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Motivating Others Through Our Blogs

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“Motivating others requires a connection to people’s deep desires. It’s not just about loading them up with a lot of how-to information,” write Steve Chandler and Scott Richardson in 100 Ways to Motivate Others.

Since as blog content writers, we’re trying to motivate readers to take action, what lessons can we learn from this book of 100 ways? I’ll choose just a few pointers offered by the authors that I found most relevant:

1.  “You can’t motivate someone who can’t hear you….In order for someone to hear you, she must first be heard…Tune in before you turn on.”
I remember, years ago, listening to a speech by radio host Michael Medved in which he told us that we need to listen to our clients with “three ears”.  That’s because we need to hear what they say, hear what they’re not saying, and even discern what they don’t even know how to say!

If we as blog writers can go right to the heart of any possible customer fears or concerns (which we’ve learned through deep research into our target market!) we have the potential to breed understanding and trust.

 

2   Stop criticizing upper management. “Maybe you do this to win favor and create bonding at the victim level, but it won’t work…The word ‘they’ solidifies the impression that we are isolated, misunderstood, victims.”
The authors are talking about managing employees, but the same lesson can be applied to the attitudes we convey about our competitors. Other providers are viable alternatives for our customers, and readers don’t like to be “made wrong” for checking out what our competition has to offer.

Although one approach in a business blog is comparing your products and services to others’ it’s important to emphasize the positive rather than “knocking” a competitor.  That means that, rather than starting with what the competition is doing “wrong”, use the power of “We” to demonstrate what YOU value and the way YOU like to deliver your products and services.

 

3.  “ Do the one thing… The truth is, there is only one thing to do, and that is the one thing I have chosen to do right now. If I do that one think as if it’s all I have to think about, it will be extremely well done.”
In blogging, doing the one thing takes the form of what I call “the Power of One“ –  addressing, in each blog post, one message, to one audience, targeting one outcome.

It’s here that blog posts have a distinct advantage over the more static website copy.  Each post can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business.  The more focused out efforts are on connecting with a narrowly defined target audience, the more successful the blog will be in converting prospects to clients and customers.

There are, no doubt, at least 97 other ways to motivate readers through our blogs, but these three make for a good start!

 

 

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Bloggers and Travel Agents Bring Clarity and Curation

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Passports to world travel

“What stresses people today,” explains Matthew Upchurch, CEO of the Virtuoso luxury travel network, “isn’t the lack of information. It’s not knowing if they are asking the right questions….People don’t go to advisers for information anymore,” Upchurch adds. “They go for clarity and curation; they need someone to distill the abundance of information available to them.”

Upchurch may well have been speaking about all internet search activity, not only about travel, I couldn’t help thinking. After all, we business bloggers serve, in a very real way, as interpreters and consolidators, and curators. For that reason, I teach, effective blog posts are less information-dispensing than they are perspective-gaining tools for readers to use. You might refer to our work as offering new understandings about things readers already know.

Travelers, writes Jill Schensel in the Indianapolis Star, were “drowning in TMI (too much information.”. The life rafts for an increasing number of those travelers is once again becoming a “friendly, flesh-and-blood travel agent”.

Again, there’s a strong parallel here with blogs, which offer business owners and professional practitioners the chance to inject their own special personalities into each piece of content. One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional bloggers is that we translate clients’ corporate messages into human, people-to-people terms. In fact, that’s the reason I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting”. I think people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

I like to compare the interaction between blog writers and online readers to behavioral job interviews.  These don’t focus on facts, but attempt to reveal the way the prospective employee functions, discovering the person behind the resume. Just as employers want to know how reliable you’ve been in the past, your blog posts need to include stories about how you solved client problems, and what lessons you’ve learned through your experiences that you’ll be applying in your dealings with them should they choose to become your customers.

Just as Upchurch described Millenials’ renewed use of travel agents to help guide their purchases, people don’t go to websites purely for information anymore; they go for clarity and curation, and for a human touch!

 

 

 

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Tidbit Blogging – a Trend that Never Goes Out of Style

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Slices of watermelonIn blog marketing, is it worth the effort of digging up curious and little-known facts related to your business or industry?  Make that a big “Oh, yes”!  Readers’ interest is piqued, you’re positioned as an expert in your field, and you’re rewarded with precious extra moments of precious attention. (Just learned that my favorite source for ripe tidbits is Mental Floss Magazine has just published its last paper issue;  from now on it will be digital all the way!)

Here’s just one juicy tidbit from Mental Floss to illustrate my point: In 2007, editors inform readers, the House of Representatives in the state of Oklahoma voted 78 to 19 to make watermelon their state vegetable. State Senator Don Barrington justified the vote by saying watermelon is a member of the cucumber family (Botanically speaking, Mental Floss reminds us, cucumbers are fruits.)  Meanwhile, in Arkansas, the Vine Ripe Pink Tomato is both the state’s official fruit and its official veggie!

