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Blogging to Help Make Them or Save Them Money

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blogging to save them money

“Before we write a single post, we ask ourselves, ‘Does this help our readers make or save money?’” says Kathleen Garvin, editor and marketing strategist for finance blog The Penny Hoarder. “That’s key for us. We’re content creators, but we only want to publish a story if we think it’s truly helpful or interesting for our readers.”

“When developing content, keep in mind the three E’s of content: Educate, Entertain and Engage,” writes Dennis Wakeman of the Social Media Examiner.

Teaching is, in fact, a large part of what we blog content writers do. How does the product or the process work? How can the business owner or professional practitioner solve the problem?

In the broadest sense of the word, entertaining is part of the job for blog writers. No, you needn’t become a comedian, but unusual anecdotes, tips, trends, and tidbits help keep readers on site.

Getting people to actually connect with you and participate in the conversation is much harder than it looks, Wakeman admits. He suggests using polls and very specifically asking for comments. Whenever somebody actually clicks on a link, takes a poll, or posts a comment, he explains, that brings them closer to becoming a client or customer.

So what about helping readers make and save money? The personal finance blog Squawkfox.com was voted #1 blog in Canada, because it’s full of tips on de-cluttering, cutting spending, and staying within a budget. (In training career mentees, I would coach them, both on their resume and in the job interview, to tell their prospective employer how, in their summer jobs, they had saved their employer money, time, and hassle.) Similarly, at Say It For You, I teach writers to make the content about them, not about you and your business or practice!

So what about helping your own business or practice make money? Your call to action should point readers to the next point in the sales funnel, says ProBlogger. You might ask web visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or sign up for a free webinar so you can turn them into paying customers in the future

In blog content marketing, it’s all about helping readers make and save money!

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For Further Explanation, Bring in the Cockpit Crew

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personal opinionShould fliers be forced to watch the safety video? Most definitely, writes George Hobica in USA Today. Whenever there’s been an emergency on a plane, we see videos of passengers doing the wrong things, such as escaping a crash landing carry luggage and not wearing shoes, or not knowing how to put on oxygen masks, he reminds us.

As a blog content writer and trainer occupied full time with getting people to read the content my team prepares for our clients, I was highly interested in Hobica’s take on the subject. His premise: If the videos explained the reasons behind the instructions they give, then people would listen more.

For instance, Hobica suggests, the exhortation to “place the mask over your mouth and nose” could be changed to “Place the mask over both your nose and mouth because otherwise you won’t get enough oxygen and you’ll pass out.” In other words, he’s saying, tell why your audience should follow your advice.

Acknowledging that “the longer the video lasts, the more passengers will tune out,” Hobica suggests that just one fine point be explained in person by one of the cockpit crew just before takeoff:

“Folks, this is your first officer.  Before takeoff, I’d like to remind you that in the
event of an emergency evacuation, it’s imperative that you leave all belongs in
the overhead bin or under the seat.  Do not bring them with you.  Doing so could
cause death or injury to other passengers.”

From a business blog content writing standpoint, there’s more than one lesson to be gained from Hobica’s observations:

  • The interview format can be very useful in creating blog posts that are more compelling in many cases than the typical narrative text. The blog writer serves as “reporter”, eliciting direct remarks from the business owner, key employer, or practitioner.
  • Attempting to cover too much ground in a single blog post, we lose focus and strain readers’ attention span. Other things to cover? Save those for later posts.

The takeaways for blog content writers? Explain your reasons for your recommendation or advice.  Then, for further explanation, bring in the cockpit crew!

 

 

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In Blog Marketing, Look for a Plot

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plot in blogging

 

“Don’t look for a plot here. This is a polemic,” are the words a reviewer in the Mensa Bulletin uses to describe J.K Hillstrom’s book, A Humanitarian’s Fantasy. The book is a more like a series of lectures, the reviewer complains, rather than a coherent, sequential piece of prose.

Individual business blog posts may appear to be non-sequential, separate pieces of writing rather than parts of a coherent whole. Yet a small business owner’s or professional practitioner’s blogging efforts can have an effect on marketing results that is disproportionately larger than might seem possible from mere short, informal selections. The power comes from the “plot”.  

