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Blogging – Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

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Identifying new uses for a product can increase usage frequency and even convert current nonusers into users.
Both are aspects of a market penetration strategy, David Stewart observes in the Branding Strategy Insider, offering as an example an advertising campaign for orange juice: .”It’s not just for breakfast anymore”, a slogan that represents an effort to expand usage. Innovation challenges people’s existing perceptions of the category and gives them pause for thought, Nigel Hollis adds.

Blogging has a 30-year history.
“Publishing a business blog is an important part of any marketing strategy, Marc Prosser of SCORE stresses. Blogging has been around for the last 30 years, but it has certainly changed and evolved over those years, Ryan Robinson reminds us. The very first online journals were made up of plain text, with no graphics or formatting, and the word “blog” itself wasn’t coined until 1997. It wasn’t until 2003 that WordPress (the platform I’m using for this Say It For You blog) entered the scene. The next year “Blog” became Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year.

Blogging in 2023
Today there are more than 31,000,000 bloggers in the U.S. alone. Blogging, broadbandsearch.net observes, is “democratized content publication, not regulated by gatekeepers such as publishing houses, news organizations, universities, or governments. 70% of individuals favor acquiring information about a company through a blog, and 55% of brands gain new clients through blogging.

“The creation of relevant content for visitors and existing customers is one of the most important benefits of blogging,” VEZA Digital asserts. “Posting blogs regularly helps you engage directly with a user’s questions and queries that they are typing in a Google search. These questions help you to understand whether your customers are getting the information that they need from your blogs and also help to know if your keywords are performing well.”

Just as identifying new uses for orange juice expanded sales of the product, blog content can build value for a brand, leading to increased sales.
“Consider what is important to your target market and to existing customers,” VEZA advises. What problem does your product or serve solve? How will it help readers overcome barriers or do their jobs better? “Creating a connection between your brand and the customer is crucial. Brand awareness and trust go hand in hand.”

What your blog is for, we explain at Say It For You, is to provide relevant, useful, and timely content to your prospects and customers to help them solve problems, understand industry trends, and make sense of the news and how it relates to them

The power of the new
People are always looking for new things, Neil Patel explains – new software, new techniques, new ways to make and save money. Using new phraseology in your blog posts is a way to command attention, and smart blog marketing expands readers’ perception that there are new ways for them to engage with your brand.

Remember – blogging isn’t just for breakfast anymore!

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In Content Marketing, Hit Anything But the Ball Out of the Park

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“Cliches begin their lives as imaginative expressions and comparisons,” explains Richard Lederer in the Mensa Bulletin. But then, after repeated use, those phrases become trite, hackneyed, and lifeless, he explains.

For example, Lederer reminds content writers, you might hit:

  • the bulls-eye
  • the spot
  • the ball out of the park
  • the nail on the head

But your writing, he cautions, will turn out to be nothing more than “a yawn”. “Our hardworking English language means business,” Lederer reminds us, and we need to think about creating content that has impact without using expressions that are “dead as a doornail”.

Having devoted the last sixteen years of my life to wordsmithing blog posts at Say It For You, I know firsthand that variety can be the spice, not only of life in general, but of content.  Gray Matter, the Elevate blog, explains that the larger your vocabulary, the easier it becomes to break away from old thought patterns. We view our thoughts as shaping our words, but our words shape our thoughts, too. A large vocabulary isn’t for showing off – it should be used to expand your thinking – and that of your readers. There’s o much content out there – being boringly clichéd is a certain path to the bottom of the heap when it comes to engaging readers and converting them to buyers.

In addition to avoiding over-used expressions, content writers need to consider varying sentence length. Brandon Royal, author of The Little Red Writing Book, reminds us that not every sentence needs to be kept short.  Instead, Royal advises writers to weave in short sentences with longer ones. Every so often, he suggests, a “naked” (extremely short) sentence can add a dynamic touch.

“Using clichés is as easy as ABC, one-two-three, pie, falling off a log, and taking candy from a baby,” Lederer admits, but…don’t. It’d be all too simple for online visitors to click away. “The purpose of a blog is to create a more engaging website for your brand,” Indeed .com reminds business owners and candidates alike.

In content marketing, hit your target market, not the ball out of the park!

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Content to Win Search, Not the Lottery

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“There’s no shaking it. Your chances of winning the lottery are extremely slim.” The Associated Press patiently explained after the Mega Millions jackpot had climbed to more than a billion dollars, the largest in U.S. lottery history.” (Since the article was published, someone in Florida did, in fact, win the jackpot.)

