Blog Your Sit-Means-Sit

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Judged by Shakespeare’s famous line “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, the Bard didn’t think monikers were very important. Apparently, to investors selecting stocks these days, they are: on average, Harvard Business Review found, companies with short, simple names attract more shareholders and generate greater amounts of stock trading than companies with hard-to-process names.

While I’m not currently a pet owner, the other day I came across what has to be my all-out favorite corporate name – Sit Means Sit. No explanation needed – not only do you know immediately that what the company offers is dog obedience training, you get a sense of the owner’s stance is on the subject.

Blog readers need to perceive you as an expert in your field, I teach at Say It For You.  And for that to happen, I believe, you need to clearly demonstrate a firm perspective on your subject. There’s no lack of information sources – and no lack of “experts” (purported or real) on any topic In blog marketing, therefore, we need to go beyond presenting facts, statistics, features, and benefits, and get authentic and yes, even opinionated. Taking a stance on your subject, using the blog content writing to express a firm opinion on issues in your industry and community, is how you leverage your uniqueness.

Blogging, remember, involves providing new material week after week, month after month, year after year. We can highlight less well-known facts about familiar things and processes. We can suggest new ways of thinking about things readers already know. Still, that’s not enough. Whether you’re blogging for a business, for a professional practice, or for a nonprofit organization, you’ve got to have an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers. In short, as blog content writers, we must help our clients become influencers.

“We don’t train dogs the same, because not every dog is the same,” the Sit Means Sit website continues, going on to explain that the company offers programs geared to “any dog, any age, any problem”. In fact, the Sit Means Sit website contains information about different training approaches, and, in your own blog posts, there will be ample opportunities to explain and explore different aspects of your own products or services.

“When writing an opinion piece, you are taking a side on a particular issue and trying to communicate to your audience why you believe your chosen side to be the correct one,” 201digital comments. “In fact, research shows that the only type of content more popular than that which encourages reads and shares is negative or controversial opinion.”

What are those things that you really mean when it comes to delivering your service or product to your customers and clients? Blog your own “sit means sit”!

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Blogging to Offer – and Change – Opinions

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When online readers find a blog, one question they need answered is “Who lives here?” Providing information about products and services may be the popular way to write corporate blog posts, but in terms of achieving Influencer status – it takes opinion, we’ve learned at Say It For You.

Whether you’re blogging to promote a business, a professional practice, or a nonprofit organization, you’ve gotta have an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers. In other words, blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations; you can’t just “aggregate” other people’s stuff and make that be your entire blog presence.

The Earth Day issue of the Indianapolis Star included an article by Jacqueline Cutler that represents a collection of different people’s opinions on the topic of environmental threats. Eight different people were interviewed, with each asked to name what they considered to be the most pressing threat and then to describe one specific change individuals could make in their daily lives that could help make a positive difference.

Photographer Joel Sartore, for example, names climate change as the biggest threat, and recommends including native plants in our landscaping. Brian Skerry of National Geographic Explorer is concerned about plastic waste in the oceans, and recommends switching to metal water bottles. Shirell Parfait-Dardar, Choctaw tribal chief says we should look at our children and at our aging parents, and “just start caring” about the impact waste and warning have on their lives.

Very thought-provoking article, yet from a blog marketing standpoint, there’s a piece missing, I couldn’t help thinking. Cutler has done a fine job “aggregating” the statements of others, without presenting her own opinion. But, in marketing a business, practice, or organization, we absolutely must make clear “who lives here”.

In “Ten tips to write an opinion piece people read”, A. Stone advises starting with an attention-grabbing opening line that cuts to the heart of your key message, evoking an emotion or curiosity.  It can be a strong fact, statement or even the beginning of an anecdote that has audience connection, he explains. “The first line is the display-window for all the goodies you have inside,” Stone explains. In opinion piece posts, the, the opener should at least hint at the “slant”.

We must be influencers, I advise clients and blog content writers alike. Whether intended for business-to-business or business to consumer,, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.

 

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Achieving Eudaimonia in Business Blog Writing

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The Stoics realized that there are things we control, and things we don’t. To get to the good life, we should focus on things we control, accepting the rest as it happens. When it comes to the things we can control, Stoics believe it’s not an external situation that makes us happy or miserable, but our interpretation of that situation. The idea is to achieve a supremely happy life, which Stoics call eudaimonia.

That ancient philosophy can help business entrepreneurs today, theconversation.com comments. As I read this article, it occurred to me that three business concepts based on Stoicism can serve as great guidelines for those of us involved in blog marketing:

  1.  “Before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves.”

Twelve years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them felt they could take the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task. Meanwhile, our business owner clients can’t throw in the towel before success has been given the chance to develop. We can’t control the market or our customers – first we have to control our own activities.

2. “Stoicism means leveraging your uniqueness.” (Don’t let emulation turn into imitation.)

