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Your Blog Helps ‘Em Go With What They Know

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branding through blogs

 

“As a handyman, you will be driving a lot. It would be a shame to waste all of those miles when you could be promoting your company at the same time with almost zero long term effort,” Dan Perry, handyman business owner advises. “Customers are more likely to hire you if they are aware of your brand, Perry explains. “People like to go with what they know.”

“Branding” – we hear a lot of this popular marketing term, don’t we?  Business owners put a whole lot of their time and money into creating a brand name, complete with a logo and other graphics, sometimes adding a motto or slogan.  As blog content writers, we’re considered part of a company’s or a practice’s marketing team, always looking for ways to help reinforce each client’s brand. The creating of each blog post is part of the process of inventing – and reinventing- a business brand.

Reading Perry’s description of truck decal advertising, I recalled reading about an experiment with billboard advertising. The subjects of the study were people (several hundred of them) who drove the same route every day to work and back, passing a giant billboard advertising new cars.  When questioned, almost none of these people could remember even seeing a billboard, much less that it was about cars.  On the other hand, the moment any individual was in the market for a car, she’d notice the billboard immediately.

The point Perry makes to handyman entrepreneurs is that, while “that lady in the Lexus sitting behind you may not need a handyman today, but if she finds you online when she does, she will recognize you and probably call you.”

What does Perry suggest in terms of content for ads on vehicles? “The most important thing is to clearly say what you do and how to contact you.“ Your blog posts are out there on the Internet “super-highway”, available for anyone to see, but the only people who are going to notice your blog are those who are searching for the kinds of information, products, or services that relate to what you do.

The only difference is, of course, is that sustaining a long-term blog marketing initiative is hardly the “zero long term effort” affair Perry promises his handymen advisees. Eleven years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them have the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

But Perry is on the right track when it comes to customers, who are more likely to hire you if they are aware your business or practice exists, and that you have solutions to offer them.

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Using Skillful Surprise in Blog Content Writing

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Blog post titles have a multifaceted job to do, arousing readers’ curiosity while still assuring them they’ve come to the right place. One compromise I often suggest to blog content writers is using a two-tiered title, combining a “Huh?” (to get attention) with an “Oh!” (to make clear what the post is actually going to be about).

In the body of a blog post, surprise can be used in a different way. I remember, several years back, listening to Jeff Fleming of the National Speakers Association of Indiana meeting, talking about misdirection as a way of adding humor to a presentation. Fleming explained the “Rule of Three”, in which the first two statements serve as a “set-up”. The third statement is not what the listeners are expecting, he added. That “misdirection”, Fleming said, causes a surprise, which tickles listeners’ funny bones.

I thought about that Fleming demo the other day when browsing through Coffee House News Indiana:

 

What has four legs, is big, green, and fuzzy, and, if it fell out of a tree would
hurt you? Answer: a pool table.

Now, as blog content writers offering information about a product or service, we’re not necessarily “into” tickling readers’ funny bones. What we are “into”, of course, is engaging readers and sustaining interest.

To be sure, using humor is an effective way to connect with your audience and humanize your brand or company, as Jason Miller of Social Media Examiner observes. All marketing doesn’t have to be serious, he adds, along with the caveat that “being funny is a risk…Some people might not appreciate your company’s brand of humor!”

So what do I think the bottom line is for using humor and surprise in blogging for business? Well,…barring politics (including company, city, state, national, and international), religion, ethnic groups, physical appearance, food preferences, insider information, and anything anyone might conceive as risque – go right ahead.  But keep the humor centered around your own weaknesses and around the consumers’ problem you’re offering to solve.

As for surprise, it can be highly useful in business blogs. At least some of our readers already know quite a bit about our subject.  What they’re looking for is new perspective on the subject, new ways to connect the dots. People are going to want to do business with people who have something different to say. There’s great power in offering strong recommendations and opinions in a blog.

Surprise them with the strength of your convictions, the depth of your knowledge, and the courage to map out a unique approach to doing business!

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Acing Your Next Blog “Interview”

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blog posts as interviews
“Want to ace your next interview and land that open job you’ve been seeking? experisjobsus asks job seekers. Go in prepared with five key selling points, along with examples of how you used those skills in real world situations.

At Say It For You, I’ve often remarked that business blogs are nothing more than extended interviews. Searchers are evaluating your content to judge whether your know-how, products, and services are a good fit for their needs.

The overriding message a successful interviewee wants to convey to a prospective employer has three elements:

  1. I understand the challenges of the job.
  2. I have the experience and expertise to take those on.
  3. I would like to start doing this important work.

