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Blog Marketing – Defining to Attract

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In a Schwab benchmarking study for Registered Investment Advisors, it was found that firms who had documented an ideal client persona for targeting their marketing efforts attracted 42% more new clients. “In order to drive growth over the long term, any company has to understand what type of person they are perfectly designed to serve,” When providers focus on the unique needs of their target audience, they can develop an experience that is perceived as valuable by those clients, was the takeaway.

That advice about targeting your market is right on target for content marketers, we know at Say It For You. Your business or practice can’t be all things to all people. Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for your ideal customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry, all must focus on things you know about your target market – their needs, their preferences, their questions – and only secondarily on how wonderful you and your staff are at satisfying those needs and preferences.

To go about creating an ideal client persona, Schwab urged its advisors to:

  • identify favorite clients, clients who are engaged, profitable, and loyal, and from whom “you get real joy and energy”.
  • create a composite of the best characteristics of those clients, identifying commonalities such as concerns, personality traits, communication preferences.
  • create a value proposition that “resonates with that composite profile”. Paint a picture of why those clients will look back and be grateful they made the decision to work with you.”

Ten years before that Schwab survey, I had shared insights from an article in the Journal of Financial Planning explaining that financial advisors have three basic roles:

  1. As listeners, advisors’ goal is to uncover and address the source of clients’ concerns.
  2. As connectors, their goal is to help clients connect the different aspects of retirement planning, and when necessary, connect clients with other professionals whose expertise they need.
  3. As resolvers, their goal is guiding clients to decisions.

In marketing, focus is everything. As content writers, we cannot position ourselves (or our clients) within the marketplace without studying the surroundings for our target audience. For blogs to be effective, they must serve as positioning and differentiating statements. We need to know our readers, and our readers need to know we know.

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Blog Content By and For the Unquenchably Curious

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts are based on the book What Makes Flamingos Pink, by Bill McLain, “a colorful collection of Q & A’s for the unquenchably curious”…

One thing it’s always a good idea to include, I tell content marketers, is interesting information on topics related to their business or professional practice. If you can provide information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, we explain at Say It For You, all the better. So long as there’s a real “back story” demonstrating valuable lessons learned and why that information should matter to the web visitor, tidbits can prove to be enormously useful tools….

The color of most birds is a matter of genetics, McClain explains in the book. Bluebirds are blue by nature, cardinals red for the same reason – their inherited genes. Famingos are different – they are pink because their diet is heavy in natural pigments called carotenoids. Wisely, the author is quick to show readers the relevance of that information – “When we eat carrots or beets, we are also eating carotenoids,” he explains. ” But no matter how many beets and carrots we eat, the only way we can turn pink is to blush or get a sunburn,” he adds.

One big goal of the writing we do for our business owner and professional practitioner clients is positioning them as experts in the eyes of both their existing clients and their web visitors. While good blog post content can and should be entertaining, it’s important to remember that most online searchers are not pursuing a recreational activity, but instead are on a fact-finding mission. You can hook them, we teach at Say It For You, with humorous and fascinating trivia tidbits, but the material you serve up needs to be meaningful to that audience and – actionable.

The factoid about flamingos’ pink coloring is an example of how trivia can be used in content marketing to accomplish a variety of initiatives: defining basic industry terminology, sparking curiosity about the subject, putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective, and explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way.

Always remember, though – they may be “unquenchably curious”, but online visitors are rarely unquenchably patient. Structure the content so as to address the two questions “So what?” (why it might matter) and “Now what?” directing them to the next step.

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Guest Post: 5 Best Ideas for Driving Organic Traffic through Blog Posts

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Are you wondering if blogging is actually worth it for your business? Blogs may seem time-consuming to create, especially for a small business owner, but they have shown to be extremely beneficial for driving traffic.

Why are blog posts important for online businesses?

Obviously, this article is all about encouraging more organic traffic through blog posts but what other benefits do blogs bring?

Firstly, the more articles your website has published, the more keywords you are likely to rank for. Increasing keyword ranking will contribute to your website’s SEO rankings and authority within your niche. With a blog, you’re able to address more questions and thoughts that your target audience is looking for and are therefore more likely to rank higher within their search results.

Secondly, blog posts are essential to the educational part of your funnel, the top entry level. People come to blogs for answers to their queries and will start pushing them through your funnel. Helping to create warm leads by getting them to sign up to your email list or explore and purchase your products and/or services.

Thirdly, unlike social media posts that have a short life span, results from blog posts can get better with age. Over time, your articles may attract more links, more shares, and gain higher SERP positions. Blogging will provide long-term results and ensure a continued flow of traffic, leads and potential sales.

This is only a touch on all of the potential benefits you will find from blogging. So, what are the best ways to start?