To have any hope of moving higher in search rankings and engage readers’ interest, blogs must provide fresh, relevant content. But, with the sheer volume of information on the Web on every topic under the sun, how do we keep providing new material in our blog posts week after week, month after month, even year after year? Two strategies include bringing in less well-known facts about familiar things and processes, and suggesting new ways of thinking about things readers already know.
But, besides offering unique tidbits of information, we must incorporate one important ingredient – opinion. Taking a stance, using blog content writing to express a firm opinion on issues, is how companies and practices can leverage their uniqueness.

   3.  “Stoicism turns problems into opportunities.”

I teach freelance blog writers in Indianapolis to include stories of their clients’ past mistakes and failures. Such stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame not only adversity, but the effects of their own mistakes! When customers’ complaints and concerns are recognized and dealt with “in front of other people” (in blog posts), it gives the “apology” or the “remediation measure” more weight. In fact, in corporate blogging training sessions, I remind Indianapolis blog writers to “hunt” for stories of struggle and mistakes made in the early years of a business or practice!

Studying the Stoics gives us a chance at achieving blogging eudaimonia!

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Blogging to Bust Myths and Build Trust

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“Was the oldest woman a fraud?” asks Smithsonian.com, referring to French socialite Jeanne Calment, who appeared to be making history when she died in 1997 at the age of 122. (Later investigation revealed that Jeanne had actually died at the age of 59 in 1934. Her daughter had actually assumed Jeanne’s identity, later dying at the age of 99.) Valery Novoselov, assistant professor of the Department of Gerontology and Geriatrics of RUDN University, known for studying medical documents to investigate the deaths of famous Russians, was actually the mythbuster, revealing that the reason for the hoax had been to avoid the payment of inheritance taxes on Jeanne’s estate.

One of the bigger myths about trust, says Charles Green in trustedadvisor.com, is that trust takes a long time to create, but only a moment to destroy. That in itself is a dangerous myth, Green contends. Human emotions take roughly as long to get over as they take to develop in the first place. Trust formed quickly, Green agrees, can be lost quickly; trust formed at a shallow level can be lost at the same level.  But trust formed deeply, or over time, takes deeper violations, or a longer time, to be lost. Thinking of trust as something you can lose in a minute makes you cautious and unlikely to take risks. But the absence of risk is what starves trust, is the point Charles Green wants to make. There simply is no trust without risk – that’s why they call it trust.

Business blog posts are actually the perfect medium for “mythbusting”, I teach at Say It For You. Blog content writing has the power to clear the air, replacing factoids with facts, allowing readers to see their way clear to making decisions. Offering little-known explanations that explode common myths is a good way to engage readers’ interest. Done right, blogging about myths related to our own products, services, and company history can provide value-packed “verdicts” on each false claim or misunderstanding. Citing statistics that disprove popular myths gives business owners and practitioners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise.

There’s a proverbial fly in the ointment here, though. People don’t really like being proven wrong. And, since one of the purposes of any marketing blog is to attract potential customers to the business’ website, it would be a tactical mistake for blog writers to prove those online visitors wrong.  The skill lies in engaging interest, but not in “Gotcha! – I’m-the-expert-and-you’re-not” fashion. (Anyone might reasonably have come to the conclusion you did, should be the message, without knowing the facts I’ve researched and which am providing here.)

Many misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves in the natural order of business, in the form of questions and comments from readers and customers. Shining the light of day on that misinformation is one function of blogging, and, provided your blog post is well written, perhaps with a bit of tongue in cheek, it can offer enlightenment in a way that engages searchers and keeps them coming back.

The goal – blog to bust myths while building trust!

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O.K., You’re Biased. Your Content is There to Tell ‘Em Why

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opinion in blogging
Is coming across as biased a bad thing? Not when it comes to blog marketing, I concluded, after reading in the Guardian about a great lecture by writer Neil Gaiman. Gaiman started out the lecture he was giving on the importance of libraries by saying “It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why.” As an author of fiction over the last thirty years, Gaiman has been earning his living through his words, so it’s obviously in his interest, he admits, for people to read.

Journalists often feel compelled to try to prove they are “unbiased,” Walter Dean admits in a piece for the American Press Institute . “But what if they took a different approach, acknowledging that bias is built into the choices they make when deciding what to leave in or leave out? Draining a story of all bias can drain it of its humanity,” he says.

Serving as head of the Say It For You team of blog content writers, I’ve had a lot of time to ponder the notion. Our mission is to help business owners and professional practitioners frame their stories, letting readers know what they know how to do and what they offer. But in addition, they need to show what they stand for and what they stand against. One of the gurus I follow is Seth Godin. In the book, All Marketers Tell Stories, Godin says something really powerful: “Your opportunity lies in finding a neglected worldview, framing your story in a way that this audience will focus on.” That “worldview” is a bias.

As content creators, we are influencers. We have to be. The content itself needs to use opinion – call it bias if you wish – to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers. Just why have you chosen this particular model for your business or practice? I loved this sentence from the University of Sussex Department of Communications and External Affairs about opinion pieces in general:

“The most important thing to remember is that “readers are not necessarily interested in what you do; they are interested in what you have to say.”

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