Effective Marketing Content Makes It Achievable

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“To succeed with a decision-maker, the person proposing a change needs to demonstrate that the plan is achievable,” Garett Mintz writes in the Indianapolis Business Journal. If you’re in business development, you need to position yourself in a way that demonstrates you are the low-risk option, he explains – not necessarily in terms of costs, but in terms of the buyer’s time and reputation.  In “de-risking” the option you’re offering, Mintz suggests the following formula:

Proximity + Follow-through = Trust

Proximity through frequency

There’s a lot of wisdom here for online content marketers, I couldn’t help thinking. For example, in order to achieve “proximity”, Mintz says, the more time a business development professional can spend with a prospect, the more rapport and connection will be built. When it comes to online “pull marketing”, we know at Say It For You, proximity is achieved through frequency of posting new content.

The issue we find so often (and this has not changed in the seventeen years I’ve been the business of creating content) is that, even knowing that winning search and driving business to the website involves frequency of posting content, the majority of business and practice owners simply cannot spare the time – or maintain the discipline – of researching, creating and posting content frequently enough to make a substantial difference in their marketing results.

Proximity through recency

As we work with the owners of businesses or professional practices, we always stress how important it is to use the blog to provide information – especially new information – related to their field. Whatever the nature of their business or professional practice, we always advise using the blog to provide that kind of new information.

Couldn’t online searchers find more complete and authoritative sources of information, some ask?  Certainly, is my response. but readers need you to help them make sense of the information. And, the very fact that you’re posting new content frequently demonstrates that you’re maintaining “proximity” to what’s going on around you and in your profession or business area.

De-risking through content

Since, as Mintz so strongly emphasized, buyers are protective of their own time, content consisting of case studies, anecdotes, and testimonials (showing how your product or service saved valuable time) are important in building trust. In another sense, de-risking through content involves “de-bunking” of prospects’ unfounded fears and biases. By offering content in the form of “guiding principles”, you can allow prospects to move forward.

To succeed in our content marketing efforts, we need to demonstrate that the plan is achievable!

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Who Will Taste This Almanac Tidbit?

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“Have you ever wondered what “sugar plums” were? Like every child used to hearing about sugar plums in “The Night Before Christmas” poem, the author of Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac thought sugar plums were fruit.  He was wrong, he later learned. In England in the 1600s, sugar plums were confit candies with a core of nuts or dried fruit encased in layers of crystallized sugar. To make the comfit, a seed or nut would be placed in the center of a pan, with sugar is layered around it. Depending on the size of the candies, a batch could take up to a week to complete. Subsequently, sugar plums were a cherished luxury back in the 18th and 19th centuries, Readelysian.com explains…

I find seemingly inconsequential tidbits of information like this highly useful when it comes to content marketing. Tidbits, I explain to clients and to writers, can be used to describe your unusual way of doing business, or to explain why one of the services you provide is particularly effective in solving a problem. The time and care that went into producing the sugar plums can be compared to the complex processes that go into producing your own products. The image of a “solid core” can be used as a metaphor for solid business practices and ethical standards upheld in your own company.

 

Content writers need never run out of ideas if they keep a file of interesting tidbits of general information on hand, and including interesting tidbits of information in corporate marketing blogs can help::

  • educate blog readers
  • debunk myths
  • showcase the business owners’ expertise
  • demonstrate business owners’ perspective

There’s another purpose tidbits can serve – softening. One of my favorite business books is Geoffrey James’  Business Without the Bullsh*t . The author showcases a point I often stress in corporate blogging training sessions – whether you’re blogging for a business, for a professional practice, or for a nonprofit organization, you’ve need to express an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers.  Well, including interesting tidbits softens the effect of the strong opinions the business owner or practitioner might express in the content of the post, while at the same time helping to explain the reasoning behind those opinions.

Readers will savor those “sugar plum” tidbits in your content..

 

 

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Ask “Have You Read?” and “Have You Tried?”

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“Have You Read?” (a two-page section of Bookmarks Magazine), I couldn’t help thinking, is a great way to offer options without being commanding or “pushy”.  A parallel tactic is described in a Learn Laugh Speak post on polite ways to offer alternatives. When customer service hospitality workers need to offer alternatives better suited for a customer, they need to do this without coming off as pushy or rude. It’s a good idea, the trainers explained, to offer have-you-tried choices, allowing the customer to feel more in control of the decision-making process.

  • What if you…?
  • How about trying…?
  • Have you considered….?

