Accentuate the Negative?

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“Eliminate the negative an’ latch on to the affirmative” was Johnny Mercer’s musical advice back in 1945.dog food Playing to one’s strengths has, in fact, been a popular fad in management development circles. As a blog content writer, though, sometimes I wonder.

The latest issue of Modern Dog magazine features eight article titles on its cover:

  • How Not to Train Your Puppy
  • Gift ideas galore
  • Big Dogs and their Puppy Counterparts
  • Winter Survival Tips
  • Great Gear
  • I’m Adoptable
  • Find a New Best Friend
  • Why is My Dog Staring at Me?

Guess which one attracted my attention the most – Yeah, gotta admit… it was the negative one telling me how NOT to train my puppy. And guess what? It’s not just me.  People are drawn to articles with negative titles, my friend and fellow blogger Lorraine Ball pointed out a year ago. Posts with negative titles stand out in a blog roll, on a Twitter feed or LinkedIn page, and the negative posts are more likely to be shared, retweeted and read.

What’s with us? Well, “edgy language draws attention”, Lorraine explains. (Lorraine’s title “Why Your Blog Titles Suck” is a bit too edgy for me, but I get the idea. I do.) Fact is, I would’ve picked “Why is My Dog Staring at Me?” before “How to Train Your Puppy”.  It was that How-NOT-to that drew my attention.

But that doesn’t jibe at all with Rich Brook’s advice on socialmediaexaminer: “The how-to is the most powerful of all the blogging archetpyes.”  Your prospects and customers have a problem and you can help them solve it by creating a step-by-step post that walks them through a solution, he says. That may be true, counters Lorraine Ball, but fear of failure is core to who we are as people, and it’s hard to resist reading material about how to avoid it.

Could it be that accentuating the negative, and only then latching on to the affirmative is the best advice for us business blog content writers?

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Help Blog Readers See Themselves in the Scenario

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Vestidos de gitana- Mujer bailando sevillanas.This week’s Say It For You blog posts are based on wisdom gained from friend Robby Slaughter’s new book, “The Battle For Your Email Inbox”.

“When information is elevated to a scenario, it becomes more obvious what to do with it,” the author explains.  “Matching elements to groupings is fundamental, he adds, so when you encounter a fact or suggestion, attempt to classify it.”

That same concept applies to blogging for business, I’m convinced.  Each claim a content writer puts into a corporate blog needs to be put into context for the reader, so that the claim not only is true, but feels true to online visitors.

I think Robby Slaughter’s description of email –“water on the open seas, everywhere and totally inescapable” – is true of blog posts.  There are literally millions upon millions of posts out there making claims of one sort or another. If we can’t help readers in their attempt to classify all that stuff, we’re not likely to be of much help at all to them.

It wouldn’t be exaggerating for me to say, based on my own experience reading all types of SEO marketing blogs, that very few manage to convey to visitors what the blogger’s claims about that company’s or that practice’s products and services can mean to them, the readers!

In fact, meaning becomes super-important when we’re blogging to describe the features of a product or service.  Sometimes I tell content writers, “Try using the phrase ‘which means that…’ to explain ways that product or services will be of help to users. Imagine those readers asking themselves, How will I use the product?  How much will I use? How often? Where? What will it look like?  How will I feel?”

I absolutely agree that information needs to be elevated into scenarios. My way of describing the process to newbie content writers is this: Painting the picture is only Step #1.  What comes next is putting the reader into the picture!

 

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So What’s an Idea When It Comes To Blogging for Business?

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“So what’s an idea?” asks friend and fellow writer Robby Slaughter in hisIntelligence concept newest book, “The Battle for Your Email Inbox”. “An idea,” he defines, “is information on which you can act.”

As a blogging trainer, I couldn’t help thinking that what Slaughter is saying about email should be a rule of thumb for us blog content writers.

“The reason to make a distinction that email is for ‘ideas’,” he points out, “is so that we do something with the information that comes to us through email, and also so that we direct others what to do with what we send them.” Email is for ideas, the author insists, not just random, context-free snippets of data. (My friend Robby might easily have been referring to blog content!)

We live in a world dominated by the buzzword “big data”, Slaughter observes. But while big data is crucial in solving crimes, fighting disease, or improving marketing, your inbox is not for big data.  Instead, it’s a router for ideas.

Blogging for business is about routing, too. After all, as a business blog content creator, you’re not in the business of information storage; you’re constantly collecting information, true, but the purpose is to route that information to potential buyers.

