Different Strokes for Different Folks in Blogging for Business

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Is your business blog reader’s tummy rumbling?

In this month’s Writers Digest, ten winners were announced. Contestants had been given a photo prompt showing a grocery store aisle and asked to write the opening line of a story based on that prompt. My personal two favorites were these:

  • “My tummy rumbles as I walk past all the things I cannot buy with the seven dollars in my pocket, the seven dollars for her cigarettes.
  • “We fell in love reaching for the same tea and fell apart picking different ice cream.”

I think this exercise illustrated two concepts related to business blog content writing:

The importance of your opening line

  • The first sentence of a blog post functions as “a hook:” and, next to the title, it’s the most important set of words in the post, creative-copywriter.net explains, advising writers to “say it fast, strong, and well”, right into the action and addressing their deepest problem instantly.
  • Readers are looking for connections. The challenge is to get the reader to nod his or her head, thinking “Yeah, that’s me.” Ann Hanley says in orbitmedia.com.

  • Writer’s Digest wasn’t talking about online content, but for blogs, the opening lines are where it’s important to incorporate keyword phrases to help with Search Engine Optimization.

The same general topic can be approached in a myriad of ways.

  • In order to add variety, I teach blog content writers to experiment with different formats, including how-to posts, list posts, opinion pieces, and interviews.
  • Different posts can present the same business from different vantage points, “featuring” different employees and different departments within the company.
  • Individual blog posts – or series of posts – can be tailored to different segments of the customer base.
  • Remember that, even within your target market, each reader’s need for information, products or services was born in a slightly different space and has traveled a different path. Not every message will work on every person.

From the very opening line and continuing throughout the blog post, remember – there are different strokes for different folks in blogging for business!

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Not That “We”, This “We” in Blogging for Business

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In using the pronoun “we” in blog posts, I asserted in a recent newsletter, we keep the blog conversational rather than academic-sounding or overly sales-ey. That isn’t pompous, I wrote – “it just works”. My point was that in conversing with readers through blog content writing, using “we” calls attention to the real people behind the company or practice brand.

One thing for sure is that not everyone agrees. “Cut the word ‘we’ wherever you possibly can,” Joanna Wiebe advises in copyhackers.com, That should apply even to “About Us” page, she says. Why? Your visitors don’t want to hear about you. They want to hear about themselves – about their problems, their needs, their futures.

In a survey by Corporate Visions, more than 47% of respondents said they use we-phrasing deliberately to position themselves as trusted partners. On the other hand, the survey revealed, the audience felt much more strongly that they must take action when you-phrasing was done rather than we-phrasing. Meanwhile, a set of experiments by the Journal of Consumer Research examined messages from banks and a health insurer, concluding that the pronoun “we” doesn’t work if it’s inconsistent with the actual relationship. In other words, if customers don’t expect a congenial relationship with a particular type of company, “we” arouses suspicion. True, existing customers responded favorably to the “we” verbiage.

All this research made we realize that I had been thinking of one type of “we”, while these other articles were referencing another. I like to use the word “we” to refer to the people owning the company or professional practice. The real people behind the “we” pronoun are taking ownership of their opinions and of the particular ways in which they choose to serve their customers. I was not recommending the use of the “we” to mean we-the-owners-and-you-the-customers, in a very fakey and patronizing “Let’s-try-on-these-shoes-shall-we?” way. The “we” to which I was referring describes the business owners/practitioners as the writers of the blog, with the readers remaining the “you”.

Business owners and professionals are the “we” with the ideas, knowledge and experience to share. The online visitors are the “you” receiving the good advice and the answers to their questions.

 

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Telling Them What It Means

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I always enjoy receiving my copy of The Zulu Group’s Home News from realtor friend Steve Rupp. This month, I thought the article “What Does that Mean” would have particular relevance for blog content writers The following three explanations were taken from Jeff Rovin’s book The Unbelievable Truth,,,

  • Pulling the wool over someone’s eyes…In earlier times, thieves would yank their victims’ wool wigs over their eyes, so that the victims couldn’t identify the perpetrators.
  • Blackmail… In 16th century England the word mail meant “rent”. Debts that had to be paid in silver were called whitemail; those that could be paid in livestock or other property were “blackmail”. Since blackmail had no ascertainable value, debt collectors could extort any amount they chose from the debtors.
  • Red tape…It was the custom, in England, to seal important documents with red wax and tape. The only way to read those documents was by cutting the tape.

