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Helping Readers Organize Their Perceptiions

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Helping readers organize their perceptions of your industry and of the services and products you offer is one of the core functions of blog marketing. An article in Forbes, “5 Cybersecurity Strategies for a Riskier World“, is an excellent model of how to present information in a well-organized, easy-to-digest format. For each imperative, a statistic is presented, followed by a piece of advice.

  1.  (Imperative) Balance innovation and security.
    (Statistic) 41% of executives say cyber risk initiatives at their organizations have not kept pace with digital transformation.
    (Advice) Don’t invest in cleanup for legacy systems – bake in security with new efforts.

2.  (Imperative) Inventory your highest risks.
(Statistic) 4 in 10 organizations now take a risk-based approach to cybersecurity.
(Advice) Get your technical teams, partners, and suppliers on the same page.

3. (Imperative) Safeguard remote work.
(Statistic) 67% of business-impacting cyber attacks target remote workers.
(Advice) Offer security awareness training for employees and their families, paying for the use of family password stories and                          antivirus protection for home devices.

In marketing a business or practice, organizing relevant and useful information in a structured format can be very useful to readers. Bullet points and numbered lists help readers’ eyes move quickly through the material. And, when the blog content “walks” readers through logical steps to a conclusion, that can increase the likelihood of them staying around to read all your key points.

Statistics can actually serve as myth-busters; if there’s some false impression people seem to have relating to your industry, or to a product or service you provide, you can bring in statistics to show how things really are. Statistics can also serve to demonstrate the extent of a problem (which is precisely how they are used in the Forbes article).  Once readers realize the problem, the door is open for you to show how you help solve that very type of problem for your customers!

In terms of offering advice, I’ve often mused that, out of all the possible advertising and marketing tactics a business or professional practice might use, blogging’s way ahead of the pack because it attracts customers who want to be sold. In fact, it’s the close match between the type of advice the searcher wants and what you know about that accounts for your meeting them in the first place!

It’s important that the entire format of the Forbes article is built around numbers, both in the “listicle” format and in the statistics. . In an analysis by HubSpot of their own blog posts to see which titles had performed the best in terms of search results, the top eight each included a number. In blogging for business, numbers are a great way to be specific about your accomplishments.  They also show that you pay attention to benchmarks and concentrate on setting and meeting goals.

Organizing the material offered in your blog post helps readers organize their perceptions.

 

 

 

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Tidbits Add Interest and Strengthen Your Slant

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In this week’s Say It For You blog, I am focusing on fascinating knowledge tidbits from The Book of Bizarre Truths.  Including  interesting snippets of knowledge in blog content not only serves as an attention getter,  but can actually strengthen your “slant” on the topic your want to discuss with your readers.

In fact, I have a strong opinion about “slant”. When blogging for business reveals your unique philosophy, your “way of being” within your field, potential customers and clients feel they know who you are, not merely what you do, and they are far more likely to want to be associated with you. For that very reason, one important facet of my job as a professional ghost blogger is to “interview” business owner and professional practitioner clients, eliciting each one’s very individualized thoughts. But even if the format of a blog post isn’t interview-style question-answer, when we tell the story of a business or a practice to consumers, we “frame” that story a certain way.

That’s a good thing, because when online readers find a blog, one question they need answered is “Who lives here?” Providing information about products and services may be the popular way to write corporate blog posts, but in terms of achieving Influencer status – it takes opinion, we’ve learned at Say It For You. Darren Rowse of problogger.com agrees: “There are many factors that set great bloggers apart from the rest, but one that I’ve seen continually cropping up over the last few years is that they often have and are not afraid to express strong opinions,”

One big advantage of including information tidbits is that they “soften” the effect of the strong opinions business owner or practitioner might express in the blog, while at the same time helping to explain the reasoning behind the “slant”. For example, this tidbit about Henry J. Heinz could be perfect for several kinds of blogs: As Heinz was riding an elevated train in New York back in 1896, he noticed an advertisement for a shoe store offering 21 different styles of shoes. Captivated by that ad quantifying the product offering, Heinz decided on the now-famous “57 varieties” motto.  Any type of business  might  to refer to Heinz 57 in order to tout its own wide variety of products or services.  On the opposite side, a specialty boutique, a private school, or a country club might use this tidbit in a blog, suggesting the contrasting exclusivity of its offerings and its clientele.

Incorporating tidbits in content marketing can add interest while strengthening your slant!

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“That’s Just It” Blogging for Business

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“You know what descriptive writing is, The Writer’s Resource authors Day and McMahan say. “It makes you smile or sigh, brings tears to your eyes, makes you say to yourself, ‘Yes, that’s just it'” Good descriptive details are welcome in almost any kind of writing, they add. “Amen to that”, we believe at Say It For You. Blog content writing might be high-quality and informative and still not engage with readers, absent the kind of personal connection that gets prospects emotionally involved. Even in B2B marketing, there’s always a person saying “Yes, that’s just it!” who will be key to doing “a deal”.

But how is it done? You don’t need to add a slew of words to a page to achieve impact, Day and McMahan suggest, just the most specific ones. You feel terrible about something? In what way? Are you humiliated, guilty, fearful, frustrated, sickened, sad? Consult a thesaurus if you need help narrowing down the word choices to find the “That’s just it” way to express your idea, they advise. In blog content, emotional “capital” can include biographical stories showing problems solved or narrowly avoided in the course of building the business or practice and evocative descriptions of situations solved by using the product or service.

