Clear Explanations Beat Vague Cultural Allusions

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“Even if you’re not a man of words, you probably agree that plumbing slogans can make a huge difference in advertising your business and attracting customers,” Or Rozenberg writes in Workiz.com. Among the examples Rozenberg offers are “Let us do your dirty work”, “Don’t let your money go down the drain”, and “Got a leak? We’ll take a peek!”. Good plumbing slogans, he says, are memorable, with the “kind of rhythm that gets stuck in your head”.

So far, so great, I thought – good content marketing advice. I appreciated “making the flow go” and caught the reference to “all systems go” in “all cisterns go.” But, when I got to “Because a good flush beats a full house”, I got lost. (Call me old fashioned, but the only card games I know are euchre and gin rummy, and I just didn’t understand the play on words.)

Interesting – almost seven years ago, in this Say It For You blog, I cautioned: “Know your reader when using allusions in business blogs.” It’s not that allusions themselves aren’t useful. In fact, they can:

  • get readers thinking about your subject in a new way
  • get a point across without going into a lengthy explanation
  • cement a bond between writer and readers based on shared experiences and
    knowledge

However, if a reader doesn’t know the underlying story, literary tale, or other reference point (just as I don’t know poker), the result is frustration, not illumination. It’s as if the writer expects the reader to possess certain knowledge and grasp its importance and – well some just don’t. I get it – you want to liven up your blog content. But be reasonably certain that the reference is obvious and that your target readers are likely to be familiar with the concept you’re trying to convey (among other things, we as content writers need to gauge our readers’ level of education).

Whether or not you’re in the plumbing business, be careful when using allusions. After all, the last thing you want is for your online visitors’ interest and trust in you “go down the drain”!

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M’splaining Yourself in Your Content

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“We might even be the smartest people in the room,” writes Matthew Grob of Mensa, “but does that always mean we should always be compelled to demonstrate that?” Mensans probably do more m’splaining (boasting of their brain power) than most, Grob admits, but “we might not always be correct, factually or politically.” Given the options in any conversational situation, he advises his fellow Mensans: “select the one that avoids m’splaining.”

One concern many new clients of Say It For You express to me is that they don’t want to come across as boastful in their blog content. At the same time, they know they need to convey the reasons prospects ought to choose them over their competition. Let the facts do the boasting, is my advice. The whole secret of content marketing is that, rather than running traditional ads for your brand of hats, or vitamins, or travel, you provide lots of information on the history of hats, on why vitamins are good for you, and about exciting places to go on safari.  Consumers interested in your subject, but who never even knew your name, will come to see you as an information resource.

When you think about it, blog posts are like “flip-flopped” job interviews, in which the blog reader “candidate” is interviewing the provider. Just as in a face-to-face interviews, those searchers read what you put out there in your blog posts and evaluate that content in light of their own needs.  Subtle “m’splaining” is needed to demonstrate ways in which the provider stands out from the competition.

But, “boasting” isn’t going to do the trick, and language such as “innovative solutions”, “great customer service”, “world-class”, or “game-changing”, as David Meerman Scott points out, can be perceived as exaggeration. Instead, conveying the special “flavor” and personality of your brand and your people is precisely what blogging for business needs to contribute to your overall marketing strategy.

With the right kind of “boasting”, business owners and practitioners can project the kind of confidence that inspires trust and, ultimately, drives sales.

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5 Tips for Fledgling Entrepreneurs and Content Writers of Every Ilk

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Fascinated by the “Online Impact” section of Start Your Own Business Magazine, I found five recommendations that are perfect for blog content writers:

1. “People respond to a business with a human side, so don’t be afraid to express your own flair.”
One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional bloggers is that we translate clients’ corporate messages into human, people-to-people terms.  People tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

2. “Be conversational. Forget formalities.”
At Say It For You, I often explain to clients and to newbie blog writers that that blogs, unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, are short and concise, less crafted and more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces.  It’s perfectly all right to take a thoughtful, serious approach to your topic.  Just write as if you were having an actual conversation, writes Paul Gillin, author of Secrets of Social Media Marketing.

3. “Do not take credit for content that does not belong to you.”
The most common way we cite our sources (whether it be an article or a website) within our blogs is by paraphrasing and hyperlinking back to the page where the information originated (precisely what I’ve already done several times in this very blog post). Vervante lists three instances where attributing content to a source is needed: a) You’re actually quoting someone else. b) You’re using statistics you did not collate yourself. c) You’re using ideas that aren’t your own.

