Blogging This or That

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For the same amount of money, Jeana Harris explains in Indianapolis Monthly, you could have a four-bedroom Roaring Twenties foursquare in Meridian-Kessler or a sleek two-bedroom downtown condo just five blocks from Mass Ave. Would you prefer a view of peaceful streets sheathed with mature trees, or a sixth-floor view of the city coming alive at night?

Unlike upselling, which involves encouraging the purchase of anything that would make your customer’s purchase more expensive with an upgrade, enhancement, or premium option, Sophia Bernazzani explains in Hubspot.com, cross-selling pitches other products or services that work together with the ones already owned by the client or customer. Investopedia.com points out that both methods are “suggestive”, requiring only marginal effort on the part of the sales professional compared with the potential additional revenue.

“Having a larger number of choices makes people feel that they can exercise more control over what they buy. And consumers like the promise of choice: the greater the number of options, the greater the likelihood of finding something that’s perfect for them,” Sheena Iyengar and Kanika Agrawal assert in The Art of Choosing. But not everyone agrees. “More Isn’t Always Better”, says Barry Schwartz in the Harvard Business Review. Research now shows that there can be too much choice, inducing “choice paralysis”, with consumers less likely to buy anything at all.

Can business blogs help potential clients and customers make better, sometimes complex, decisions? A possible path to achieving that precise result, we have found at Say It For You, involves suggesting questions readers can ask themselves while choosing among many options. (Do they want ease of use? Current functionality? Future capabilities?)

No, more isn’t always better, but companies that get the balance right will be amply rewarded, Schwartz concludes. Due to the natural “drip effect” of blogs .consistent posting of informational “this-or-that” content can help consistent marketers achieve that Goldilocks “Mmm…just right” result.

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Blogging One Aspect at a Time

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Latest trends
“Make your first blog post all about the latest trends for the coming season and you’ll be providing relevant content,” George Todorv of Thrivemywaycom tells wanna-be fashion bloggers. In fact, whatever your industry or field, blog readers are likely to enjoy learning about current trends. A recent issue of The Old Farmer’s Almanac mentions “flavors we’re craving”, including maple syrup with edible glitter and flash-frozen cups of coffee. In the field of home décor, the Almanac mentions walk-in closets being converted to offices, and multifunctional, flexible rooms. Using your business blog to describe recent trends is especially appropriate for businesses in industries undergoing changes – new legislation, new discoveries, new technological advances.  But, whether your topic is clothing, food, or interior design, readers like to feel “in the know” about what’s popular.

How-tos
“Articles about how to upcycle clothes and use them to create new outfits will always go down well,” Todory continues. In fact, as Neil Patel observes, more than one billion Google searches per day are in the form of a question, so outlining all the steps a reader needs to accomplish what they’re trying to do is a great blog content tactic.

Ideas, concepts, and opinions
“Talk about sustainable vs. fast fashion and you’ll be connecting with what people want,” Todory suggests, alluding to the variety of styles and approaches in any category of business. In fact, blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations of even very useful information. It is opinion that humanizes a blog and differentiates a business, professional practice, or organization from its peers. One aspect of blogging is to put your own unique slant on best practices in your field.

In the news
“Use your fashion blog to deliver a commentary on the latest styles on show at places like Paris Fashion Week and the Met Gala”, Todory suggests, alluding to the tactic of tying blog content to current happenings in the community and beyond, showing readers that you’re “with it”.

These are just four ideas from the list of 21 different types of blogs Thrivemyway mentions. As we well know at Say It For You, there are dozens and dozens more. Just remember to blog one aspect at a time!

 

 

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Your First Job is to Communicate a Beautiful Idea

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“Caught up in the difficulty of mystifying, magicians often forget that the first job of any artist is to communicate a beautiful idea,” is a quote from Raymond Joseph Teller in Joshua Jay’s book How Magicians Think. One idea that audiences find irresistibly beautiful is that they are being given access to “secret”, or at least little-known, information. That is precisely the tactic Penn & Teller used in demonstrating the age-old cups and balls trick, but using clear plastic cups, demonstrating that it is the magician’s skill rather than the props that create illusions.

“The idiom ‘inside scoop’ particularly refers to information that is only known to people who are among a select group”, grammarist.com explains. In the book Craved, author Kel Hammond notes that people love behind-the-scenes video footage, which makes people feel like they’re in the know. Showing people a more personal side of who is behind the brand is a powerful marketing tool. In other words, it’s the idea of being empowered with “inside info”, rather than the information itself, the accomplishes the marketing goal.

Researchers at the University of Bath, working with Nielson, came up with two ways to score ads.

