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Interviewing Questions for Blog Posts

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Interviews are a vital aspect of nonfiction writing, Don Vaughn explains in Writer’s Digest. and freelancers often turn to subject matter experts or to everyday people with unique experiences, perspective, or opinions. Vaughn suggests five key questions be posed to interviewees:

  1. What was your inspiration for…..?
  2. Why is your accomplishment important?
  3. What were the greatest challenges you faced?
  4. What do you get personally from your work?
  5. Who else would you suggest I talk to?

In a sense, blog posts might be viewed as “reverse” or “flip-flopped” interviews, with prospects interviewing the business, rather than the other way around. At Say It For You, we teach content writers that searchers are recruiting help, evaluating the content in light of their own needs. But, as a blog-content-writer-for-hire by business owners and professional practitioners, I’ve found that actually interviewing the founders or principals of a business or practice can make for very effective marketing content, often more compelling than the typical narrative text. How does that work? In a face-to-face (or online) interview with a business owner, executive, or professional practitioner, I capture their ideas and some of their words. I then add “framing” to the post with my own questions and introductions.

Interviewing subject experts will give your content depth, credibility, and perspective, explains Dawn Wolfe of thesimonsgroup.com. For one thing, industry experts are in a better position to make a topic meaningful for non-insiders. As a side benefit, Wolfe suggest, the experts you interview are more likely to share the content with their own networks, increasing your reach. In fact, Wolfe recommends providing interviewees with “teaser copy” they can post to their own social channels, making sure to include relevant hashtags. Wolfe has practical suggestions for locating subject matter experts to interview, suggesting analysts, authors, consultants, government agency and nonprofit personnel, universities and professional associations.

The STAR method of conducting a “behavioral” interview has become quite popular, The interviewee is asked to describe a Situation they were in, a Task they needed t accomplish, the Actions they took, and the Results. But, whatever format our Say It For You content writers select for an interview with a SME (subject matter expert), the goal is to elicit new insights into the subject matter. Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to contain opinion and insight, not only information and products.

 

 

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Retelling Your Marketing Story

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Of course they’ve heard it before, and reusing ideas is certainly nothing new, Toni Fitzgerald explains in the Writer magazine. “From Biblical stories to Homer’s Odyssey, conceptsget adopted and tweaked for the audience.” And just why do writers retell stories?

  • to honor a work that made a big impact on them
  • to amplify an important message
  • to explore a theme from a new direction
  • to add diversity and additional context
  • to force readers to rethink things they may have taken for granted

“Stop us if you’ve heard this one,” Fitzgerald tells readers: Headstrong young woman bucks the expectations of society and of her family. She meets a young man who seems immune to her charms, falls in love with him, learning that things are not always what they seem and that being vulnerable is the only way to move forward… Sure, that’s the story of classic novel Pride and Prejudice, but that plot also fits Bridget Jones’ Diary. The big advantage of recasting a novel is that, since people are already familiar with the story, you spend less time setting up the plot, earning automatic “buy-in” from the readers.

Storytelling is a strong business skill, SCORE explains, with the power to boost business in a number of ways, creating product awareness, improving customer loyalty, and increasing profit. Business stories today, the authors add, are created around eight topics:

  1. Who we are
  2. Why us
  3. Our vision
  4. Good business
  5. What we have learned
  6. How we design it
  7. How we do it
  8. Meet our customers

“Transferring values and beliefs is done through your story’s character having an epiphany because your audience will also experience this,” the SCORE authors explain  As Fitzgerald sees it, “We all want to be the heroes of the story.” But, because different segments of your audience will experience your story in different ways, audiences must be attracted with different “digital honeypots”, on24.com explains. To create a compelling story, you need to understand your readers and who will respond and take action, defining your “buyer persona(s)”, Hubspot advises.

“As marketing strategists, we stress the importance of repetition. Retelling your story – through traditional and digital media, advertising and face-to-face sales – is the only way to ensure your value points are heard, understood and remembered,” says Robin Miller of publicity.com. “If you’re going to be in the marketing or advertising business, if you’re going to be in sales, you’ve got to tell your story over and over, and over and over, and over and over again. Then you’ve got to tell it one more time,” he advises.

Of course they’ve heard it before, we explain to our Say It For You clients. The very secret of success lies in the retelling of your marketing story!

 

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Blogging the Whys, Whats, and Talking Points

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Carmel Rotary and the City of Carmel, I learned from the Carmel Monthly magazine, are preparing to host the Deputy Mayor of Cortona Italy, Carmel’s new sister city. As part of an “authentically Italian experience”, titled Arte d’Italia, Attesti, a world-renowned pianist, will perform at the Palladium and at the Carmichael.