While all the “data” about the candidate is to be found on the resume, what interviewers are trying do is understand what makes that person “tick” and decide if he or she will “fit in’ with the company culture. Often interviewers will ask candidates to “describe themselves”. Behavioral interviewers don’t focus on facts about the candidates at all. Instead, the purpose is to reveal the person behind the resume.

For that very reason, we encourage Say It For You clients to include “Who’s Who in our business/our office/our industry” blog posts. Apart from the typical “Our Team” landing page on your website, which introduces people by name with a brief bio, the blog might offer close-up views of the functions each person serves. And, if you’ve kept in touch with your “alumni”, I advise content writers, it would be a great thing to let your readers know you’ve kept in touch with them and their doings.

One important thing to remember is that, while a website presents the company’s or the practice’s “big picture”, in business blogging, each post is like one question at an interview. With many blog readers tending to be scanners, they need to find very targeted content showing they’re come to the right place to get precisely the information, products, and services they were seeking.

“Acing” your next blog interview can depend on showing you’re ready, willing, and able to start doing “this important work!”

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Give ‘Em a Glimpse of the Guiding Principle

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guiding principle in blogs

The opening speaker at a recent Financial Planning Association Study Day was talking about recession. Are we “due” for a recession, given that we’ve been experiencing the longest period of economic growth in our country’s history?

Seated in the audience, I was listening with “two ears”. Now retired from my financial planning career, I continue to keep up with the educational requirements for my CFP® designation, and very much enjoy the lectures and the discussions with former colleagues.

My other “ear”, though, caught something very important for blog content writers. Brandon Zureick of Johnson Asset Management was there to “bust a myth”, contradicting widespread financial media “hype” about the recession lurking around the corner. “Some believe the Federal Reserve will save the day through cutting interest rates, while some think additional stimulus cannot combat the looming downturn,” writes Yun Li of CNBC.

Every one of the financial planners in the audience had clients reading, listening, and watching talking heads repeating the same so-called “rule” – a recession is “overdue”. Telling their clients they are “wrong” to believe that so-called rule isn’t going to work. Zureick knew what would work – arming the planners with a “guiding principle” to share with their clients in order to replace the framework within which many investors have been operating.

Here’s the new guiding principle Zureick offered: Economic recessions aren’t time-driven; they are factor-driven. Recession isn’t “due” or “overdue”. When and if we experience the next recession will relate to employment, consumption, and trade levels, not to timing.

Business blogs are wonderful tools around facts.  That’s why business owners and professional practitioners can use corporate blog writing as a way to dispense information, but, even more important, to address misinformation.

Why is that important to do? False beliefs about products and services often stand in the way of customers taking action. You might say that the de-bunking function of business blog writing is owners’ way of taking up arms against a sea of customers’ unfounded fears and biases.  Blog content writing is a way of “cleaning the air”, replacing factoids with facts, so that buyers can see their way to making decisions.

To do that, however, requires introducing guiding principles that offer readers a way to organize the barrage of information. Guiding principles allow readers only to move forward with buying decisions, but to explain those buying decisions to others.

Give ‘em a glimpse of the guiding principle!
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Blog Reader Encounters of the Right Kind

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client encounters

When it comes to blog marketing, there’s a lot of talk (too much talk, in my opinion) about traffic. Yes, blogging is part of business owners’ or professional practitioners’ “pull marketing” strategy, designed to attract readers’ eyeballs. At least a percentage of these readers, the hope is, will become customers and clients.

In a sense, however, fewer might well prove better when it comes to the numbers of online searchers who find your blog, then click through to the website. Remember the 1977 movie about aliens called “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”? 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”. These are customers who have a need for and who will appreciate the services, products, and expertise being showcased in the blog.

Long-time friend and fellow blogger Thaddeus Rex had it right, I believe, when he said: “If your marketing is not getting enough people into the pool, you’ll find the problem is in one of three places.  You’ve either got the wrong story, the wrong stuff, or the wrong audience”. Rex recommends filtering: the audience by differentiating your own business or practice in some way:

  • Your product or service can do something your competitors can’t .
  • Your product/service is more easily available relative to your competitors’.
  • You offer a better buying experience.
  • You’re less expensive.

Years ago, I remember a speaker at a wine-tasting event explaining that, when a customer finds a product or service that appears to be the exact right thing, it’s as if a light pops on. By offering a “content-tasting” on your blog, and doing that regularly and frequently, I tell business owners and professionals, you’ll have put yourself in a position to attract those “encounters of the right kind”.

Getting it “right” takes planning and thought, to be sure. Are you selecting the “right” keyword phrases? Are you establishing the “right” clear navigation path from the blog to landing pages on your website? Are you blogging for the right reasons and with the right expectations?

Remember, the goal is not lots of blog reader encounters; it’s blog reader encounters of the right kind!

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