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Best Content Marketing – Both Empathetic and Authoritative

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“To position yourself as the guide for your customer needs,” says Donald Miller in Marketing Made Simple, ” you need to express empathy and demonstrate authority. Together, empathy and authority make a powerful one-two punch, while, Miller cautions, “empathy without authority falls flat, as does authority without empathy.”

On a website, Miller suggests, there are three ways to communicate authority:

  1. testimonials
  2. logos of companies you’ve worked with
  3. statistics: years you’ve been in business, how many clients have worked with you

Meanwhile, to communicate empathy, he suggests, use “we know what it feels like to…” statements in the content.

Interestingly, the three “soundbites” Miller suggests looking for when collecting testimonials are element that, at Say It For You, we suggest are “soundbites” on which to base blog posts:

  • Overcoming objections: “I worried that the course was going to be a waste of time. I was wrong…”
    In creating content for marketing blogs, we need to keep in mind that people are online searching for for solutions for dilemmas they’re facing. But, since searchers haven’t always formulated their questions, what I suggest is that we do that for them, anticipating blog readers’ negative assumption questions.
  • Solving problems: “I’m on my feet all day, and my lower back used to ache. Now, with my new XYZ shoes….
    As you’re describing how your product or service solved clients’ problems, the reaction you’d like to elicit in blog readers is sighs of relief that they’ve found you.
  • Adding value: “I was skeptical of the price, but I’m so glad I used…”
    A small business owner in a retail or services field cannot hope to compete in purchasing ads and needs to rely on organic search to attract eyeballs. With blog marketing, using consistency and commitment, they have a chance a winning the customer acquisition game.

One way content writers can project empathy is with history-of-our-company background stories.  Those personal anecdotes can have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame adversity.

At the same time, “authority” is an important term in marketing blog writing. For one, Google’s algorithms are sensitive to authority when selecting which content to match with a reader’s query. Perhaps even more important, readers visit your blog for answers and for information they can trust. The success of your blog marketing efforts will be very closely aligned with your being perceived as a SME (subject matter expert) in your field.

Content marketing needs to be both – empathetic and authoritative!

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It’s Your Rant, But It’s All About Them

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A “rant”, (venting a complaint in an angry, loud voice), is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a “a high-flown, extravagant, or bombastic speech or utterance, a piece of turgid declamation, a tirade.” While oral tirades are still with us, Daniel Seidel writes in Slate, the last decade or so has seen more and more written rants, “a form that has blossomed on the Web.” A good rant, Seidel thinks, expresses a real passion, often one enflamed by a feeling of powerlessness. Still, many rants are humorous, with a tongue-in-cheek tone. Whatever the tone of aa particular rant, he adds, there is neither the expectation nor the desire for a response. “It would be simplistic to think of blogging as a kind of sublimated ranting,” Seidel remarks, “but blogs do form a part of our cacophonous culture.”

Not all blog posts are rants, of course. There are, however, three “rant”- like content piece types that our writers at Say It For You have found useful:

  1. An “if only” best business practice that you wish everyone with whom you do business would adopt. The content makes the point that doing things in a certain way would make the lives of both the provider and of the customer so-o-o much easier and business dealings so much more efficient!
  2. A device, program, or source of information that the owner wants t make sure everyone knows about, something that would make doing business s much smoother and more efficient
  3. A mistake that you see others making over and over that you believe is a big barrier to their success.

(To be most effective, even if a rant post is focused on a single idea, the content should be broken down or “chunked” into bullet points or numbered steps to make the concept easy to remember, as demonstrated above.)

Needless to say, rant blog posts can elicit strong reactions on the part of readers (either because you’ve touched a nerve (what you’re complaining about may be their pet peeve, as well), or because they totally disagree and want to prove you wrong. Worse, your rant risks rubbing readers the wrong way, making them feel as if they are incompetent or uninformed.  People generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they come to your blog seeking information on what you sell, what you do, and what you know about!

If you’re moved to include a rant or two in your content marketing, the cardinal rule to remember is that it’s all about the readers, not about you. How will they experience your rant?

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To Be Original, Be Well-Versed

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“Originality is important for publication, and to be as original as possible, you have to be well versed in what has already been done,” Ran Walker, author of 28 books, tells writers in a Writer’s Digest piece. With millions of people working in the horror novel genre, for example, “it’s easy to go for the easy scares or gross-outs. It’s good to be inspired by other writers, he admits, but that inspiration needs to guide you into new and uncharted territory.

When it comes to online content marketing, Camille Allegrucci has a slightly divergent view, citing “the myth of originality”. Your voice, Allegrucci says, is more important than new ideas, and no “original” idea is truly original, anyway. (Would anyone seriously contend that Anna Karenina lacks originality or is not worth reading because of the plot points it shares with Madame Bovary?) The question to ask yourself is not “How can I say something that has never been said before?” but rather “How can I express myself in the best way that my voice allows?”

It helps to bring in less well-known facts about familiar things and processes, and even more when you suggest new ways of thinking about things readers already know. New ideas may not be “a thing”, but new insights and opinions can be. At Say It For You, our advice to business owners and their content writers is that you must offer an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up to readers. No, it’s not “new information”, and you’re not re-inventing the proverbial wheel. What’s “new is the clarity of your views on the subject.

There may, in fact, be “millions of people” working in the horror novel genre, as Ran Walker points out, but there are 4.4 million new blog posts being published every DAY! So, as Allegrucci claims, it may not be about “originality” after all, but more about “un-packaging” information already out there, proactively interpreting content in ways that are not only understandable, but usable by readers.

The other “piece” of being well-versed to be original involves the research into emotive power responsiveness. 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

The “originality” of effective blog posts, I teach at Say It For You, consists of offering the business owner’s (or the professional’s, or the organizational executive’s) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic and their unique experiences and insights gained.

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Behind Each Marketing Content Piece Lies at Least 1 of 5 Key Interview Questions

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“Interviews are a vital aspect of nonfiction writing,” Don Vaughn explains in Writer’s Digest. He’s discovered five questions that “help add detail, color, and heft to our work”. At Say It For You, we’ve learned, these same questions inspire content marketing, as business and practice owners “introduce” themselves to their potential buyers.

1. What was your inspiration?
Almost always, there’s an important incident or insight that give birth to the birth of an enterprise. The insight can come from a negative experience or a positive one, and sharing that with readers serves to humanize and personalize the post, adding power to the value proposition.

2. Why is this important?
Someone who has accomplished something remarkable inherently understands why that accomplishment is important, Vaughn reasons, but readers may not.. Often blog visitors don’t know how to “digest” the claims you’ve “served up”.  They simply don’t have any basis for comparison, not being as expert as you are in your field. Spend time providing that “context” that clarifies why what you’ve done – and what you’re doing – is important.

3. What were the greatest challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?
“Asking sources how they dealt with overwhelming challenges in pursuit of success can often form the heart of an article,” Vaughn teaches. Passion and personality give blog posts a big advantage as compared to brochures, ads, or even the website, and owners’ recalling the obstacles they’d needed to overcome lends power to the marketing narrative.

4. What do you get personally from your work?
Using first person (the pronouns “I” and “we”) allows the marketing content to come across as intimate, unique, and conversational. And while no one likes people who speak of nothing but theselves, It’s important to show the person behind the posts, revealing the personality of the business owner or practitioner standing ready to serve the customers.

5. Who else would you suggest I talk to?
Quoting others to support your points and show you’re in touch with trends in your field is a good idea. Aggregating different sources of information on a topic is a way to add value to content readers.

Behind every content marketing piece is at least one of those five key interview questions!

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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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