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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You Don’t Have To Be a Blog Content Writer to Write

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“A writer writes, always.,” says the grand-prize winner of the Writer’s 500-word essay contest Michelle Y. Green. She doesn’t have to be at her keyboard or scribbling in a journal to write, she explains, because simply being curious and paying attention to details are any writer’s greatest tools.

In fact, several of Michelle Green’s pieces of advice for those new to writing are a perfect fit for blog content writers.

  • Many writers add one sentence, then subtract two or three words. Instead, just let the words flow.
    Blog content writing should be conversational and informal. Are second drafts even needed? Yes, but later, after you’ve let the thoughts flow, we tell content writers at Say It For You. Even more important than checking for spelling and grammar errors, though, is visualizing your target readers, and making sure your blog post is addressed to them, in their language, and that you’ve addressed their concerns.
  • Read what others are writing.
    Reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to your business field goes a long way towards keeping the blog “quiver” stocked with content ideas. Blog marketing involves knowing what’s being said by competitors, what’s trending, what aspects of your field are being discussed..
  • Enjoy research.
    To deliver quality writing of any kind, you’ve got to keep educating yourself, reading everything you can get your hands on, citing sources by paraphrasing and hyperlinking back to the page where the information originated. You then “translate” that information by putting it into context of your primary topic.
  • Notice details.
    Successful blog content writing is all about the details. Websites provide basic information about a company’s products or a professional’s services, but the blog content is there to attach a “face” and lend a “voice” to that information by filling in the finer details about the people behind the business and the choices they’ve made.   .

You don’t have to be a blog content writer to write – just feed your own natural curiosity – and take notes!

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Resisting the Urge to Repeat? Not!

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Ask a question and wait for a response, no matter how long it takes, is one piece of advice given to newbie salespeople. In other words, resist the urge to repeat your question, instead waiting- wait for an answer. Your prospect will inevitably feel moved to fill the silence, is the theory. Some health experts agree, citing repetition compulsion, or called trauma reenactment, which involves repeating physically or emotionally painful situations that happened in the past.

Not all sales trainers are on board with the advice about waiting for prospects to respond. “The mistake many people make–including me–is not following up often enough,” Minda Zetlin writes in Inc. Magazine. “When customers don’t hear from you for a while, they’re liable to forget you just at the moment when you want to be top of mind,” she says. Ask yourself, Zetlin advises, if there’s a follow-up note you can send with additional metrics or other information that will help your potential customer make a decision. Meanwhile, the trainer adds, “You don’t want to make the classic mistake of losing customers you already have while you’re busy landing new business.”

Hubspot agrees with Zetlin’s approach, saying that following up on a sales call or email significantly increases your chances of getting a response. Research shows that if you add just one more follow-up email, you can increase your average reply rate by eleven percentage points. In fact, first followup emails show. a 40%-increase in reply rate in comparison to the first email.

At Say It For You, after years of being involved in all aspects of blog writing and blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that business owners who “follow up” with new content on their websites are rare. There’s a tremendous fall-off rate, with most blogs abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. Blog marketing maven Neil Patel reminds business owners and practitioners that “Google isn’t shy about rewarding websites that publish regular, high-quality content.” The “frequency illusion”, Mark Zimmer adds, means that each time a customer is exposed to the message there is a sense of omnipresence.

At least when it comes to blogging for business, resisting the urge to repeat is not the way to go!

 

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Starting – and Sticking With – Blogging for Business

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While launching a business blog is a fearsome thing for many, sustaining the process is even harder, as Seth Godin discusses in The Dip.

Too many business owners and professional practitioners embark on blog marketing in recognition of its power to generate interest in their products and services. What gets them down is the week-after-week work of creating new, relevant, interesting, and results-producing…blog posts.

In the face of all the compelling reports demonstrating the value of blog marketing, Caslon Analytics tells us that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month!, 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days. The average blog, Caslon remarks ruefully, “has the lifespan of a fruitfly”.

Problem is, as we well know at Say It For You, in blog marketing, it’s just not OK to quit. Those abandoned blogs belong to those who don’t recognize what Seth Godin describes as the “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”. Google and other search engines tend to give more weight to websites that update their content regularly and that “keep on keeping on.” In fact, it’s the constant, consistent stream of new content that gives blogging its edge over other forms of marketing.

After years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and corporate blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that blog content writers who do nothing more than “show up” are exceptional! That’s because business owners who are able and willing to maintain consistency and frequency in posting to their blog are so rare. Remember, a company or practice might be achieving exceptional results, but potential customers and clients don’t yet know that, and that’s the message that needs to come across in the blog (and the latest entry cannot be six months old!).

Readers and search engines each know to “expect” fresh content. Freelance blog content writers are helping their business owner and professional practitioner clients build equity in keyword phrases over time, helping clients achieve those “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”.

 

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What Woodpeckers Know About Blogging for Business

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To hardworking, motivated people, diversification feels like the right thing do – enter a new market, apply for a job in a different area, start a new sport, observes Seth Godin in The Dip. “And yet,” the author continues, “the real success comes to those who obsess.” A woodpecker, he says, can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or – he can tap 20,000 times on the same tree and get dinner!

Translating woodpecking into blogging terms, Neil Patel admits that blogging isn’t for the faint at heart. One of the reasons that’s true is that “one thing Google isn’t shy about is that it rewards websites that publish regular, high-quality content that provides real value to users.”

At Say It For You, after years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that business owners who “show up” with new content on their websites are rare. There’s a tremendous fall-off rate, with most blogs abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. Pity, because blogs are startlingly less costly than business print ads, “winning” with content, not cost, and with frequency, not size.

Not to strain a simile, healthcare professionals stress the importance of “regularity” for maintaining digestive health, exhorting us to shun sugar, processed food, alcohol and caffeine in favor of fiber. Harvard Health Letter advocates exercise, emphasizing that is must be regular.

“There’s always been a lot of debate about content quality vs. quantity and frequency in content marketing practitioner circles,” Brock Stechman writes in DivvyHQ. However, he (significantly) points out. It will be difficult to get traction with an inconsistent or slow publication schedule, and frequent, consistent publication is vital for success.

Research on several psychological phenomena supports the importance of frequency in advertising and marketing, Mark Zimmer of Zimmer Marketing explains:

  1. The mere-exposure effect – people show preference for that with which they are familiar.
  2. The frequency illusion – each time the customer is exposed to the message there ia sense of omnipresence.
  3. Information-gap theory – reader feels there is a gap between what we know and what we want to know.

How often should you blog? Blogtyrant.com admits the only correct answer is “It depends” on a number of factors, including your schedule, your topic, and your blog post length. You want your blog to be successful for years to come, but without burning yourself out.

The lesson woodpeckers offer to blog content marketers is consistent tapping!

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