Interesting….almost exactly ten years ago, I published a Say It For You blog post called “Which Means That” Business Blogging. Al Trestrail, a networking colleague of mine at the time had just produced a brochure offering marketing tips. Trestrail suggested to salespeople that they should develop a list of benefits, and then, after each item, add the words “which means that….”, going on to explain how that benefit helped the buyer of the product or service. Adapting that rule to the world of blogging means answering your readers’ question “so what?” before it’s even asked, I realized.

We’ve all heard it – buyers care about benefits, not features. Content writers need reminding – there are millions of blog posts out there making claims of one sort or another.  But what do those claims mean to the customers and clients reading that blog post? It’s true for both existing customers and clients and the new ones we’re seeking to win over – to win hearts and dollars, you need a strategy in place to demonstrate “what it means”, which might include describing how your “it” is: rarer easier to use, safer, more compact, more water-resistant, more beautiful, greener, or fresher.

A big part of blogging is simply telling them what it means!

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Post-It Note Blogging For Business

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Several years ago, while serving as an English tutor at Ivy Tech Community College, I created a writing guide for my students, urging them to complete the first three steps before sitting down at their laptops to write an assigned essay. They were to use Post-It® Notes to jot down ideas. That way, the order of the different paragraphs could be switched around. Blog content writers can follow an identical process in organizing their thoughts…

Step One: Select your topic. (Hint: Your TOPIC is not necessarily the same as the title for the post. Your topic is also not the same as your thesis statement. Your topic IS the answer to the question I might ask a person who’s just finished reading your blog post: “So…what was the subject of that piece?

Step Two: Compose your thesis statement. Another way to think of your thesis statement is your “one-sentence speech”. The thesis statement tells the reader what your particular “slant” is on the topic. Are you out to explain how to use a product or service? Are you intent on raising awareness of a problem you know how to solve? Are you aiming to demonstrate your involvement in your community?

Step Three: the three-legged stool
Just as a stool will not stand firmly without having at least three legs, you should plan to have three “legs”, or points to use in proving your thesis.

Step Four: Support your points
This is where students would find statistics, or articles by authorities who have opinions that support their ideas. (Even in this digital age, I used to advise students to print out pages they were going to quote, so that they could highlight specific passages they might cite.) On a Post-It®, which they’d affix to the page, they’d capture the information needed to cite that source on their References or Works Cited page).

Step Five: Outline your paper (or blog post)
With your tools now “lined up”, you are ready to decide in what order you’ll present the ideas. (This is where you experiment by moving the Post-It notes around). Once you’ve settled on the order, it will be easier to see which element is best for capturing attention at the start, as well as which makes for a powerful ending statement. This can also be the ideal time to select a title to arouse readers’ interest.

Try Post-It® blogging for business!

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Blogging – Much More Than What Your Business Does

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Five pieces of primary information consumers use to choose a business, RevLocal says, include:

  1. price
  2. products and services offers
  3. availability of service
  4. customer service
  5. location

Coupons and offers are important, as are testimonials and reviews, RevLocal adds. “Customers want to know about your business and its history. You don’t have to write an essay, but give a brief history of your company and its core values so that consumers know enough to trust your business.” (Our Say It For You blog post earlier this week makes this very point.)

“Marketing has never been more about compassion, Shama Hyder of fastcompany.com cautions, with successful marketing requiring appealing to consumers’ emotional side. Companies must show that compassion and accountability are part of their underlying mission. Hyder cites financial institution Experian, whose business model is dedicated to addressing financial disparities in the credit system by making credit scores more inclusive.

Blogs are actually the perfect vehicles for conveying compassion, because, as guest blogger and e-commerce businessman Nick Semon wrote, “Blogging allows businesses an informal and efficient way to communicate a wide variety of ideas and topics…Our customers expect a hassle free shopping experience.  They don’t want to see a bunch of clutter when purchasing our product. Blogging allows us an area to communicate much needed information away from the store front but still very much integrated into our business.

In fact, the best website content and the best marketing blogs, we teach at Say It For You, achieve a number of different goals:

  • building good will
  • staying in touch with existing customers and clients
  • defining values
  • announcing changes in products and services
  • controlling damage when it comes to negative PR or complaints
  • recruiting employees
  • In short, the blog should give readers insight into a company’s core beliefs in addition to information about products and services that company offers.

Blogging should be about much more than what your company does – it must also be about who your company IS!

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