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Saying What They Said in Blogging for Business

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“Quoting other people is a staple of many types of writing. Journalists use quotes in their stories, magazine writers interview experts to support their piece, and academics quote research papers. As a blogger, you too can borrow the wisdom of others to inspire and support your writing,” advises Ali Luke of dailyblogtips.com.

There are plenty of different ways to incorporate a quote into your post, and you don’t need to use the same method each time, Luke adds, naming some popular tactics:

  • at the start of your post
  • as the basis for your post
  • to support a point you’re making

As I’m fond of saying in corporate blogging training sessions, quoting others in a marketing blog can be good or bad.

On the positive side, when you link to someone else’s remarks on a subject you’re covering, that can:

  • Reinforce your point
  • Show you’re in touch with trends in your field
  • Add value for readers (by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog)

On the other hand, as is true of all tools and tactics, “re-gifting” content needs to be handled with some restraint and using proper protocol (attributing content to its source).

Professional speaking coach Andrew Dlugan agrees that there are good points to using quotes in your material. “A quotation is more powerful than simply repeating yourself in different words”, he says. Dlugan offers a caution I want to emphasize to business bloggers: Avoid closing your speech with a quote. “Your final words should be your own.”

Curating others’ work – bloggers, authors, speakers – is a wonderful technique for adding variety and reinforcement to your own content.  Remember, though, you’re trying to make your own cash register ring.  It’s your voice that has to be strong throughout the post, so readers will click through to your website or shopping cart.

Used with discretion, saying what they said can be good in blogging for business!

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Business Blogging Earns High Scores

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“There’s no doubt that blogs afford small businesses big payoffs. They humanize a business, position you as an expert in your field, and work hand-in-hand with your website and social media presence to improve your search engine rankings,” the SCORE website advises its members.  But, since finding the time or an eager author to write an original blog for every slot in your calendar isn’t always possible, Score offers tips for “staying afloat” in your blogging efforts, including:

  • freshening up old blogs
  • distilling white papers or webinars into quick tips or how-to’s
  • using “filler blogs that link to other sources
  • showcasing photos from an event that you recently held

“Think of your website as a garden. If it’s left unattended, weeds will grow and your plants are likely to shrivel up and die,” cautions crazyegg.com. “To get the most out of any garden, you must prune, trim, fertilize, aerate, plant, and remove pests in a strategic manner.” Interestingly, one piece of advice crazyegg offers is this: “If you don’t have a business blog, get one! It’s a great way to update your site—even if you only have time to do it once a month.”

If you’re lacking ideas for your blog, crazyegg offers suggestions:

  1. Review something – the newest business book or hit movie. In a way, I’ve often reflected, what we do when we write business blog content offering information and opinion is comparable to a book review. Online visitors are “test-reading” your company or practice through reading your blog posts. They want to see whether you understand their problems and can quickly and effectively help solve those. A review, though, is more than a mere summary. Whether you’re blogging for a business, for a professional practice, or for a nonprofit organization, you’ve got to have an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers.

2. Take a poll. Then, write content to address those things. Using blogs to perform a focus    group function could be a very feasible marketing strategy.  Blog readers would weigh in on their own time in the form of responding to surveys, offering ideas or ratings – all good techniques to stimulate interaction with target customers. 
  
3. Interview someone. You can do this via email or phone. As a blog-content-writer-for-hire by business owners and professional practitioners, I’ve found, there’s an interesting way to get the job done: the interview format. In a face-to-face (or Skype) interview with a business owner or executive (or professional practitioner), I am able to capture their ideas and some of their words, then add “framing” with my own questions and introductions, to create a blog post more compelling and “real” than the typical narrative text.

As SCORE advises its business owner members, business blogging earns high scores!

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In Blog Marketing, Accentuate the Practical

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“Most products, ideas, and behaviors are consumed privately,” observes Jonah Berger in his book Contagious. Problem is, he points out, if people can’t see what others are choosing and doing, they can’t imitate them.

