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Cutesy is for Dolls, Not Blog Post Titles

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Flea Market Home & Living wasn’t the only home decorating magazine I browsed (see Tuesday’s post) in the course of “reading around” to get fresh blog marketing ideas and inspiration. Paging through Modern Home, I couldn’t help but be amused by the clever, “cutesy” article titles:

  • Starting Fresh
  • Sofa, So Good (go ahead, say it aloud)
  • Yay, Boucle!
  • How Do We Love Boho? Let Us Count the Ways
  • Soft Rock
  • Find and Seek
  • Can You Handle It? (decorative knobs and door pulls)
  • From Found to Finished

Unfortunately, when it comes to blog marketing, clever, cutesy titles are far from sofa, so good. The name of your blog post must make clear – to both searchers and search engines – what the post is about, and mystery titles simply don’t get that job done.

In Keyword Research for Magical SEO, Jennifer Lawrence lists different post title approaches:

  • Listicles (10 Ways to….. 15 Reasons to…..)
  • How To…
  • Questions:
  • Mistakes to avoid…..
  • Comparisons (Which is better – ____ or ___?)

Whichever of these you select, Lawrence stresses, it’s important to first do keyword research and then incorporate one of the keywords in the title itself as well as in the body of the article.

Yahoo!small business explains there are three categories of keywords:
Generic –basic words that describe a product or service “( camera”, “accountant”, ”chiropractor”).
Descriptive – these keywords have adjectives to narrow the focus, such as “Indianapolis accountant” or “digital camera”.
Targeted – these keywords apply to only one product or service, such as “tax accountant” or “Samsung Galaxy 8 phone accessories”

Aside from SEO considerations, a blog post title in itself constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors: If you click on this title, you’re telling readers, it will lead you to a blog post that discusses the topic mentioned in the title. (As comedian Jerry Seinfeld put it – the pilot should end up where it says on the ticket!)

Sofa, so good. Truth, though, is that no clever title, even one that incorporates well-researched keyword phrases, can substitute for well-written, relevant content in the blog post itself, content that provides valuable information to your readers.

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Personalizing Blog Content – on Both Ends

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We need to update the definition of the word “personalize”, Stu Heinecke insists in his book Get the Meeting. Why? To differentiate between the two forms “wide” and “deep”. Wide personalization, Heinecke explains, applies readily available data across an audience, while deep personalization applies individualized research findings to produce unique outreach elements, one by one.

Can blogging do both?

Personalizing on the audience end:
At Say It For You, I teach that everything about your blog should be tailor-made for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry – all of it. And since we content writers are hired by clients to tell their story online to their target audiences, we need to do intensive research, as well as take guidance from the business owner’s or practitioner’s experience and expertise.

Now, since blogging is part of inbound marketing, it cannot involve researching each individual’s hobbies and preferences, creating and shipping unique gifts in order to “get the meeting”.

On the other hand, as Mo the Blog Coach explains, having an abstract audience in mind when creating content is ineffective, causing you to ramble on, trying to help ALL the people. Instead, she advises, “humanize your reader, singling them down to one specific person experiencing one specific problem.

Personalizing on the blog marketer’s end with I-you language:
In blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

It was apparent the editors of Flea Market Home & Living magazine had latched onto this exact secret. Each page featured a designer – or homeowner – statement beginning in first person:

  • “I make things out of what most folks consider garbage and get an inordinate amount of pleasure from it.”
  • “I try not to follow any rules. I really try not to copy anyone and I try to avoid trends.”
  • “I believe your sense of color is like a muscle that needs to e exercised.”
  • “I feel good supporting the local Goodwill. Plus, with the money I save, I feel better about the occasional splurge.”

In blog marketing, customers might be asked for statements like these – sharing stories of unique ways they used your product or service, or describing a problem you helped them solve. On marketers’ end, “I” and “we” statements give readers the feeling that the providers of the services and products are speaking directly to them. In fact, in business blogging, one goal should be to present the business or practice as very personal rather than merely transactional, reminding readers that there are real life humans behind the content on the website.

Blog content with the greatest chance of success is personalized on both ends!

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Blog Content Writing – Up For the Count

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word count for blogs

One “fake fact” included in Alex Palmer’s book Alternative Facts is that part of the reason Charles Dickens’ novels ran so long is that he was paid by the word. Truth is, while his novels’ length was often dictated in advance, Dickens’ earnings were pegged to the number of novels sold.

Today, some professional writers for hire choose to charge based on word count or page count, while other ghostwriters prefer to charge flat project rates or hourly fees, varying by experience, subject matter and location, Brafton, a leading UK content marketing company explains.

As much as we all wish for it, there is no simple answer to the question “What is the right length of a blog post?” A longer blog post doesn’t necessarily rank better than a short one. The reason search engines generally appear to favor longer posts is because they are detailed, hence considered to be providing more information to readers. But, when writing blogs, one needs to consider the topic, the goal, the target audience, the industry, and the competition to find which length works best. Focus should be on quality, not quantity.

