My Mother Was a Sneaker

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sneakersBlogs are not ads, as I am careful to emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions. That’s not to say, though, that we blog content writers can’t learn a lot from ad writers.

I love the Samuel Hubbard.com ad for men’s dress shoes, for example. “My mother was a sneaker. My father was a dress shoe. … I can’t help it. I was born this way.  Insanely comfortable and ready for a day in the office.”

You shouldn’t try to give searchers information about everything you have to offer, all in one blog post.  With each post, stress just one major aspect of your company or practice, I teach. On the other hand, you want your blog to stand out, to be unusually interesting, so that readers will want to stay awhile and maybe even move on to your business’ website.

And when you put two things together that don’t seem to match – that can be a good technique to capture people’s interest. Having the shoe “talk” to the reader, and suggesting that a comfortable shoe is the “offspring” of sneaker and a dress shoe is just different enough to startle and engage.

The “nucleus” around which business blog posts are formed is their topic, the expertise and products that business offers. The key words and phrases around that topic are what bring readers to the blog posts. But, even though the overall topic is the same, there is endless variety that can be used to make each blog post special. The technique used by Samuel Hubbard Shoes is metaphor – making an unusual comparison – in this case between parents and shoes.

If you place a ripe banana next to a green tomato, the tomato will ripen, too, explains Brian McMahon in Mental Floss Magazine. Interesting facts such as this can always be of business blogging help, but that advice comes with two provisos:

Your reason for including the fact in your post must be apparent early on in the blog post, and the new information should relate to something with which readers are already familiar.

What “different” metaphor or comparison can you include in your blog that catches readers’ attention but still stays true to your message?

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Price Point Blogging?

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???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????“Be specific when it counts,” advises Robin Ryan in the book 60 Seconds & You’re Hired!, referring to salary discussions during job interviews. “Try this,” she suggests: “According to all the salary survey data, someone with my ten years of experience would be in the upper 70s…I was thinking $78,000 is what I’d accept.”

Many business websites fail to address the subject of pricing, observes Marcus Sheridan of socialmediaexaminer.com. Instead of addressing the number-one consumer question up front, they decided to wait until the initial phone contact, or worse, the first sales appointment in the home. But, although this “hidden approach” may have worked in marketing five or ten years ago, today’s consumers don’t like their core questions to be left unanswered, Sheridan states firmly.

From my point of view as a corporate blogging trainer, the topic of “price point blogging” fits in nicely with the overall concept of putting information into perspective for clients. The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate, and the better ones give visitors at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”

Pricing is one of those sets of facts. With the typical company or practice offering many different product feature and service benefits, pricing must be put into perspective. There might be dozens – or even hundreds – of factors that dictate the ultimate pricing any consumer would pay.  Because of this, says Sheridan, “it’s best to offer ranges, not definitive numbers, allowing potential clients to get a feel for the cost and know if they’re at least in the ballpark.”

Karen Greenstreet, writing about Self-Employed Success, offers nine reasons you should – and then ten reasons you shouldn’t – put pricing on your website or in your blog. On the negative side:

  • Your competition can find out what your pricing is
  • You’re worried about “price fixing”
  • You want the chance to establish rapport before talking pricing
  • You want to stay away from tire-kicking, price shopping customers and clients

Reasons Greenstreet found in favor of discussing pricing upfront include:

  • Honoring customers’ time constraints
  • Positioning your brand as, for example, a low-cost leader or the expert who people pay more for
  • Many customers will not do business with a company who is not forthcoming about pricing and fees

Whatever you decide, make sure your decision based on what’s helpful to your customer and right for your marketing plan, not based on your fears about what “might” happen, is Greenstreet’s parting advice.

Think about offering perspective through price point blogging!

 

 

 

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Tips on Business Writing for Bloggers – Part B

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All Or Nothing Keys Meaning Entire Or Zero

This week, I’m sharing Susan Adams’ “Ten Tips on Business Writing”, offered in Forbes Magazine, with my Say It For You readers (again, I’ve added my own thoughts in italics):

Start by asking yourself what you want the person to do as a result of reading this post.
Each business blog post should impart one new idea or call for a single action. Focused on one thing, your post has greater impact, since people are bombarded with many messages each day. Respecting readers’ time produces better results for your business.

Avoid using big $10 words because you want to sound intelligent.
Unfortunately, as a blog content writing trainer, I see a lot of the kind of overused buzzwords hiring expert Carina Chivulescu sees on resumes, such as “best of breed”, or “results-driven”. “Employers want to see words and phrases that clearly and succinctly define your skills, experience, and accomplishments,” Chivulescu explains. That’s precisely the type of words and phrases your business blog readers need to find when they visit your site.

