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Sharing the “We” in Blogging for Business

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In a Say It For You blog post last week, I mentioned the ongoing debate about the use of the two pronouns “you” and “we” in marketing messages. While many respondents to a Corporate Visions survey had said they used we-phrasing deliberately to position themselves as trusted partners with their customers, a set of experiments reviewed in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that sometimes the use of “we” arouses suspicion rather than trust, because prospects and brand-new didn’t yet have reason to feel a congenial relationship with the company.

My own feelings on the matter, as expressed in my monthly newsletter, are that “we” is a valuable syllable. In communication with the public, and particularly in blog content writing, there’s a very special purpose to be served by using first person pronouns – they help keep the blog conversational rather than either academic-sounding or overly sales-ey. When the owners of a business or practice use phrases such as “we think”, “we believe”, “we see this all the time”, they are offering their unique slant or opinion that differentiates them from their competition.

Much to my delight, as I read through my copy of this week’s Indianapolis Business Journal, I saw that editor Lesley Weidenbener’s Commentary column was titled “we’re listening; we’re focused on business” The article  presents an extremely personal accounting of the way Weidenbener and her editorial staff had wrestled with the decision about whether, as a business-focused publication, they should include breaking news stories about criminal and social events that affect businesses. How would they avoid sensationalism or “yellow journalism”? The newsroom staff met, readers’ advice was considered, and “WE” (the editor shares) “decided that WE will maintain our focus on business news and on how crime….affects business.”, There’s no “royal ‘we'” here; in fact, Wedenbrener tells readers “We want to know what YOU think…”

As blog content writers, we represent those business owners and professions who are – and should be – the “we”, the ones with the ideas, the knowledge, the products and services, and the ones who have the experience and the unique “slants” to share. Those real people behind the “we” are sharing their stuff with YOU, the online readers receiving the good advice and answers to their questions. Blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations or “aggregations” of information, even when that information is extremely valuable. There has to be human connection.

The “oomph”, I’m now even more firmly convinced, comes from sharing the “we” in blogging for business.

 

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Not That “We”, This “We” in Blogging for Business

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In using the pronoun “we” in blog posts, I asserted in a recent newsletter, we keep the blog conversational rather than academic-sounding or overly sales-ey. That isn’t pompous, I wrote – “it just works”. My point was that in conversing with readers through blog content writing, using “we” calls attention to the real people behind the company or practice brand.

One thing for sure is that not everyone agrees. “Cut the word ‘we’ wherever you possibly can,” Joanna Wiebe advises in copyhackers.com, That should apply even to “About Us” page, she says. Why? Your visitors don’t want to hear about you. They want to hear about themselves – about their problems, their needs, their futures.

In a survey by Corporate Visions, more than 47% of respondents said they use we-phrasing deliberately to position themselves as trusted partners. On the other hand, the survey revealed, the audience felt much more strongly that they must take action when you-phrasing was done rather than we-phrasing. Meanwhile, a set of experiments by the Journal of Consumer Research examined messages from banks and a health insurer, concluding that the pronoun “we” doesn’t work if it’s inconsistent with the actual relationship. In other words, if customers don’t expect a congenial relationship with a particular type of company, “we” arouses suspicion. True, existing customers responded favorably to the “we” verbiage.

All this research made we realize that I had been thinking of one type of “we”, while these other articles were referencing another. I like to use the word “we” to refer to the people owning the company or professional practice. The real people behind the “we” pronoun are taking ownership of their opinions and of the particular ways in which they choose to serve their customers. I was not recommending the use of the “we” to mean we-the-owners-and-you-the-customers, in a very fakey and patronizing “Let’s-try-on-these-shoes-shall-we?” way. The “we” to which I was referring describes the business owners/practitioners as the writers of the blog, with the readers remaining the “you”.

Business owners and professionals are the “we” with the ideas, knowledge and experience to share. The online visitors are the “you” receiving the good advice and the answers to their questions.

 

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Putting Price Into Perspective

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Boy, those Harvard Business Review guys sure know how to put things into perspective… I learned that minimum wage employees in Venezuela would need to work 7,063 hours (in other words, more than three years) to buy an iPhone 13. (Here in good ole’ USA, you’d need to work a mere 114 hours to afford that phone.). Customers in every industry are price-sensitive, but, as Allstate found when it comes to auto insurance, it’s simply not true that most will buy the least expensive plan they can find. Price for the value you create, advises Dave Gray, author of Gamestorming: a Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. In fact, the Corporate Finance Institute defines value-based pricing as adjusting the price based on perceived value rather than historical price.

At Say It For You, we perceive our primary task as blog content writers to be this – clearly demonstrating the value delivered by a business or practice to its customers and clients. By doing that, we have the power to put the price of those goods and services into perspective.

Karen Greenstreet, writing in Forbes in 2014, offered reasons you should – and reasons you shouldn’t – put pricing on your website or in your blog.  You want the chance to establish rapport before discussing pricing, she acknowledges, but many customers will not do business with a company that is not forthcoming about pricing and fees.

