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Benchmark Blogging

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“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” legendary management consultant Peter Drucker was fond of saying. “How do we know if we’ve identified a result rather than an activity?” he asks. To achieve any goal, whether personal or business, explains local consultant Michael Hill, use the acronym SMART:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Results-oriented
  • Time-phased

When blog content writers use SMART, that can greatly enhance the value of the information and advice they’re offering.

Specific:
Start by asking yourself what you want the person to do as a result of reading this post.
Each business blog post should impart one new idea or call for a single action. Focused on one thing, your post has greater impact, since people are bombarded with many messages each day. Respecting readers’ time produces better results for your business.

Measurable:
Readers need to know how they will know that choosing a particular product or service has been a good idea. Offer tips on small, incremental positive changes they should begin to notice.

Attainable:
Describe realistic, achievable and easily identifiable signs that can signal that the client is on a trajectory leading towards the desired outcomes.

Results-oriented:
While time may have elapsed from the initial transaction, the content of the blog can serve as a reminder of the initial reason for beginning the regimen, purchasing the item, or continuing to take training.

Time-phased:
Setting expectations based on time is a good idea for blog content writers. Imagine readers asking themselves “How will I use the product?  How much will I use? How often? Where? What will it look like?  How will I feel?”

Remember, if clients and customers can’t measure it, they will not even try to “manage it”.

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Triggering Trivia in Business Blogs

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Modern technology has made it possible to find and share fascinating information, explains Alex Palmer in the delightful little book Alternative Facts. Of the 200 entries in the collection, about one-third are “true-ish” rather than true, and readers are invited to guess which those are, with answers found at the back of the book.

Trivia in general, I’ve long maintained, represent useful tools for blog content writers. In addition to adding some fun to the discussion of a topic, trivia can be used in business blogs in at least four different ways:

1. defining basic terminology
2. sparking curiosity about the subject
3. putting modern-day practices and beliefs into historical perspective
4. explaining why the business owner/practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way

Of course, stocking up on ideas for future blog posts isn’t all about trivia, as I explain to newbie blog content writers. The trivia tidbit is just the jump-off point for the message.

Here are eight facts, culled from Palmer’s book, that illustrate the value of “triggering” the discussion of a subject using a piece of trivia and relating it to the sponsor of the blog:

Who might use each of these tidbits in their blog?

1. Chewing your food longer can help you lose weight.
(weight loss advisor, spa, health provider, health food store) ,:

2. Of all creatures, moths have the strongest sense of hearing.
(audiologist, hearing aid company)

3. Americans are the only people who label pencils No. 2.
(private school, tutoring center, office supply store)

4. Warner Music Group owns the rights to the lyrics of “Happy Birthday”, and earns royalties on every use of the song on film, on TV, or in a public performance.
(patent attorney, birthday party organizer, party favor store, child care center)

5. William Shakespeare wore one gold earring.
(jeweler, fashion advisor, salon)

6. The bathroom scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” was the first time a toilet was flushed on screen.
(plumbing supply store, plumber, home builder, realtor)

7. The oldest preserved human body in the world was covered in tattoos.
(tattoo parlor, salon, spa)

8. Being double-jointed is something a person is born with.

(dance studio, exercise coach, dance equipment or exercise equipment provider)

For blog content writers, adding fun and interest to blog posts might be a “trivial” matter!

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Using GOLO in Blog Marketing

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I had never heard of GOLO, but once I’d seen the company’s TV commercial, I had a hard time getting it out of my mind. Sure, the name GOLO is catchy, but it was the clever memory hook that did the trick:

  • GO LOse weight
  • GO LOok great
  • GO LOve life

Around six years ago, I’d had a similar experience at a Financial Planning Association meeting. The speaker wanted to convey to us that spending is highest early in retirement and declines with age. He had catchy names for each of three age groups of retired people when it comes to spending needs:

  • Go-Go  (ages 55-64)
  •  Slo-Go (Age 65-74 )
  •  No Go (Age 75 and up )

Since business blog content writers like me are always searching for novel ways to present information to online readers, memory hooks are “a good thing”. The delightful little book, Brain-Boosting Challenges, confirms my instinct about the value of memory hooks.

“A useful technique when learning facts is to contrast them in some way.”  Compare-and-contrast is one of several structures we blog writers can use to help customers and prospects derive the greatest use out of the information we’re presenting. Use what they know, comparing your ”new” solution to traditional “old” solutions to the problem your company solves. Compare unfamiliar things to things with which readers are already comfortable.

“Chunking” is a memory device that binds sequential digits or words into groups. Chunking is one way business bloggers can offer technical information in “chewable tablet form”,  breaking down information into bite-sized pieces so readers’ brains can more easily digest it. The “reverse” form of chunking is to take individual pieces of information and show how they are related, perhaps in ways readers hadn’t considered.