  1. Information Power Score – measures what the consumer perceives as the value of the message
  2. Emotive Power Score – measures if the emotion is going to change feelings about the brand

    At Say It For You, our business is blog marketing, which means connecting professional practitioners and business owners with prospective clients and customers. And, while I continually preach and teach that blog posts are not ads, but more like advertorials, establishing connections is the name of the game for both advertisers and content marketers. The first job of content marketing is, in fact, to communicate ideas that online visitors will find “beautiful”, making them feel as if they are part of a well-informed “inside group”.

    Sometimes, the “beauty” of the blog content is that it simplifies and unifies diverse details into central concepts.. Other times the “beauty” lies in linking “conversation-piece” tidbits of information to concepts that help readers better understand complex processes. Caught up in the difficulty of online marketing, let’s remember that the first job of any blog content writer is communicating beautiful ideas.

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Should Blog Titles Tell All?

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Besides being an absolutely fascinating read, Popular Science Magazine‘s special collector’s edition “Journey to the Future” offers a course in creating interesting titles (a topic of extreme interest, as you may imagine, to any blog content writer).

Of course, when it comes to blogs, the very first piece of information readers are going to receive is the title of the post. We want the searcher to click on the link, and of course we want search engines to offer our content as a match for readers seeking information and guidance on our topic. More than that, though, a blog post title in itself constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors. In essence, you’re saying, “If you click here, you’ll be led to a post that in fact discussing the topic mentioned in the title.

Here are some very straightforward titles from Popular Science Magazine:

  • Quantum Computing: the Future of AI
  • Will Robots Help or Harm? That’s Up to Humans
  • The Future of Transplants
  • Boosting Memory

    In blogs, as we teach at Say It For You, even the tone of the title constitutes a promise of sorts, telling the searcher whether the content is going to be humorous, satirical, controversial, cautionary, or simply informative. Then, for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes, the title needs to contain keyword phrases, which each of these titles does. At the same time, an important purpose of marketing blogs is inducing searchers to read the post, and for that, the title must arouse curiosity and interest.

Curiosity-piquing titles in this Popular Science issue include:

  • Get Ready to Sniff Disease
  • Engineered for Ethics
  • Running on Reckless
  • Eyes on the Earth
  • Re-defining Meat
  • Always on Duty

(Fascinating, curious titles, but you don’t really know what sort of content to expect in the article to come.)

One compromise is what I call the “Huh?-Oh!” two-part title, in which the first part is an attention-getter, with more of an explanation in the second part.

Examples of two-part titles from Popular Science:

  • All Together Now – Human Societies are the Technologies of the Future and Cooperation is the Fuel
  • The Extra-Dimensional Artist – When Visual Art and Augmented reality Merge

One popular misconception I run into as a business blogging trainer is that blog titles need to be what I would call “cutesy”, meaning they must have an enticing “ring” to them that arouses attention. My opinion – Cutesy belongs in baby clothes. Yes, blog post titles need to capture attention, but when readers click on a link, they need to find material that is congruent with what the title promised would be there.

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Blogging Your Pull Quote

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In graphic design, a key phrase or sentence is sometimes “pulled” from an article and placed in a larger print in a box on the page. The “pull quote” is used to draw interest, but also gives readers a a “preview” of the thesis to be proven or at least discussed in the article.

In a recent issue of Health Magazine, the article “The Digital-Era Brain” (a discussion of whether the Internet is eroding our memory) features the following pull-quote, printed in bold: “In one study, a group of students said they spent 20 percent of class time texting, playing games, and checking social media”. A second article discussing the USA Memory Championship, titled “Battle of the Big Brains”, features the following pull quote: “Though the brain accounts for only 2 percent of the body’s mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breathe and burns a quarter of our glucose.”

In blog posts, both titles and images can serve as “pull quotes”.

“Pull quote” titles

When it comes to blogging for business, titles matter, and for two basic reasons: a) Keywords and phrases help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or professional practice has to offer. b) Exactly like the pull quote on the magazine page, the idea is to “pull” in readers by engaging their interest.

If the title is phrased as a question, asking readers if they’re grappling with an issue or a need that you not only know about, but which you’re accustomed to helping solve – that’s perfect as a pull quote tactic.

“Pull quote” images

Adding images to blog posts has been shown to increase readership. In fact, consumers have been shown to be more likely to consider or contact a business when an image appears in search results. What we’ve found at Say It For You, interestingly, is that commercial images, or “clip art”, which don’t depict the actual products, customers, or colleagues of that business or practice, work particularly well as interest “pullers”, capturing the main concept that will be articulated in the post.

In a very basic sense, blog posts themselves function as “pull quotes”. In fact, one of the most important reasons blogs have a distinct advantage over the more static website copy is that each post draws visitors’ focus to just one story, one aspect of the business, practice, or product, precisely in the manner that a pull quote draws attention to just one main concept embodied in the full article.

Use blogging as a set of pull quotes for your website offerings!

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