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Premise-Based Blogging for Business

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Whether you’re pruning hedges, painting a room, or cooking dinner, having the right equipment for the job matters a lot.  That’s precisely the concept upon which a radio ad I heard recently was based.  The ad sponsor was mattress manufacturer BeautyRest, and I couldn’t help feeling that the commercial was impactful as a result of its getting us listeners to first agree on a premise before they introduced their product.

Once everyone was “on the same page” about the importance of the right equipment for each job, it made sense for the sponsor to posit that, to achieve high-performance sleep, you had to have the right “tool”, e.g. their mattress.  Beautyrest marketers apparently knew that, only after we listeners had gotten “on page” would all the information they had to offer – about how a mattress affects how you sleep, how to best shop for a mattress, etc. – make any difference to us.

The premise on which I believe blog marketing is based is this:  Websites present the big picture – the different services and products the company offers, who the principal players are, the mission statement, the geographic areas the company deals with, the “unique selling proposition” – in other words, the whole enchilada!

But readers, like radio listeners, can’t focus on everything at once. And, on a website, each page and each block of content takes the mind away from all the others. What each blog post does, then, is focus on just one aspect of your business, so that online searchers can feel at ease and not be distracted with all the other information you have to offer. In previous Say It For You blog posts, I’ve compared blogging to job interviews.  Each post is like one question at the interview.  The question might be about your technical knowledge in a given area, or it might be about your reliability, or about your salary expectations.  The interviewer will expect you to stick to that one subject in answering that question in the most direct way. That’s exactly what each blog post is designed to do.

Each post should be focused on one “premise”, just like the BeautyRest radio commercial.  The first task is to get everyone “on the same page” or the same “wavelength” with you.  Then, and only then can you make it clear why this one product you have, this one piece of special information, this one service, relates to what everyone has bought into as a basic premise!

 

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“Ever-Wonder-Why” Blogging for Business

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My friend Larry M. shared a fascinating list of “Ever Wonder Why Trivia” that I think you’ll enjoy.  More important, there’s a lesson here: trivia and blog marketing go together like “a horse and carriage” (if you’re my age) or maybe like peanut butter and jelly (if you’re any age).

Trivia can be used in business blogs for:

  • defining basic terminology
  • sparking curiosity about the subject
  • putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective
  • explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way

Here are some choice tidbits from Larry M.’s list – see if they spark some ideas related to your own business or profession:

  • Why do men’s clothes have buttons on the right, while women’s clothing has buttons on the left? When buttons were first invented, they were very expensive and used primarily on rich people’s clothing.  Most people are right-handed, so the buttons went on the right. (Rich women were dressed by their maids).
  • Why do Xs at the end of a letter signify kisses? In the Middle Ages, few people knew how to write, and documents were signed with an X. Kissing the X. was a sign of accepting the obligations specified in the document.
  • Why is someone feeling great said to be “on Cloud Nine”? Clouds are numbered based on the altitudes they attain, with 9 being the highest level.
  • Why do we save coins in jars called “piggy banks”? Dishes and cookware in Europe used to be made of an orange clay called “pygg”.

A tidbit of trivia, I’ve found, can be the jumping off point for explaining what problems can be solved using your business’ products and services. Trivia is just one of the many tools that can help business owners present what they know, what they do best, and what they have to sell.

When I’m offering business blogging assistance to writers and owners, I talk about the need to create as much fresh material as possible to inform, educate, and entertain.  That’s a pretty tall order for most busy business owners and employees.  Collecting trivia can be part of “keeping up” with blog content creation.  “Ever-wonder-why” blog posts are one good place to start. 

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Using the “It’s Not Your Fault” Appeal in Blog Marketing

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An advertisement I happened upon incorporates what I think was a very effective form of “reverse psychology” as a way to appeal to customers: “It’s not your fault”, the ad read. 
If your hot water heater “chose” a weekend to break down – well, that’s not your fault and you shouldn’t be charged extra for the service call.  Carl’s Heating & Air’s value proposition, in fact, is this: “We Keep the Same Price 24 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week”.

Making prospects feel “in the right” can be a good marketing tactic when it comes to blogging content as well as in advertising copy, I believe. Think about it – so much marketing is based on “why you need to….” and “have you been using the wrong…..” . In general, negative marketing attempts to form a bond with customers by commiserating about their daily pain, identifying something that the customers hate, and ridiculing it, explains 602communications.com. In a way, the Carl’s Heating & Air ad IS commiserating about the customer’s frustration at having their hot water heater go down (and even worse having it happen on a weekend). But rather than focusing on their own inconvenience (having to hire workers and pay them overtime to work on a weekend), the Carl’s ad is all about the customer’s unhappy plight.

