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Blogging the Way things Used to Be

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Whether or not you’re into home remodeling and décor, the new “Reveal” magazine by two of my own favorite reality show personalities, Drew and Jonathan Scott, is a great source of ideas for blog content writers. Last week in this Say It For You blog, I noted that the brothers had offered no fewer than five full articles about, of all things, tile, each one informative and imaginative.

Even the advertisements are uniquely creative in  “Reveal”, I discovered to my delight. A painting of a 19th century woodsman sitting in his shop with his dog’s face turned towards him takes up the bulk of the page, with an art-museum-style plaque that reads “Things dogs used to smell- their owners”. At the bottom of the page is a second plaque reading “Things dogs smell now: chicken”, positioned over a box of Cesar dog food.

“When it comes to business, trends come and go. This is particularly prevalent when it comes to marketing strategies,” Metova posits, noting that as technology becomes increasingly available to the general public, people are more receptive to marketing tactics when the material is formatted directly for them.

One really important point Metova stresses is that today, product comparison is an outdated and unnecessary marketing strategy. With trust in U.S. companies in general having dropped to 50% this year, now is not a great time for brands to be making lofty claims or taking potshots at competitors. Instead, Metova says, now is the time to be building trust and relationships.

This takes me back to the “Reveal” magazine ad for dog food. While making comparisons with competitors’ products and services may be passé, comparisons of “now” with “then” always hit the spot. Sharing memories of the “good old times” that weren’t really so good in terms of efficiency and convenience, you have the ability to share with blog readers a sense of look-how-far-we’ve-come togetherness.

The Business Dictionary definition of the term “product innovation” is “the development and market introduction of a good or service that is:

  • new
  • redesigned
  • substantially improved

What that means is that if you have taken something already there and made it better, that “innovation” is the most powerful thing you have to share in your blog marketing. After all, Drew and Jonathan Scott didn’t “invent” tile, and the Cesar company didn’t invent dog food. It’s probably true, we tell Say It For You clients wondering how they can come up with new ways to present their products and services through content marketing, that you can’t claim to have “invented” those products or services “from scratch”!

On the other hand, history-of-our-company background stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame adversity. Most important, tracing the “then” calls attention to the modern solutions that grew out of those past attempts and failures.

Blogging “the way things used to be” is a great way to help prospects and clients savor the way things are!

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Yips and She-Cessioning for Blog Content Writers

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One would be hard-pressed to view the Coronavirus as a positive development, but in one way, the pandemic has added a lot to our lives – via the dictionary. The new term “doomscrolling”, for example, refers to the practice of obsessively checking online news for updates. Just the other day, in Employee Benefit News magazine, I was fascinated a headline using the coined phrase term “she-cession”, alluding to the fact that, during the pandemic, nearly three million American women exited the workforce, accounting for more than half the overall job loss in the country.

According to Merriam-Webster, the term “yips” was referenced by many journalists to describe a state of nervous tension affecting an athlete during the no-spectator Olympics. In fact, the Coronavirus has led to an explosion of new words and phrases, and new vocabulary helps us cope, the conversation.com comments. WFH (working from home) is disorienting (isn’t today “blursday”?).

Since for us blog content writers, words are our tools, we want to use words that capture attention, and often coined phrases do the trick nicely. One reason for this is that people are always look for new things, Neil Patel explains – new software, new techniques, new ways to make and save money. New phraseology commands attention.

Writeonline.io actually compiled a list of “grease-slide phrases” that help create smooth transitions between sentences and between paragraphs. One type of grease-slide is a conjunct. “Similarly”, “first off”, “for starters”, “to top it all off”, and “needless to say” are all grease slide conjuncts that keep the momentum going. “Here’s the scary part” and “It all boils down to this” are phrases that lead to the conclusion…

Prior to the pandemic, word combinations such as “contact tracing” and “essential businesses” weren’t part of our vocabulary, Miami University points out. “Bellyfeel” (blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea) and the verb “blackwhite” (accepting what one is told) are both part of “Newspeak” vocabulary, deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language.

While, at Say It For You, we use words to clarify and edify, never to confuse or mislead, we know that the ways in which people express themselves is constantly changing. When a newly minted expression captures a mood or a concept, using that phrase to make readers overcome their “yips” and take notice of your content – all I have to say is “Yippee”!

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Blogging Kernels of Wisdom

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Ease, flavor, and healthiness are the three ways Kelsey Ogletree rates different methods of preparing popcorn (Kernels of Wisdom in a recent issue of AARP Magazine). As a blog content writer, I couldn’t help thinking how, using those same criteria, I might rate the different categories of business blog posts….
‘
Ease –
“Listicles” would probably rate highest on ease, both in terms of the writer’s time in preparing the posts and in terms of how easy numbered or bullet-pointed lists are for readers to scan. The lists can be of tactics to try, alternatives for solving a particular problem, or a “best of” collection.