Bullet points represent a graphic way to organize information, and it seems content writers either love or absolutely abhor them.  Myself, I’m kind of partial to those little black dots as a way to keep readers’ attention on track. Like anything else, of course, bullet points can be overused, but they’re certainly visually attractive.

The idea, of course, when it comes to marketing a business or practice through blogging, is not to have the readers memorize your content, but to have them find it – and by association – you, memorable. If the writing style is clear and simple, triggering familiar associations in the readers’ minds, those memorable business blogs can improve their memories, and, quite possibly, your own bottom line!
GO blog!

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Framing the Facts in Blog Marketing

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For us business blog content writers, it’s important to remember that every choice of words we make involves framing. Our goal is positioning our story in a way that our audience can focus on and respect.

Blog readers need to perceive a business owner or professional practitioner as an expert, I teach at Say It For You.  For that to happen, I believe, the blog needs to deliver more than information (facts, statistics, features, and benefits) and even more than instruction and advice. It needs a firm perspective or “frame”.

The term “framing” comes from behavioral science, which teaches that people decide on options based on whether an option is presented with positive or negative connotations. Certain features of a topic can be emphasized more than others through framing. For example, is a choice presented as a loss or as a gain? (“Prospect theory” indicates that people are loss-averse, disliking losses even more than they like gains.)

Even a slight alteration to the way something is presented can result in a completely different response or decision, the authors of the digitalalchemy.global blog explain. There are four main types of frames used in marketing, they add:

  1. Gain: This approach highlights all the potential benefits of using the product or service.
  2. Loss: This approach highlights all the benefits the reader “stands to “lose out on” by choosing not to use the product or service.
  3. Emotion: This approach stresses how using the product or service will make the reader feel.
  4. Statistical: This approach stresses the number of people using and endorsing the product or service.

Framing also means casting a potentially negative fact about your product or service into a positive light, Gerald Hanks teaches in Chron. At Say It For You, we know that “framing” responses to bad publicity is a valuable use for a blog. I call it “controlling your own journalistic slant”. Through putting their own “spin” on reports about their company, business owners can exercise control over the way the public perceives any negative developments. The blog can also correct any inaccurate press statements.

Does framing border on exaggeration and even dishonesty? Certainly it can, and those are effects we blog marketers must work hard to avoid. After all, we’re trying to build trust, and it’s crucial that we be factually correct in describing the extent to which our products and services can be of help.

At the same time, there is an ocean of information sources, and our blog readers are looking to us for a firm perspective or “framework” with which they can filter, understand and use the information for their own benefit.

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Thanksgiving is a Good Time to Talk Turkey About Blog Posts

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Despite the flair of those TV Chefs who seem to nonchalantly add “a dash” of this or that seasoning, as you’re preparing the Thanksgiving feast, it’s a good idea to measure the ingredients and the cooking time. Is it important to measure your time in blogging for business? Well…“It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong,” observed English economist John Maynard Keynes almost a hundred years ago.  I think that saying holds true when it comes to measuring the effects of SEO marketing blogs.

I realize that our Say It For You business owner and practitioner clients want to be able to measure the success of their blogging initiative. Still, I tell Indianapolis blog writers that Return on Investment is more than “analytics” and charts. Why is that so?

  1. Even using today’s analytics, it’s not always possible to associate a specific ROI measurement to blogging for business without regard to all the other initiatives the client is using to find and relate to customers.  All the parts have to mesh – social media, traditional advertising, events, word of mouth marketing, and sales.
  2. Blogging for business carries benefits in addition to helping increase sales, I’ve found. Continuously producing and making available quality content helps demonstrate that you care about quality in all dimensions of your business.

On the other hand, I teach content writers to measure, and the Thanksgiving turkey is a good metaphor to keep in mind. Just as in preparing the turkey, it is useful to measure where you business blogging time goes, I teach at Say It For You. Say you’ve allotted two-three hours of your time for each blog post. One fourth of that time might be devoted to finding, reading, and processing existing content published relating your topic. Then, the bulk of the blog creation time is taken up in thinking about the topic, and actually composing the post. Finding just the right photo or clip art to capture the theme of a blog post and inserting it into the post might take 10 minutes. Then, there’s formatting the text to make it more readable, editing, strategically employing keyword phrases – all that will take the reminder of the time involved in the gestation of a single blog post.

Measuring is important in blog marketing in another way. Blog posts should contain at least a third less content than a promotional brochure or a website page, and should focus on one idea having to do with the business – highlighting one product or service, debunking one myth, making one comparison, offering one testimonial from a customer or one true story. This is a case where increasing the amount or number of ingredients is going to take away from – not add to – the eating pleasure!

Thanksgiving is a good time to “talk turkey” about blog posts!

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