Target Content But Leave No One Aghast

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The Certified Financial Planners Board ‘Perfect Job” ad campaign has apparently left Certified Financial Planners aghast, Tracy Longo reports in Financial Advisor Magazine. Meant to encourage young people to embark on “perfect” careers in financial planning, the ad depicts prospective CFP®s as snoozing, taking bubble baths, and competing in burrito-eating contests. The apparent intent was showing that careers in financial planning offer life-work balance, but the content ended up offending rather than informing.

As a CFP Board Emeritus® and now owner of a content marketing company, I view this “Perfect Job” marketing fiasco as a cautionary tale. Certainly, when building a plan to connect with an audience, we need to consider not only age, gender, and nationality, but where members of  the target audience are “hanging out” on social media, Interviews, and focus groups. The creators of “Perfect Job” were obviously aware of the high value the younger generation places on work-life balance. But, because they were clumsy in using exaggeration to create a humorous effect, their ploy failed.

A number of years ago, I found material on some research done at the Saimaa University of Applied Sciences on the impact of humor in advertising. The researchers concluded that, while humor is an effective method of attracting attention in advertisements, it offers no advantage at increasing persuasion.

For the content writers at Say It For You, our “employers” are business and practice owners whom we work to connect with their target audiences, positioning those owners and practitioners as Subject Matter Experts in their respective fields. Because we are figuratively “putting words in their mouths”, it is they who must embrace the messaging prior to our “sending it out” to their target readers.

In the case of the “Perfect Job” campaign content, the marketers failed to consider the very financial planners they were positioning as models in the eyes of future entrants into the profession.

In defense of the campaign, CFP Board officials said the ads were “facetious portrayals” intended to help student audiences think about “what their dream job might look like”.

As a longtime content creator, I have learned that “facetious” marketing content too often combusts. As content marketers, the “trick” lies is targeting our content while leaving absolutely no one aghast.

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Self-Help Titles Teach Variety

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Browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble, I came across an entire three-shelf section of self help books. The variety of titles was astounding, perfect examples of how a single topic can be approached in a plethora of ways:. Here are just a few of the titles:

  • Already Enough
  • Wild Calm
  • Yay All Day
  • Wander the Stars
  • Slow Down, Take a Nap
  • What’s Behind the Blue Door
  • You Meet You
  • Always Change a Losing Game
  • The Other Significant Others
  • Atomic Habits

When it comes to content marketing, all the titles show above could be classified as “Huhs?”, meaning that each needs a subtitle to make clear what the book is actually about. “Oh!” titles, we teach at Say It For You, are self-explanatory, and from an SEO (search engine optimization) standpoint, make a direct connection to the query readers type into their search bar.

For either straightforward or “Huh?-Oh!” titles of blog posts, one way to engage readers is using the sound of the words themselves, repeating vowel sounds (assonance) or consonant sounds (alliteration), so that searchers use their sense of hearing along with the visual.

Just as titles “grabbed” me as a bookstore browser, it’s important to have “ringing” in blog post titles, we teach. Titles matter in two ways:

  1. For search – keywords and phrases help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or professional practice has to offer.
  2. For engagement – after you’ve been “found”, you’ve gotta “get read”! (Of course, no clever title can substitute for well-written, relevant content that provides valuable information to the readers.)

But when blog content writers try being too clever, too general, or too cliched, that’s not good, either, Authormedia points out in “Top 5 Blog Title Mistakes Authors Make” The overriding criterion is whether you can deliver on your headline promise in the body of the post.

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Writing About WIne and Other Difficult Content Tasks

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“Using words to describe wine is fraught with peril and leaves wine writers exposed to ridicule,” Gus Clemens writes in an article  I found reprinted in my Indianapolis Star the other day. “Writing about wine is like dancing about architecture,” he complains. Although many familiar terms about wine tastes and smells are delicious to imagine and easy to understand because we know them from the fruit we eat, other terms, such as “leather”, “granite” or “green bell pepper” sometimes make us ask, “Are they just making stuff up to appear superior?”

Interesting. Just a couple of months ago, I posted a piece on introducing “insider terminology” to blog readers. The point I was making is that, in content marketing, once you’ve established common ground, adding new vocabulary  or “in-words” actually adds value to readers’ visit, giving them a sense of being “in the know”.

Offering online readers more than a description, but an “experience” is, in fact, one of our biggest challenges as content writers. Our goal is, through what they see on the page, to give visitors a “taste” of the benefits and satisfactions they stand to enjoy when using your products or services. 

“Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his book All Marketers Tell Stories. While effective stories have authenticity and an implied promise of satisfaction, they must also, he stresses, appeal to the senses rather than to logic

With readability being a critical yet often-overlooked aspect of writing (as StraightNorth.com explains, content  must be matched to the education and sophistication level of your intended audience. In the case of a wine vendor, is the content targeted towards experienced wine consumers or is it intended to draw in “newbie” enthusiasts?

Humanizing your marketing content is a way of bringing readers “backstage”, keeping the company or professional practice relatable. Building a story around the “leather” or “granite” element in the services and products you have to offer can mean turning information-gathering into an experience!

 

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Content Creators Need to Think Like Wolves

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After re-visiting Michael Breus’ book The Power of When, I’ve concluded that, in order to create marketing content for a business or practice over the long-term, we need to think like wolves….

The book, based on circadian biology, explains that there is a best time for each of us to eat lunch, ask for a raise, write a novel, and take our meds, depending on our individual “chronotype”. 50% of people are Bears (who prefer a solar based schedule and have a high sleep drive). Dolphins are light sleepers, while Lions are morning-oriented. The author describes wolves as “night-oriented creative extroverts” with a medium sleep drive.

From a content-marketing point of view, a key clue may be found on Page 77 of Breus’ book, where the author notes that “wolves see every situation from multiple vantage points”.  The big thing about content marketing, I’ve often explained to business owners and professional practitioners, is learning how to keep on keeping on. No doubt about it, sustaining content writing over long periods of time without losing reader (or writer!) excitement is the real challenge, one that “wolves” are best equipped to handle using their ability to approach the topic from “multiple vantage points”.

  • In order to add variety, I teach content writers to experiment with different formats, including how-to posts, list posts, opinion pieces, and interviews.
  • Different articles can present the same business from different vantage points, “featuring” different employees and different departments within the company.
  • Individual posts – or series of posts – can be tailored to different segments of the customer base.
  • Different pieces of content can offer valuable information and advice relating to different aspects of the business’ or the practice’s product or service offerings.

While “wolves are creative and completely open to trying new things,” the author cautions, “they do run into some trouble sticking with it”. Breus’ advice? “Be spontaneous about the direction you choose, so long as you take walks and eat meals on your correct bio time.”

My own advice, meanwhile, is that sustaining an engaging business blog  over the course of years is very do-able – so long as you stay engaged.  Keep learning by “reading around” – books, blogs, articles, magazines, almanacs – you name it, all to stay aware of developments, cultural changes, even controversies.

Whatever your circadian biology, in content writing, it helps to think like a wolf!

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Arming Your Blog With the 4 A’s

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“Use the four A’s – Acronym, Analogy, Anecdote, Alliteration – to catch the reporter’s ear and help the reader remember what you said,” Janet Falk of Falk Communications and Research advises business professionals going to a conference.

Acronyms
While Sharif Khan, writing in the American Marketing Association’s Business Writing Tips for Professionals thinks readers might find company acronyms annoying, at Say It For You, our content writers use acronyms to add variety, presenting information to readers in a different way.

Analogies
Matching our writing to our intended audience is part of the challenge we business blog content writers face. Using an analogy to link an unfamiliar concept to something that is familiar can help the reader better comprehend what we’re trying to say. For example, blogging can be compared to a parhelion (an atmospheric optical illusion consisting of halos of light around the sun, showcasing rather than obliterating the shine). Approaching the same topic in different ways can help your content appeal to different audiences, still highlighting the central message.

Anecdotes
Stay alert for anecdotes about customers, employees, or friends who are doing interesting things or overcoming obstacles. Real-people stories of you, your people, and the people you serve are always a good idea in your business blog. Anecdotes and examples lend variety to the blog, even though the anecdotes are being used to reinforce the same few core ideas.

To demonstrate that you understand the problems the online searcher is dealing with, it can be highly effective to relate how you personally went through the same failure stages. Next best to the business owner or professional relating an “I” experience which drives their passion, is anecdotes and testimonials from employees, customers, or vendors..

Alliteration
Using alliteration (consonant repetition) and assonance (vowel repetition) in blog titles has the effect of making those titles more “catchy”. In a sense, readers’ are both seeing the repetition and “hearing it”. Making a subtle but strong impact on readers is is precisely the focus of our content work at Say It For You is all about.

Content writers, try arming your blog posts with the 4 A’s!

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