There’s a long list of rare events that are more likely than winning the lottery, the AP author explains, including the 1 in 15,000 odds of being struck by lightning once in your lifetime . In fact, it’s about four times as likely that you die in a car accident on the way to buy your lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery! (Depressing facts to all of us ever-hopeful lottery ticket buyers, to be sure.) Still, the article itself holds a valuable content writing lesson, which is that one very important function served by a blog is putting things into perspective.

When you think about it, the typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are, and in what geographical area they operate. The better websites give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers. In other words, it’s the function of the blog content to give readers a deeper perspective with which to process the information offered.. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?” The facts need to be translated into relational, emotional terms that compel reaction – and action.

Blogging helps you build authority in your industry, WP Beginner explains. “It is harder to prove your expertise and authority on a subject if all you have is a five-page website selling your products/services. Adding a blog allows you to regularly publish content on topics related to your industry. This helps you establish authority and win users’ trust.

As content writers, we understand that online readers have access to more technically detailed sources than our blog posts.  Our job, though, is to help those readers (and that includes B&B prospects of our marketing blogs) make sense out of the ocean of available information.

In blogging for business, we’re trying to “win search” and win hearts, not overcome enormous odds and win the lottery. But to truly overcome the still substantial odds against getting noticed, content writers must focus on putting avalanches of information into focused perspective.

 

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M’splaining Yourself in Your Content

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“We might even be the smartest people in the room,” writes Matthew Grob of Mensa, “but does that always mean we should always be compelled to demonstrate that?” Mensans probably do more m’splaining (boasting of their brain power) than most, Grob admits, but “we might not always be correct, factually or politically.” Given the options in any conversational situation, he advises his fellow Mensans: “select the one that avoids m’splaining.”

One concern many new clients of Say It For You express to me is that they don’t want to come across as boastful in their blog content. At the same time, they know they need to convey the reasons prospects ought to choose them over their competition. Let the facts do the boasting, is my advice. The whole secret of content marketing is that, rather than running traditional ads for your brand of hats, or vitamins, or travel, you provide lots of information on the history of hats, on why vitamins are good for you, and about exciting places to go on safari.  Consumers interested in your subject, but who never even knew your name, will come to see you as an information resource.

When you think about it, blog posts are like “flip-flopped” job interviews, in which the blog reader “candidate” is interviewing the provider. Just as in a face-to-face interviews, those searchers read what you put out there in your blog posts and evaluate that content in light of their own needs.  Subtle “m’splaining” is needed to demonstrate ways in which the provider stands out from the competition.

But, “boasting” isn’t going to do the trick, and language such as “innovative solutions”, “great customer service”, “world-class”, or “game-changing”, as David Meerman Scott points out, can be perceived as exaggeration. Instead, conveying the special “flavor” and personality of your brand and your people is precisely what blogging for business needs to contribute to your overall marketing strategy.

With the right kind of “boasting”, business owners and practitioners can project the kind of confidence that inspires trust and, ultimately, drives sales.

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5 Tips for Fledgling Entrepreneurs and Content Writers of Every Ilk

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Fascinated by the “Online Impact” section of Start Your Own Business Magazine, I found five recommendations that are perfect for blog content writers:

1. “People respond to a business with a human side, so don’t be afraid to express your own flair.”
One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional bloggers is that we translate clients’ corporate messages into human, people-to-people terms.  People tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

2. “Be conversational. Forget formalities.”
At Say It For You, I often explain to clients and to newbie blog writers that that blogs, unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, are short and concise, less crafted and more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces.  It’s perfectly all right to take a thoughtful, serious approach to your topic.  Just write as if you were having an actual conversation, writes Paul Gillin, author of Secrets of Social Media Marketing.

3. “Do not take credit for content that does not belong to you.”
The most common way we cite our sources (whether it be an article or a website) within our blogs is by paraphrasing and hyperlinking back to the page where the information originated (precisely what I’ve already done several times in this very blog post). Vervante lists three instances where attributing content to a source is needed: a) You’re actually quoting someone else. b) You’re using statistics you did not collate yourself. c) You’re using ideas that aren’t your own.

4. “Storytelling is your secret weapon.”
Blog posts will be at their most effective when presenting stories, where the stories themselves become calls to action for readers. You can use stories to explain what you do and whom you’ve been able to help. Blog marketing through stories not only helps online visitors feel only understood by you, but lets them feel they understand where you’re coming from as well.

5. “If your text sounds strange or stilted because there are two many key words, visitors will be turned off.”
“Two of the most widespread mistakes made by bloggers are failing to integrate new keywords into their posts and not getting rid of keywords that are no longer valuable,” Catherine Smith of PhD Centre explains. Searchers use words and phrases to hook up with you, but keyword-overstuffed blog posts are uncomfortable to read and can make your content look like spam to readers.

 

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