4. “Storytelling is your secret weapon.”
Blog posts will be at their most effective when presenting stories, where the stories themselves become calls to action for readers. You can use stories to explain what you do and whom you’ve been able to help. Blog marketing through stories not only helps online visitors feel only understood by you, but lets them feel they understand where you’re coming from as well.

5. “If your text sounds strange or stilted because there are two many key words, visitors will be turned off.”
“Two of the most widespread mistakes made by bloggers are failing to integrate new keywords into their posts and not getting rid of keywords that are no longer valuable,” Catherine Smith of PhD Centre explains. Searchers use words and phrases to hook up with you, but keyword-overstuffed blog posts are uncomfortable to read and can make your content look like spam to readers.

 

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Blog Marketing – Defining to Attract

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In a Schwab benchmarking study for Registered Investment Advisors, it was found that firms who had documented an ideal client persona for targeting their marketing efforts attracted 42% more new clients. “In order to drive growth over the long term, any company has to understand what type of person they are perfectly designed to serve,” When providers focus on the unique needs of their target audience, they can develop an experience that is perceived as valuable by those clients, was the takeaway.

That advice about targeting your market is right on target for content marketers, we know at Say It For You. Your business or practice can’t be all things to all people. Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for your ideal customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry, all must focus on things you know about your target market – their needs, their preferences, their questions – and only secondarily on how wonderful you and your staff are at satisfying those needs and preferences.

To go about creating an ideal client persona, Schwab urged its advisors to:

  • identify favorite clients, clients who are engaged, profitable, and loyal, and from whom “you get real joy and energy”.
  • create a composite of the best characteristics of those clients, identifying commonalities such as concerns, personality traits, communication preferences.
  • create a value proposition that “resonates with that composite profile”. Paint a picture of why those clients will look back and be grateful they made the decision to work with you.”

Ten years before that Schwab survey, I had shared insights from an article in the Journal of Financial Planning explaining that financial advisors have three basic roles:

  1. As listeners, advisors’ goal is to uncover and address the source of clients’ concerns.
  2. As connectors, their goal is to help clients connect the different aspects of retirement planning, and when necessary, connect clients with other professionals whose expertise they need.
  3. As resolvers, their goal is guiding clients to decisions.

In marketing, focus is everything. As content writers, we cannot position ourselves (or our clients) within the marketplace without studying the surroundings for our target audience. For blogs to be effective, they must serve as positioning and differentiating statements. We need to know our readers, and our readers need to know we know.

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Blog Content By and For the Unquenchably Curious

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts are based on the book What Makes Flamingos Pink, by Bill McLain, “a colorful collection of Q & A’s for the unquenchably curious”…

One thing it’s always a good idea to include, I tell content marketers, is interesting information on topics related to their business or professional practice. If you can provide information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, we explain at Say It For You, all the better. So long as there’s a real “back story” demonstrating valuable lessons learned and why that information should matter to the web visitor, tidbits can prove to be enormously useful tools….

The color of most birds is a matter of genetics, McClain explains in the book. Bluebirds are blue by nature, cardinals red for the same reason – their inherited genes. Famingos are different – they are pink because their diet is heavy in natural pigments called carotenoids. Wisely, the author is quick to show readers the relevance of that information – “When we eat carrots or beets, we are also eating carotenoids,” he explains. ” But no matter how many beets and carrots we eat, the only way we can turn pink is to blush or get a sunburn,” he adds.

One big goal of the writing we do for our business owner and professional practitioner clients is positioning them as experts in the eyes of both their existing clients and their web visitors. While good blog post content can and should be entertaining, it’s important to remember that most online searchers are not pursuing a recreational activity, but instead are on a fact-finding mission. You can hook them, we teach at Say It For You, with humorous and fascinating trivia tidbits, but the material you serve up needs to be meaningful to that audience and – actionable.

The factoid about flamingos’ pink coloring is an example of how trivia can be used in content marketing to accomplish a variety of initiatives: defining basic industry terminology, sparking curiosity about the subject, putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective, and explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way.

Always remember, though – they may be “unquenchably curious”, but online visitors are rarely unquenchably patient. Structure the content so as to address the two questions “So what?” (why it might matter) and “Now what?” directing them to the next step.

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