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Blog Content Parhelions

parhelions in blogs
Earlier this week, we devoted a Say It For You blog post to a term from the field of psychology (Just Noticeable Difference); today’s post explores a term from meteorology…

You might say a “sun dog”, or parhelion, as it is known in meteorology, is an atmospheric optical illusion. The phenomenon consists of bright spots, or halos, that appear at one or both sides of the sun, when ice crystals in the atmosphere refract sunlight.

While as blog content writers, we’re hardly aiming for illusion, optical or otherwise, the work we do presents a number of important parallels with the parhelion effect:

  1. If you ask the question, most business owners and professional practitioners will tell you they have more than one target audience for their products and services. What can be done with a blog is to offer different kinds of information and advice in different blog posts. Just as the parhelions showcase, rather than obliterate the sun, blogging allows coming at the same topic in different ways, still highlighting the central message.

  2. Just as parhelions showcase, rather than distract from the central figure of the sun, doing so through a visual phenomenon, engaging blog posts need visual elements to enhance and showcase the the information, advice, and “slant” of the written content.
  3. Different consumers are going to process our content in different ways. In order to make clear that this business or professional practice has chosen to carry on in a certain way, but that there were other options, the “parhelion effect” can highlight the business owner’s or professional’s “slant” through contrasting that approach with other views.

  4. The parhelion effect can be achieved in groups of blog posts, not only within one article. Readers are different, with different “rules” and needs. We blog content writers need to keep on telling the story in its infinite variations, knowing that, to a certain extent, the blog content readers who end up as clients and customers action have self-selected.
  5. Sentence length can create a parhelion effect. Writers can weave in short sentences with longer ones. Surrounding one “naked” (extremely short) sentence between two longer ones creates, to create a parhelion-like contrast.

By varying the format, the images, the opinions, the sentence length, images and sentence length, writers can create blog content parhelions!

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Blog Testimonials Are That Valuable

 

testimonials

 

“It’s hard to sing your own praises, and it rarely works when you do, “ is the sentiment Chris Garrett once so aptly expressed in copyblogger.com. If a customer ever tells you how much they value your service, Garrett advises, ask them for a testimonial. Even if they don’t ask, ask them for a testimonial, he says, because testimonials are that valuable.

Careful, though; good testimonials don’t gush, the Hotjar team warns. Too much praise is likely to engender skepticism, not belief. Good testimonials, on the other hand, give prospective customers peace of mind, providing proof that people have tried your products and services and approve of them. Really effective testimonials directly address doubts prospects have about price, learning curve, or functionality of a product or service.

Just why do customer testimonials work? They are a powerful form of social proof, a psychological concept based around the idea that we are more likely to follow the actions others have already taken, explains shopify.com.

But do testimonials, in fact, work? Shopify cites four studies exploring that very question:

  1. Econsultancy – sites showcasing testimonials experience an 18% increase in sales.
  2. Wikijob – sites with testimonials earned 34% more conversions.
  3. Reevoo – 50+ reviews converts to a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
  4. Brightlocal – 88% of people trust online reviews as much as recommendations from personal contacts.

Is asking for testimonials a good idea? Maybe. Asking for feedback always is. After all, as Sujan Patel points out, your customers are the end users of your products and services, “so who better to tell you what you’re getting right and where you’re going wrong?”

There are better and not-so-good methods of gathering testimonials from customers, printwand.com points out. First of all, never fabricate them. Amen to that, I teach at Say It For You. In fact, when a client says, “Sure, just tell me what you want me to say……” , my answer is always “No.” The testimonial has to be in the customer’s words (grammar errors and all).

Second, printwand authors caution, “Just because a customer said some nice things about your brand doesn’t mean you automatically have the right to reproduce those.” On the other hand, when you do receive good spontaneous feedback from a customer, it’s OK to ask if they would allow you to use that statement on your website.

As content for your business blog, customer testimonials are that important. No ad copy, no claims, no statistics can ever wield the power of “people just like them” praising the product or service.

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Your Blog Helps ‘Em Go With What They Know

branding through blogs

 

“As a handyman, you will be driving a lot. It would be a shame to waste all of those miles when you could be promoting your company at the same time with almost zero long term effort,” Dan Perry, handyman business owner advises. “Customers are more likely to hire you if they are aware of your brand, Perry explains. “People like to go with what they know.”

“Branding” – we hear a lot of this popular marketing term, don’t we?  Business owners put a whole lot of their time and money into creating a brand name, complete with a logo and other graphics, sometimes adding a motto or slogan.  As blog content writers, we’re considered part of a company’s or a practice’s marketing team, always looking for ways to help reinforce each client’s brand. The creating of each blog post is part of the process of inventing – and reinventing- a business brand.

