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Will Your Post Persuade – or Convince?

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This week, my Say It For You blog posts were inspired by speaker and humorist Todd Hunt…

When your message changes someone’s actions,  Hunt’s video explains, what you’ve done is PERSUADE, Todd Hunt explains. On a deeper level, when you’ve CONVINCED the recipients of your message, you’ve actually changed their beliefs.

Unfortunately, it seems that a great deal of marketing content is devoted to persuading prospects by describing “what we do”,  what the services and products the company or organization offers. Too often, little effort appears focused on “what we believe”- type “convincing” visitors, giving them a sense that “kindred spirits” are to be found at this web address.

The idea of changing beliefs through content is hardly new. The LASSI (Learning and Study Strategies Inventory developed at the University of Texas) is an 80-item assessment based on the theory that success in learning relies on thoughts, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs.  Researchers at the University of Bath, meanwhile, created a measurement for ads called the Emotive Power Score to gauge if the ad is going to change feelings about the brand.

The best posts, we emphasize at Say It For You, give online readers a feel for the company culture and for the core beliefs owners wish to share. While content marketing uses Calls to Action, aiming to persuade lookers to become buyers, content that convinces through “we believe” statements can result in long term customer loyalty. Although the marketing content might relate to a for-profit business, a core-beliefs-over-core-products-and-services emphasis can prove surprising effective in making the cash register ring.

Will your next blog post be designed to persuade readers to take action – or will it convince, changing or reinforcing their beliefs?

 

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Give your Brain and Theirs a Workout in Your Blog

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“Most of us have lived with the belief that we lean left brain or right brain in all capacities – from our hobbies to career to the movies we love,” Hope Clark explains in the latest issue of Writer’s Digest. In reality, Clark points out, there isn’t a defined spot for many tasks we do, and, it takes both right and left hemispheres of the brain’s cerebellum to write. Our left brain chooses words and phrases, constructing sentences, and calculating the “plot”. The right brain, meanwhile, is the “impulsive” side, putting imagination to work in the “story”.

Reading for the left brain
Strong writers are voracious readers, Clark says. First of all, reading takes reasoning and analysis, drawing on your left lobe. Since word choice is left-side behavior, reading diverse sources increases your vocabulary.

One of the principles I stress at Say It For You is that, in order to create a valuable ongoing blog for your business, it’s going to take equal parts reading and writing At least half the time that goes into creating a blog post is reading/research/thinking time!  Business content writing in blogs is the result of a lot of reading and listening on the part of the blogger.

Feeling and sensing for the right brain
Unexpected twists in books, plays, and art “feed” the right side of our brains. Writers can “lock themselves” into their usual ways of using words and the words can become stale, Clark explains. In blog marketing’s race, as Jeremy Porter Communications teaches, “those who make the most emotionally persuasive argument win.”  While blog posts can be informative, filled with myth-busting proof, it’s the emotional impact that keeps readers engaged.

Why change?
If you have a dominant style that’s worked for you, why change? Going against the current strengthens you and gives depth to your writing, Clark is convinced. Maybe your story seems dull or too predictable. Maybe you have lots of ideas but have trouble meshing them into a tale. Don’t be satisfied with “who you are” – be who you can become, she urges her readers.

Combine right brain and left brain in blog marketing
Clark’s message to writers is one all content marketers need to hear. Remember, online searchers arrive at a blog on a fact-finding mission, looking for information about what the owners do, sell, and know about. Posting fresh content that relates directly to the purpose of the reader’s search is exactly how to reassure search engines – and ultimately searchers – they’ve come to the right place to get the facts. But data itself may not be the best way to persuade and to overcome skepticism. The marketing message needs to be emotionally persuasive as well.

Blog to put both sides of your brain – and theirs – to work!

 

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How Not to Write a Letter or Blog Post

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“When you write a business letter to a stranger, never keep to the point,” is Anna Stevens Read’s tongue-in-cheek advice to authors. “Indulge in lengthy discussions – for all you know, the person may not have the average amount of intelligence.”

While dripping in sarcasm, Read’s piece actually emphasizes a number of important points which content writers of every ilk would do well to heed:

Keeping to the point
In a sense, focus is the point in blog content writing. At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the “Power of One”, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience. Decide up front what your point it, then stick to it, is our advice to content creators.

Respecting readers’ intelligence
Over-explaining is symptomatic of authorial insecurity, K. M Weiland tells book authors.  As a corporate blogging trainer, I agree. We have to assume our online readers are a) intelligent and b) by definition, interested in our subject. The University of North Carolina’s Writing Center is saying much the same thing, telling students to write their essays in a manner that treats their instructors as an intelligent but uninformed audience.

Addressing “what they want to hear”
“Do not ask yourself what your friend wishes to hear. If her interest is in clothes, describe your houseplants.” Uh-uh. At Say it For You, we teach that, in addition to having a focused topic for each blog post, writers must have a specific audience in mind, choosing the best evidence for that target audience.  Smart blog content marketers know there are many subsets of every target market group, and that not every message will work on every group. Is the viewpoint you’re presenting relevant to a current need or conversation or trend?

Providing variety
“Never think of variety or of what kind of letter you last sent in that direction,” Reads quips.
In blogging, as we continue to write about our industry, our products, and our services, we’ll naturally find ourselves repeating some key ideas. But it’s the different examples we use – of ways our company’s products can be helpful or the ways problems are solved using our services – that lend variety to our blog posts. In addition, variety can be offered in sentence and paragraph length, and in the layout of the post itself.

Careful use of humor
“These directions, faithfully followed, will soon save you from the nuisance of writing letters,” Reads humorously summarizes. As a blogging trainer, I admit to having mixed feelings about humor in business blogs.  While I’ve no doubt about the power of laughter to forge connections, humor has to be handled with care not to offend.

No, it’s not funny…..Keeping to the point, respecting readers’ intelligence, and providing variety – those are the very skills successful content creators must master.

 

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Speaking English in Content Marketing

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“This big fat notebook makes all the stuff you learn in school sink in,” the editors of The Complete Middle School Study Guide to English Language Arts promise. “Words don’t exist in a vacuum out in space, the authors explain. Sometimes we can only understand what they mean because of the other words around them..”As a content writer, I found the author’s list of word relationships might serve as a checklist of ideas for different ways of presenting information in blog posts (adapting the sophistication level, of course, to the target audience)

Cause/effect
“I wanted a new bike because I saw the one Carlos had.”‘

A small business owner’s or a professional practitioner’s business blog marketing can have a disproportionately positive effect on results – IF those efforts are kept up. On the other hand, spelling and grammar errors in emails and blog posts will have a negative effect on readers’ perception of your company.

Compare/contrast
“You’re about to introduce your brother to a new friend. To give him an idea of what that friend might be like, you might say either ‘He’s just like Chris’ or ‘He’s nothing like Chris'”.

A unique selling proposition (USP) is a succinct, memorable message that identifies the unique benefits that are derived from using your product or service as opposed to a competitor’s, business coach Andrew Valley emphasizes.

Analogy
“A student is to a new topic like a detective is to a case.” “A tree is to a forest like a boat is to an ocean.”

As you set about explaining yourself, your business philosophy, your products and processes , to make the information you’re presenting in blog posts easy for readers to understand by comparing the unfamiliar with the familiar and the timely.

Contrasting characters in books and plays
“One way a writer develops characters is to contrast them so the reader can see their differences”

There’s something of a moral dilemma in content marketing . We want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition, but “Golden Rule” ethics dictate that we say only those kinds of things about specific competitors that we’d want them saying about us. The solution: accentuate the positive, explaining why you have chosen to do things the way you do,

The Little Fat Notebook is a good reminder to “Speak English” in your content marketing!

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Content Lessons From the Stanley Cup

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“Of all the major sports trophies, none can compare to the storied history and quirkiness of the Stanley Cup, Sean Hutchinson explained in a fascinating 2017 Mental Floss magazine article. Although hardly an avid hockey fan, I couldn’t help noting – and sharing with Say It For You readers – quite a number of valuable content writing lessons in Hutcheson’s anecdotes and observations….

A new Stanley Cup isn’t made every year.
Unlike other major league sports trophies, a new Stanley cup isn’t made every year.  Instead, after each championship, the names of the players, coaches, management, and staff of the winning team are added to the cup.

Unlike a personal diary written in a notebook, Artem Minaev explains in firstsiteguide, blog entries are displayed in reverse chronological order, with the newest post on top, pushing previous posts down the list.. Older posts remain on the site, accessible in the “archives”, providing valuable resources available to readers.

The cup is always changing.
Between 1927 and 1947, a new, more streamlined and vertical incarnation of the cup was used. with a cylindrical shape. But, by 1948, the trophy had become too tall to hold or put on display, so the shape was changed to the tiered version used today.

Unlike the more static web page content, blog posts allow new insights and information to be constantly added without losing the cumulative power of older posts. The content can  incorporate the company’s history while showing what is being done to adapt to modern trends.

The cups are not always perfect.
Many champion player and team names are misspelled on the Stanley Cup. The name of the 1980-’81 New York Islanders is misspelled as “Ilanders,” and the 1971-’72 Boston Bruins’ name is misspelled as “Bqstqn Bruins.” Most of the errors are left as they are—it would be too costly to fix the mistakes. However, after 1996 champion Colorado’s Adam Deadmarsh’s name was spelled “Deadmarch”, it was correct after he publicly stated he was heartbroken by the error.

One function of any marketing blog is updating and correcting information, including your own older entries. Mistaken data may have been inadvertently published on your business blog. There may have been updates in a company policy, or in one or more of the products. Or, there might have been a recent development in your industry that makes one or more of your former blog posts “incorrect”. At Say It For You, we recommend going back periodically to former blog posts and insert corrections, perhaps in bold type.  That way, when online searchers find that “old” post, they can see that the company is keeping its readers current. Failed links and misspellings can be fixed as well.

Watch for more Stanley Cup content lessons in Thursday’s Say It For You post!

 

 

 

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