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Catalogs and Blogs – Not To Sell Product, But to Inspire

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Catalog iconIn our digital age, you’d think hard-copy product catalogs would have become obsolete.  But, as Molly Soat explains in Marketing News, catalogs are still very much alive and well.  That’s because, Soat explains, companies are “leveraging the content marketing power of catalogs to offer customers ideas and inspiration extending well beyond a brand’s product portfolio”.

The catalogs of today are really magazines, often personalized to the recipients’ purchasing habits.  The pages of today’s catalogs “are filled with artistically styled photography and expertly penned information”. Modern catalogs (and this is the part so relevant for us business blog content writers) contain ”ideas and inspiration extending well beyond a brand’s product portfolio”.

The typical website, I believe, is more like the catalogs of an earlier era, explaining what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate. Of course, the better websites give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.

Where the continuously renewed business blog writing comes in is parallel to the modern-day catalog, offering ideas and inspiration. 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?”

Another way in which blog writers can use posts to serve a “New Catalog” function is by condensing website/newpaper/magazine/trade journal wisdom into bite-sized pieces, keeping readers up on industry trends and discoveries.

Yet a third function of the “new catalogs” and “new blog posts” is to debunk common myths. Business owners can use their blog not only as a way to dispense information, but to address misinformation.

For business blogs, just as Molly Soat points out about catalogs – the purpose may not be to sell product, but to inspire!

 

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Helpful Hint Blog Writing

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hints and tipsHitting precisely the right “advertorial” note is the big challenge in corporate blog writing.  In fact, one point I’ve consistently stressed in these Say It For You blog content writing tutorials is how important it is to provide valuable information to readers, while avoiding any hint of “hard sell”.  Well, providing tips and help hints may very well be the perfect tactic for accomplishing that very goal.  

In a recent issue of AARP magazine, I found an article that uses a “kill-two-birds-with-one-stone” approach to offering helpful hints.  I think that approach could work really well in blogging to promote a business or professional practice.

The AARP article is titled “Great ways to save: tips from 20 experts that can save you thousands of dollars.”  Wow! That gets readers’ attention – useful information coming to them not from any sponsor or vendor, but from twenty experts.  What’s more, the authors have done all the work, collecting all this wisdom and serving it up for readers’ convenience.

I noticed that the “Great ways to save” article was about money management; the tips were collected from a money coach, a chief information officers, the fashion director for Men’s Health magazine, and a positive living expert.

OK, so as a business blog writing trainer, how would I advise adapting that helpful-hint/curation strategy to you business or practice?

Find complementary businesses or practices.  Ask the owners (or cite their blogs) for tips they can offer your readers.  Pet care professionals can share tips from carpet cleaning pros – or the reverse! If you’re a carpet cleaning pro, you can share tips from allergists as well.  If you’re an insurance advisor, offer tips from car dealers about accident prevention.

Of course, you’re going to want to add some tips of your own.  A realtor’s blog might offer tips for buying a house.  A restaurant’s blog might offer hints on tipping etiquette or the temperature of “rare”, “medium” and “well-done” steaks. Whatever the product or service, readers will be hungry for information that helps them gain maximum advantage for buying and using it.

Helpful hint blog writing can be very useful to your business or practice!

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So What’s the Deal with Business Blog Posts?

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“So what’s the deal with Japanese whisky?” is the intriguing title of a feature article in Mental Floss Magazine. Reporter Kyle Chayka holding a glass of whiskyorganizes the article around four questions; I think that precise format could be adapted to any business blog post introducing a product or service.

Background material:
“Wait…How Did Whisky Ever Land in Japan?” The author explains that a young man studying chemistry in Glasgow returned home to start Japan’s first distillery. In this part of the blog post, the content writer would talk about the origins of the company, and about the particular consumer or business need that company is able to satisfy.

So What Makes It Different from Scotch?
Technically, not much, explains Chayka, but Japan’s distillers “take time to make it correctly rather than making it quickly and cheaply.” In this portion of the post, the content writer would explain the differentiating features of the product or service, comparing it to competitors’ offerings.

What Does it Taste Like?
“Japanese distilleries also use rare Mizunara oak for their barrels, which imparts a hinty of coconut,” the author explains. When you’re composing business blog content, I tell writers, imagine readers asking themselves – “How will I use the product (or service?” “How will I feel?”

How Should I Drink It?
“Highball” in Japan is synonymous with a whisky soda. So mix away! But if you like drinking it neat, a great starter blend is Nikka’s Taketsuru Pure Malt 12 Year,” is the author’s advice.  This section of the blog post would offer helpful hints relating to the product or service. In every business or profession, there’s no end to the technical information available to consumers on the Internet. But it falls to us business blog content writers to break all that information down into chewable tablet form, telling readers “how to drink it”.

So What’s the deal with business blog posts?  Give ‘em the background, differentiate, give ‘em a taste and then give them advice!

 

 

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Don’t Cut Your Business Blog Vocabulary Down to Size

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Word Toolbox Teaching Tools Resources Spelling Reading Lesson Ai“How many words are there in English? It depends on how you count them…a good conservative estimate is 250,000.” Perceiving that many of our words mean practically the same thing, back in the 1930s a British writer named C.K Ogden proposed a new form of English with a vocabulary of only 850 words. While Winston Churchill liked the idea of Basic English, Roosevelt joked that Churchill’s famous speech about “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” wouldn’t have been nearly as effective couched  as “blood, work, eye water, and face water.”

As a writer and corporate blog writing trainer, I must say I prefer the English language just as it is, chock full of nuances and variety. Time4Writing.com apparently agrees: “A good vocabulary is an indispensable tool,” Time4 explains. “Just as really good mechanics can pull out the right tools…good writers can pull out the right tools at the right time to make good writing even more powerful.”

“Style is the way writing is dressed up (or down) to fit the specific context, purpose, or audience,” Kathleen Cali of Learn NC teaches. “Good writers are concise and precise, she adds,” weeding out unnecessary words and choosing the exact word to convey meaning.”

Adding variety to prose can give it life and rhythm, the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) stresses.

Life and rhythm – I can’t think of any goal more important for a business blog content writer to achieve. There’s just so much content out there – being boring is a certain path to the bottom of the heap when it comes to engaging readers and converting them to buyers. We have such a rich, rich language to work with, I tell writers.  For Heaven’s sake, use it!

C.K.Ogden, I learned, wanted to eliminate all the English words beginning with the letter Z. No, no, no, I’d protest.  When writing a business blog, be conversational, sure. But what word variety can add to a marketing blog posts is ZEST! How about spunk? Pizzazz?

Were Roosevelt still alive, I’m sure he’d tell you the same thing: Don’t cut your business blog vocabulary down to size!.  

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Softly, Softly Advertising by Blogging for Business

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company name“An advertorial is ‘softly softly’ advertising,” cautions write.co.nz., by using a news or human-interest story to sell your product or service. The art of writing a good advertorial, write.co explains, is getting the right balance between story and sale. To do it right, the author warns, your advertorial must start and finish with the story, putting the sales message in the middle, never lower than the third paragraph.

Imagine you’re writing an advertorial about your new sports therapy clinic, says write.co. If you’re promoting the clinic as a whole, the story might be about the growing popularity of holistic therapy clinics. If, on the other hand, you’re promoting a particular service, the story might consist of facts and figures about that service. But if you’re promoting the clinic’s staff, your story might consist of a personal profile.

There’s a parallel here with business blog content writing. Sure, when people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or on different websites, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business.  But as long as the material is valuable and relevant for the searchers, they’re perfectly fine with knowing there’s someone who wants them for a client or customer.  The secret of successful business blogging, I found, is just that – not coming on too strong, staying in “softly, softly” mode.

As in the example write.co offers about the sports therapy clinic, each separate blog post should have a definite focus on only one aspect of the business or practice. In designing blog content, we need to present the “condensed” version of the information, then offer as one CTA (call to action) with the ability to click through to a landing page on the business’ or practice’s website to obtain more information. In fact, blog posts have a distinct advantage over the more static website copy, because you can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business in today’s post, saving other topics for later posts.

The story ties it all together – the answers to readers’ questions, and the solution you’re proposing.  You set the scene, introduce the characters, have them encounter, then overcome the obstacles.

Keep softly, softly advertising by blogging for business!

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