Best Communication Practices for Business Blogging
No surprise – a special research study conducted for the Journal of Financial Planning on ways planners communicate with clients showed that, in most categories, more communication is better. But exactly what kinds of communication matter most?
As Evan Beach, CFP® reports in the article, several different types of communication were examined:
1. Educational pieces about investments: These had a high positive association with satisfaction and trust, but the difference was marginal when sent more than once per month.
2. Non-investment-related educational pieces: These seemed to result in the most referrals, particularly when sent digitally.
3. Interest and hobby-based pieces:
These are best sent quarterly, and should be focused on clients’ interests, not planners’.
These are best sent quarterly, and should be focused on clients’ interests, not planners’.
Just as financial planners are trying to offer information, encouragement, and thought leadership to clients, we blog content writers are using different methods of reaching out to readers.
If we substitute the product or service being marketed for “investments”, we can use all three of these communication categories in blogging for business, seeking to increase reader engagement and trust:
1. Educational blog posts –
Business blogs are wonderful tools around facts. That’s why business owners and professional practitioners can use corporate blog writing as a way to dispense information, but, even more important, to address misinformation. Blog content writing is a way of “cleaning the air”, replacing factoids with facts, so that buyers can see their way to making decisions.
Business blogs are wonderful tools around facts. That’s why business owners and professional practitioners can use corporate blog writing as a way to dispense information, but, even more important, to address misinformation. Blog content writing is a way of “cleaning the air”, replacing factoids with facts, so that buyers can see their way to making decisions.
2. Non product or service-related blog posts –
One company that made the list of Forrester’s Top 15 Corporate Blogs was 37 signals.com. Why were they chosen? The company “rarely blogs about their products, instead devoting their blog content writing to sharing advice about business and other topics.”
One company that made the list of Forrester’s Top 15 Corporate Blogs was 37 signals.com. Why were they chosen? The company “rarely blogs about their products, instead devoting their blog content writing to sharing advice about business and other topics.”
3. Interest-based pieces –
One of the realities about corporate blogs that is toughest for newbie Indianapolis writers of blog content to accept is that other people, specifically online searchers, are interested, first and foremost, in themselves and their own needs, wants, and interests. Their curiosity about what you do – or about what you have to say or sell, I explain in corporate blogging training sessions, will be at its most intense when it concerns testing their own limits or their own knowledge.
One of the realities about corporate blogs that is toughest for newbie Indianapolis writers of blog content to accept is that other people, specifically online searchers, are interested, first and foremost, in themselves and their own needs, wants, and interests. Their curiosity about what you do – or about what you have to say or sell, I explain in corporate blogging training sessions, will be at its most intense when it concerns testing their own limits or their own knowledge.
Remember, Evan Beach told those financial planners, ”marketing events are just a conduit to get people in the door when the time is right for them.” For us blog content writers, we use blog posts of different types to get readers “in the door”, so they can act when the time is right for them.
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