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Blog Reader Encounters of the Right Kind

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client encounters

When it comes to blog marketing, there’s a lot of talk (too much talk, in my opinion) about traffic. Yes, blogging is part of business owners’ or professional practitioners’ “pull marketing” strategy, designed to attract readers’ eyeballs. At least a percentage of these readers, the hope is, will become customers and clients.

In a sense, however, fewer might well prove better when it comes to the numbers of online searchers who find your blog, then click through to the website. Remember the 1977 movie about aliens called “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”? 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”. These are customers who have a need for and who will appreciate the services, products, and expertise being showcased in the blog.

Long-time friend and fellow blogger Thaddeus Rex had it right, I believe, when he said: “If your marketing is not getting enough people into the pool, you’ll find the problem is in one of three places.  You’ve either got the wrong story, the wrong stuff, or the wrong audience”. Rex recommends filtering: the audience by differentiating your own business or practice in some way:

  • Your product or service can do something your competitors can’t .
  • Your product/service is more easily available relative to your competitors’.
  • You offer a better buying experience.
  • You’re less expensive.

Years ago, I remember a speaker at a wine-tasting event explaining that, when a customer finds a product or service that appears to be the exact right thing, it’s as if a light pops on. By offering a “content-tasting” on your blog, and doing that regularly and frequently, I tell business owners and professionals, you’ll have put yourself in a position to attract those “encounters of the right kind”.

Getting it “right” takes planning and thought, to be sure. Are you selecting the “right” keyword phrases? Are you establishing the “right” clear navigation path from the blog to landing pages on your website? Are you blogging for the right reasons and with the right expectations?

Remember, the goal is not lots of blog reader encounters; it’s blog reader encounters of the right kind!

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Master Lists Can Call Blog Readers to Action

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master lists in blogging

 

This month’s issue of the Journal of Financial Planning included a description of two experiments designed to explore the way consumers make investment decisions. Simple lists, researchers found can overcome “cognitive blind spots”, speeding up the decision making process…

(Now retired from my career as a CFP®, I stay interested in behavioral finance, which is using science to move individuals in the direction of better decision-making. I view my present work as content writer for business blogs as very similar – helping my clients’ readers make good buying decisions.)

“Identifying investment goals is a critical step in developing a sound financial plan that helps investors reach their objectives,” but the success of goals-based planning hinges on two important steps, behavioral scientists at Morningstar realized. Investors had to find what goals are important to them, and then prioritize those goals. The reality, however, was that behavioral biases too often undermined the process, and investors found themselves unable to take action that truly matched their own goals.

Dual process theory suggests that our minds use two different processes to make decisions:

  1. System One is fast and intuitive
  2. System Two is slow and deliberative

Because of a lack of pertinent information, a failure to pay attention to key information, and time constraints, science has found, we often rely on System 1 when it comes to decision-making

In this experiment, the researchers created a “master list” containing 12 typical financial and non-financial retirement goals (financial independence, health care, housing, travel and leisure, etc.). Study participants were asked to complete two sequential tasks through an online survey:

Step One: Each participant was asked to list and rank their top three investment goals. (The program then added those self-generated goals for each participant, in random order, to the master list of common investment goals.)

Step Two: Each participant was asked to look at the master list of goals and, if they wanted to, change their list of top three goals.

Results – 26% of respondents changed their top goal after seeing the master list. Almost twice as many changed either one or both of their top two goals, and 73% changed one or more of their top three goals.

Conclusions – The provision of a master list helped clarify a person’s previously ambiguous self-reported goals. “When asked to prioritize a list of goals that are important to them, people may not know what their preferences are and therefore elect to prioritize short-term goals over long-term ones or emphasize minor objectives while neglecting major aspirations because of the desire for instant gratification.”

How does all this information about investor behavior translate into blog content writing? Hasn’t the technique of using lists in blog posts been overdone? Perhaps, but I think using lists in blog posts is less about grabbing attention and more about demonstrating ways in which the company’s (or the practitioner’s) products, services and expertise are useful, perhaps in unexpected ways.

Since buyers often use System One thinking, relying on brand awareness or past purchases to make buying decisions, providing a “master list” showing other options is designed to stimulate more thoughtful purchasing choices. At Say It For You, an important goal is opening up readers’ minds and “calling them to action”. The research I read about in the Journal of Financial Planning suggests that master lists might help in the process!

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Things About Consumer Behavior Blog Content Writers Need to Know

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consumer behavior
This month’s issue of the Journal of Financial Planning included a description of two experiments designed to explore the way consumers make investment decisions. Since success in blog marketing is designed to assist in consumer decision making, I’m devoting this week’s Say It For You blog posts to discussing the insights those researchers share with Journal readers…

Who is investing in ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds)? Using an investor survey, researchers investigated the relationship between financial knowledge of an investment product and consumers’ choice to actually invest in that product. Their hypotheses going in –given that ETFs are still a relatively new product with benefits still not fully understood by the full investment community, increasing investor knowledge would be a significant variable when predicting ETF ownership.

