Blog Hunter-Gatherers Tell Stories to Ignite

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Anybody can become a better communicator, a better storyteller, says Carmine Gallo, author of “the Storyteller’s Secret.”.  Tell more personal stories, he advises.  Unfortunately, he laments, most of what we read and hear is 99% facts and 1% story. “I say, turn it around”, Gallo urges.

 

In the 1960’s, a Canadian anthropologist studying hunter-gatherer Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, a society that had existed in southern Africa for more than 150,000 years, found that  the Bushmen were hunter-gatherers by day and storytellers by night. In a place of frequent droughts, floods, and famine, the Bushmen used storytelling to boost their social relationships and create bonds.

 

“No matter who you are, you are a storyteller, says Karen Friedman of the Public Relations Society of America. Research shows that people are more likely to remember a story than a statistic. In a program at Stanford University, students were asked to give one-minute speeches that contained three statistics and one story. Only 5 percent of the listeners remembered a single statistic, while 63 percent remembered the stories.

 

Friedman’s message has direct applicability to blog content writers, and it comes in the form of a warning: …”Using digital content will not increase brand loyalty or enhance your marketing efforts. It takes an old-fashioned story that keeps listeners on the edge of their seats to help you shape your outcome.”

 

But, like every worthwhile endeavor, storytelling takes some skill and demands practice. True, as Elizabeth Bernstein said last year in the Life & Arts section of the Wall Street Journal, “when we share our personal narratives, we disclose something about our values, our history, and our outlook on life. But the bonding benefits of storytelling only work if you’re good at it, and many of us aren’t.”

 

As a professional blog content creator and trainer in corporate writing, I think storytelling is a perfect vehicle for blogging. 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 storytelling. Done well, the stories will show why you are passionate about delivering your service or products to customers and clients.
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Turns of Phrase Catch Readers By the Curiosity

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Blog post titles have two seemingly contradicting jobs to do – arousing readers’ curiosity while still assuring them they’ve come to the right place, I’ve often explained to blog content writers at Say It For You.
Sometimes, in either the title or the body of a post, “misdirection” adds humor. I remember Jeff Fleming of the National Speakers Association of Indiana teaching us that speakers and magicians use misdirection to cause a surprise, which tickles listeners’ funny bones.

Just the other day (Employee Benefit News is just one example of the “reading around” I do to keep content fresh),  I came across two examples: “Not-So-Sweet-Dreams” was the title of an article about lack of sleep on the part of workers. (We’re used to the expression “sweet dreams”, so the title sort of brings readers up short.) A second article in the same issue was called “Thank God It’s Thursday”, discussing the merits of a four-day workweek.  Since the expression “Thank God It’s Friday” is so ubiquitous, the insertion of “Thursday” arouses curiosity.

Using unlikely comparisons is another technique content writers can use to engage readers. Putting ingredients together that don’t seem to match is not only an excellent tool for creating engaging business blog content, but also a good teaching tool. Going from what is familiar to readers to the unfamiliar area of your own expertise, allows your potential customers to feel smart as well as understood.

One point I keep stressing to business owners and practitioners hesitant about launching a blog
on the grounds that “I’ve already covered my products and services on my website – what else is left to say?” is that the blog is there to provide relevant, useful, and timely content to your prospects and customers to help them solve problems, understand industry trends, and make sense of the news and how it relates to them.

One caution about surprising readers – far-fetched can come across as “bait ‘n switch” if the unlikely comparison doesn’t clarify and help readers get the answers they came to find. You might say that, when it comes to blog content writing, misdirection needs to end up by offering direction!
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Staying Specific in Blog Marketing

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“Including one, or a combination of certain aspects can generate higher opt-in,” Ryan Duss and Russ Hennesberg explain in the book Digital Marketing for Dummies. Those important aspects include:
  • a promise
  • an example
  • a shortcut
  • a solution
There’s a big caveat – these will work only if they are specific, the authors caution.  Generic or clever titles, for example, generally decrease conversions, so it’s important to craft a clear promise. An example must also be specific, perhaps in the form of a case study, and the more specific you are in describing the shortcuts and solutions, the more engaging that content will be.

One way to keep it “real”, we agree at Say it For You, is to be specific. One concern business owners and practitioners express to me is that they don’t want to come across as boastful in their blog.  At the same time, they need to convey the reasons prospects ought to choose them over their competition. This is where being specific comes in – let the facts do the boasting, I explain.

When Inc. Magazine interviewed the purchasing agents of several mega-corporations, asking how each preferred to sold to by suppliers and vendors, the responses supported the concept of specificity.  Northrup Grumman executives actually said, “”Be as specific as possible when describing what you can do for us.  Don’t be shy.  If you have a capability, highlight that capability.”

Benefits consultant Mel Schlesinger tells salespeople the same thing.  Instead of a generic opening (“I have an idea I want to roll by you”), he suggests agents switch to idea-specific ones (I have an idea that can help you reduce employees’ pressure on you to increase wages.”)

Rush’s Magnetic Marketing Checklist is based on the same concept:  Choose a specific audience, she advises, then choose a specific program you can solve for them.

