Blogging Pointers From a Sales Training Star

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“The introduction and body of your presentation might be in good shape, but don’t forget about your closing remarks,” famed sales trainer Brian Tracy cautions. “Often, your audience will remember your final words the longest.” Back when I was an investment sales professional, Brian Tracy’s tapes kept me on the right track whenever I felt discouraged. Today, I realize, many of Tracy’s tips about a speaker’s closing remarks can be applied to content marketing…

Tie up all the loose ends. Make sure you’ve hit all the points you said you would.
A big part of successful blog content writing involves getting the “pow opening line” right.. “Pow” endings tie back to the openers, bringing the post full-circle. If you’ve used a list to organize the information, use the concluding paragraph to help readers see the connection between the information you’ve provided and the products and services you have to offer.

Use inflection in your voice.
As your speech is drawing to an end, you can use your tone of voice, inflection, and pitch to signal that things are wrapping up, Tracy advises. While we are not using voice in blogging for business, we blog content writers can use typeface and bolding to draw readers’ special attention to parts of the message in each of our posts, including the closing sentence..

Summarize your main message.
The content of the opening sentence can be designed to grab readers’ attention. Two possible tactics include beginning with the conclusion, using the remainder of the blog post to “prove” the validity of the bold opening assertion. Or, if you’ve opened by posing a challenging question in the opening sentence, using the post to propose an answer, the ending can consist of restateing the question and then the answer.

Include a call to action. “Make it easy for your audience to take action by being clear and direct.”
Direct, but never abrupt, caution the authors of writtent.com caution. The CTA must be a logical extension of the blog post itself, they advise.

Around six years ago, BusinessWeek magazine had an article about corporate executives in demand as speakers, advising them to “Choose Your Podium Wisely”, accepting only those opportunities likely to result in business leads, attracting new talent to their firms, or building their company’s reputation. There, too, I found a parallel between speakers and blog content writers. I advised blog marketers to pinpoint their target customers and clients and focus the blog content on the needs of that audience.

Public speakers and content writers – we’re both out to bring the right message in the right way to the right audience!

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Blogging to Help X Do Y

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“Ultimately, your company profile matters. It can intrigue a new visitor to check out your products or services in more detail, and nudge potential customers into choosing your business over competitors,” Caroline Forsey writes. Forsey uses the Starbucks company profile as an example, incorporating the company’s mission, background story, products, and even folklore regarding its name.

All that material makes excellent fodder for website content, I thought. When it comes to blog marketing, however, I liked the very simple model for a business profile offered by Linked In sales enabler Missy Parrish: – “We help X to do Y”.

At Say It For You, we teach, blog content writers’ initial focus must be on the X. Even if your products and services are top-rate, that’s not enough to keep content fresh and make conversions happen. Your knowledge of the target audience has to influence every aspect of your blog. In fact, the very essence of content marketing is not “pitching” prospects and customers, but providing content that is truly relevant and useful to them

What about the Y? Most of the time, I explain to newbie blog content writers, at stage #1 of their search, online readers don’t know the name of the individual, the business, or the practice they want. What most consumers are likely to type into the search bar are words describing:

1.  their need
2. their problem
3. their idea of the solution to their problem
4.  a question

That means telling those visitors (the X) about the things you can help them learn and the things you can help them do (the Y) is what is most likely to lead to a next step. Always keep in in mind that, when you’re blogging, you’re talking to a friendly and interested audience about things that might help them (as opposed to forcing your message in front of people who are trying to avoid it).

What if you have more than one X and more than one Y? In fact, most business owners and professional practitioners tell me they have more than one target audience for their products and services. There may be one demographic that accounts for the majority of their customers, but they also have “outliers” who bring in just enough revenue to matter.

That is precisely the beauty of blog marketing. In fact, what you don’t want is an all-in-one marketing tool that forces a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 99 wonderful services your company or practice has to offer.  Each blog post will offer just enough to convey to individual searchers they’ve come to the right place (which they will have, based on the search terms they used).

Your welcome to those very visitors is the message conveyed in that very blog post: You help X’s like them to do Y!

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Blogging the What-Do-I-Do

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In creating content – whether for blogs or newsletter, we’re sometimes so close to our own project that we forget to look at it from the reader’s point of view. Humor speaker Todd Hunt must have been reading a recent Say It For You blog post about the three questions prospects ask themselves: What is it? Is it for me? What do I do? No matter what, you can’t leave that third question unanswered. “Always remember where our customer is coming from,” Hunt cautions, showing a copy of an ad from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press touting the Doyle & Debbie Show.

The show is advertised in glowing terms: Brilliant! Drop dead funny! Fall-off-the-barstool fun!
Clever, Hilarious, Wacky & Brilliant! Extended Due to Overwhelming Demand! The only problem? Nowhere is the reader told either where the show is taking place or how to buy tickets! In other words, the what-do-I-do question goes frustratingly unanswered.

“If you find that your leads and prospects aren’t taking the next step in your sales process—whether that’s buying or simply requesting more information—the problem could be a faulty or non-existent call to action,” writes Mindy Lilyquist in thebalancesmb.com. It seems obvious to let people know the next step in doing business with you, but the truth is, many business owners don’t have calls to action in their marketing. Lilyquist thinks there are two possible reasons for this omission:

  1. a belief that the prospect already knows what to do if they’re interested in buying or learning more
  2. concerns that calls to action are obnoxious and will annoy the potential customer

Calls to action don’t need to be “calls to buy – now!”. In fact, the what-do-I-do question can be answered by suggesting the reader:

  • subscribe (to the blog via an RSS feed or to a newsletter)
  • share (via social media)
  • follow (on social media)
  • download (a white paper or book)
  • click to learn more (leading to more information-intensive landing page)

    The what-do-I-do can be in short form (a link or an icon to click on) or a sentence or two, AdEspresso.com explains. “Love learning about…… and want to learn more? Subscribe now for weekly updates….”):

While Todd Hunt reminds us to remember where our customer is coming from, “What-do-I-dos” and Calls to Action offer blog readers options for “Where do I go from here?”!

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Blogging for Business’ Sake

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It’s a wonder more companies don’t do it,” Paul Gillin, B2b Content strategist, observes, referring to topical blogs. Topical blogs, Gillin says, connect with customers about topics that are mutually interesting. The purpose of a topical blog, he says is to “offer practical information that helps readers be more successful and productive, thereby associating the sponsor with that expertise.”

Serving as a “go-to” source for online readers can be a winning strategy for business owners, showcasing the blog content writer’s own expertise while offering useful, actionable, information to readers. This is in no way disingenuous, we firmly believe at Say It For You, because when people go online to search for information about a product or service, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to capture business.

“An advertorial is ‘softly softly’ advertising,” cautions write.co.nz. The art of writing a good advertorial, write.co explains, is getting the right balance between story and sale. “An effective call to action will act as a logical extension of your blog posts, the authors of the Ivy Tech Study Power Leaders’ Guide add. “Your calls to action should never seem abrupt, or you’ll struggle to get the reaction you’d hoped.”

According to About.Com, “a Subject Matter Expert is an individual who understands a business process or area well enough to answer questions from people in other groups who are trying to help.” Individuals designated as subject matter experts (SMEs) are sought out by others interested in solving solve specific problems meeting challenges. Provide good useful information and establish trust and credibility – sales will follow,” Think eBiz Blog concludes.

The stance we’ve adopted at Say It For You in our blog content writing is this: If the information in a blog is “topical”, meaning it’s relevant to the search, helpful and useful, with no hint of a hard-sell, most readers are perfectly OK with the concept that the company providing the information would like to have them customers or clients.

Because readers understand that they are the ones in control, we believe, they have no trouble being “softly softly sold”.

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Give Blog Readers Something to Walk Away With – But Add Something to Act On

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“Give your audience something to walk away with,” Lindsay Kolowich Cox advises in a HubSpot piece called “Blogging Tips for Beginners”. “Your goal in creating content should be to provide value to your readers,” Peg Fitzpatrick asserts in another blogging advice piece, suggesting printable checklists and the sharing of expertise. At Say It For You, we suggest adding value by aggregating materials from different sources, then adding the blog content writer’s own unique twist on the concepts presented.

Earlier this month, a networking friend of mine used her blog for the first week of September to recount the history of Labor Day, explaining that the special day had been planned by the Central Labor Union in New York City back in 1882. I enjoyed the material and felt the blogger had offered value – I had “walked away with something”, for sure. What was missing, though, was the Call to Action. In other words, there had been no attempt to tie the subject (the history of Labor Day) to the sender’s own business (investment planning).

In corporate blogging training sessions, I do often recommend including interesting information on topics related to your business (or, if you’re a freelance blog content writer, related to the client’s business). If you can provide information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, so much the better. Tidbits and “startling statistics” are important in blogging for business, because that information helps engage online readers’ interest. Still, the connection between the material and the business relationship (or potential relationship) between the sender and the reader needs to be related to the information.

So, although the piece my friend had included in her blog post about Labor Day was interesting and appropriately timed, that information was not tied to the reader’s problem or need, nor was there any call to action. No sentence indicated why the writer herself cared about the information, nor was there anything explaining why that information should be of special help to readers.

Blog content writing has an enormous advantage over traditional “push marketing” tactics, because, what blogging does best is deliver to corporate blog sites customers who are already interested in the product or service they’re providing! However, there needs to be an “ask”, and in blogging for business, the “ask” comes in the form of calls to action.

Give blog readers something to walk away with, but add something they can act on!

 

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