My own take as a blog writer and trainer is that the very purpose of blogs is to put information into perspective for visitors. The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate; the better ones give visitors at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers.

For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”  It’s not that pricing isn’t important or that it should be left out –  it’s simply one of many things readers are going to consider.

I think about putting price into perspective not only in terms of my blogging clients’ customers, but in terms of their own budget as we begin a blog marketing initiative.. Often it’s a small business owner in a retail or services field competing with giant national chains. With fewer dollars available, the little guy cannot hope to compete in purchasing ads and needs to rely on organic search to attract eyeballs.  In other words, my clients are wondering, what are their chances for success when they find themselves playing with fewer “game pieces” than their larger, better funded, competitors?

That is where blog value comes in – with consistency and commitment, they have every chance of demonstrating the value they offer, putting the price of their goods and services into proper perspective.

 

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Post-It Note Blogging For Business

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Several years ago, while serving as an English tutor at Ivy Tech Community College, I created a writing guide for my students, urging them to complete the first three steps before sitting down at their laptops to write an assigned essay. They were to use Post-It® Notes to jot down ideas. That way, the order of the different paragraphs could be switched around. Blog content writers can follow an identical process in organizing their thoughts…

Step One: Select your topic. (Hint: Your TOPIC is not necessarily the same as the title for the post. Your topic is also not the same as your thesis statement. Your topic IS the answer to the question I might ask a person who’s just finished reading your blog post: “So…what was the subject of that piece?

Step Two: Compose your thesis statement. Another way to think of your thesis statement is your “one-sentence speech”. The thesis statement tells the reader what your particular “slant” is on the topic. Are you out to explain how to use a product or service? Are you intent on raising awareness of a problem you know how to solve? Are you aiming to demonstrate your involvement in your community?

Step Three: the three-legged stool
Just as a stool will not stand firmly without having at least three legs, you should plan to have three “legs”, or points to use in proving your thesis.

Step Four: Support your points
This is where students would find statistics, or articles by authorities who have opinions that support their ideas. (Even in this digital age, I used to advise students to print out pages they were going to quote, so that they could highlight specific passages they might cite.) On a Post-It®, which they’d affix to the page, they’d capture the information needed to cite that source on their References or Works Cited page).

Step Five: Outline your paper (or blog post)
With your tools now “lined up”, you are ready to decide in what order you’ll present the ideas. (This is where you experiment by moving the Post-It notes around). Once you’ve settled on the order, it will be easier to see which element is best for capturing attention at the start, as well as which makes for a powerful ending statement. This can also be the ideal time to select a title to arouse readers’ interest.

Try Post-It® blogging for business!

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Authenticity Blogging

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Get personal on social media, is Justin Mack’s advice to financial advisors – to demonstrate that you’re unique, you need to explain what you care about and what it’s like to work with you. “The right mix of personal, educational, and corporate brand content can add great value to an advisor’s social media page.” What resonates strongly with prospects, Mack says, is “personal character, culture, and behind-the-scenes content. “Both current and potential clients want to see the people who power the firm more than the firm’s latest earnings success.”

Authenticity is powerful in blog marketing. “You can talk about your goals, background, mission, and products by simply writing and publishing posts,” Livia Ryan writes on.eonetwork.org. Ryan is talking about personal posts, but at Say It For You, we think her statement very much applies to business blogging: “Readers will be provided an intimate view of your journey and what goes into developing your products and services. Connect with readers, and you create potential customers.”

Real people are the key to authentic relationships, sproutsocial agrees. Consumers want to learn more about the people behind their favorite brands. Surveys show 72% of consumers report feeling sloser to a company when employees share information about a brand online. For that very reason, thehartford.com explains, “Your employees need to understand your company, its values, its goals and its priorities.”

Company employees’ contribution to blogging
At Say It For You, when I’m working with a company to set up a business blogging strategy and I’m training that company’s employees to post blogs, quite often I hit resistance, with employees seeing blogging as just one more task in a series of duties that makes their work load heavier. Still even if my team is going to be composing the posts, it’s crucial for the business owner to enlist the support of the employees.

  • Employees are the ones in the field and on the phone with customers and clients.
  • Employees know the strengths and best uses of their own company’s products and services.
  • Employees are the best people to , in conversation with customers. to elicit testimonials and anecdotes that can be used for blog content.

One combination tactic that quite often turns out to be just right is having professionally ghostwritten posts (to maintain the regularity and research needed to win search engine rankings), but with employees providing their very special touch when time and their regular duties allow.

Blogging for business represents an ideal tool for “getting personal” and earning trust, allowing business owners to express who and “what” they are – What makes them tick?  What “ticks them off” about their own industry? In short, business blog writing needs to be real. Being real, though, doesn’t mean being sloppy about grammar and spelling – or about properly attributing quotes and ideas to their sources.

There’s a balancing act between authenticity and brand, but there’s little doubt – authenticity is powerful in blog marketing!

 

 

 

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