When Robby Slaughter talks about routing, he doesn’t mean sticking information in a folder never to be looked at again.  Routing, he says, means you send stuff to where it belongs, usually outside of the system in question. It’s all about getting freight out of the door.

That’s where, by the way, there really is one big difference between an inbox and a blog. “Old” blog posts don’t go out the door. Even if the information from those blog post is “routed” through Facebook or Twitter, the material remains in the “archives” of the website, organized in reverse chronological order.

That structural difference, though, doesn’t take away one iota from the value of the Slaughter definition of an idea as leading to an action. I’d say the ultimate challenge blog content writers face is getting readers to “see” themselves using the products and services described in the blog posts and then providing them with options for using the information we’ve provided.

So what’s an idea when it comes to blogging for business? A blog is a router towards action!

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Painting Blog Posts With a Narrow Brush

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paintbrush“WISH-TV Channel 8 and WTTV-TV Channel 4 are at the center of the biggest shakeup  the Indianapolis TV market has seen in 35 years,” observes Anthony Schoettle of the Indianapolis Business Journal.  It’s a long story, with IBJ using almost 1 ½ full pages of text to comment on the situation.

But for us blog content writers, the takeaways from this article are to be found in the one small section titled “Differentiation Key.”  As WTTV and WXIN General Manager Paul Rennie made clear to both staffs, “we don’t want to be delivering the same news to the same people.” That could hurt both stations, he explains. The plan is for WXIN to go after the 25-49-year-old audience, he explains, while WTTV targets the 45-plus segment.

In talking with reporter Schoettle, Rose Durbin, media director for Hirons & Co. ad agency, describes the challenge as follows: “The stations absolutely have to keep the news fresh….  If they start recycling stories, advertisers will run from that.”

My “Rockstar” friend and fellow blogger Thaddeus Rex talks about four tactics to help “stuff” can differentiate itself:
1. Features – your product or service can do something your competitor’s can’t (or yours does it better).
2. Location – your product/service is available someplace your competitor’s is not (or yours is more easily available)
3. Service – the buying experience you provide sets you apart
4. Cost – you’re the cheapest or the most exclusive.

But even if your (or your blogging client’s) products and services are highly differentiated from the general market, that’s not enough to keep content fresh and make conversions happen. Your knowledge of the target audience has to influence every aspect of your blog. “When you define your market, really define it. Draw an indisputable border around it, and then own that market with a message that will make all other less focused competitors disappear in the fog of clutter,” says business coach and author Jim Ackerman.

Whether you’re a radio reporter or a business blogger, paint your posts with a narrow brush!

 

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Blogging to Tell Them What to Think About

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Thinking manHara Estroff Marano, writing in Psychology Today, says she won’t tell you what to think, but will tell you what to think about.  While in this article the psychologist is offering food for thought in the sphere of dating and self-motivation, I couldn’t help but love that line of hers, realizing how very apropos it is for us business blog content writers.

In fact, a point I often stress in corporate blogging training sessions – whether you’re blogging for a business, for a professional practice, or for a nonprofit organization, is this: you need to voice an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers. In other words, blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations; you can’t just “aggregate” other people’s stuff and make that be your entire blog presence.

On the other hand, if you, as a business owner or professional practitioner, try telling people what to think, that’s a surefire way to lose friends and customers in a hurry. Yes, your blog is your “podium”, meaning you get to showcase your business so customers will want you to be the one to provide them with the product or the service they need. But they need to arrive at that point as a result of their own thinking.  Dr. Marano hit the nail on the head – don’t tell readers what to think; give them all the facts they need to think about.

How can blogs help potential clients and customers make better, sometimes complex, decisions?

  • By suggesting questions readers can ask themselves while choosing among many options. (Do they want ease of use? Current functionality? Future capabilities?)
  • By “mapping”, meaning showing how choices are related to consequences.  How much sooner will your mortgage get paid off if you add $100 each month to your payment. How should the prospect feel about the purchase (Relief? Trust? Premier status?)
  • By offering easy ways to make choices, so that the decisions are not pressure-packed.

You might say the art of blogging consists of In supplying facts, and then putting those facts in context.  As bloggers, we’re giving them the raw materials to think about, but we need to go one step further, demonstrating why those facts matter, suggesting ways readers can use the information for their own benefit.

To the woman concerned that the man she’s been dating has been legally separated for the past twenty years, Marano suggests, “Could it be that your online friend values clinging to the comfort of the status quo?”

What can you give your blog readers to think about?

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