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Surprise-Laden Blog Post Titles

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two part blog post titles

 

Blog post titles have a multifaceted job to do, arousing readers’ curiosity while still assuring them they’ve come to the right place. One compromise I’ve suggested to blog content writers is using a two-tiered title, combining a “Huh?” (to get attention) with an “Oh!” (to make clear what the post is actually going to be about).

The latest business book covers use this “compromise solution” all the time. Here are some samples of recently published titles (The main or “Huh?) title is shown in bold, with the “Oh!” subtitle below it):

When to Jump
If the Job you have isn’t the Job You Want

Do  Nothing
Discover the Power of Hands-Off Leadership

The Persuasion Code
How Neuromarketing Can Help You Persuade Anyone, Anywhere, Any Time

When
The Scientific Secret of Perfect Timing

Originals
How Non-conformists Move the World

The Culture Code
The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

The Energy Bus
10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy

In This Together
How Successful Women Support Each Other in Work and Life

Unlike book publishers, we business blog content writers simply don’t have the option of using “mysterious” titles, since search engines will be will be matching the phrases used in our titles with the terms typed into readers’ search bars. So, just how can we get those keyword phrases in while still being enticingly enigmatic?

One possible way is including the “Oh!” part of our title in the meta tag description (the blurb of information that shows up beneath your clickable website address on search engine results pages).

Worth a try, anyway, with the idea being to pique readers’ curiosity and maintain the surprise, but meanwhile, giving the search engines the “advance scoop”.

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Can Your Blog Pass the Emotive & Information Power Response Tests?

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(There’s a test for those, didn’t you know?)

Since emotional response towards advertising plays an important part in building a strong brand, researchers at the University of Bath, working with Nielson, came up with two ways to score ads.

  1. Information Power Score – measures what the consumer perceives as the value of the message
  2. Emotive Power Score – measures if the emotion is going to change feelings about the brand

So why am I interested in this research? Well, at Say It For You, our business is blog marketing, which means connecting professional practitioners and business owners with prospective clients and customers. And, while I continually preach and teach that blog posts are not ads, but more like advertorials, establishing connections is the name of the game for both advertisers and content marketers

Broadly speaking, the Bath studies showed, there are two types of emotive responses: those based on empathy and those that respond to creativity. In an empathetic response, people feel emotionally closer to the brand; in a creative response, the people feel the brand is imaginative and ahead of the game. “It’s always best if can get both empathy and creative,” Dr. David Brandt writes.

The way that information is communicated has an important influence on how likely people are to believe that information. And for certain advertiser categories, Brandt points out, empathy is more important (food and toiletries, for example), while for other categories (electrical goods or computers, for example), creativity is more important.

Readers of business blog posts fall into two categories, according to Morgan Steward of Media Post Publications:

  1. Deal seekers go online in search of bargains and discounts on products and services they already know and use. The effectiveness of the blog content writing, therefore, would be measured through the “information score”; the content would focus on the cost-effectiveness of your product or service and on any special deals or offers.
  2. Enthusiasts seek information to support their hobbies, interests, and beliefs.
    Blogs aimed at this audience might focus on the “emotive score”. On the other hand, creative packaging, color and shape appeal to these customers, so the “creativity score” can be important as well.

    Can your blog pass the emotive and information power response tests?

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They-Know-Why, You-Know-How Blog Marketing

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Even if you’ve never smoked, there’s a lot to learn about blog marketing from the “Josh and Kayla know quitting is hard” TV commercial for NicoDerm CQ®, I was thinking just the other day.

Story power:
You may or may not ever have been addicted to nicotine, but as humans, we’ve always been addicted to stories, Alex Limberg writes in SmartBlogger.com. Stories, he explains, engage a deeper part of our brains than any logical explanation ever could. In the NicoDerm CQ® video, Kayla, leaving her dad’s hospital bedside to grab a smoke with Josh, realizes she needs to quit – she’s found her “why”.

People:
People-based marketing is driving change across the U.S. advertising industry, reports viantic.com. Even if your blog is devoted to marketing product, focus the content on how people will experience using it. The NicoDerm CQ® commercial shows “real” smokers experiencing the “real” challenge of quitting in a “real” human hospital setting. In blogging for business, where face-to-screen is the closest blog content writers come to their prospects,  introducing people (both people working for the company and users of the product or service) can ignite the kind of personal connection that gets readers emotionally involved.