(The last three of Susan Adam’s tips have to do with English grammar)

Choose pronouns wisely. “Send the memo to Bob and myself’” is incorrect.                                                                                                           Think how you would word the sentence if you removed mention of other people. In fact, as “Grammar Girl” Mignon Fogarty points out, the pronouns a writer chooses, she explains, set the point of view and the tone of a passage. 

Know when to use “that” and “which”.                                                                                                                                                                           “Which” introduces extra information and it isn’t essential to the first clause. In a sentence such as “Computers are the only products that we sell,” the clause “that we sell” is essential to the meaning of the sentence, so the correct word is “that”.

Affect is a verb meaning “to influence.” “Effect” is a noun that means “result.”
What’s the big deal? Grammar mistakes in content writing for business call attention away from the kind of impression we intend to make on behalf of our businesses or professional practices. 
Would your latest blog post pass the Ten-Tip test?

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Tips on Business Writing for Bloggers – Part A

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Writing Tips and tricks B

As a business blog content writer, I found Susan Adams’ “Ten Tips on Business Writing”, offered in Forbes Magazine, almost made to order for bloggers.  Five of the tips have to do with word choice and ideas (I’ve added my own thoughts in italics):

Start by writing short, declarative sentences.
Short sentences have what I call “pow!” and are easily shared on social media sites. Focused content, I teach in corporate blogging training sessions, keeps readers’ attention on the message. That doesn’t mean every sentence needs to be short, because variety is important, too.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or any kind of jargon if you can think of an English equivalent.
Jargon, in general, is a handle-with-care writing technique, all the more so in corporate blogging, where readers are impatient to find the information they need without any navigational or terminology hassle.

Make your point and move on. If your big idea isn’t in the first paragraph, put it there. If you can’t find it, rewrite.
A blog post might consist of a few dozen sentences, but no line is as important as that opener. Beginning with a startling statistic is certainly one tactic blog writers can use to demonstrate to online readers that business owners and practitioners are familiar with the reader’s problem and know how to deal with it.
 
Be specific. Instead of mentioning “the current situation,” explain exactly what the situation is.
Be specific in terms of both location and services. Each potential customer needs to find value “where they are”, both geographically and in terms of their unique needs.

Whenever possible, use active instead of passive verbs. Active verbs help to energize your prose.
Using the passive voice hides the identity of the person who performed the action. But, because the very purpose of the blog content is to showcase the accomplishments of the business and products and services it brings to customers, using the active voice makes sense in corporate blog writing.

Would your latest blog post pass the Five-Point Word Choice test?

 

 

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Getting Personal in Blogging for Business

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Those who tell the stories rule society - Quote by Plato

As someone who helps clients communicate via the internet, I got a thought-provoking kick out of the anecdote Nancy Clark from West Point, Virginia submitted to Readers’ Digest:

      I’ve given up social media for the new year and am trying to make friends outside Facebook     while applying the same principles.  Every day I walk down the street and tell passersby what I’ve eaten, how I feel, what I did the night before, and what I will do tomorrow. I share pictures of my family, my dog and my gardening….I also listen to their conversations and tell them I love them.  And it works. I already have three people following me – two police officers and a psychiatrist.

One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional bloggers is that we are interpreters, translating clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms. In fact, one reason I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting” is that I believe people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

“Getting down and human” in business blogs is so important that it becomes a good idea for a business owner and professional to actually write about past mistakes and struggles. Blogger Beccy Freebody posits that it’s much easier to connect to someone who has been where you are.

So just how personal should your business blog be?” asks mavenlink.com.  Many businesses and business people struggle to find that fine line between adding a personal touch and shocking or boring their readers to death with overly personal, trite information,” the authors observe.

On a business blog, you will be rewarded for having a unique and authentic voice, but that doesn’t mean you have free reign to swear or otherwise be rude. Your unique voice should fit nicely within the brand’s larger personality, mavenlink wisely adds.

Important to the Readers’ Digest dilemma, the authors state that “while business bloggers may benefit from discussing past and current struggles as a tool for connecting emotionally with readers, such stories are best used as a means to an end, with the end being solving readers’ problems.

“Business is personal, so is a blog,” writes Ty Kiisel in Forbes. “Over the years,” Kiisel says, “my readers have gotten to know me because I share with them some of the details of my life.”

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