Focus 2 Blogging for Business

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ExamFocus™2, a career and education planning system for college students that we use with our students at Butler College of Business, talks about three types of people:

Helpers
People with a social orientation enjoy helping people and are very interested in human relationships. They are often described as patient and idealistic.

Persuaders
Persuaders like to influence others, and enjoy working with people and ideas, rather than with things. They are adventurous and ambitious.

Organizers
Organizers like to follow set procedures and routines, and to work with data and details.

What this suggests for us business blog content writers is that, for each post, we target one of  the three types of readers.  Over time, we can address all three types of readers.

For example, Rich Brooks of socialmediaexaminer.com lists different types of blog post formats, including:

– How-to’s and tutorials
– Resources and link lists
– To-do’s
– Reviews
– Controversial posts
– Interviews
– Series
– Case studies
– Stats
– Daily roundups
– Breaking news
– Personal stories

I can see where “Organizers” would love the to-do’s, the how-to’s and tutorials, the resources lists, and the stats. The “Persuaders” might like the controversial posts and the reviews.  The “Helpers” might like the personal stories and interviews the best.

Our task as blog content writers is to signal to target customers that we understand their needs and are dedicated to helping them. Our knowledge of who our target audience is must influence every aspect of our blog –from the words we use in the title, how technical we get, to how sophisticated we try to be in our approach.

But, since, no matter how skillful our analytics, we don’t really ever know who will be reading our blog post on any one day, let’s target the helpers, persuaders, and organizers in turn!

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Bibi Makes a Point on the Side of Humor in Blogging for Business

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Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in JerusalemJust after I’d posted Monday’s Say It For You blog urging blog content writers to use humor with caution, my friend George shared the following link to what he calls “a truly original ad”.  George was right, I think you’ll agree – the video really got me laughing – and thinking…

WAIT!  Before you click, let me provide some background (most of you will need to go with the subtitles ; I was able to understand the Hebrew).  This is a campaign ad for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nicknamed Bibi.  Netanyahu represents the right-wing Likud party. The challengers are Isaac Herzog (nicknamed Buji) of the Zionist Camp and Tzipi Livni of the Kadima party….

OK, you’ve seen the video, so what happened here?   Monday, I quoted Jason Miller saying that humor is an effective way to connect  with an audience and humanize your brand or company.  This video sets a very common scene of parents waiting for the babysitter to arrive. The incongruity of having the Prime Minister serve as a sitter lends humor.

Of course, the blog content writers I advise are not writing politically related copy. In fact, politics is one of the subjects best avoided in blog marketing for a product or service, I advised. But this video clip, where politics was the very topic of the piece, managed to make a few very pointed statements about the two opponents: Herzog would be too quick to give away  the rugs in the apartment (territory) and Tzipi is not visible enough and an infiltrator (she would have moved before the parents came home.).

“It’s them or me,” is the parting line of Bibi’s explanation to the parents, watching out for the future of your children. When the parents arrive home and say ” Shalom” (hello, meaning peace), Bibi says, ” Not unconditionally!”

Got to admit – this video was made up of  a soft, yet very pointed jabs at the Bibi’s political opponents, yet presented such an everyday, human situation, so funny and endearing.  Loved it!

Still, let’s face it.  What’s the likelihood of our being this effective with humor on an ongoing basis in our blog posts? In fact, this video made me think of a sort of moral dilemma when it comes to blog marketing (actually to any kind of marketing).  We want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition.  But how can we get the point across that readers should want to choose us?

My friend and colleague Thaddeus Rex at National Speakers Association tells us to get readers to laugh at the competitor’s negative, but emphasize your positive.

 

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Questions Readers Shouldn’t Need to Ask at an Open Blog

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“The best way to find out if a school is a good match for your student and your family is to visit the school in person.” Great-Schools.org offers a list of questions to ask at the next open house:

Does this school have a particular educational philosophy or mission? For blogs to be effective, they must serve as positioning statements. The “visit” has to cute boy sitting at table and writing. conclude with readers understanding exactly what your particular philosophy or mission is.

What is this school’s approach to student discipline and safety?