You know your business and your customers better than anyone else, so why would you hire a ghostwriter to take over such an important task as blogging? There are plenty of reasons, Shandra Cragun of BKA Content explains:

  • You lack the time to write lengthy, informative blog posts.
  • Writing isn’t your strong suit.
  • The content creation process overwhelms you.
  • You want to elevate your brand’s story with well-written and highly engaging content.

In terms of word count, Cragun observes, there are some topics for which only so much can be said, while there are others about which a lot more can be said. Don’t give a ghost blogger a word count request that far exceeds the collective information on the subject, she cautions.

Opinions have always differed on the optimal size for a blog post. Having composed blog posts (as both a Say It For You ghost writer and under my own name) numbering well into the tens of thousands, I’m still finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!”

Chip and Dan Heath’s book The Power of Moments describes research that found that when people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length, instead rating the experience based on the “peak” (best or worst moment) and the ending. My conclusion about word count? As Albert Einstein famously said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

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ETDBW Blog Content Writing

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“An important driver of customer loyalty is how little effort the customer has to expend to do business with you,” Dixon, Toman, and Delisi point out in the Effortless Experience. Identify the customers’ biggest hassles and look for ways to be their hero by making that piece of the process easier for them, the authors advise.

There are ways to be Easy To Do Business With, says Ted Stahl, and each of these can be implemented through blog marketing:

  • Be proactive. Stay in touch with customers on a regular basis, Stahl emphasizes.
    At Say It For You, after years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that business owners who “show up” with new content on their websites are rare. There’s a tremendous fall-off rate, with most blogs abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. You might say the first job of a blog content writer is to help a business or a professional practice “get its frequency on”, so that they keep “running into” their readers.
  • Simplify your packages. We live in a culture of information saturation. Consumers today are highly distracted, which is why your blog posts need to include very focused, well-written calls to action. Often I remind practitioners and business owners getting ready to launch a marketing blog that the only people who are going to notice their blog are the ones already interested in that topic. The Call to Action is simply giving those readers a simple way to act on the information you’ve provided, I explain.
  • Say YES to any reasonable request for personalization. I like to remind both the blog content writers at Say It For You and the clients who hire us that the goal of a business blog is to bring in customers “of the right kind”, customers who have a need for and who will appreciate the services, products, and expertise being showcased in the blog. Anecdotes and testimonials are each ways of using your blog to show how personalized your service can be.
  • Answer the phone on the first ring. “You’d think website visitors would be more than willing to click through to your Contact page to find your phone number, but the truth is, many times they’re not,” the Bright Orange Thread blog points out. Websites – and blog sites – that make it difficult for online searchers to navigate make it easy for those searchers to “bounce away”.  If the content makes the reader want to call your company, is the phone number in plain sight? If the reader wants to submit a question or comment, or request further information, how easy is that to do?

Your blog is an excellent way to show you are here and Easy-To-Do-Business-With!

 

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Blogging About Sisters Erica and Maria

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“Erica and Maria are both red-blooded Americans, born in the USA to parents from Pueblo, Mexico. They have worked with us for over a half decade…Virginia has worked with us over twenty years. She and the ten people in a t-shirt team made $153.45 in 8 hours. That is $19.18 per hour.” In just this way, Los Angeles Apparel invites its online shoppers to “Know the people who make your clothes,”

Most websites contain an “Our Team” section, but Los Angeles Apparel’s, I thought, was a true grabber, with the kind of personalization and emotional appeal we need to include in blog content writing. A team page adds a personal touch to the company and can lend trust to visitors, Cameron Chapman points out in Smashing Magazine. “Meet the Team is all about introducing your visitors to your employees, providing transparency and a sort of personal touch,”, Bluleadz.com explains.

In Creating Buzz With Blogs, veteran business technology consultant Ted Demopoulos explains, “Blogs create buzz because people will feel like they know you, and people like to do business with people they know.”  Blogs represent people talking to people, and blogging is the business manifestation of what Barbra Streisand meant when she sang about people who love people being the luckiest people in the world.

So, should the employees themselves be required to write blog posts? After all, Marcuss Sheridan points out, one goal of content marketing is to produce as much content as possible, so the more hands are put to the task, the better. And, since content that answers consumers’ questions is the most valuable, and since those employees are typically the ones dealing with the consumers every day, stands to reason they should be committing that experience to print.  Still, Sheridan admits, most employees don’t want to participate.

Whether employees, owners, or professional content writers – or a combination of all three – create the blog posts, the more personal they are, the better, we teach at Say It For You. The focus should be on personal anecdotes and the personal value of the business owners. Blog marketing may be about business, but it had better be about people as well, including both buyers and sellers, writers and readers.

Los Angeles Apparel is onto something with their content about sisters Erica and Maria, inviting their web visitors to know the people who make their clothes..

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