Blog What Should Have Been in the Box

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Talk about an “I-wish-I-had-thought-of-that” concept! I absolutely love the name O’Reilly Media® gave its series of manuals by David Pogue: “The Missing Manual® – the Book that Should Have Been in the Box”. The now-120 book series covers tech for amateurs topics such as iPhone use, Quickbooks, Windows10, Photos for Mac – an almost exhaustive list of how –to guides.

Precisely such a “how to” concept can be invaluable for us blog content writers.  Why? Our biggest challenge is providing valuable information to readers while avoiding any hint of “hard sell”. Offering tips and helpful hints to consumers (stuff that may not have occurred to them but which helps them get the most out of the products and services they own or might purchase) may well strike the perfect note.

So what if you’re trying to promote a business or practice but don’t consider yourself an “expert” on all aspects of your field? In a recent issue of AARP magazine, I found an article that uses a “kill-two-birds-with-one-stone” approach to offering helpful hints.  I think that approach could work really well in blogging to promote a business or professional practice.

The AARP article is titled “Great ways to save: tips from 20 experts that can save you thousands of dollars.”  Wow! That gets readers’ attention – useful information coming to them not from any sponsor or vendor, but from twenty experts.  What’s more, the authors have done all the work, collecting all this wisdom and serving it up for readers’ convenience. How would you as a business owner or practitioner use this strategy? Aggregate!

Aggregate? How? Find complementary businesses or practices and ask the owners for tips they can offer your readers (or simply cite their blogs, giving them credit for the ideas). Carpet cleaners can share information from allergists, pet care professionals and realtors. Restaurant owners can offer information gathered from etiquette advisors or food stores. Whatever the products and services, readers will be interested in information that helps them gain maximum advantage from buying and using them.

Blog what should have been in the box!

 

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Blogging for Those Wandering the Stacks

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Searching the Library

“I’ve discovered that searching the Internet doesn’t necessarily get you only to the thing that you were looking for,” observes Vinton Cerf, VP at Google and a “father of the internet”. “Maybe this is like wandering around the stacks in the library and pulling the book next to the one you were looking for, and discovering there was something interesting there.” Cerf says.

Funny, I’ve pondered the same phenomenon about Internet search myself. As I and my Say It For You writers work on blogging strategy with our business owner and professional practitioner clients, we’re looking to use as many key words and phrases as possible that specifically relate to the audience each business is trying to attract.  Actually, we’re trying to satisfy two “masters”, the search engines and the searchers.  We know both of those are looking for the same thing – fresh, frequently changing, and very relevant content that has to do with the subject.

The way I picture it, there’s a boxing competition with two rings and two matches going on at the same time. There’s the PPC (Pay Per Click) and Sponsored Link side, which is where businesses have bought space.  In PPC, every time someone clicks on the link, the business owner pays a fee to the search engine company.

The other “ring”, organic search, is where I and all the other bloggers and writers operate. We’ve chosen organic search, my clients and I (although some businesses also employ PPC as part of their marketing strategy), not only because it offers free placement, but because more than 90% of the action (the clicks) take place on the organic portion of the search engine results page.

Every once in a while, though, just as Cerf pointed out, there’s a “disconnect” between what the searcher wanted and what he or she actually finds.  If this happens with your blog, even though it’s not one of your target customers that clicks on the blog link, it’s not necessarily bad news.  That kind of “mistake” on the part of a reader (like pulling the book next to the one you were looking for in the library) can even result in you converting a searcher-gone-astray into a buyer. I call this “accidental organic donating“.

So, I tell blog content writers and clients, don’t for a moment worry that head of yours about accidental organic donations – just murmur a quiet “Thank you” to the search engine for the miscue!

 

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Ways-To-Take-Charge Blogging for Business

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Gain control concept.

 

The article “15 Ways to Take Charge of Your Care”, cover story of December’s AARP Bulletin, is a very fine example for blog content writers.  Why?

  • It uses a numbered list, offering 15 detailed tips for saving time and money on healthcare. As Maria Konnikova remarks in the New Yorker Magazine, “Lists spatially organize information, helping create an easy reading experience.” Back in 2011, psychologists Messner and Wanke concluded that we feel better when the amount of conscious work we have to do in order to process information is reduced. We are drawn to a list intuitively, Konnikova points out, and we process it more efficiently. From all indications, I teach business blog content writers, Google loves bulleted lists, too.
  • The information in the article was specifically chosen because the topic is of interest for target readers (seniors, in the case of AARP). “Briefly,” says Jim Connolly of Jim’s Marketing Blog, “here’s how content marketing works: You build and market a website and stock it with free information that has real value to your prospective clients.”
  • The advice is highly specific, including filling prescriptions at a preferred pharmacy within your insurance network and finding out precisely which generic dosages and forms qualify for the $4 big box store and supermarket discount price. In blogging for business, every tip should be helpful in converting online searchers into customers or clients. That means content writers must invest the effort to understand customers’ needs before making the “pitch”.
  • The entire thrust of the article is empowerment for the consumer, rather than promoting the interests of the sponsoring company. Business blogs should be closer to advertorials than to ads. We content writers must satisfy prospects’ need to control the situation, going right to the heart of any possible customer fears or concerns and addressing negative assumption questions (before they’ve been asked!).