Interestingly, the authors divided “knowledge” into two categories:

  1. Subjective knowledge (how much an investor SAYS they know on the subject)
  2. Objective knowledge (how successful that investor is answering knowledge questions on the subject)

Their hypotheses going into the experiment was that both subjective and objective investor knowledge are positively associated with ownership of the product itself. The findings? Both subjective and objective investor knowledge do have a positive association with ETF ownership.

Researchers’ advice to financial advisors? To increase ETF adoption among clients, engage in education efforts to pave the way for greater acceptance. Significantly, the authors stressed that “supporting investors’ confidence in their own financial knowledge may be as important as educating those investors.”

Now retired from my career as a CFP®, I stay interested in behavioral finance, which is using science to move individuals in the direction of better decision-making. In fact, I see my present work as content writer for business blogs as very similar – helping readers gain access to – and process – the information they need to make good buying decisions.

In blogging for business, teaching is the new selling. Since customers have access to so much information, they want to know that you and your organization have something new to teach them. Even more important, you need to help readers absorb, buy into, and use the information you provide through your blog.

At the same time, (recalling the Journal researchers’ advice about supporting consumers’ confidence in their own financial knowledge), even when it comes to myth debunking in blogs, our content has the potential of rubbing readers the wrong way. People generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they came to a website seeking information on a particular subject.
As a blog content writer, then, you want the provider (vendor or practitioner) to be perceived as a subject matter expert who is offering usable information and insights in addition to readers’ own knowledge level…

To the extent you’re successful, the blog content itself constitutes a Call to Action!  Once readers feel assured that you’re “meeting them where they are”, they might be ready to take action before they even read all the way into the blog post!

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There’s More Than One Way to “Skin” a Blog Post

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skinning a blog post
The proverb “There’s more than one way to skin a cat” certainly applies to blog content marketing.

Darren Rouse of Problogger.com, for example, lists no fewer than twenty types of posts, including instructional and informational posts, reviews, interviews, and case studies. Interestingly, Rouse mentions collation posts; the term describes many entries in this Say It For You blog, in which I gather content creation advice from others, presenting that helpful information to my readers.

Maurice of Tasklabels.com offers a combination of review and collation posts, in “The Essential List of 8 Productivity Blogs with Different Approaches to Efficiency”, compiling a list of experts in the time management field, explaining each author’s approach, and commenting on who might find that author a good source of advice.

I found two types of posts included on the Problogger list especially interesting and worth a try:

Prediction posts
The blog writer looks ahead, predicting what new developments in their niche might occur over the next year.

Hypothetical posts
These are ‘what-ifs”, about something that might happen in your field and what the implications would be if it did.

Some eight years ago, I examined the blogs of five companies that had been recognized on Forrester’s Top 15 Corporate Blogs list, noting the reasons reviewers had liked the way these companies presented their information. Favorable comments included these:

  • “rarely blogs about their products, instead devoting their blog content writing t sharing advice about business….”
  • “…blogs with a personal touch….”
  • “…employees share insights on technology,, hiring, and consulting…”
  • “…writes fun posts…”
  • “…posts advice on understanding the market…”

Rex London singles out the Awkward Situations for Girls blog, calling it a “masterpiece” because the author “catalogues disasters, embarrassments, and truly awkward situations that she finds herself in on a fairly regular basis”. London’s choice brings out a point I believe every business owner and content writer ought to keep in mind: writing about past failures is important. True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business.

There’s certainly more than one way to “skin” a blog post!

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How Much Do Your Blog Readers Actually Know About Your Company?

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which of the two

 

Yet another great blog content idea sparked by the latest issue of Mental Floss magazine is a “Which of the Two….” quiz. Which product or brand has locations in more countries worldwide – a) McDonald’s or b) Burger King? Which is known for its brown delivery trucks and uniforms – FedEx or UPS? Which is licensed to the Hershey Company by Nestle – a) Kit Kat or b) Milky Way?

By adding interactive content to your blog, advises Kaleigh Moore of Snapapp.com, you stand to make more impact and help your blog content stand out from the noise. Josh Haynam of copyblogger.com goes a step further, telling marketers that the word “actually” is very compelling, posing a challenge from which readers won’t want to back down: How much do you actually know about….?” Interactive quizzes are huge lead magnets and have high conversion rates, Simply Amanda agrees.

At Say It For You, we look at trivia as components of a “toolbox” for blog content writers. Continually coming up with fresh content to inform, educate, and entertain readers is a pretty tall order for not only busy entrepreneurs and employees, but even for professional content writers. That’s exactly why I’m constantly on the prowl for blogging “foodstuff”, trivia that can be used to explain concepts, sharing with readers each of our clients’ unique point of view within their own profession or industry and within the community. The interactive quiz serves as a lead-in to sharing that kind of discussion.

“Which of the Two” quizzes can be used in business blogs to:

  • define basic terminology
  • compare one company or practice to others
  • demonstrate unique problem solutions
  • put matters into perspective, explaining why this business owner or practitioner has chosen to operate in a certain way

“Which-of-the-two” can be one way to challenge and engage blog visitors and to find out – just how much DO your readers know about your company and industry?

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