To put power into business blogs, use “close-ups” for emotional connection and impact, because it’s the details that stimulate emotional responses in readers. In fact, blog posts have a distinct advantage over more static traditional website copy precisely because of that close-up effect. And the “closer up” the focus, (and that goes for business-to-business blog writing every bit as much as B-to-C), the greater the impact. Introduce real people into the content, helping each find “That’s just it” words to convey their thoughts to readers:

  • real employees delivering the product or service to the public, portraying them as real people with real lives of their own, dealing with real frustrations, but who take real pride in their work
  • real business owners who overcame real hurdles to launch and to continue growing their business
  • real customers who have been helped in real ways

“Advertising is ubiquitous in modern society, and while many people have some understanding of the power it wields over our everyday choices, few realize the subtle nuances of advertising that cause it to be so effective,” formationmediaco.uk writes. “The power of an advert becomes that much stronger when it is personally attached to your own daily life…Understanding how to use language in adverts is a skill in itself and you’ll know when you get it right; the customers will come flooding through the door.”

Descriptive writing with “that’s just it” words can make them smile, sigh, and hopefully – buy.

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Sharing the “We” in Blogging for Business

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In a Say It For You blog post last week, I mentioned the ongoing debate about the use of the two pronouns “you” and “we” in marketing messages. While many respondents to a Corporate Visions survey had said they used we-phrasing deliberately to position themselves as trusted partners with their customers, a set of experiments reviewed in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that sometimes the use of “we” arouses suspicion rather than trust, because prospects and brand-new didn’t yet have reason to feel a congenial relationship with the company.

My own feelings on the matter, as expressed in my monthly newsletter, are that “we” is a valuable syllable. In communication with the public, and particularly in blog content writing, there’s a very special purpose to be served by using first person pronouns – they help keep the blog conversational rather than either academic-sounding or overly sales-ey. When the owners of a business or practice use phrases such as “we think”, “we believe”, “we see this all the time”, they are offering their unique slant or opinion that differentiates them from their competition.

Much to my delight, as I read through my copy of this week’s Indianapolis Business Journal, I saw that editor Lesley Weidenbener’s Commentary column was titled “we’re listening; we’re focused on business” The article  presents an extremely personal accounting of the way Weidenbener and her editorial staff had wrestled with the decision about whether, as a business-focused publication, they should include breaking news stories about criminal and social events that affect businesses. How would they avoid sensationalism or “yellow journalism”? The newsroom staff met, readers’ advice was considered, and “WE” (the editor shares) “decided that WE will maintain our focus on business news and on how crime….affects business.”, There’s no “royal ‘we'” here; in fact, Wedenbrener tells readers “We want to know what YOU think…”

As blog content writers, we represent those business owners and professions who are – and should be – the “we”, the ones with the ideas, the knowledge, the products and services, and the ones who have the experience and the unique “slants” to share. Those real people behind the “we” are sharing their stuff with YOU, the online readers receiving the good advice and answers to their questions. Blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations or “aggregations” of information, even when that information is extremely valuable. There has to be human connection.

The “oomph”, I’m now even more firmly convinced, comes from sharing the “we” in blogging for business.

 

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Not That “We”, This “We” in Blogging for Business

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In using the pronoun “we” in blog posts, I asserted in a recent newsletter, we keep the blog conversational rather than academic-sounding or overly sales-ey. That isn’t pompous, I wrote – “it just works”. My point was that in conversing with readers through blog content writing, using “we” calls attention to the real people behind the company or practice brand.

One thing for sure is that not everyone agrees. “Cut the word ‘we’ wherever you possibly can,” Joanna Wiebe advises in copyhackers.com, That should apply even to “About Us” page, she says. Why? Your visitors don’t want to hear about you. They want to hear about themselves – about their problems, their needs, their futures.

In a survey by Corporate Visions, more than 47% of respondents said they use we-phrasing deliberately to position themselves as trusted partners. On the other hand, the survey revealed, the audience felt much more strongly that they must take action when you-phrasing was done rather than we-phrasing. Meanwhile, a set of experiments by the Journal of Consumer Research examined messages from banks and a health insurer, concluding that the pronoun “we” doesn’t work if it’s inconsistent with the actual relationship. In other words, if customers don’t expect a congenial relationship with a particular type of company, “we” arouses suspicion. True, existing customers responded favorably to the “we” verbiage.

All this research made we realize that I had been thinking of one type of “we”, while these other articles were referencing another. I like to use the word “we” to refer to the people owning the company or professional practice. The real people behind the “we” pronoun are taking ownership of their opinions and of the particular ways in which they choose to serve their customers. I was not recommending the use of the “we” to mean we-the-owners-and-you-the-customers, in a very fakey and patronizing “Let’s-try-on-these-shoes-shall-we?” way. The “we” to which I was referring describes the business owners/practitioners as the writers of the blog, with the readers remaining the “you”.

Business owners and professionals are the “we” with the ideas, knowledge and experience to share. The online visitors are the “you” receiving the good advice and the answers to their questions.

 

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