When it comes to converting readers into customers, our job as content writers is to present choice, we stress at Say It For You. Given enough “space” to absorb the relevant and truthful information we present over time, consumers are perfectly able to – and far more likely to – decide to take action. Defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. Even showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience in providing solutions to very that problem can help drive the marketing process forward.

Offering options using a “Have you tried…?” approach may prove the way to avoid a “hard sell”. At the same time, you don’t want to force a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 57 wonderful services your company has to offer!. What you can do is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts.

What we content writers can take away, I believe, from both the Bookmarks article  and the Learn Laugh Speak guidance for hospitality workers is the importance of allowing customers to feel in control of the decision-making process.

 

 

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No-Nos — and OKs — for Content Writers

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Earlier this week in my Say It For You blog, I showed how Mark Byrnes’ cautionary advice to financial advisors applies to creating content for blog posts, newsletters, and even emails. Today’s post represents my reaction to a list of common grammar rules Words Trivia thinks we content writers should actually break. 

The way the Words Trivia editors see things, overly strict grammar rules “leave writers constrained and limited in their expression”.  As a content writer and trainer, I agree – but only when it comes to some of those rules the editors claim are made-to-be-broken. I’d say “yes”, for example, to starting sentences with “and” or “but” to connect ideas and add flow, and “yes” to splitting the occasional infinitive.

  1. I most definitely concur with breaking the rule about maintaining consistent sentence structure and length throughout a piece. As the editors correctly point out, mixing short and long sentences can create a rhythm, emphasize certain ideas, and prevent monotony.
  2. Frankly, my feelings are mixed when it comes to embracing the “singular they“.  “They” may have been accepted in modern writing (going along with society’s respect for those who do not identify within the binary gender system).  However, rather than the highly awkward “Every nurse should take care of his/her own uniform and cover the expense him/herself”,  or “Every nurse should take care of their own uniforms…” (which still grates on my ear), I’d write simply, “Nurses should take care of their own uniforms, covering the expense themselves.” By being gender-neutral, we writers can avoid being either awkward or gender-insensitive. 
  3. In terms of using double negatives to emphasize contradiction, saying “I can’t get no satisfaction” may be fine for Rodney Dangerfield, but (sorry to disagree), not for marketing content writers.  Sure, as Forbes points out, humor is attention-grabbing and can serve to make business owners more relatable, but it can also cheapen ideas and even be offensive.

Yes, I know the online crowd likes to be informal, and yes, blog posts are supposed to be less formal and more personal in tone than traditional websites. But when content of any type appears in the name of your business (or in the case of our Say It For You writers, in the name of the business owned by one of our clients, the brand is being “put out there” for all to see.

My advice on content writing “no-nos” and “OKs” – Find the fine line between letting rules constrain your creativity and getting a grip on your grammar!

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Interview Blogging

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“Subject matter experts are your key to organizational survival,” writes Peggy Salvatore in Working With SMEs, suggesting best questions to pose when interviewing sources. Writer’s Digest Don Vaughn agrees, seeing interviews as a vital aspect of nonfiction writing. The interview format, we’ve found at Say It For You, can be an efficient way to create compelling content that:

  1. inspires readers based on the success of the interviewee
  2. offers useful tips and tactics the interviewee has used

In a recent Indianapolis Business Journal interview, Albert Chen was asked  a)what he’s focusing on  b) what he’s listening to  and  c) his toughest challenge. In an interview described in Start Your Own Business Magazine, interviewees were asked “What’s on your walls?” and “What do you do for lunch?” One very clever interview format is “Buy, Hold, Sell” , asking  a) Which new business choices are “buying into” now? b) What tactics have served you well that you plan to continue? c) Which are you finding no longer work in today’s environment? After your interviewee has answered the question, Peggy Salvatore advises interviewers, find a nugget in their answer that you find interesting and ask more about it.

Just last week in this Say It For You blog, I quoted a remark by digital marketing advisor Jeff Bullas to the effect that blogging is a platform for self-development. Since it’s so often the founder of a business or practice whom we’re interviewing, what I call “the training benefit” comes into play. The very interview process “forces” entrepreneurs to learn ways of effectively expressing their passion and defining the business lessons they’ve learned.

“Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently?” is an excellent question, with the answer serving to “humanize” the subject while offering valuable tips to readers. “What routines do you follow each day?” is a question that can introduce a post containing valuable “how to” tips for readers, Zoe Maggert of Perfectly Planned Content teaches. Usin your blog to interview a leader in a different industry is like having a guest lecturer enliven a college class session. Interviews inspire human connection, Maggert adds.

Every so often, to add vim and vigor to your content marketing efforts, include an interview blog post!

 

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