Empathetic:
The “You know why, we know how” slogan is catchy, to be sure. More importantly, the tag line creates an emotional response. While advertising communicates a message about what a brand does, the way the message is conveyed has a greater influence on how likely consumers are to buy, David Brandt of Nielsen explains.  Ads that make people feel closer to a brand have a positive empathetic score.

Targeted:
Obviously, the Nicoderm CQ® ad is focused on a target market – viewers who are smokers, and smokers who know they need to quit.   In the same manner, business blogs must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who will want to do business with you.  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.

Advertising is “push marketing, while blogging is “pull marketing”, designed to attract searchers who have already identified their own need for a particular product or service. Those searchers already know why.What your blog content needs to demonstrate is this: you’ve done your homework and understand their “why”.  Your function is to furnish the “how”!

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How Committed and How Motivated Are Your Business Blog Readers?

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“To me, when people talk about the fact that employees are not engaged, that means they’re missing what’s in it for them,” Margarida Correia writes in Employee Benefit News. “Employers need to help their employees understand how their lives are better because they are employed at the company.”

“Employee engagement represents the levels of enthusiasm and connection employees have with their organization,” Alexis Croswell of Culture Amp adds. It’s a measure of:

  • how motivated people are to put in extra effort.
  • how committed they are to stay there.

Notice the order, if you please, in which I presented these comments from two benefits experts.
If employees don’t first understand how their own lives are better because they are working at the company and how their own interests are being served, they are unlikely to commit to stay with that company and to put in that extra measure of effort.

Exactly that same order of priority will be operative when it comes to readers engaging with the content in a company’s – or a professional practice’s blog. 

Blog content marketing based solely on the features of products and services is simply not likely to work. Certainly, for blogs to be effective, they must serve as positioning statements and describe a value proposition. But blogs must do more, far more. Just why, exactly, should all those features and benefits you’ve spent paragraphs describing make any real difference to them?

At Say It For You, I’m fond of saying that in writing content for business blogs, the “what” needs to come before the “who”.  The opening sentences of each post must make a clear connection between “what” the searcher needs and the “what” your business or practice can offer to fulfill that need. The first order of business is writing about them and their needs. Only after that’s accomplished should you be writing about what you do, what you know, and about what you know how to do.

Just as those employee benefits experts talked about getting employees to commit to staying at the company, a blog has a “retention” function as well.  Engaged readers might decide at any point that they:

  • are ready to learn more
  • have a question to ask
  • are ready to sign up
  • are ready to buy

That would be a wonderful result, of course, so long as the navigation path on your website isn’t a nuisance.  Like unmotivated employees, unmotivated readers will not be willing to put in extra effort to satisfy their needs. Both the content itself and the navigation path on the website had better be easy to digest.

Don’t let your readers miss “ the What’s-in-it-for-them” in your business blog!

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Boxing Day Mythbusting for Bloggers

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Discovered a mild case – or an epidemic – of counterproductive thinking when it comes to your industry or profession? Blog posts are the perfect medium for “mythbusting” to dispel that counterproductive thinking.

Since our last Say It For You post (dealing with Santa’s red outfit and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer), Boxing Day was celebrated in the UK and Australia.  Many think Boxing Day is for boxing up and returning gifts you don’t want, but that’s not the case at all. It was on Boxing Day that, in the Middle Ages, churches would open their alms boxes and dole out the money to the poor.

One very simple format blog content writers can use when mythbusting is to simply list common myths surrounding a particular business, debunking each one. Oxygen Magazine does exactly that in the article “Sacking Sleep Myths” lists 5 myths. Each myth is followed by a paragraph full of debunking facts. It’s a myth, for example, your relationship will suffer if you don’t sleep with your partner. “Night divorce” can actually improve sleep patterns and in turn improve the relationship.

In a second mythbusting article in Oxygen. writer Jenna Aytyiru Dedic takes a different tack, using a claim/verdict format. Claim: Joint pain is exacerbated by cold weather. Verdict: False. There is no evidence that cold itself is at all culpable.

The debunking function of business blog writing is very important.  Blog content writing has the power to clear the air, replacing factoids with facts, allowing readers to see their way to clear to making decisions.

Offering little-known explanations that explode common myths is one way to engage readers’ interest, to be sure.  The next step, however, has to be leading into myths and little known details related to our own products, services, and company history, and providing a value-packed “verdict” for each false claim or misunderstanding.

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