Offer information in your business blog that offers ways for readers to take charge!

 

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Creating Community Through Blog Conversations

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Purple pink Community puzzle“You create community by having conversations with people who are excited about the same thing as you are,” says Elizabeth Gerber, associate professor of design at Northwestern University.  Gerber is one of many scholars exploring what really compels people to give to other people online through crowdfunding. As much as crowdfunding is a modern economic phenomenon, writes Elizabeth Kelsay in Psychology Today, it’s also a social and psychological one, fueled by fundamental human impulses.

As business blog content writers, we have reason, I think, to be intensely interested in this research on the crowdfunding phenomenon. Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside, believes the secret is that giving online appeals to the essential need to feel like part of a group.

Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School studied nearly 7,000 articles in The New York Times to determine what was special about those on the most-emailed list. He found that an article was more likely to become viral the more positive it was. When we share information, we create an energy exchange, Berger says, that amplifies our own pleasure.

Kevan Lee of bufferapp.com says we measure blog traffic by digging into analytics, but don’t pay enough attention to the immeasurable elements of blogging which cannot be quantified. Instead of tracking how many “views”, “likes”, and “clicks”, Lee says, we should be asking whether the content:

  • is so good you’d bring a coworker over to see it
  • you’d email it to a friend
  • the reader will learn something new

“The only people in a community are those that believe they are, not those that have a completed a registration in 30 seconds,” observes Richard Millington in MOZ. Increasing a sense of community means adding an explicit, shared goal to the group. Increasing a sense of community means asking individuals what skills and experiences they can contribute to the group, Milligan says.

How is that best done? Ask a question for your readers at the end of posts, suggests blogger Melyssa Griffin. Add a poll or reader survey and share the responses, she says.

In a way, as bloggers, we start out ahead of the game; the readers who found their way to our blog are, by definition, excited about the same thing as we are.  Now it’s up to us to foster that sense of community.

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Not-So-Palatable Blog Topics

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non-palatable
“Fury or eternal apathy. These are the two feelings you’ll evoke from your reader if you dare dip your foot on these not-so-palatable topics,” writes Eunice David of Adhere. And what are those terrible taboo topics when it comes to blog content writing for business?

  • political topics
  • religious talk
  • highly contentious topics
  • redundant topics
  • capitalizing on tragic events
  • self-promotional posts

Let’s talk a bit about that political topic taboo thing. “Choosing a politically charged topic for your business blog pretty much equates to planting a virtual time bomb,” says David. “Your business blog would be a sitting duck for pundits who won’t hesitate to fire back and dent your credibility.” But taking a stance, I’ve found, is what gives a blog post some “zip”. And after all, doesn’t being a thought leader involve stating your own thoughts on the matter under discussion?

Sure it does. Whether it’s business-to-business or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use owners’ opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers. But where politics is not directly related to the business or practice, I agree that it’s best not to dip your foot – or your content – into the political arena.

In essence, the same guideline applies when it comes to religion. Assuming your target audience is not a particular religious community, nor is the product or service you’re marketing to them religious in nature, it’s best to stay focused on the topic at hand.

In terms of capitalizing on tragic events, AT&T’s attempt to capitalize on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (encouraging social media audiences to take pictures on their phones of the scarred New York city skyline) turned out to be a disaster, points out mic.com. “There is no useful connection between remembering a tragedy and shilling their product.”

Ford did a better job using a tragedy, mic.com adds, by posting a respectful thank you to the first responders of the Boston Bombing, without mentioning any Ford products.

Blatant self-promotion doesn’t work any better for blogs than it would at a party. Blogs are advertorials, if anything, and that means finding the right balance between story and sale. Sure, when people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or on different websites, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business.  But as long as the material is valuable and relevant for the searchers, they’re perfectly fine with knowing there’s someone who wants them for a client or customer.  The secret of successful business blogging, I found, is just that – not coming on too strong, staying in “softly, softly” mode.

Since, in writing business blog content, you’re out to elicit neither fury nor apathy, a healthy respect for the negative power of non-palatable topics is in order.

 

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