Boxing Day Mythbusting for Bloggers

/0 Comments/in , /by


Discovered a mild case – or an epidemic – of counterproductive thinking when it comes to your industry or profession? Blog posts are the perfect medium for “mythbusting” to dispel that counterproductive thinking.

Since our last Say It For You post (dealing with Santa’s red outfit and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer), Boxing Day was celebrated in the UK and Australia.  Many think Boxing Day is for boxing up and returning gifts you don’t want, but that’s not the case at all. It was on Boxing Day that, in the Middle Ages, churches would open their alms boxes and dole out the money to the poor.

One very simple format blog content writers can use when mythbusting is to simply list common myths surrounding a particular business, debunking each one. Oxygen Magazine does exactly that in the article “Sacking Sleep Myths” lists 5 myths. Each myth is followed by a paragraph full of debunking facts. It’s a myth, for example, your relationship will suffer if you don’t sleep with your partner. “Night divorce” can actually improve sleep patterns and in turn improve the relationship.

In a second mythbusting article in Oxygen. writer Jenna Aytyiru Dedic takes a different tack, using a claim/verdict format. Claim: Joint pain is exacerbated by cold weather. Verdict: False. There is no evidence that cold itself is at all culpable.

The debunking function of business blog writing is very important.  Blog content writing has the power to clear the air, replacing factoids with facts, allowing readers to see their way to clear to making decisions.

Offering little-known explanations that explode common myths is one way to engage readers’ interest, to be sure.  The next step, however, has to be leading into myths and little known details related to our own products, services, and company history, and providing a value-packed “verdict” for each false claim or misunderstanding.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Business Blogging – Don’t Forget What It Means

/0 Comments/in , , /by


“To me, when people talk about the fact that employees are not engaged, that means they’re missing what’s in it for them…how their lives are better because they are employed by the company,” observes Dana Polyak in a recent issue of Employee Benefit News. 

Back to Radio Station WIIFM, that old sales training rule that all employers – and all of us writers of marketing blogs had better remember: employees want to know What’s In It for Me; buyers care about benefits, not features.

A number of years ago, in a brochure marketing professional Al Trestrail shared with me, he taught that after each feature  of the products and services your business or practice offers, you need to add the words “which means that…” What I took out of that discussion with Trestrail was that there are millions of blog posts out there making claims of one sort or another.  But what do those claims mean to the customers and clients reading the blog???

When people switch jobs, Polyak comments, they are ultimately seeking something more. “More” might mean better compensation, better benefits, better hours, shorter commutes, or more praise and recognition. At Say it For You content writing training sessions, I remind attendees that there has to be a “reason why” readers would follow the Calls to Action in a blog: Does your company or practice do things faster? Operate at a lower cost? Make fewer errors? Offer greater comfort? Provide a more engaging experience? In other words, What’s In It For Them?

In the current job market, Dana Polyak concedes, “there are a lot more jobs available than there are people available to fill those jobs.” In marketing, with both our existing customers and clients and the new ones we’re seeking to win over, it’s the same way.  “If you want to start beating your competitors, you will need to have a very good strategy in place, Smarta.com advises. But being cheaper may not be enough. What might well be enough is demonstrating that your product is:

  • of better quality
  • rarer
  • easier to use
  • safer
  • more efficient
  • more compact
  • more retro
  • more water-resistant
  • more beautiful
  • greener
  • fresher

As blog content writers, we need to understand the features of the products and services we promote, but we must never forget to explain What’s In It For Them!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Steps to Light Up Your Place in the Blogosphere

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

blogging with intention
In coaching financial advisors, John Bowen Jr. writes in Financial Planning, he found that the most successful individuals had a secret weapon at their disposal: the power of their presence. Bowen names steps advisors can take to “light up a room when they enter”.  Blog content writers, I believe, can use every one of those steps to “light up the blogosphere” with their posts:

Know your story. “By opening up to others about what’s important to you, they will be more inclined to trust you with what’s important to them.”

Customers don’t want to feel like they are being told a brand story, the authors of “Tips & Traps for Marketing Your Business” caution. In your blog content writing, engage readers with storylike entries about existing customers and about you, they advise.  The idea is to create an emotional – and personal – attachment with your company or practice.

Build your dream team. “Leading financial advisors surround themselves with top people, in the form of strategic alliances.”

When things don’t work well in blogging, I’ve come to realize, it almost always has to do with lack of coordination among the team. The webmaster has to work together with the blog writer to provide the optimization and analysis that make the content “work”. Not only should there be periodic team meetings to discuss content, the blog writing must be coordinated with email and social media.

Live with intention. When you define your vision, your tasks become crystal clear.

One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that focusing on main themes helps blog posts stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website. The posts fit together into an overall business blog marketing strategy through “leitmotifs”, or recurring themes. These themes tie together different product or service descriptions, different statistics, and different opinion pieces. Once five or six over-arching themes have been chosen, the tasks of creating individual blog posts become crystal clear.

