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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Opening Up Options in Your Blog

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In his business book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that his favorite opening question when meeting a prospect is “Where are you from?” That opener allows the other person to respond in a myriad of ways, the author explains. The prospect might talk about her hometown or country – “I grew up in Berlin”, or about her employer – “I represent Fidelity Bank and Trust”, or reveal that she’s originally from LA, but has been living in the Midwest for most of her adult life. The concept is, as Daniel Pink mentions in his own book To Sell is Human, when talking to prospects, open things up rather than shutting them down by making people think you’re passing judgment on them.

When it comes to converting readers into customers, our job as blog content writers is to present choice, we stress at Say It For You. Given enough “space” to absorb the relevant and truthful information we present over time, consumers are perfectly able to – and far more likely to – decide to take action. Defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. But showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience in providing solutions to very that problem can help drive the marketing process forward.

But what I don’t mean in advising you to present a variety of options is the “Swiss army knife” approach – you don’t want your blog to be an all-in-one marketing tool that forces a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 57 wonderful services your company has to offer!. What you can do with the blog is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts.  I often remind business bloggers to provide several options to readers, including “read more”, “take a survey”, “comment”, or “subscribe”. On websites with no e-commerce options, of course, “Contact” might be  the ultimate reader “compliance” step.

I think the important take-away from Collins’ “Where-are-you-from?” approach is that people are different. Action-oriented readers will want our best recommendations from among the choices. Idea-oriented persons will want to know about the business owners’ core beliefs underlying the way that business is structured. A process-oriented reader will want to know how the process of purchasing and using the product or service works.

To sell what you do and how you do it is human, but be sure to open up a variety of options in your blog!

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Tidbits Add Interest and Strengthen Your Slant

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In this week’s Say It For You blog, I am focusing on fascinating knowledge tidbits from The Book of Bizarre Truths.  Including  interesting snippets of knowledge in blog content not only serves as an attention getter,  but can actually strengthen your “slant” on the topic your want to discuss with your readers.

In fact, I have a strong opinion about “slant”. When blogging for business reveals your unique philosophy, your “way of being” within your field, potential customers and clients feel they know who you are, not merely what you do, and they are far more likely to want to be associated with you. For that very reason, one important facet of my job as a professional ghost blogger is to “interview” business owner and professional practitioner clients, eliciting each one’s very individualized thoughts. But even if the format of a blog post isn’t interview-style question-answer, when we tell the story of a business or a practice to consumers, we “frame” that story a certain way.

That’s a good thing, because when online readers find a blog, one question they need answered is “Who lives here?” Providing information about products and services may be the popular way to write corporate blog posts, but in terms of achieving Influencer status – it takes opinion, we’ve learned at Say It For You. Darren Rowse of problogger.com agrees: “There are many factors that set great bloggers apart from the rest, but one that I’ve seen continually cropping up over the last few years is that they often have and are not afraid to express strong opinions,”

One big advantage of including information tidbits is that they “soften” the effect of the strong opinions business owner or practitioner might express in the blog, while at the same time helping to explain the reasoning behind the “slant”. For example, this tidbit about Henry J. Heinz could be perfect for several kinds of blogs: As Heinz was riding an elevated train in New York back in 1896, he noticed an advertisement for a shoe store offering 21 different styles of shoes. Captivated by that ad quantifying the product offering, Heinz decided on the now-famous “57 varieties” motto.  Any type of business  might  to refer to Heinz 57 in order to tout its own wide variety of products or services.  On the opposite side, a specialty boutique, a private school, or a country club might use this tidbit in a blog, suggesting the contrasting exclusivity of its offerings and its clientele.

Incorporating tidbits in content marketing can add interest while strengthening your slant!

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“That’s Just It” Blogging for Business

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“You know what descriptive writing is, The Writer’s Resource authors Day and McMahan say. “It makes you smile or sigh, brings tears to your eyes, makes you say to yourself, ‘Yes, that’s just it'” Good descriptive details are welcome in almost any kind of writing, they add. “Amen to that”, we believe at Say It For You. Blog content writing might be high-quality and informative and still not engage with readers, absent the kind of personal connection that gets prospects emotionally involved. Even in B2B marketing, there’s always a person saying “Yes, that’s just it!” who will be key to doing “a deal”.