On the other hand, Berger cautions, making things more public can have unintended consequences. “If you want to get people to not do things, don’t talk about the people who are doing it.” Instead, his advice is, highlight stories of success that came through using your product or service.

Useful information helps people do what they want to do, but faster and better and easier, Berger says, citing an analysis done by the New York Times which revealed that articles about health, education, and cooking were the most highly read, theoretically because those topics are widely useful.

One piece of research recounted in Contagious is especially relevant for us content writers as we tell our clients’ stories to the public: “Don’t fall into the trap of providing only content that has a broader audience. Narrower content may actually be more likely to be shared, Berger asserts, because “it reminds people of a specific friend or family member who could use that information.”

Go for the practical; people like to help one another.  Of all the principles of contagiousness, what Berger calls Practical Value may be easiest to apply. Business owners and professional practitioners need to package their knowledge and expertise so that people learn about them even as they are passing the knowledge along.

Accentuate the practical, communicating the fact that you and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the latest technology to solve problems and meet needs, yet offer choices of action to help readers feel they are in control.

For effective blog marketing, keep accentuating the practical!

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Contagious Blog Marketing

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“Why do some products, ideas, and behaviors succeed when others fail?” Jonah Berger asks in his book Contagious. Berger first lists some traditional answers:

  • they are just plain better – easier to use and more effective
  • attractive pricing
  • advertising

None of these explains the whole story, Berger claims, without including social influence and work of mouth. “The things others tell us, e-mail us, and text us have a significant impact on what we think, read, buy, and do,” he says.

Why is word of mouth marketing so much more effective than advertising? Berger offers a couple of reasons:

  1. It’s more believable – we tend to believe our friends’ stories and recommendations
  2. It’s more targeted – we don’t share a news story or a recommendation with every we know, only with people who we think will find the information relevant

Berger’s marketing principles might serve as a perfect checklist for business blog content writers:

  • Social currency – give people ways to achieve visible symbols of “insider” status they can show off to others. (Nienke Vlutters of the University of Twente agrees: “With their consuming behavior, individuals symbolize with which groups they want to be associated.”)
  • Triggers – link your products and services to prevalent trends.  Keeping up with trends in your field helps earn you “expert power” with readers.
  • Emotion – contagious content evokes emotion.
  • Utility – craft content that is useful in saving time and money and improving health.

You may be convinced your products and services are “just plain better”, but to really connect with consumers through your business blog, you need to use contagious blog marketing!

 

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How-I-Did-It Blogging for Business

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“Starting and running a business is traveling a landscape filled with opportunity and hazards.  Knowing which is which can make the difference between growing your company and blowing it up,” begins the special issue of Inc. magazine in which twelve company founders describe how they rose to success.

‘How-we-did-it” stories make for very effective blog content for both business owners and professional practitioners, I’ve learned. In a post a couple of years ago, I quoted The Moth founder George Dawes Green, who teaches storytellers to share their own human failures and frailty. “It’s easier to connect with someone who is or has been where you are,” is the way Beccy Freebody of the Australian charity realisingeverydream puts it.

Sounds great, but how can sharing secrets and failures help when you’re trying to market a business or a practice?

  1. True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business or practice.
  2. Stories of struggles and failures can be used as a means to an end, using the special expertise and insights you’ve gained towards solving readers’ problems.
  3. Blogs also have a damage control function.  When customer complaints and concerns are recognized and dealt with publicly (there’s nothing more public than the Internet!), that gives the “apology” – and the remediation – a lot more weight in the eyes of readers.

The interesting thing I’ve noticed is that many business owner and practitioner clients are so close to the subject matter of their own past and present business battles, they can’t see how valuable those “failures” can prove to be in terms of blog content. That’s where the outside eye of a professional blog writer becomes especially valuable.

In “how-I-did-it” blogging for business, failures can sometimes be the secret to success!

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