Amplify your influence.  Communicate your vision in a clear and lively manner. Make your vision come alive to others by using metaphors, examples, and anecdotes.

Most business owners and professionals can think of quite a number of things they want to convey about their products, their professional services, their industry, and their customer service standards. The problem is those ideas need to be developed into fresh, interesting, and engaging content marketing material. Metaphors help readers “appreciate the information picturesquely”.

Inspire those around you by providing leadership.

When it comes to blogging for business, positioning ourselves (or our business owner/professional practitioner clients) as SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) is obviously a worthy goal. Being a thought leader is even better. Our readers need even more from us than expertise, I’m convinced. Yes, we’re giving them subject matter, but they need help processing that subject matter. They need thought leadership!

Take steps to light up your place in the blogosphere! 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blog To Show Readers You’ve Got Their Number

/0 Comments/in , /by

numbers in blog titles

Numbers that can be expressed in one or words should be spelled out, while figures should be used for larger numbers the Purdue OWL advises. Following that guidance, you’d express ”two million dollars”  or thirty-one years in words, while writing “126 days”.

There’s a very good reason, however, that most magazine editors and blog content writers choose not to follow the first part of that OWL advice.  Few would choose to write “two million dollars”, “fifteen reasons”, or “thirty-one years”.  Numbers – in digits, as opposed to being spelled out in words – have more impact.

Here are just some of the titles I saw displayed on magazine covers at my local pharmacy only this morning::

  • 341 Cluster Solutions
  • 147 Tips From Home Cooks
  • 101 Hearty Dishes for the harvest Season
  • 50 Fall Ideas
  • 293 Fresh Looks for Classic Cuts
  • 145 Festive and Easy Decorating Tips

When colleagues at online marketing firm Hubspot analyzed their own blog posts to see which titles had performed the best in search results; the top eight, they found, each included a number!  Some of the numbers were short, and OWL would have had the authors spell those out in words.  But numbers in words simply lack the “punch” of numbers in digits, it appears.

Some of the Hubspot winners:

  • “How to monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day”
  • “22 Educational Social Media Diagrams”
  • 12 Mind-Blowing Statistics Every Marketer Should Know”

Several research studies have show that headlines with numbers tend to generate 73% more social shares. “Our brains are attracted to numbers because they automatically organize information in logical order.” And, for some reason, one study revealed, odd numbers are seen as more authentic than even numbers.

It’s interesting. The American Marketing Association’s Manual of Style tells us not to use digits to express numbers that occur at the beginning of a sentence, title, or subtitle! Another way Ryan McCready thinks the so-called experts have it wrong has to do with the number 10. Thought leaders have agreed the number 10 is too common and will not stand out on social media, but McCready found the exact opposite to be true – the number 10 is the best number to use for blog titles.

It’s not only in blog post titles that numbers wield power. At Say It For You, I advise business owners and professionals to use statistics (one form of numbers) in 3 ways:

1. Attention-grabbing
2. Mythbusting (statistics help prove the reality versus the widely held misperceptions about your product or service)
3. Demonstrating the extent of a problem leads into showing readers ways you can help solve it

Blog to show readers you’ve got their number!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

The Barnum Effect Can Be Used Ethically in Blogging for Business

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Barnum effect in blogging

As humans, we tend to crave to be “understood”. Sometimes, though, due to the Barnum effect, (named after famed manipulator and circus man PT. Barnum), we tend to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of our personality. We believe we are being understood and that the descriptions (the “fortune”, the horoscope, the reading, the assessment) are tailored specifically to us. In reality, though, the descriptions are general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

Psychologist Bertram Forer tested this idea by giving a personality test to his psychology students, then asking them how well they thought the results matched their self-perceptions. Unbeknownst to those students, they had all been given the exact same summary of results “describing” their personalities. Almost all the students thought their “tailor-made” description was “spot-on” in describing their “one-of-a-kind“ personalities!

“Consider that marketing and advertising is also quite dependent on people believing that they are the ‘kind of people’ who would benefit from a product, or have a ‘specific problem’ for which they could purchase a solution,” observes Kate Kershner in How Stuff Works.

In a way, I explain to new Say It For You blogging clients, blogs are the perfect marketing tool for niche markets.  Remember, I tell them, you, the business owner, are not going out to find anyone! Blogs use “pull marketing”.  The people who find your blog are those who are already online looking for information, products, or services that match up with what you know, what you have, and what you do. Your online marketing challenge is not to seek out the people, but to help them seek you out!

The Barnum effect, when it comes to business blog posts, is what draws in those searchers, who perceive that the information and observations you’ve provided in the blog has “high accuracy” in terms of their own needs and wants. And, while Barnum’s tactics are now seen as having been manipulative, when it comes to business blogging, online searchers tend to make very accurate assessments of whether what they find is what they need!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail