Posts

Everyday Employee Experience at the Heart of Blogging

/0 Comments/in , , /by

 

 

“Narrative gives us a sense of shared experience and humanity,” Hubert Joly (former CEO of Best Buy) writes in The Heart of Business.  “Telling everyday stories – stories of employees, customers, communities, and how they impact each other’s lives – fosters a sense of purpose and connection..” For that very reason, thehartford.com explains, “Your employees need to understand your company, its values, its goals and its priorities.”Surveys show 72% of consumers report feeling closer to a company when employees share information about a brand online.

As I related in an August Say It For You blog post, when I’m working with a company to set up a business blogging strategy, encouraging that company’s employees to post blogs, quite often I hit a wall of resistance, with employees viewing blogging as just one more task to add to their work load. Should employees be required to write blog posts? Marcus Sheridon of SalesLion.com thinks so. Since one goal of content marketing is to produce as much content as possible, the more hands are put to the task, the better. With content that answers consumers’ questions so valuable, it stands toathat employees who deal with consumers every day should be the ones to write about it. Human nature being what it is, he says, if it’s not required, they won’t do it.

Sure, but after fifteen years of providing blog content writing services to dozens of different businesses and professional practices, I’ve come to the same conclusion as Stan Smith of pushingsocial.com: “Blogging is writing, and writing, for most people has a fear factor right up there with public speaking.  You can coach, bribe, threaten all you want but in the end, you’ll be writing most of your blog posts.” That’s precisely why I found Joly’s account of how things worked at Best Buy so inspiring. At every meeting, people would tell their own personal stories and how they personally had been able to make a difference to someone.

At Say It for You, as our team provides content writing services to business owners and practitioners, one way we involve employees is to highlight specific accomplishments in a blog. That brings a two-way benefit: When readers learn about an employee’s enthusiasm and how that person put in extra time and effort in serving customers, that tends to cement the customer’s relationship with the company or practice. As featured employees proudly share those write-ups with friends and family, the blog becomes a gift that keeps on giving.

Far from being a contradiction to concept of authenticity, we help readers “meet” the actual team of employees who are providing the product or service, the ones whose daily activities result in the benefits customers enjoy.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Back Matter Blogging

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

“Writing the end of a story isn’t always the end of the book,” explains Whitney Hill in Writer’s Digest. “Even if there’s no sequel, there’s more to say, and it goes in the back matter.” The “back matter” offers additional value to those readers who enjoyed and engaged with your work enough to read through to the end. That section  adds content and helps readers look ahead to the next book.

Hill lists some standard things found in back matter:

  • acknowledgement of people who helped in the writing and editing
  • personal information about the author
  • praise – awards won
  • a pitch for the next book
  • commenting on a specific change the narrator undergoes as a result of the experience described in the book

But, in addition to these, the editor suggests, authors might like to “call out” situations or new events that are affecting them and their readers.

The Author Learning Center refers to back matter as epilogues, afterwords, or author’s notes.

Can blog content writers use “back matter”? Definitely.

  1. While, in blogging for business, it’s important to offer enough information in each post to convincingly cover the key theme, in order to cover a topic more comprehensively, the material can be divided into several different blog posts relating to that one issue or problem. The “back matter” would explain that a discussion of other aspect of the issue will be covered in future posts
  2. Certainly personal information about the business owner or practitioner might be included in the back matter as well. In addition, suggestions as to where to find more in-depth information on the topic (perhaps linked to landing pages) represent a perfect use for back matter.
  3. Using the back matter to explain how learning the information conveyed in the post actually changed your own (or your blogging client’s) thinking and how that will be reflected in a change in business procedures or in customer service changes.
  4.  At Say It For You, we particularly like the concept of using the back matter to make “a pitch for the next book”. In the age of the Internet, there’s no end, it seems, to the technical information available to consumers. But it falls to us business blog content writers to break all that information down into chewable tablet form! Serving as a “tour guide” or “librarian” for your readers, giving them the benefit of your own searches and information “sorting” is a valuable use for the back matter of blog posts.

The end of a blog post isn’t always the end of the blog!

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

White Meat or Dark? Carving Up Blog Content

/0 Comments/in , , /by


Uncle Ned prefers a thigh, while your sister Julie has first dibs on a drumstick. Very much like your Thanksgiving turkey, any blog content topic can be approached in a variety of ways.  Like guests at the Thanksgiving table, within your target market, each reader’s need for information, products or services was born in a slightly different space and has traveled a different path. Not every approach is going to work for every reader.

In fact, in order to add variety, at Say It For You, we like blog content writers to experiment with:

  • different formats – how-to posts, list posts, opinion pieces
  • different vantage points, “featuring” different employees and different departments within the company.
  • different segments of the customer base

In fact, what I’ve learned over the years of freelance blog content writing, is that most business owners have more than one target audience for their products and services. And, while there may in fact one market segment or demographic that has proven to yield the greatest number of raving fans for them, they also have “outliers” who bring in just enough revenue to matter. What can be done with a business blog, then, is to offer different kinds of information in different blog posts. There is, of course, one over-arching topic (just as all the guests are around your thanksgiving table), but there’s something on your blogsite to satisfy each one’s tastes.

Just as, at most Thanksgiving dinner tables, relatives “catch up” on each other’s doings, on their opinions about what’s going on in the world, and about what they’ve been doing, reading, and thinking – a business blog is a forum of sorts. Providing information about products and services may be the popular way to write corporate blog posts, but blog visitors want to know what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers. And, just as Dad might tell those gathered at the table about a great documentary he’s seen or a book he’s just read, you can “borrow” the wisdom of others to reinforce your point and add value for readers by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog.

White meat or dark? At your thanksgiving table or in your blog, carve up the content to offer something for everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Survival Tips for Blog Content Writers

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

“I realize how depressing publishing survival tips can sound,” Bob Eckstein starts out his “Top 10 Survival Tips for Publishing” article in Writer’s Digest. but it’s essential for writers to realize that all writers experience struggles. As a blog content writer, I actually found Eckstein’s survival tips inspiring more than boring, especially the four listed here:

Show Up.
“Show up daily, happy and ready to work.” The same advice, seems to me, applies to business blogging. I’ve learned that trumping elements of success in blog marketing such as technical expertise and writing skill, is what I dub “drill sergeant discipline”, which involves the simple but very difficult exercise of continuing to “show up” online.

Keep Learning.
“Your work can always improve. Spend a few minutes every week familiarizing yourself with the news in your genre.” A true business  blog content writer never stops “learning the trade,” which, at Say It For You, we’ve found means getting ideas from everywhere and everyone, constantly looking to broaden our own experience and so as to share knowledge of our readers. “Content writers must expand their horizons to more challenging material than they typically read, paying special attention to sentence structure, word choice, and flow,” wordstream.com advises.

Don’t read reviews.
“Trust the experts among your inner circle and your inner monologue – there’s far too much negativity from critics.” Search engine optimization is the science part of the art-science mix inherent in blogging for business, and I frequently need to remind my clients (and often myself) that analytics are important, but they aren’t everything. As yoast.com (the WordPress plugin guide our blog content writers at Say It For You rely on) reassures us ” Above all, your blog post has to be a good piece of writing!

Be Ready to Pivot.
“Your book can be a movie script, Twitter feed, or animated series,” Eckstein tells authors. Of all marketing tactics, I’m convinced, business blogging is the best suited for implementing the lean startup concept of pivoting. In fact, that’s exactly what I love most about blogging as a communications channel. Each post can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business. With proper tracking, you quickly learn what’s working and what’s less effective; “pivoting” in the blog content does not involve any lengthy or costly new research.

Depressing? Far from it – survival on the internet is simply a matter of getting frequent, relevant, and passionate content “out there”!

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

The E Test for Blogs

/0 Comments/in , , /by

 

Since the 1980s, Daniel Pink lets us know in his book To Sell is Human: the Surprising Truth About Moving Others, psychologists have used the E test to measure “perspective-taking”. Asked to, with the index finger of their dominant hand, draw the letter E on their own forehead, some will draw the letter “backwards” (so that they themselves can read it), while others will draw the E correctly, with the spokes to the right, (so that others can read it). When confronted with an unusual or complex situation, will that person examine it from only his/her own point of view, or step outside and view the situation from another’s perspective? What’s being tested is the ability to “attune”, bringing one’s own outlook into harmony with other people. When it comes to sales, there’s an important additional element in attunement, the author goes on to explain. Individuals don’t exist as single units; their reactions are connected to groups, situations, and contexts.

When it comes to blog marketing, achieving “attunement’ is all about finding the right timing, along with the right context. Back in 2009, with Say It For You in only its second year, I shared an insight gained from the late advertising marketing guru Eugene Schwartz: As the same promise is made over and over by different providers, the market progresses to a new level of sophistication, and it becomes necessary to market through unique value propositions. And, as prospects achieve the highest levels of sophistication,  Schwarts went on to say, marketers must use prospect-centered tactic (AKA attunement).

Blog marketing itself, of course, is inherently prospect-centered – the only people who are going to notice your blog posts are those who are searching for the kinds of information, products, or services that relate to what you do. Having said that, it’s still crucial to keep your blog posts “attuned” to the frequency and sophistication level of your target audience, not to mention to those of the others in their “context”.

As content writers, we need to ask ourselves – would our blog posts pass the E test?

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail