills in children.

Bamboo is the world’s tallest grass, growing as much as 34 inches in a day. Not only might this tidbit prove useful in a blog promoting a lawncare service, it might be used by a company installing flooring or one promoting the advantages of bamboo hand towels or offering tips for cooking with bamboo shoots.

In blogging for business, you can often use bizarre tidbits to capture interest and make things plain!

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Sharing the “We” in Blogging for Business

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In a Say It For You blog post last week, I mentioned the ongoing debate about the use of the two pronouns “you” and “we” in marketing messages. While many respondents to a Corporate Visions survey had said they used we-phrasing deliberately to position themselves as trusted partners with their customers, a set of experiments reviewed in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that sometimes the use of “we” arouses suspicion rather than trust, because prospects and brand-new didn’t yet have reason to feel a congenial relationship with the company.

My own feelings on the matter, as expressed in my monthly newsletter, are that “we” is a valuable syllable. In communication with the public, and particularly in blog content writing, there’s a very special purpose to be served by using first person pronouns – they help keep the blog conversational rather than either academic-sounding or overly sales-ey. When the owners of a business or practice use phrases such as “we think”, “we believe”, “we see this all the time”, they are offering their unique slant or opinion that differentiates them from their competition.

Much to my delight, as I read through my copy of this week’s Indianapolis Business Journal, I saw that editor Lesley Weidenbener’s Commentary column was titled “we’re listening; we’re focused on business” The article  presents an extremely personal accounting of the way Weidenbener and her editorial staff had wrestled with the decision about whether, as a business-focused publication, they should include breaking news stories about criminal and social events that affect businesses. How would they avoid sensationalism or “yellow journalism”? The newsroom staff met, readers’ advice was considered, and “WE” (the editor shares) “decided that WE will maintain our focus on business news and on how crime….affects business.”, There’s no “royal ‘we'” here; in fact, Wedenbrener tells readers “We want to know what YOU think…”

As blog content writers, we represent those business owners and professions who are – and should be – the “we”, the ones with the ideas, the knowledge, the products and services, and the ones who have the experience and the unique “slants” to share. Those real people behind the “we” are sharing their stuff with YOU, the online readers receiving the good advice and answers to their questions. Blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations or “aggregations” of information, even when that information is extremely valuable. There has to be human connection.

The “oomph”, I’m now even more firmly convinced, comes from sharing the “we” in blogging for business.

 

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Putting Price Into Perspective

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Boy, those Harvard Business Review guys sure know how to put things into perspective… I learned that minimum wage employees in Venezuela would need to work 7,063 hours (in other words, more than three years) to buy an iPhone 13. (Here in good ole’ USA, you’d need to work a mere 114 hours to afford that phone.). Customers in every industry are price-sensitive, but, as Allstate found when it comes to auto insurance, it’s simply not true that most will buy the least expensive plan they can find. Price for the value you create, advises Dave Gray, author of Gamestorming: a Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. In fact, the Corporate Finance Institute defines value-based pricing as adjusting the price based on perceived value rather than historical price.

At Say It For You, we perceive our primary task as blog content writers to be this – clearly demonstrating the value delivered by a business or practice to its customers and clients. By doing that, we have the power to put the price of those goods and services into perspective.

Karen Greenstreet, writing in Forbes in 2014, offered reasons you should – and reasons you shouldn’t – put pricing on your website or in your blog.  You want the chance to establish rapport before discussing pricing, she acknowledges, but many customers will not do business with a company that is not forthcoming about pricing and fees.

My own take as a blog writer and trainer is that the very purpose of blogs is to put information into perspective for visitors. The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate; the better ones give visitors at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers.

For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”  It’s not that pricing isn’t important or that it should be left out –  it’s simply one of many things readers are going to consider.

I think about putting price into perspective not only in terms of my blogging clients’ customers, but in terms of their own budget as we begin a blog marketing initiative.. Often it’s a small business owner in a retail or services field competing with giant national chains. With fewer dollars available, the little guy cannot hope to compete in purchasing ads and needs to rely on organic search to attract eyeballs.  In other words, my clients are wondering, what are their chances for success when they find themselves playing with fewer “game pieces” than their larger, better funded, competitors?

That is where blog value comes in – with consistency and commitment, they have every chance of demonstrating the value they offer, putting the price of their goods and services into proper perspective.

 

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Authenticity Blogging

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Get personal on social media, is Justin Mack’s advice to financial advisors – to demonstrate that you’re unique, you need to explain what you care about and what it’s like to work with you. “The right mix of personal, educational, and corporate brand content can add great value to an advisor’s social media page.” What resonates strongly with prospects, Mack says, is “personal character, culture, and behind-the-scenes content. “Both current and potential clients want to see the people who power the firm more than the firm’s latest earnings success.”

Authenticity is powerful in blog marketing. “You can talk about your goals, background, mission, and products by simply writing and publishing posts,” Livia Ryan writes on.eonetwork.org. Ryan is talking about personal posts, but at Say It For You, we think her statement very much applies to business blogging: “Readers will be provided an intimate view of your journey and what goes into developing your products and services. Connect with readers, and you create potential customers.”

Real people are the key to authentic relationships, sproutsocial agrees. Consumers want to learn more about the people behind their favorite brands. Surveys show 72% of consumers report feeling sloser to a company when employees share information about a brand online. For that very reason, thehartford.com explains, “Your employees need to understand your company, its values, its goals and its priorities.”

Company employees’ contribution to blogging
At Say It For You, when I’m working with a company to set up a business blogging strategy and I’m training that company’s employees to post blogs, quite often I hit resistance, with employees seeing blogging as just one more task in a series of duties that makes their work load heavier. Still even if my team is going to be composing the posts, it’s crucial for the business owner to enlist the support of the employees.

  • Employees are the ones in the field and on the phone with customers and clients.
  • Employees know the strengths and best uses of their own company’s products and services.
  • Employees are the best people to , in conversation with customers. to elicit testimonials and anecdotes that can be used for blog content.

One combination tactic that quite often turns out to be just right is having professionally ghostwritten posts (to maintain the regularity and research needed to win search engine rankings), but with employees providing their very special touch when time and their regular duties allow.

Blogging for business represents an ideal tool for “getting personal” and earning trust, allowing business owners to express who and “what” they are – What makes them tick?  What “ticks them off” about their own industry? In short, business blog writing needs to be real. Being real, though, doesn’t mean being sloppy about grammar and spelling – or about properly attributing quotes and ideas to their sources.

There’s a balancing act between authenticity and brand, but there’s little doubt – authenticity is powerful in blog marketing!

 

 

 

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