Exciting cultural news, but as a content marketer, I was quite impressed with the way writer Janelle Morrison presented that news, including the three elements that need to be included in blog posts designed to inform readers about new developments in a business or practice:

The Whys
The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate. The better websites give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs. But, as we stress at Say It For You, it’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to present new developments, as well as giving readers a deeper perspective with which to process the information and show why it’s important. The first part of the Carmel Monthly article explains the various ways, according to Mayor Brainard, any city that is a member of Sister Cities International benefits in terms of international goodwill, student educational exchanges, and expanded business relationships.

The Whats
Morrison then went on to detail the “whats”, meaning the details of the upcoming plans, representing opportunities to “showcase some of Carmel’s finest and most beautiful venues and organizations”. Hotel Carmichael’s Chef Jason Crouch have curated “an amazing menu focused on the rich culinary influence found in this region of Italy”. Carmel Symphony Orchestra Artistic Director Janna Hymes worked via Zoom with Attesti to design a whole new program featuring Italian and American pieces. In blogging for business, it’s simply not enough to provide even very potentially valuable information to online searchers who’ve landed on a company’s corporate blog. The facts (the “whats”) need to be “translated” into relational, emotional terms that compel reaction – and action – in readers.

The Talking Points
Prepare talking points for each interview, is the advice offered by Sally Cates to financial advisors in Financial Planning Magazine. Business bloggers need to prepare talking points as well, curating and properly attributing materials from different sources to support the points and add value for readers. Some of the powerful talking points included in the Carmel Monthly piece are these: Music is a universal language. Mayor Attesti explained that the Italian legislation, more restrictive than that of the U.S., makes approaching sponsors for cultural activities a challenge; he hopes to learn about economic sustainability of cultural initiatives. On the other hand, he hopes to suggest ways to increase tourism and cultural life in Carmel.

In blogging for business, all three elements are important for success – the whys, the whats, and the talking points!

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Blogging Starts and Grows Because of Trust

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“In business, we need our customers and potential customers to trust us….otherwise they simply won’t want to invest time and resources into us and our business,” Safarz Ali writes in the Business Influencer. How do you prove that you are trustworthy? Ali suggests the biggest three ways:

1. Show, don’t tell. Live up to your promises and use client case studies to prove it.
At Say it for You, we emphasize that case studies chronicle a customer or client who had a problem or need, taking readers through the various stages of using the product or service to solve that problem.

2. Practice honest communication, brushing no issues under the rug.
Problems with customer service are going to arise, but those very situations offer you an opportunity to shine by making things right. Empower Then use writing for business as one excellent vehicle to tell about your own mistakes and the way you offer outstanding customer service by making things right.

3. Prove you know your customers.
Your blog can’t be all things to all people, any more than your business can be all things to everybody.  The blog 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 and how sophisticated your approach..

The top five best communication traits of a successful leader, Rebecca Weintraub and Stan Lowes think, are these:

1. walking the talk
The typical online searcher is leery of hype and unrealistic claims, and honesty in content writing has power.

2. authenticity (understand yourself first)
To demonstrate that you’re unique, you need to explain what you care about and what it’s like to work with you.

3. embracing a communication culture
Use your blog to demonstrate your full engagement and concern for your customer’s welfare, and allow real-time feedback from your target audience.

4. storytelling
You have to have a point, conveying the reason you’re sharing the story.

5. listening
When I’m ghost-blogging for a business, I need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, on what’s in the news, and about what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my client sells and what it does for its clients.

Blogging starts and grows because of trust!

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Elevate Your Word Game in Blogging for Business

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“I learned the hard way that my marriage was on the edge of collapse – again” and “The Bitter Truths I learned About My Eating Disorder – After Being Pregnant” are both decent titles for a pitch, says Estelle Erasmus, who, in Writer’s Digest this month, teaches writers tactics for capturing the attention of an editor. (The expression “the bitter truths” is quite cliché, Erasmus noted, but having an eating disorder rear its head during pregnancy is different enough to catch attention. She suggested changing the title to “Getting Pregnant Spiraled Me Into an Eating Disorder”.)

Tips offered by Erasmus that are remarkably relevant for business blog content creators include:

Clarity is key, more important than beautiful language.
Titles represent crucial elements in capturing the interest of both search engines and online searchers. But, aside from Search Engine Optimization considerations, the title of a blog post constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors that if they choose to click on the title, it will lead them to a blog post with information on the topic named in that title.

Find the emotional implication behind what you’re writing about. There has to be a transformation that takes place, one to which readers can relate.
In blog marketing, those who make the most emotionally persuasive argument win. The goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message.

Active verbs work best, helping to paint a picture for readers.
The very purpose of the blog content is to showcase the accomplishments of the business and products and services it brings to customers. That’s why using the active voice makes so much sense in corporate blog writing.

Focus on a small moment in time, not a a broad all-encompassing saga.
At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the Power of One, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience.

Elevate your word game, learning to think in sound bites by watching TV with the captions on.
Blogs, unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, are short and concise, more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces.  That’s what makes it so feasible to use blogs to achieve the frequency that’s needed to win online search engine rankings.

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