Blog Testimonials are Egg McMuffins!

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Just as shoppers are presented with lots of choices while browsing at the mall, Internet browsers have lots of choices about which sites to "enter".  If your "store window" doesn’t do it for them, they’ll be quickly moving on to your neighbors’ stores.  That’s why advertising blogger Michel Fortin stresses the importance of headlines in ads and in business blogs.

So, OK, you get them to come on in and check out your blog. What keeps those "shoppers" from turning around and walking right back out into the mall?  Your blog content. Obviously, It’s got to be on the mark – recent, relevant, and on point with whatever motivated the search.  We’ve all been there, done that – or gone away and not done that, as the case may be!

I think the Egg McMuffin story illustrates how testimonials in your blog can make the difference between engaging online readers – or losing them before you have the chance to even start the conversation.  Mental Floss Magazine’s "Egg McMuffin: Born of McLovin’" explains that back in 1972, Herb Peterson, who ran a McDonald’s in Santa Barbara, California, loved eggs Benedict.  Peterson created the Egg McMuffin (grilled Canadian bacon on a steamed egg over a slice of American cheese squeezed into an English muffin) and got scolded for serving it without authorization from McDonald’s executives. Even McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc thought the idea was crazy.

(Here’s the part I think is so relevant for bloggers:
"But, when Kroc saw how much customers liked the new sandwich he changed his mind."

In other words, stories about customer satisfaction turned around the skeptical attitude of the executive nay-sayers. That’s precisely the reason it’s so important to use customer satisfaction stories as content for your business blog. No ad copy, no claims, no statistics can ever wield the power of "people just like them" praising the product or service.

Testimonials go a long way in answering the five why’s:

  • Why this reader (is a good fit for your product or service)?
  • Why you the business owner?
  • Why this offer?
  • Why now?
  • Why this price? 

Whatever your "Egg McMuffin" is, be sure to showcase its fans in your blog!



 

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They May Look at the Website, But Your Blog Helps Them See!

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Communications coach and friend Myrna Selby forwarded a video to me relating to a psychology study on focus. In fact, the two professors who co-authored the study have published a book called The Invisible Gorilla and Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us.

The directions are to count how many times girls in white shirts pass the ball to each other.  In other words, the viewer is directed to focus on one aspect of all the different things going on in the video.  But (and this is the whole point), when you focus on one aspect, you miss the others.

To me, that premise hits the nail on the head for the way websites and blogs relate to each other.  Websites present the big picture – the different services and products the company offers, who the principal players are, the mission statement, the geographic areas the company deals with, the “unique selling proposition” – in other words, the whole enchilada!

But, just like in the video, where the viewer can’t focus on everything that’s happening at once, on a website, each page and each block of content takes the mind away from all the others.  It’s exactly the same as focusing on the number of passes by the players dressed in white and missing the gorilla!

What each blog post does, then, is focus on just one aspect of your business, so that online searchers can feel at ease and not be distracted with all the other information you have to offer. In previous Say It For You blog posts, I’ve compared blogging to job interviews.  Each post is like one question at the interview.  The question might be about your technical knowledge in a given area, or it might be about your reliability, or about your salary expectations.  The interviewer will expect you to stick to that one subject in answering that question in the most direct way. That’s exactly what each blog post is designed to do.

Online searchers may look at your website, and that’s a good thing, but it’s your blog that will help them “see”.  Each single blog post makes it clear why this one set of products you have, this one service you provide, and this one piece of special wisdom you have relates to just what they need!

 

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Social Media Can Be “The Wiz” in Promoting Your Business Blog

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Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum is inspirational for business bloggers, and not only in terms of finding blog ideas in unlikely places such as the O-Z file cabinet label from which he took the name Oz.

Although he lived a hundred years ago, Baum was able to use the then-equivalent of social networking to promote his book. A Mental Floss Magazine article about Baum’s life explains that, while "the Wiz" may have been an immediate hit with children, librarians disapproved of the book and took it off their shelves, waging what was dubbed the "Wizard War of 1957".

While LinkedIn® would not make its debut for more than half a century, Baum had "friends", beginning with William Buckley, who wrote favorably about Oz in the National Review. Twitter® was unheard of as of yet, but apparently Buckley managed to "tweet" his approval to other famous authors such as Gore Vidal and Nora Ephron, who then "retweeted" to Ray Bradbury and William Styron.  Pretty soon, Baum’s friends had a "buzz" going for his book.

Bottom line (although not online!), through promoting the book, creating friends and followers, those who "liked" Wizard of Oz overcame the librarians’ negative reviews, and Baum  was able to take his place among the ranks of classic children’s fairy tale authors.

It’s not enough to just blog – you’ve got to spread the word about the blog and create "buzz"!

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Look As Far As The Bottom Drawer For Blog Ideas

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If ever there was an example of drawing ideas from everywhere and everything (what I’ve been calling “learning around” for your blog), it would be L. Frank Baum and his book The Wizard of Oz.

As a child, a Mental Floss Magazine article explains, Baum had loved reading fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, but “loathed the dark, grisly endings”. He wanted to create a world where wonderment and joy are retained.  So what would Baum call his utopia?  Scanning his office for ideas, family legend holds, Baum stared at his filing cabinets, drawing inspiration from the label “O-Z” on the bottom drawer.

The oh-so-important lesson here for business bloggers relates to the fact that blogging is no sprint.  A long-term, drawn-out effort is required in order to “build equity” in keyword phrases, gather a following, and gain – and sustain – online rankings.

From both my work as a professional ghost blogger these last three years and my work as a business blogging trainer, I know just how challenging it can be to sustain the discipline and “the faith” needed for long term business blogging success.

Ideas, on the other hand? That’s the easy part.  Just stand there, listen, look around – and learn!

 

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Help People Who Need People Find You

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When Barbra Streisand sang: "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world", she was onto something that bloggers for business need to keep in mind.

Fellow blogger Michel Fortin says that, "When compared to traditional offline business, online people are more important than ever before." That’s because the Internet is cold and impersonal, Fortin explains, to some extent taking the human element out of the sales process. People are easier to forget online, he continues, and a very, very big mistake on the part of any online marketer would be thinking of potential clients in terms of click-throughs and conversion rates rather than as people.

So how does that translate into writing effective blog copy? Fortin’s advice is to make your content more experiential. "Let them feel or imagine how it feels….appeal to the reader’s ego when describing benefits."  Always remember, he warns, people buy on emotion.  (Even in business-to-business situations, Fortin stresses, it’s still people okaying the deals and writing out the checks.)

Michel Fortin’s idea of good selling copy is "copy that presses hot buttons, energizes hormones, and invigorates buying behaviors". In a way, I was saying the same thing in yesterday’s Say It For You blog post when I talked about the claims we make about our products and services.  Every claim needs not only to be true, but to feel true to online visitors.  I talked about how even that’s not enough; readers must be shown how the claim has potential to help them with their problem or need. It has to be – start, middle, and
finish – about people. Fortin calls it painting vivid mental pictures.

"Be intimate. Be ego-driven. Above all, be emotional." is Fortin’s advice to online marketers. "People want to do business with people they like and trust," Chris Baggott, CEO of Compendium Blogware continually reminds blogger.

Barbra had it right long before the blogging era. In posting blogs to promote your business, remember the principle that people need people. Consistently following that simple maxim could help you get very lucky in terms of online business! 

 

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