Web searchers are on a fact-finding mission, looking for information about what you do, what you sell, and what you know about.  The more specific the key words and phrases in the title and in the body of the blog post, the greater the chance search engines will direct those searchers to your blog.

To succeed in blog marketing, it’s important to stay specific!
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For Lack of a Genre, the Blog Was Lost

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“I’ve learned the hard way that it’s very hard to sell any story that doesn’t fit neatly into a known category,” writes Paula Munier in her book The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings. “I won’t know where or how to sell it, the editor won’t know how to pitch it to her publishing board, the bookseller won’t know where to shelve it, and the readers won’t know where to find it.
In blog content writing, the same issue exists.  If it’s not clear what the genre, or category is, search engines won’t know where to “shelve” your blog post, and readers, therefore, won’t see it in their search results.
In the WordPress platform, for example, categories are the general labels or “genres”.  A category symbolizes a topic or group of topics, themeisle.com explains, that are connected to one another in some way. The category assigned to each blog post helps organize the website content, making sure that the reader has an easy time finding the content on the ‘shelf”.
Meanwhile, themeisle.com adds, assigning categories to your own blog posts prevents Google from doing the indexing for you, perhaps in ways that are not the most beneficial in helping you get found.

When you categorize a new blog post, that quickly tells readers what the post is about, as well as providing a helpful way to group posts together, making it easier for readers to find related posts. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension offers a list of best practices when using categories, including:

 

  • Plan what categories you plan to use throughout your site and stick with those.
  • Assign each new post to one-three of those categories.
  • Use consistent capitalization and spelling (WordPress treats capitalized and noncapitalized versions of the same name and two different categories).
  • Use terminology that you believe will be familiar to your audience.
  • Don’t use categories that are applicable to only one or two posts.In keeping with all this good advice, at Say it For You, we’ve always used categories to help our clients’ readers find their way to content that matches their specific interests.  But after reading the book “the Lean Startup”, I had an additional thought, based on using a lean production principle in assigning individual blog posts to certain categories. When you‘re studying your Google Analytics, you can see which categories were most frequently viewed by readers that week. Let’s say there were twenty five “sessions” for a particular category. That tells you to “replenish” that category with new content in the same manner as the car dealer might replenish its stock of front bumpers based on 25 customer orders. In other words, the content creation would be driven by the ‘demand” for each category, with the blog itself functioning as a consumer survey tool!

    “For lack of a genre, the sale was lost,” Paula Munier quipped.  Don’t allow the effect of your blog content to get lost for lack of a category!

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Words of Wisdom for Blog Content Writers – Part B

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reading around for blog writing

 

This week, at the start of a new blogging year, I’m looking through my bookshelves at all the business writing-related books I’ve collected over the year 2019. What would I do without these “reading around” gems with their different sorts and shapes of advice and reflection?….

The audience is the hero.
“You are not the hero who will save the audience; the audience is the hero,” Nancy Duarte advises public speakers in the book Resonate. Audience insights and “resonance” can occur only when a presenter takes a stance of humility, the author and coach explains, placing the audience in the center of a story, so it becomes meaningful to them..

Since one important function of any marketing blog is converting lookers to buyers, and since I train Indianapolis blog content writers, this concept of resonance really piqued my interest. When readers arrive at your business blog, it’s because they already have an interest in your topic and are ready to receive the information, the services, and the products you have to offer. However, the focus of each blog post must be on the end results from the readers’ point of view. Help readers know how good they’ll feel in terms of security, savings, recognition, or basic need fulfillment – make them the heroes.

Don’t get steaming mad.
Blowing off steam may seem like a good idea for heart health, explains Mandy Oaklander in a special Time Magazine edition on living longer, but angry outbursts have been proven to result in increased heart risks.

In the real world, many blog content writers focus on appealing to consumers’ fear or greed, making them “angry enough” to take action. At Say It For You, our approach has been that blogging for business is just one aspect of any company’s overall marketing strategy.  The entire tone of the blog, therefore, needs to be consistent with the kind of positive image the company wants to project. Can and should a single blog post appeal to customers’ anger about the poor service, shoddy workmanship, or exorbitant charges they’ve experienced in the past? Definitely! Overall, though, a positive slant will win the day.

What we measure, we can improve.
Improvement in anything happens not all at once, but over time, Michael Hill explains in Measuring Ourselves. When Benjamin Franklin decided he wanted to become proficient at writing, he found examples of writing clearly superior to his own, then would do writing – and rewriting – daily, measuring himself against both others and against his own earlier efforts.

As a corporate blogging trainer and content writer, I find that it’s not always possible to associate a specific ROI measurement to blogging without regard to social media, traditional advertising, events, word of mouth marketing, and sales. Yet, what we’ve learned through working with Say It For You clients, is that the very process of continuously producing and making available quality content (either content they write themselves or content they co-author through interaction with a content writer) helps demonstrate that they care about effectively expressing to customers and colleagues their unique “slant” on their industry.

Writers, as the new year begins, make – and keep – the perfect New Year’s resolution: “Read around” to find gems like these and then – share those gems with your readers in the form of improved blog content!

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