The Hire or DIY Decision in Blogging

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taxes
Should you hire an accountant or do your own taxes? That’s the Point/Counterpoint question John Peragine tackles in Speaker Magazine this month.

“Don’t hire” responses included:

  • “Organized people can do their own taxes.”
  • “I’m a trained CPA, so I don’t need outside help.”

“Yes” responses included:

  • “Tax professionals know their stuff.”
  • “I hate taxes and billing. I sleep well at night knowing the experts are doing what they know how to do best while I am doing what I do best, which is bringing in the money that they have to work with.”

Reading Peragine’s column, I couldn’t help thinking that the same two “camps” would form when it comes to hiring professional content writers for a corporate blog. Just as many speakers felt they can handle their own financial records; others felt they lacked the time, the expertise, and the inclination to prepare their own tax returns.

In the same way, while a minority of business owners and professional practitioners prefer to do their own writing, most lack the time – or the inclination – to compose corporate blog content with enough consistency and frequency to make a difference in search results and customer engagement.

There’s another important way in which business tax reporting and maintaining a blog are similar. No speaker’s CPA (who is not the CFO of the company, keeping track of finances throughout the year) can prepare tax returns for that speaker without being given correct and detailed information by the client. As one professional speaker described her process, “I have a bookkeeper for my everyday finances and payroll, and a CPA for my tax returns.”

Similarly, a freelance blog content writer can do the most effective job on any business owners’ behalf when there is a free flow of information from owners and from their boots-on-the-ground  sales and customer service employees to the writer.

Just like a CPA, a ghost blogger is a specialist – in writing, and in particular, writing for online marketing, and writing with consistency over extended periods of time. Most business owners lack the time to keep up that effort.

 

 

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When to Slice Your Blog Content in Two – or Three….

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hands slicing cucumber

“There’s a trend in web design you need to know about, writes Peter of roundpeg.biz. The typical simple web design pattern with one main message followed by 3-4 blurbs works great when you sell one thing to one type of customer, he explains.   But you might have two or more groups you’re equally interested in talking to. And in that case, Roundpeg recommends, create a distinct landing page for each type of customer, immersing each in what they care about.

The same basic concept of targeting more than one type of reader applies to blog content creation, I believe. Matt Bailey, author of Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day. Bailey has a theory about longtail keyword phrases and how the choice of words a searcher uses relate to buying decisions. General search terms are used in Stage One, at the point of need, the very beginning of the buying cycle, but whenever customers use highly specific search phrases, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy, he says.

Just as you can “slice” your web design, you can “slice” blog content by inserting different calls to action that take ready-to-buy customers directly to the detailed information they need, while readers at the “weighing-the-evidence” stage are directed to a page with   a demo video, a question/answer page, to a list of testimonials or of case studies.

Not only are blog readers likely to be at varying stages of their decision-making process, readers are of different personality types. To make sure you’re offering “slices” that will appeal to each of those types, consider offering different types of content:

  • For “Drivers”, who are most concerned with results,  blog about how your products and services helped solve problems, how long that took, and how much it costs to get there.
  • For “Expressives”, who care most about how they’re perceived and about feelings,., emphasize the prestige that comes with using your products or services, and how customers can use those to express their own creativity.
  • For “Analyticals”, who tend to be preoccupied with details, offer lots of statistics, measurement, steps in a process, and lists of product ingredients.
  • For “Amiables”, who are interested in relationships and in pleasing others, blog about how your product helps others and helps build and strengthen personal relationships.

Slicing is indeed a trend you need to know about and use in blog marketing!

 

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To Sell Something, Eliminate the Risk of Buying It

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Erasing Risk
That strategy of “educating” the customer about who you are?  Totally dead, says Jeffrey Gitomer, author of “The Sales Bible”.  Gitomer has news for us.  Prospects don’t care who we are, UNLESS, he says, they perceive that we can help them.

The traditional selling sequence:

  1. Appointment
  2. Probe
  3. Present
  4. Overcome objections
  5. Close

“Those 50-year old practices are dead,” says Gitomer.  “The problem is that 95 percent of salespeople haven’t heard the news.”

What’s new in selling, Gitomer advises, is step-by-step risk elimination.  What’s that? Well, a risk of purchases is some mental or physical barrier, real or imagined, that causes a person to hesitate about ownership. The salesperson’s job? Identify the risk and eliminate it.

