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Personalizing Blog Content – on Both Ends

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We need to update the definition of the word “personalize”, Stu Heinecke insists in his book Get the Meeting. Why? To differentiate between the two forms “wide” and “deep”. Wide personalization, Heinecke explains, applies readily available data across an audience, while deep personalization applies individualized research findings to produce unique outreach elements, one by one.

Can blogging do both?

Personalizing on the audience end:
At Say It For You, I teach that 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. And since we content writers are hired by clients to tell their story online to their target audiences, we need to do intensive research, as well as take guidance from the business owner’s or practitioner’s experience and expertise.

Now, since blogging is part of inbound marketing, it cannot involve researching each individual’s hobbies and preferences, creating and shipping unique gifts in order to “get the meeting”.

On the other hand, as Mo the Blog Coach explains, having an abstract audience in mind when creating content is ineffective, causing you to ramble on, trying to help ALL the people. Instead, she advises, “humanize your reader, singling them down to one specific person experiencing one specific problem.

Personalizing on the blog marketer’s end with I-you language:
In blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

It was apparent the editors of Flea Market Home & Living magazine had latched onto this exact secret. Each page featured a designer – or homeowner – statement beginning in first person:

  • “I make things out of what most folks consider garbage and get an inordinate amount of pleasure from it.”
  • “I try not to follow any rules. I really try not to copy anyone and I try to avoid trends.”
  • “I believe your sense of color is like a muscle that needs to e exercised.”
  • “I feel good supporting the local Goodwill. Plus, with the money I save, I feel better about the occasional splurge.”

In blog marketing, customers might be asked for statements like these – sharing stories of unique ways they used your product or service, or describing a problem you helped them solve. On marketers’ end, “I” and “we” statements give readers the feeling that the providers of the services and products are speaking directly to them. In fact, in business blogging, one goal should be to present the business or practice as very personal rather than merely transactional, reminding readers that there are real life humans behind the content on the website.

Blog content with the greatest chance of success is personalized on both ends!

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Add the Fred Factor to Your Business Blog

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Within ten minutes of his house are two giant hardware stores that are known for their low prices , Mark Sanborn relates in his book The Fred Factor, but he never goes to either one. Instead, Sanborn goes to a smaller store about ten minutes away. There, when you walk in the door, knowledgeable helpful staff members greet you and take you to the exact spot where you can find what you need. And, Sanborn adds, they ask enough questions to find out if what you asked for is what you need for the job. All organizations have access to the same information, training, compensation systems, and processes. So why do some succeed and others flop, Sanborn asks? The secret is passionate employees.

How can that “Fred Factor” be made to come across a computer screen, I wondered. With so many potential customers meeting you online these days, rather than in person, how can you replicate the feeling of being greeted by “knowledgeable and helpful staff members”? First-time blog site visitors can, indeed, become customers IF, Neil Patel explains, “you listen to them and give them a good visitor experience.” The goal – moving visitors upwards through the “trust pyramid”, from awareness to understanding, then belief, and finally to action.

The process begins, Patel says, with defining your ideal reader. See that customer as one person, not as groups of people, then develop a unique selling proposition around that very person. Just a Sanborn was saying about his favorite hardware store, success is all about solving problems and making customers happy. What valuable gift can you give to your first-time blog visitors in order to excite and retain them. Put yourself in their shoes and feel their pain, Patel says.

Sanborn was impressed with the fact that the hardware associates were right there at the door to welcome him and help him navigate to precisely the right shelf to find what he needed. In precisely the same way, now that visitors have found their way to your blog, your immediate challenge is to put them at ease by assuring them they’ve come to the right place and convey that they are valued.

Translating a face-to-face shopping experience into a digital visit is the challenge we blog content writers take on. Saying you offer superior customer service is never enough – you have to specifically illustrate ways in which your company’s customer service exceeds the norm. Stories of all kinds help personalize a business blog. Even if a professional writer is composing the content, true-story material increases engagement by readers with the business or practice. Case studies are particularly effective in creating interest, because they are relatable and “real”.

You might not think of simplifying your website navigation as another way to personalize your service, but it absolutely is. Both the content of your blog posts and the navigation paths on the blog site had better be easy, calling for fewer keystrokes and less confusion. Just as the hardware salesperson asked questions before taking Sanborn to the right section of the store, the website can help “steer” visitors to the right click.

Think of ways to add a “Fred Factor” to your website and blog.

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Using the Cs for Virtual Meetings and Business Blogs

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“Meetings should matter, especially when those meetings are taking place exclusively online,” author Paul Axtell posts in the book Make Virtual Meetings Matter. No one wants to be called in for a meeting that could have been an email.

You can transform those opinions by holding a meeting that is efficient and productive, useful and important, Axell explains. Leadership development consultant Jill Hinrichs tells how to use the Cs, each of which can be applied to business blog content writing:

Clarity
Make clear what the purpose of the conversation or meeting is and the outcome you are committed to producing. Keep tasks short, clear, and actionable.
The job of a blog post headline is to get people to read your article, but you must respect the reader experience. The expectations set up in the title must be fulfilled in the content, which itself must remain focused.

Connection
What is our relationship to each other and what is our shared experience? Who are you and with whom have you been dealing. What is our shared experience?
At Say It For You, I tell newbie blog content writers: “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.” Since we, as ghostwriters, have been hired by clients to tell their story online to their target audiences, we need to do intensive research, taking guidance from the client’s experience and expertise.

Candor
What is the relevant information we need to have in order to make good decisions? Create trust and share values, Hinrichs advises.
Blog readers want to feel trust in your know-how and professionalism and you won’t be able to help them until that trust happens. Readers who visit your blog are trying to learn about the business owner or practitioner behind the blog. One way to address that need is to use opinion to clarify what differentiates this business or practice from its peers. The blog has to add value, not just a promise of value should the reader convert to a buyer, but real value in terms of information, skill enhancement, or a new way of looking at the topic. Searchers will sense that they’ve come to a provider they can trust.

Commitment
What action will we commit to as a result of the conversation? There should be a clear next step.
In corporate blogging for business, the “ask” comes in the form of calls to action. Offering a reason for the requested action greatly improves the chances of having your request fulfilled. In both meetings and blogs, participants need to know how they can measure success.

If our blogging Calls to Action are going to be effective, I realized, it’s up to us blog content writers to offer workable benchmarks, explaining the “as measured by”.

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ETDBW Blog Content Writing

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“An important driver of customer loyalty is how little effort the customer has to expend to do business with you,” Dixon, Toman, and Delisi point out in the Effortless Experience. Identify the customers’ biggest hassles and look for ways to be their hero by making that piece of the process easier for them, the authors advise.

There are ways to be Easy To Do Business With, says Ted Stahl, and each of these can be implemented through blog marketing:

  • Be proactive. Stay in touch with customers on a regular basis, Stahl emphasizes.
    At Say It For You, after years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that business owners who “show up” with new content on their websites are rare. There’s a tremendous fall-off rate, with most blogs abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. You might say the first job of a blog content writer is to help a business or a professional practice “get its frequency on”, so that they keep “running into” their readers.
  • Simplify your packages. We live in a culture of information saturation. Consumers today are highly distracted, which is why your blog posts need to include very focused, well-written calls to action. Often I remind practitioners and business owners getting ready to launch a marketing blog that the only people who are going to notice their blog are the ones already interested in that topic. The Call to Action is simply giving those readers a simple way to act on the information you’ve provided, I explain.
  • Say YES to any reasonable request for personalization. I like to remind both the blog content writers at Say It For You and the clients who hire us that the goal of a business blog is to bring in customers “of the right kind”, customers who have a need for and who will appreciate the services, products, and expertise being showcased in the blog. Anecdotes and testimonials are each ways of using your blog to show how personalized your service can be.
  • Answer the phone on the first ring. “You’d think website visitors would be more than willing to click through to your Contact page to find your phone number, but the truth is, many times they’re not,” the Bright Orange Thread blog points out. Websites – and blog sites – that make it difficult for online searchers to navigate make it easy for those searchers to “bounce away”.  If the content makes the reader want to call your company, is the phone number in plain sight? If the reader wants to submit a question or comment, or request further information, how easy is that to do?

Your blog is an excellent way to show you are here and Easy-To-Do-Business-With!

 

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For Business Bloggers, the First things is Finding New Things to Say

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Gerald Ford must have had blog marketing in mind when he stated, “When a man is asked to make a speech, the first thing he has to decide is what to say”.

Copyblogger’s Liz Fulghum knew that, too. Back in 2008, Fulghum suggested that blog platforms come with a warning notice:

Blogging is not easy. You may experience unexpected droughts of inspiration, difficulty maintaining a schedule, or succumb to the  pressure of always needing fresh content.

Business bloggers often confide they have trouble continually coming up with fresh ideas for their blog posts and finding new ways to talk about the products and services they offer.  In this, the #1898 of the Say It For You blog, we have several blog “starter kit” models to offer:

Kit #1 – “Interview questions”
How did you arrive at the name for your business? For services or “packages” you offer? What do the names say about the outcomes you hope to bring for your clients and customers? What’s the biggest mistake you feel you’ve made in starting your business and what have you learned from that mistake?

Kit #2 – “Collating”
Collect information from different sources on a specific topic related to your business and organize the information in a new way. Use content from your own former bog posts, newsletters, and emails, adding material from other people’s blogs and articles, from magazines and book, summarizing the main ideas your readers are likely to find useful.

Kit #3 – “Curating”
Find opinion pieces that relate to your industry, quoting from those and then expressing your own unique perspective on that topic.

Kit #4 – “Listicles”
Listicles round up existing content pieces and present them in the form of numbered lists – of tactics to try, alternatives for solving a particular problem, or “best of…” compilations.

Kit #5 – “Changes of heart”
Go back and read your own past blog posts – the further back the better. Has experience – or have outside factors – caused you to change your mind on any of those statements? How? What factors caused your change of heart?

Kit #6 – “In the now”
Enter trending “conversations” about topics in the news. Scour the daily news and pay attention to talk shows, finding “hooks” to promote your products or services by weighing in on current concerns.

Blogging wasn’t yet around in the Gerald Ford era, but the former U.S. President was certainly right about this one: When a man (or woman!) is asked to make a speech (or compose a blog post!), the first thing to decide is what to say.

Keep your blog starter kit stocked and ready to wow!

 

 

 

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