Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

Attending a trade show for one of her clients, marketing professional Amy Lemen experienced an "Aha!" moment about the "who" and the "how".

Most of the vendors at the show, Lemen realized, demonstrated through their displays and messages that they knew who their target customers were.  In other words, most of the trade show companies were OK on the "who" part.

But only a handful of vendors, she noticed, were OK on the "how", meaning how to let their customers know their business "was specifically focused on meeting their target customers’ unique set of needs."

The Lemen article might have been discussing the key challenge for business bloggers.  Your website content and blog posts can demonstrate that you’re offering all the right products and services your online visitors need. Despite that, you might still be experiencing a very high "bounce rate", meaning that visitors to your blog are thinking to themselves "No, that’s not what I meant!"

Identifying target customers is only half the battle, Lemen points out.  "The other half is appropriately signaling to your target customers that you understand, serve, and are targeting them." One way to accomplish that, she says, is by offering cues that you understand the situations and challenges they face when they’re using your type of product or service.

The more your customers "see" how you understand them and are dedicated to them, the more differentiated and persuasive you become, according to Lemen. As a professional ghost blogger and blog trainer, I couldn’t agree more.  Because of their short, informal, and ongoing conversational style, blogs are actually the perfect vehicle for putting out such targeted "cues" saying "I see you. I really see you!"
 
You’ve used blogs to win search and you’ve been found.  They’ve seen you. Now it’s your turn to demonstrate to those potential clients that you really see them!

"Making things happen, meaning sales, web hits, engagements, etc. is not just a function of how many people you reach; it’s also a function of how many times you reach them, and how much you spend reaching them,". Bryan Farrish explains to speakers trying to get radio interviews.

The idea of blogging for business is an almost exact parallel to Farrish’s idea about radio interviews: You want to hit as many people as possible, several times, and do so for the least amount of money as possible, he says. In reaching these goals, he goes on to say, you’re going to have advantages with small stations in smaller markets.

Each one of the advantages Farrish mentions relative to radio fits for blogging, I found…

• Most listeners need to hear something several times before they act.  (Since smaller stations are more likely to ask guest back, you’ll have several "shots" at your audience). With short, focused blog posts appearing with frequency, you’re more likely to not only "win search", but gain repeated opportunities to spread your message. Through links and archives, your Individual readers are easily able get back to earlier posts, or navigate to other sources you’ve found.
  
• Small stations are more likely to put you on their website, plus announce your website during the interview, Farrish tells speakers. Readers are more likely to leave comments on your blog rather than communicate with you through a traditional website.  Its simple for interested readers to sign up for an RSS feed to your blog, and even list it on their blog roll. Traditional websites are not flexible – or small – enough to move with ease among online conversations.
   
• With smaller radio stations, you’ll reach a larger demographic of listeners (with fewer stations in small cities, each station has a broader spectrum of people listening to each). With blogs, the reach is basically unlimited!
   
• Smaller stations’ advertising rates are less. You can’t get lower advertising rates than the zero space-cost for blogs!
  
  When you think about it, smaller might be a lot better for both radio stations and blogs!