5 best ways to boost organic traffic with blog posts

1. Writing List Posts
Our first recommendation is to write list posts, exactly like the post you are reading right now. Want to know the specific data behind the success of list posts? In a recent study reported by Conductor, a global SEO agency, 36% of the participants noted that they were more likely to click on list posts and list headlines.

Here are some examples of good list headlines that are sure to increase traffic:

  •  10 ways for using the Pomodoro technique in everyday time-management
  •  3 open-source alternatives to Adobe Photoshop
  •  5 free workout programmes for busy people and their benefits

If you want to increase your search rankings, your list posts have to offer something unique and valuable. This is typically done by following these  recommendations:

  • Offering expert advice based on your personal experiences. Referring to existing case studies and data.
  • Sharing valuable anecdotes and tidbits relevant to your topic.
  •  Including practical recommendations addressing topical issues.

 

2. Sharing Third-Party Resources and Links
When blogging, it’s easy to see other bloggers as your rivals. This attitude, however, is destructive and unhealthy if you’re planning to blog professionally.

Collaborating with other bloggers is one of the most effective means of growing organic traffic and is a cornerstone of white-label link building. A great way to achieve this aim is by writing and curating a resource page.

A good resource page should do all of the below.
? Include links to respectable blogs, and third-party products and services.
? Disclose if you’re partnered with other blogs or are sponsored by the companies that you are linking to.
? Be topical; you should update your resource page at least once a month to keep track of the latest issues and provide value to your readers.
? Include your remarks and comments about the content you’re linking to.

Some platforms (e.g., Hubspot) are so large that their entire resources page only includes links to their own resources and tools. This is simply not feasible for smaller bloggers. Because of this, don’t worry if your resources page needs to link to other popular blogs. Other blogs are not out there to ‘steal’ your readers. Your readers will appreciate you trying to provide as much value as possible and will return to your blog for more. In addition, resource pages can be a great place to connect with other bloggers and perhaps gain links back to your blog and grow your rankings.

3. Writing Detailed Reviews
Let’s face it, everybody likes reading a good review. But what exactly should you review? Well, practically anything goes. Book reviews are incredibly popular right now as reading is seen as a highly prestigious and thoughtful hobby in a world that is overwhelmed by information. The average time spent reading books in the US has remained consistently around 15 minutes per day since 2014.

Other great review options are online platforms, tools and courses. Online learning is experiencing a huge boom right now due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, a lot of people simply don’t know what courses or online universities they should choose. You could (and should) become a very valuable guide in a rapidly expanding industry.

Reviews of products are also encouraged. There are always new and emerging products and brands within every niche. Product reviews will always have a place in blogging and gain organic traffic from the people looking specifically for reviews before purchasing anything. This can also easily lead to affiliate sales and sponsored review posts in the future.

If you want to write a captivating review, follow the below guidelines:

  • Include links to respectable sources of secondary data.
  • Clearly mark your own subjective opinions.
  • Don’t be afraid to share personal stories and anecdotes.
  • Always remain critical but don’t nitpick.

4. Using a Keyword Ranking Tool
Two of the most widespread mistakes made by bloggers are failing to integrate new keywords into their posts and not getting rid of keywords that are no longer valuable. You’ve already made the same mistakes if you’ve done at least one of the following things:

  • Only use a single spreadsheet including all your keywords.
  • Do not check the keyword statistics for your older posts.
  • Do not use any third-party tools to monitor the rankings of your current keywords.

If you’ve recognised your blogging practices in the above list, then it’s time for a change. Luckily, two of the best keyword ranking tools that are available to bloggers are completely free.

  •  Ahrefs provides free monthly updates to its keyword database and can search keyword popularity across different domains. The tool also focuses on non-conventional metrics such as keyword difficulty and the estimated organic traffic provided by each new keyword
  • MOZ can be used to easily generate infographics about specific keywords and is a great daily tracker of keyword popularity.

Make a habit of spending at least 10-15 minutes per day to check the status of your keywords and update your SEO spreadsheets and documents. This is not only a great time management exercise but is practically a guarantee of achieving solid organic traffic figures.

5. Guest Posting Featuring Opinion Leaders
We’ve already discussed that bloggers become stronger by cooperating and writing extensive resource pages. The same principle also applies to guest posting and inviting opinion leaders to give valuable tips on a specific subject.

A good guest post:

  • is written by a well-known personality and includes the distinct features of this personality’s style.
  • offers a unique perspective on a topical issue (e.g., new updates to the Google algorithm).
  • credits all contributors and details why these people are considered experts in a given field.
  • includes links to the guest contributor’s other publications.

We know that guest posting might seem a bit scary. After all, you’re willingly relinquishing creative control to a person you might not have met before. Nonetheless, it’s a great way to grow traffic and increase the authority of your web page.

You can also provide high-quality, guest post content to other websites yourself. This helps to establish you and your business as an authority in your niche and can bring organic traffic from other blogs.