Reading Perry’s description of truck decal advertising, I recalled reading about an experiment with billboard advertising. The subjects of the study were people (several hundred of them) who drove the same route every day to work and back, passing a giant billboard advertising new cars.  When questioned, almost none of these people could remember even seeing a billboard, much less that it was about cars.  On the other hand, the moment any individual was in the market for a car, she’d notice the billboard immediately.

The point Perry makes to handyman entrepreneurs is that, while “that lady in the Lexus sitting behind you may not need a handyman today, but if she finds you online when she does, she will recognize you and probably call you.”

What does Perry suggest in terms of content for ads on vehicles? “The most important thing is to clearly say what you do and how to contact you.“ Your blog posts are out there on the Internet “super-highway”, available for anyone to see, but the only people who are going to notice your blog are those who are searching for the kinds of information, products, or services that relate to what you do.

The only difference is, of course, is that sustaining a long-term blog marketing initiative is hardly the “zero long term effort” affair Perry promises his handymen advisees. Eleven years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them have the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

But Perry is on the right track when it comes to customers, who are more likely to hire you if they are aware your business or practice exists, and that you have solutions to offer them.

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The All-Important Call to Action in Blog Content Writing

 

One of the resources Ivy Tech offers to students is the Study Power Leader’s Guide. The Guide suggests students keep a daily activities list containing three categories:

  1. Must Do!
  2. Should Do
  3. Could Do

“We live in a culture of information-saturation. Consumers today are highly-distracted, which is why you need to end your posts with a bang, by including enticing, well-written calls to action,” writtent.com suggests. An effective call to action will act as a logical extension of your blog posts, the authors add. “Your calls to action should never seem abrupt, or you’ll struggle to get the reaction you’d hoped.”

Over the years of working with business owners and practitioners, I’ve encountered two very different attitudes towards blog marketing and specifically towards Calls to Action. At the one extreme are those who feel that any direct Call to Action is abrupt and obtrusive, believing that if the blog provides useful information, the reader will want, without being asked, to follow up with the company or practice. At the opposite end of the spectrum are owners who feel uneasy about giving away valuable information “for free”, even though they realize their blog will become a way of selling themselves and their services to online searchers.

In response to the first fear, I explain that a CTA does not at all invalidate the good information provided in the piece. When people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or on different websites, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business. But as long as the material is valuable and relevant for the searchers, they’re perfectly fine with knowing there’s someone who wants them for a client or customer.

Similarly, I can reassure 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. “Giving away” knowledge showcases the owners’ experience and expertise rather than threatening it in any way. More often than not, readers want to get it done, not by themselves, but by the expert you’ve shown you are!

Using those three Study Power categories might be a good way to vary the Calls to Action in blog posts, was my thought.

  • Must-do!s can include safety and health checklists, along with an offer to download a white paper or brochure.
  • Should Dos might include links to landing pages with more information.
  • Could Dos include an invitation to chat or telephone for further information.

Using the three categories can help students keep track of their activities, and varying your calls to action can help you get the reaction you’d hoped for, I teach at Say It For You.

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How-To Blog Content is Harder to Write Than First Appears

giving directions

 

Giving directions is a lot harder than first appears. That point was brought home to us at a recent tutor training I attended at Ivy Tech Community College. An instructor may believe he’s given clear instructions to his class for completing a particular assignment, but different students interpret those directions… well, differently. Working together in informal study groups, students can help each other arrive at the correct interpretation, was the point.

We tutors were divided into small groups (3-4 people each) and given the following set of directions:

  1. Draw a circle about an inch in diameter.
  2. Draw a square so that each side of the square touches the circumference of the circle.
  3. Draw an equilateral triangle, making sure that one of the triangle’s sides is touching one half of one of the sides of the square.

Sounds fairly simple, doesn’t it? (After all, every one of us in that room has several college degrees!) Well, it wasn’t – it took much discussion and interpretation to comply with those “clear” directions.

There is no end to the technical information available to consumers on the internet. Therefore, as business blog content writers, our job is to help readers understand, absorb, buy into, and use that information. At Say it For You, I’m fond of saying that in blogging for business, teaching is the new selling. One way to empower customers to make a decision is to help them understand the differences between various industry terms, as well as the differences between the products and services of one business compared to those offered by another.

As bloggers, we’re giving readers the raw materials to think about, and even the how-to instructions. We need to go one step further, demonstrating ways different customers and clients have “figured out” how to interpret and use the “instructions” and “directions” we’ve offered for their own benefit.

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