Prospects are always mentally posing the “What’s In It For Me?” questions.
What’s the benefit in this for ME? How will MY interests be protected and served if I choose to do business with you or become your client or patient? What will you do to keep me “safe” from risk?

What kinds of library resources are available for students?
Serving as a “go-to” source for online readers can be a great formula of success for
business bloggers. Readers could, in theory, have sought information from sources
more authoritative than your blog. Yet those same readers will be sure to appreciate that  you’ve gone to the trouble of culling valuable nuggets from a variety of sources and  helped them make sense of the information.

How do students get to school? Is free busing available?
Generally, online searchers want to find out what they’ll get if they buy and want to gain
perspective about how the pricing and the quality stacks up against the competition.

Online searchers who visit your business blog are very much like those parents at a school
open house. The parents are looking for the very best institution to help with their children’s
education. Online searchers arrive at your business blog needing to know how to find products
and services, how to do something, how to solve very specific problems.

Don’t wait for readers to pull out that list of prepared questions – your
blog content should address those questions ahead of time. That way, the answers will be
there waiting when visitors arrive!

 

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Who’s Who Blogging for Business

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I think the article “Who’s Who in Your Doctor’s Office” in AARP Magazine is 
onto a good Shield. Armor. Question mark.thing, using a concept that could be useful for us blog content writers.

“Back in the day, there were doctors and nurses,” AARP authors Sarah Barchus and Cady
Sagon explain. “Now a plethora of health care professionals may be caring for you. Here’s how
to keep them straight. .. ”

There follows a detailed description of what each professional wears (the length of the white
coat differentiates a physician’s assistant from a medical student, while technicians wear
scrubs), the level of education required for each position, and what each professional actually
does.

The tone of this article – well, I found it quite reassuring. As a consumer, I must say, it made me
feel “armed” with understanding.

That’s precisely the feeling tone I think every professional practice or business would like to
communicate to customers and clients, and one way to do that might be through writing “Who’s
Who in our business/our office/our industry” blog posts. Apart from the typical “Our Team”
landing page on your website, which introduces people by name with a brief bio, the “Who’s
Who” would focus on the function each position serves.

“Analytics and data give us all sorts of insiqhts into what our customers want from our business. But
sometimes … don’t you wish you could get an answer straight from your customers?” asks
KISSmetrics .. Why are people using one feature three times as often as another? What causes
customers to use your product less frequently (and eventually stop altogether)? When we match
customer feedback to what we’re seeing in our analytics, we get a much clearer picture of what’s
going on. Then we’ll know how to fix problems and go after the right opportunities, KISSmetrics
observes.

After dealing with Say It For You client companies representing dozens of different industries and
categories, I discovered that the feedback “loop” begins with customers knowing what to expect from each
department or each professional in the companies or practices with whom they’re doing business.

Helping your customers understand “Who’s Who”, I explain to blogging clients, will go a long, long way towards putting people at ease with your products and services.  Over time, you’ll be arming your readers with information!

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Spam Comment Remedies for Business Blogs

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For advice on the issue of the spam comment “attacks” that tend to plague newly created blog pages, I turned to friend Jeremy Politt of the ITeam . Jeremy was kind enough to share some of the following information for the benefit of Say It For You readers:

Jeremy starts out by admitting that there is no definitive way to stop SPAM comments 100%.

However, there are a couple of steps business owners can take when first setting up their blog platform:

  • Don’t automatically accept comments. Comments can still be submitted, but you can at least review them and decide whether to publish them.
  • Include a “Captcha” (you know, where they have to type in a set of numbers or letters to prove they’re human, not a digital SPAM machine gun.)
  • There are free or very inexpensive plug-in software solutions that filter keywords in comments to test if they’re legit. Jeremy was nice enough to provde this link to a list of plug-ins: http://premium.spmudev.org/blog/stop-wordpress-comment-spam/

According to anti-spam service Askimet, at least 80% of all comments posted to blogs are spam.

Have you been having this very problem on your business blog? (Isn’t it nice to be noticed? LOL)

 

“Jeremy Pollitt is the Founder and President of ITeam.  ITeam provides customized internet marketing solutions to small and medium sized business for the last 7 years.  ITeam has a proven track record of helping business getting greater exposure on the internet.  Click here to contact Jeremy.

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