Another way to collaborate with opinion leaders is by creating interview-type posts or list of snippets from multiple personalities. The wealth of information in these posts can attract a lot of attention from potential visitors and links from other bloggers.

Conclusion:

In our opinion, the optimal time to start growing your organic traffic is right now. With the rise in teleworking and similar digital services, more and more people turn to bloggers to adapt to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. If you follow the above strategies, you’re sure to become a valid opinion leader in your own right and strongly grow your loyal following.

Author Bio
           

 Catherine Smith is an online Marketing Manager at PhD Centre, specializing in PhD thesis writing. She is passionate about researching and writing on various topics, including Education, Marketing, and Technology.

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Taglines and Blog Post Titles

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“Slogans and their accompanying campaigns are some of the best tools advertisers have to connect with their audiences,” according to theladders.com. Also known as catchphrases or tagline, slogans 1. grab attention and 2. build awareness around a product or brand.

As a content writer, I couldn’t help noticing that the well-known taglines listed in the article appear to fall into several different categories::

The actual brand name is included in the tagline:
State Farm – “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”
MasterCard – “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.”

The tagline emphasizes the benefit to users of the product:
M&M – “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands”
Energizer -” It keeps going and going and going”
Bounty – “The quicker picker upper”
Greyhound – “Leave the driving to us”
Campbell’s Soup – “M’m! M’m! Good!”
New York Times – “All the news that’s fit to print”
Maxwell House – “Good to the last drop”
FedEx – “When there is no tomorrow”

The tagline is largely motivational, appealing to consumers’ desire for significance:
Nike – “Just do it”
De Beers – “A diamond is forever”

The tagline needs a lot of further explanation:
McDonalds – “I’m lovin’ it”
Wendy’s – “Where’s the beef??
General Electric – “Imagination at work”
California Milk Processor Board – “Got milk?”

“You can’t be confused about your mission, the authors caution; otherwise you’ll create a slogan that lacks power and purpose.” (In creating blog post titles, content writers can take heed of three of the Ladder’s guidelines):

  1. Keep it short and sweet, ideally under eight words.
  2. Don’t get too fancy or sophisticated with your word choice.
  3. Be honest

Another of their suggestions, on the other hand, is less applicable to blog marketing: “Don’t give it an expiration date; you want it to transcend time, so don’t include references to current events…” Marketing content writers, we believe at Say It For You, should, in their posts and in the titles of those posts, make use of conversations trending at the time and of current happenings.

In content marketing through blogs, we want the searcher to click on the link to the post, and of course we want search engines to offer our content as a match for readers seeking information and guidance on our topic. More than that, though, a blog post title in itself constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors. In essence, you’re saying, “If you click here, you’ll be led to a post that in fact discusses the topic mentioned in the title. Catchy as the “I’m lovin’ it” and even the “Where’s the beef?” taglines just aren’t going to sere the purpose, since the words don’t match up with those the searchers used.

On the other hand, when titles succeed in appealing to target readers’ need – both for the benefits of a product or service and to satisfy their desire for motivation and significance, that’s nothing but M’m! M’m good!

 

 

 

 

 

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More Content Lessons From the Stanley Cup

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This week in our Say It For You blog, I’m sharing valuable content writing tips based on Sean Hutchinson’s article in Mental Floss magazine …

Players avoid the “jinx” until they’ve won
Some hockey players are afraid that if they touch the Stanley Cup before having won it, they’ll jinx their team’s chances at the real prize.

Content writers have the power to soothe fears and debunk myths, addressing misinformation and superstitions standing in the way of prospects taking action, all while demonstrating the expertise and knowledge of their business owner clients.

Stanley Cup near-disasters
At a 1994 Pittsburgh Penguins victory party, winger Phil Bourque wanted to see if the cup would float and threw it into the host’s in-ground pool. (The trophy sank to the bottom immediately.) in 1924, on their way to a victory banquet, team members had to remove the Cup from the truck of the car to get to the spare tire. When time came to drink champagne from the Cup, they realized they’d left it at the side of the road, and had to go back to retrieve it. In 2022, defenseman Jack Johnson had his three kids baptized in the Cup.

In content marketing, not only do true stories such as this entertain and amuse, in blog content, stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, helping readers relate to the business or practice owners.

There are actually three Stanley cups.
The original Stanley Cup dates back to 1892, but, by the 1960s, it had become too brittle to handle and was relegated to a display at the Hockey Hall of fame in Toronto. The Presentation Cup was created and is the one awarded today. The final cup, a replica created in 1993, is used as a stand-in when the Presentation Cup is unavailable.

Whenever I’m sitting down with new Say It For You business owner clients as they’re preparing to launch a blog for their company or practice, I find that one important step is to select one to five recurring – and related – themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts.  Different “cups” are still centered around the same central themes.

The Stanley Cup, a hockey victory symbol, can turn content creators in the direction of success!

 

 

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