Don’t Keep Yourself a Secret in Your Blog

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“What we’re marketing is Y-O-U”,” career strategist Diane Wingerter reminds clients, subjecting their personal profiles to her “’red pen review”: It’s a mistake to introduce yourself to a prospective customer or employer with a laundry list of all the things you do, she teaches . In order to focus on how you want the reader of the profile to feel about you, weave your bio into a narrative that reveals your personality.

In fact, two P’s of business blogging, we remind clients of Say It For You, are Passion and Personality. As compared to brochures and advertisements, blog posts are ideal for revealing, while imparting valuable information to visitors, the unique personality and core beliefs of the business or practice owners.

Used to be, the emphasis in marketing was on conveying a USP, a unique selling proposition. Today, however, we should move in the direction of ESPs – emotional selling propositions,” Jeanette McMurtry cautions in Marketing for Dummies. And, in online communication, while need may have brought visitors to your blog, it’s their want (their desire to do business with you) that will move those visitors “down the sales funnel”.

Based on my years as a college career mentor, helping students secure internships, I have come to compare blog posts to long interviews. Searchers on the web are “recruiting” help, and just as in a face-to-face interview, they evaluate your content in light of their own needs. It’s more than that, as Diane Wingerter so aptly emphasizes. What interviewers really do, as the Helium Jobs & Careers website says, is “get a look at your personality.”

Business blog posts, shorter, less formal, and more personal than websites, are the perfect venue to showcase your personality and your unique approach to your field. Yes, a marketing blog must demonstrate what you have, what you do, and what you know how to do, but, whatever you do – don’t keep yourself a secret in your blog!

 

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Signs They’ve Found the Right Place

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they've come to the right place

“How can you be assured your hundreds – or thousands – of dollars have been well spent?” James R. Healy asks, writing in the AARP Bulletin about finding the right auto repair shop. Reading through those 9 “signposts” Healy suggests shoppers use as guidelines to quality assurance, it occurred to me how very relevant those are to blog marketing.

Just as consumers would not be searching for the right auto shop unless they already felt the need for one, online searchers who land on your blog are already interested in and have a need for the type of products or services you offer. Several of the signs attesting to the competence of the auto repair shop are those you can stress in your blog content that will serve as “signs” to those readers that “they’ve found the right place”…

People you trust say good things.
Testimonials from clients and customers are a powerful form of social proof; we are more likely to follow actions others have already taken,

The shop has the right stickers in the window.
What needs to come across loud and clear in business blog writing is what preparation, training, and effort it takes – on your part and on the part of your employees – to be able to deliver the expert advice, service, and products customers can expect from you.

The shop shows pride in its appearance.
The main message of a blog is delivered in words, of course. Where visuals come in, whether they’re in the form of “clip art”, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos, is to add interest and evoke emotion. You should take pride in your blog’s appearance, ease of navigation, and correct grammar.

Management will stand by its work.
Blog content writers need to need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to that industry, and use the blog content to show how this practitioner or business owner has stood by his/her work.

Not all these things can be accomplished in any one blog post. But, if you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes, and prospects who have reading your blog posts will typically enter the sales process more educated about what you have to offer.

Welcome blog visitors by offering signs they’ve found the right place!

 

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Is Your Business Blog Content TNAS?

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directions in blogs

 

As part of my work in the tutoring lab at Ivy Tech Community College, it often falls to me to help students revise essay papers. Students may have submitted first drafts, then received their papers back from their instructor with notations and corrections. The student then has the opportunity to “fix” things and re-submit the assignment.

At first, I didn’t understand the meaning of the notation “TNAS” that frequently appeared on these papers. I was soon informed that those initials stand for “That’s Not a Sentence”.

In fact, sentence fragments seem to be a common mistake among blog content writers. Often the problem is clauses. A sentence can have any number of clauses, but needs at least one main or independent clause, with a subject and a verb, as englishgrammar.org explains, and any dependent clauses need to be attached to an independent clause.

In business blog content writing, there’s another common problem related to sentences – run-ons. Run-ons have more than one independent clause. The effect, I tell students and content writers, is comparable to squeezing two bodies into one seat!

But, isn’t it OK to be more relaxed about grammar rules when writing for blogs? Yes….blogs are supposed to be less formal and more conversational than a company’s (or a practice’s) main website. As spotcolormarketing.com puts it, there are times when it is more effective to sound like a relatable human and not your sixth grade English teacher who never seemed to be able to connect with her audience.”

Along with several other grammar rules that Spot Marketing says are OK to break in blogs (such as ending a sentence with a preposition, using slang and contractions, or beginning a sentence with “and” or “but”) it might even be OK to use sentence fragments!

As a corporate blogging trainer, my favorite recommendation (to both business owners and the freelance blog content writers they hire to bring their message to customers) has been this: Prevent blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions”, including grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors.

At the same time, the real question writers need to ask themselves about any one blog post is this: Have I done what I set out to do? Is the marketing message clear?

After all, readers who “get the idea” you were trying to convey are unlikely to reject your content on the grounds that it’s TNAS!

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Inviting Blog Readers to Learn What You Live By

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blogs reveal corporate culture

Of the 17 best examples of business blog design cited by Carolyn Edgecomb of impactbnd.com, the one I think best embodies a point I emphasize to blog content writers is the Zappos website. “If you thought their blog was only going to talk about shoes, you’re sorely mistaken,” Edgecomb points out, because Zappos transitioned their blog to an “outlet for inspiration and everyday life.”

What we live by
Readers are invited to discover the ten core values central to the way the company does business, including building open and honest relationships, doing more with less, and being passionate and determined, and pursuing growth and learning.

Tony Hsieh Unlaced
Readers are invited to “walk a mile in the CEO’s shoes, discovering downtown Vegas from his point of view.

The Zappos blog is really a wonderful example of the fact that, in business blog posts, as compared to brochures, ads, or even the website itself, it’s easier to communicate the unique personality and core beliefs of the business owners.  Over time, in fact, a business blog becomes the “voice” of the corporate culture, whether the “corporation” (or partnership or LLC) consists of one person or many. In fact, when I’m “meeting” a business through its blog, I like to get a sense that the owners are tuned in to the bigger picture of what’s going on in their industry and to what’s happening the everyday world around them. I want to know what they “make of it all” from their little corner.

True, every online content writer must focus on what’s relevant to the searcher’s query. Yet, the more revealing the blog is of the owner’s slant on what’s going on – and what should be going on and how – the more engaging and interesting I’m likely to find that business’ blog posts.

The lesson I “preach” at Say It For You is that the content has to show searchers they’ve come to the right place to get what they’re after, and also show those searchers that the information, services, and products you have to offer are a good fit. But, as the old sales mantra goes,– “They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!”

Invite blog readers to learn what you live by!

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