Flavor –
Personal story blog posts and interviews would rate high on “flavor”. In a different way, opinion pieces would be rich in flavor, showcasing the unique slant of either the business owner of practitioner or that of an employee or customer. You can add “flavor” by revealing how you arrived at the name of your business, and even by revealing the biggest mistake you made in starting your business or practice and what you’ve learned from that mistake.

Humor can be a hook, grabbing attention with a wry “flavor”. Like spices, humor is best in small proportion, and most effective when focused around a problem your company can solve.

Healthiness –
Using content to add value is healthy – for both owner and visitor. How-to blog posts and articles describing unusual applications for a product all add “healthful” value. News-based blog posts can be “healthful”, in that they help readers put current community or industry happening into context. It can be “healthy” for owners to promote products or services by tying in their link to current concerns.. Conversely, it’s healthful for readers when owners use blogs to debunk false information or even to clear the air and erase doubt by responding to a complaint.

Ease, flavor, and healthiness may be used to rate different ways of preparing popcorn, but for content writers, they offer guidelines for creating content that is engaging.

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Blogging a Surround Sound Effect

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The Guy Raz book, How I Built This is all about starting and building a successful venture, with insights and inspiration from the world’s top entrepreneurs. In one of my favorite chapters, Raz talks about creating what he calls a “surround sound effect”.

In actual surround sound, one or more channels are added to the side or behind the listeners to make it seem as if the sound is coming at that listener from all directions. Translated into marketing, Raz explains, the secret is to give the impression that you are “everywhere”, when in reality you’re getting your name out in the handful of places where your core customers spend their time.

To market successfully, Business News explains, “your customer can’t be everyone.” Instead, you need a targeted marketing strategy, the authors stress, to succeed. You must define your niche and target those specific customers.

In fact, Spider Graham writes in bizjournals.com, “the whole goal of all marketing is to get the right message to the right person at the right time”. Of course, Graham adds, we must make sure to do this at the best price possible. If you try to be everything to everyone, your message becomes less impactful, he emphasizes.

Learning about your target customers includes gathering intelligence about:

  • their gender
  • their average age
  • their marital status
  • their educational level
  • their employment
  • their outlook on life
  • where they get their news

OK, OK. But how can marketers help entrepreneurs achieve that “surround sound” effect while still carefully targeting their customers? For our content writers at Say It For You, the challenge is using blogs to inform, educate, and persuade. Where does the “surround sound” come from?

Just as your target market can’t be “everyone”, a blog isn’t –and cannot be – an all-purpose, Swiss-army-knife solution for all your marketing needs. In fact, blogging is just one piece of the general strategy you work on with your team (which might well include a blog copy writer, but which also might include the web designer, the business manager, the employees, loyal fans, even, sometimes, a franchisor).

All the pieces used to promote your business or practice must mesh – social media, traditional advertising, event planning, word of mouth marketing, community involvement. Together all those pieces create the “surround sound effect”.

 

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Analogies Help Information Resonate With Readers

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Matching our writing to our intended audience is part of the challenge we business blog content writers face. After all, we’re not in this to entertain ourselves – we’re out to retain the clients and customers we serve and bring in new ones, so we try to use words and sentences to which our target readers can relate.

There are four ways to make information resonate with an audience, advises climate scientist Lissa Ocko (who often addresses non-scientists on scientific topics):

  1. strip down to the essentials
  2. craft a story
  3. provide context
  4. use analogies

Using an analogy to link an unfamiliar concept to something that is familiar can help the reader better comprehend what you’re trying to say. It’s also a catchy and clever way to help get a point across, MasterClass.com points out.

At Say It For You, our content writers often use analogies as teaching tools in business blog posts:

Analogy: Parhelions and blogs posts
A parhelion is an atmospheric optical illusion consisting of “halos” of light around the sun. Just as parhelions showcase, rather than obliterate the sun, blogging allows content writers to approach the same topic in different ways to appeal to different audiences, still highlighting the central message.

Analogy: Suitcases and blog posts
Packing light has always been one of the better tips for savvy travelers. Pack your blog post with just enough materials to show searchers they’re on track to find the services or information they need.

Analogy: Cows being milked at night and blog posts
Cows were often milked in their barns at night, making that task one of the last ones on a farmer’s list. The expression “Till the cows come home” could be used in a message about a provider’s prompt service.

In blogging for business, using an analogy to link an unfamiliar concept to something familiar can help the reader better comprehend what you’re trying to say.

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