Even when it comes to myth debunking in corporate blogs, addressing misinformation about our industry, our content has the potential of rubbing readers the wrong way. People generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they came to a website seeking information on a particular  subject. That’s because part of us resents being told that something we’d taken for granted as true is in fact a lie.

Prospects, like customers, aren’t always right. As blog content writers, we know that. But putting them “in the wrong” is a bad, bad idea.  The blog can set forth a unique value proposition while at the same time reassuring readers that It’s Not Your Fault!

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It’s Smart to Answer “Stupid Questions” in Your Business Blog

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“The next time someone asks you a seemingly stupid question, stop and look at it from their side,” advises speaker Todd Hunt. After asking his local copy shop to quote a simple black-and-white printing job, Hunt was annoyed when they emailed him asking whether he wanted them to print his job on their black printer or color printer. (“What a stupid question,” Hunt’s first thought was.) His printer explained that some clients want black jobs printed on a color printer because that gives the black a richer glow.  “My project didn’t need a ‘fancy’ black, he explains now. “But they asked, and that impressed me,” Hunt now concludes.

Remember, as business blog content writers, we need to impress readers even before they’ve had the chance to ask us their questions, “stupid” or otherwise.  They do have questions – in fact, those readers are online because they’re searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions for dilemmas they’re facing. I really believe that blog writing for business will succeed only if two things are apparent to readers, and in the order presented here:

1. You (the business owner or professional practitioner) understand their concerns and needs
2. You and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs.

How can you anticipate what readers’ questions are so we can offer the answers in our blog? Let some of your existing customers provide the answers though testimonials. Besides that, every business owner fields customer queries daily. Just as Todd Hunt shared with his readers the question about black and white print jobs, you can share with your readers actual situations that have arisen in your business or practice.

In your blog, you can also be doing the questioning, inviting readers to comment on a particular statement or offering a brief survey or questionnaire. Point being, there are no stupid questions, and it’s always smart to answer questions in your business blog.

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Halloween Hints for Your Business Blog

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blogging to answer questions

 

The late October wind was serene and tranquil as the bold orange sun faded into the seemingly empty autumn evening sky. Crisp shades of red, yellow, and orange from fallen leaves, formed a thin layer over the brown lawns of the neighborhood. Immediately noticeable were the bolder colors in the decorations of the local estates. Each color scheme of deep purples, grays, and oranges had a corresponding theme of horror….

(For the benefit of high school and college students, this piece of writing is offered as an example of an opening paragraph for a descriptive essay using a Halloween theme.)

“A descriptive paragraph describes a person, place, or thing, and its purpose is to paint a word picture using rich vocabulary,” the University of North Carolina in Asheville points out. One technique is “using the five senses. – what it looks like, how it feels, the sounds it makes, the smell, and possibly even the taste,” UNCA teachers point out. “Writing with sensory descriptions requires the use of precise and sophisticated vocabulary,” the authors caution.

But can visual imagery and subtle nuances be useful in business blog content writing? And are readers at all likely to “wait for it… wait for it…” as they read through the many descriptions of ‘crisp shades of red, yellow, and orange” to get to the “corresponding theme of horror”?

Opening blog post lines need to be compelling, to be sure. But painting word pictures in the first line? Maybe not such a good idea, I’d caution freelance blog content writers.  In fact, one critical function served by the first line of any marketing blog post is reassuring readers they’ve arrived at precisely the right location to find the products, services, and information they were looking for in the first place.

Keeping Halloween in mind, however, (think about the delicious eeriness of a haunted house, where you know scary things are in store, but not where or when they’ll show up), you can use the title and the opening line of a post to make a controversial statement or offer a make-’em-sit-up-and-take-notice statistic.

While opening lines in business blog posts should be definitive rather than mysterious, one very important function of blog posts can be de-mystification, shining the light of day on misinformation about your field.

There’s no doubt visual imagery is powerful, and freelance blog writers can certainly paint pictures with words, helping readers experience how safe, happy, beautiful and savvy they will be feeling after taking advantage of your products and services!

Happy Halloween, all!

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