But how is it done? You don’t need to add a slew of words to a page to achieve impact, Day and McMahan suggest, just the most specific ones. You feel terrible about something? In what way? Are you humiliated, guilty, fearful, frustrated, sickened, sad? Consult a thesaurus if you need help narrowing down the word choices to find the “That’s just it” way to express your idea, they advise. In blog content, emotional “capital” can include biographical stories showing problems solved or narrowly avoided in the course of building the business or practice and evocative descriptions of situations solved by using the product or service.

To put power into business blogs, use “close-ups” for emotional connection and impact, because it’s the details that stimulate emotional responses in readers. In fact, blog posts have a distinct advantage over more static traditional website copy precisely because of that close-up effect. And the “closer up” the focus, (and that goes for business-to-business blog writing every bit as much as B-to-C), the greater the impact. Introduce real people into the content, helping each find “That’s just it” words to convey their thoughts to readers:

  • real employees delivering the product or service to the public, portraying them as real people with real lives of their own, dealing with real frustrations, but who take real pride in their work
  • real business owners who overcame real hurdles to launch and to continue growing their business
  • real customers who have been helped in real ways

“Advertising is ubiquitous in modern society, and while many people have some understanding of the power it wields over our everyday choices, few realize the subtle nuances of advertising that cause it to be so effective,” formationmediaco.uk writes. “The power of an advert becomes that much stronger when it is personally attached to your own daily life…Understanding how to use language in adverts is a skill in itself and you’ll know when you get it right; the customers will come flooding through the door.”

Descriptive writing with “that’s just it” words can make them smile, sigh, and hopefully – buy.

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Business Blogging With Adjectives

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Pay attention to proper spelling and grammar, Joanne Adams says in Grammar, and “people who read your writing will know, without a sliver of doubt, that you are somebody who really knows their $h*t”. One thing Adams thinks we ought to know about adjectives, for example, is that they come in three flavors: absolute, comparative, and superlative. In describing a team of runners, for example, you’d probably describe them all as “quick” (absolute). Two might be “quicker” (comparative) than the others, while one outstanding runner is “quickest” (superlative).

Making comparisons, in fact, is an important function in blogging for business. An effective blog clarifies what sales trainers like to call your “unique value proposition” in terms readers can understand. One excellent way to do that is by making comparisons with things with which readers are already comfortable and familiar. Effective blog posts, we’ve learned at Say It For You, must go from information-dispensing to offering perspective.  Before a reader even has time to ask “So what?” we need to be ready with an answer that makes sense, blogging new knowledge by presenting it in a framework of things readers already know. (Telling me that Moringa leaves are healthy isn’t as powerful as telling me they have four times the calcium of milk.)

“Everything isn’t awesome,” Cristine Struble observes in Fansided. Using one adjective to describe all types of events, experiences and things degrades both the adjective and the object described. Some words can better define an experience, emotion or action better than others. Why use one word over and over when a dictionary is filled with descriptive words? The lesson – when it comes to using adjectives in your blog to describe your products and services, don’t overuse the superlative.

Blogging maven Neil Patel teaches “How to Avoid the Destructive Power of Adjectives in Your Marketing Copy”. In fact, Patel observes, “adjectives are a copywriter’s nightmare. With the right adjectives, you’re persuasive and memorable. With the wrong ones – you lose your readers’ attention, he warns. If you’re trying to paint a picture with words, you need adjectives, Patel admits, but flowery or bombastic words make you sound insincere. Is what you’re offering really second-to-none, state-of-the-art, and unparalleled?

Patel’s practical suggestions:

  1. If the meaning of your sentence doesn’t change when leaving out the adjective, leave it our altogether.
  2. Use stronger nouns if that means you can leave out an adjective.
  3. Avoid adjective modifiers such as “very” and “really” – use specific adjectives.
  4. Offer specific technical details telling the real benefits of the product or service (what pain does using it avoid? )

Business blogging with adjectives can be a good idea, but stick with the absolute and the comparative, never overusing the superlative.

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