Some of the fears that may go through prospects minds include:

  • Financial – am I spending too much? Is this a budget violation?
  • Quality – something better exists.
  • Salesman is lying – (risk of nondelivery or overstated promises)
  • Hidden agenda – (friend in the business, I’m not the real decider)

How does the salesperson go about eliminating these barriers to a sale? List the corresponding gains – and loss avoidance –  if they buy.

Most people will not react overly positively to a blog that is just sales spin,” cautions Problogger.net. “While blogs can be used as a tool for selling they are at their best when they are relational, conversational and offer their readers something useful that will enhance their lives.”

Business blogs, I’m fond of saying in corporate blogging training classes, are nothing more than extended interviews.  (Just as in a face-to-face job interview, searchers who read your blog evaluate the content, judging whether you’re a good fit for them.) The good news for business owners and practitioners who use blogs as a marketing tool, is that blog posts are an ideal vehicle for demonstrating support and concern while being persuasive in a low-key manner.

You might say that due to the cumulative effect of ongoing content posting, blogs and step-by-step risk elimination are a perfect match!

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Taking a Tip from the Texas Anti-Littering Campaign

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Mental Floss March April 2016

“Slogans are powerful marketing tools that can motivate customers to support your brand,” says Dustin Betonio of Tripwire Magazine, citing examples of highly successful word combinations:

  • Harley-Davidson – “American by birth. Rebel by choice.
  • Walmart – “Save Money, Live Better”
  • McDonalds – “I’m lovin it.”
  • Hallmark – “When you care enough to send the very best.”
  • Nike – “Just Do It”
  • Kentucky Fried Chickin – “Finger lickin good”

Like slogans, blog titles can serve as powerful marketing tools. In fact, as blog content writers, one big challenge we face is selecting the best title for each of our blog posts. One very good example is the billboard the Texas Department of Transportation used as the centerpiece of their highly successful anti-littering campaign:

Don’t Mess With Texas – Up to $1000 fine for littering!

 

What are some of the elements in this billboard that blog content writers can use in titles?

Alliteration and assonance
Those are literary devices that help make sentences more memorable because of repeated sounds. “mess” and “Texas” are not a perfect sound match, but the “ess” and “tex” sounds are close enough.

Numbers
Having the billboard read “Up to one thousand dollar fine” wouldn’t have packed nearly the punch of the $1,000 in digits.

Strong language
Strong phrases (and quite frankly, negative ones) have more of an effect in titles.

Definitive
In composing business blogs, we need to keep several goals in mind.  We want to write engaging titles,  we want to include keyword phrases to help with search, we want to be short and to the point, and  we want to use power words.  The overriding goal, though, in composing a title has to be making promises  we are going to be able to keep in the body of the blog post itself.

Don’t mess with business blog post titles – make them strong and definitive!

 

 

 

 

 

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Going for Words that Sell in Business Blog Writing

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Words That Sell book

 

I like calling attention to books I’ve come across that are must-reads for business blog content writers, and Words That Sell, by Richard Bayan certainly falls in the must-read category. Words, after all, are our basic tools in conveying our business message to online readers.

After all, as I remember social media consultant Jason Falls commenting way back in 2009, when he discussed with business owners why they wanted to use social media, the answers came down to one thing – selling more stuff.

On the other hand, as business coach Jack Klemeyer pointed out, going directly to the selling stage without first satisfying all the prerequisites such as establishing rapport and gaining a complete and mutual understanding of the client’s needs is probably going to mean failure. Plus,
“Online marketing is about help, not hype,” Mitch Meyerson writes in the book I highlighted earlier this week in my blog.

It’s important, then, to find word that do some of the selling for us, and that’s where Bayan’s tips and categories can be so useful to us content creators.

Open with a challenge:

  • Prepare yourself for…..
  • Beware of….
  • Join the…..
  • Recapture the…..
  • Take a deep breath and…..
  • For once in your life…..

Appeal to their sense of belonging:

  • You’ll stay in the loop….
  • You’ll be privy to….
  • You’ll join the ranks of…..
  • You’ll feel the warmth of….
  • You’ll build strategic alliances….
  • Take part in….

Avoid wordiness:

  • Instead of “at the present time”, say “now”
  • Instead of “on the grounds that”, say “because”
  • Instead of “be in receipt of”, say “get”
  • Instead of “during the time that”, say “while”
  • Instead of “make use of”, say “use”
  • Use provocative question openers:

Use provocative question openers:

  • Have you thought about….
  • Are you drowning in a sea of…..
  • What’s the most effective way to…..
  • Did you ever ask yourself…

Go for words that sell in your business blog writing!

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