Sure, that info is funny and unusual, but why do I think bloggers could use those tidbits to advantage? For one thing, this tidbit explodes some commonly held myths (cucumbers and tomatoes are vegetables and belong in salads, never desserts). More importantly, those true tales engage readers’ interest, and we can use them to lead into some little-known facts about our own (or our clients’) products and services. Think cukes and tomatoes in:

  • Catering
  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Restaurants
  • Beauty products

How does the process work?  Well, the tidbit becomes the jumping off point for explaining what problems can be solved using that business’ products or that practice’s services, for defining basic terminology, and for putting modern day statistics into perspective. 

I could see business bloggers using a second funny tidbit I pinpointed in this latest Mental Floss issue as a lead-in to a serious discussion about educational policy and parenting:

Wooden paddle spankings are still legal in 19 American states.

This little gem deals head-on with the touchy issue of corporal punishment both at home and at school. Think about your own business, I ask owners in the course of providing them with business blogging assistance: Is there anything that might be considered unsafe, cruel, or environmentally non-friendly about your industry or your business? Rather than avoiding the topic, what about using the blog to explain what you as a business owner are you doing to mitigate those factors?

Funny or serious, tidbit blogging is a trend that I can’t see ever going out of style!

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Blogging in Basic English

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flight-attendant“Basic English” simply means using words that people will understand,” says business humorist Todd Hunt. On recent flights, Hunt appreciated the fact that both Delta Airlines and American Airlines warned passengers of the possibility of “rough air” or “unexpected bumps” rather than talking about “turbulence”.

Hunt was used to hearing the request: “Please discontinue the use of portable electronics”, but thinks United Airlines takes the prize for making things clear:  “Please turn off your cell phones, laptops, and anything else that has an on-off switch”.

When Todd Hunt talks about “basic English”, he simply means using words understandable to the majority of readers, but there is an actual language called Basic English, which was created by linguist Charles Ogden in 1930 as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a second language. What survives today of Ogden’s Basic English is the basic 850-word list used as the beginner’s vocabulary of the English language taught worldwide.

When it comes to blogging for business, keeping it basic means using understandable, clear language. “Unless you provide a very specialized service aimed only at professionals, avoid industry jargon and use easily understandable, clear language in your blog,” advises the Chamber of Commerce’s Personal Branding Blog. “Never use a long, complex word when a short, simple one will do, and never say in 15 words what could be said in five.”

“People in different companies and industries often don’t speak the same language,” observes one of my favorite wordsmiths, Milo O. Frank (How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less).

My own observation, based on working with different industries doing corporate blogging training, is that lack of clarity between writer and reader is worse with business-to-consumer corporate blog writing.  But even among suppliers, consultants, and retailers within a single industry, there’s no question that the clearer the words are to all the parties, the easier it becomes for transactions (obviously one of the end goals of marketing blogs) to happen.
Business blogs are all about getting found, then getting the point across.

When it comes to choosing language for flight attendant greetings or for business blogs, it’s best to keep the English basic!

 

 

 

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Know the Value of Your Pieces

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PPCWinning in life involves improving your game. My favorite magazine, Mental Floss, devoted an entire issue earlier this year to advice on winning games. When it comes to the game of chess, Mental Floss presents two pieces of advice from Chessacademy:

  1. The most common beginner mistake is simply not being aware of what’s happening on the board. Being distracted leads to preventable mistakes.
  2. Know the value of your pieces. “Each piece has a respective value, and if you have fewer pieces than your opponent, you’re playing with less material.”

I think about that pieces thing often when discussing online marketing strategies with new Say it For You clients as we begin a blog marketing initiative. Often it’s a small business owner a retail or services field competing with giant national chains. With fewer dollars available, the little guy cannot hope to compete in purchasing adwords and needs to rely on organic search to attract eyeballs.  In other words, my clients are wondering, what are their chances for success when they find themselves playing with fewer game pieces than their larger, better funded, competitors?

NewMediaCampaigns.com asks the same question: “SEO (search engine optimization) vs.PPC (pay per click) – Which Provides You the Better Value?” NewMedia cites research from Jupiter Research showing that 81% of users find their desired destination through a search engine. However, New Media points out, “There’s still a big decision to make – whether to use SEO (naturally ranking high in the organic results) or PPC (purchased ads on a Google search) to get in front of your target.

Jupiter’s findings:

  • Paid search results are 1.5x more likely to convert.
  • Organic results are 8.5X  more likely to be clicked on than paid search results

“It can be concluded that the opportunity from organic search is 5.66x that of paid search,” NewMedia sums up. “You won’t rank #1 overnight, but SEO is more affordable and the longterm benefits have been proven.”

Without the means to use a combination of paid search and organic content marketing through blogging and SEO, my clients may have fewer pieces than their opponents, but with consistency and commitment, they have every chance of winning the customer acquisition game!

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