Whenever I’m sitting down with new Say It For You business owner clients as they’re preparing to launch a blog for their company or practice, I find that one important step is to select one to five recurring – and related – themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts. The themes may be reflected in the keyword phrases they are going to use to help drive search, but themes are broader in scope than just key words.

The variety in their blog is going to come from the details we will be filling in around those central themes, different ways the company’s products can be helpful, different valuable tidbits of information or how-to tips, plus specific examples of how the company helped solve various problems.

The unifying themes in a business blog are the beliefs of, and the unique “slant” of, the business owner or professional practitioner. Those “leitmotifs”  help the separate blog posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy.

In blog marketing, look for the plot!

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Worm Your Way Into Readers’ Hearts with Business Blogs

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The Tatoeba Project, which helps foreign students by translating from a foreign language into their own native language, has a lot to say about worms. Examples provided include sentences such as:

  • Tom put a worm on the hook.
  • Worms are sometimes beneficial to soil.

Even more interesting are these sentences:

  • Tom opened a can of worms.
  • The early bird gets the worm.
  • Tom seldom reads an editorial and is not a bookworm.

As blog content writers in Indiana, the basic tool we use to bring our business owner clients’ message to their prospects and customers is – language. True, the majority of our targeted readers might be U.S. born and bred, but some of the “lingo” we sling about so casually – in our effort to write “engaging” copy – well, it might need explaining.

English idioms, the FluentU blog explains, are groups of words which have a meaning which isn’t obvious from looking at the individual words.  “They’re used so often in everyday English,” the authors explain, “that if you don’t know them, it’s almost impossible to understand the context.”  FluentU offers a number of examples:

  • to hit the books
  • to hit the sack
  • to twist someone’s arm
  • to be up in the air
  • to stab someone in the back
  • to lose your touch
  • to sit tight
  • to pitch in
  • to face the music
  • to be on the ball
  • to be under the weather
  • to blow off steam
  • to cut to the chase

In blog marketing, the right words can make a big, big difference in what we like to call “the sales cycle” (itself an idiom!).  When it comes to lingo and industry jargon, we can literally “arm” readers by sharing – and explaining – the buzzwords.  That feeling of knowing the “inside scoop” allows prospects to feel in control and in a better position to make buying decisions with confidence.

Worm your way into blog readers’ hearts!

 

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/english/essential-english-idioms/

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Business Blog Readers’ Fourth Drive

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blog reader curiosity

 

One of the many things we don’t understand is this: What is interestingness? observe John Lloyd and John Mitchinson in the Book of General Ignorance. What we do know, the authors tell us, is that, while we humans have the same three primal drives as animals (food, sex, and shelter), it’s the fourth drive which makes us uniquely human – curiosity.

Appealing to blog readers’ fourth drive is certainly one secret to success in content writing.  Arousing curiosity through blog titles and through the opening lines of blog posts has proven to be a winning tactic. Why is that? For one thing, we like completion and balance.  Put a question out there and we are driven to find the answer, Lloyd and Mitchinson explain.  “What’s the name of the tallest mountain in the world?”  Most of us are quick to answer: Mt. Everest. But no, measured from the seabed, it’s Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. Everest is the highest, but not the tallest.

Curiosity explains why readers enjoy juicy gossip tidbits about sports and movie stars, even personal details about the lives of famous people from the past.  Curiosity explains the interest readers have in how stuff works in the world and how things came to be. And, yes, (as I always stress in corporate blogging training sessions), by definition of their having found your blog, readers have curiosity about some aspect of your profession or business. What my own experience has taught me is that readers are most curious about themselves, how they “work” and the limits of their own knowledge and their own physical capabilities. I believe that’s why magazine “quizzes” are so hard to resist.

Unlike novelists or even reporters, we blog content writers can’t afford to be enigmatic in the name of arousing curiosity, since it’s essential for us to assure readers that they’ve come to the right place to find the information that brought them online to find answers. Five times as many people read headlines as read the body copy, “Father of Advertising” David Ogilby taught. If the headline doesn’t do the trick, even if we appeal to searchers’ general curiosity, the danger is they’ll bounce away from our site before we get to share our thoughts!

In the preface to their book, Lloyd and Mitchinson may have unwittingly hit upon the business blog writers’ solution.  “The human brain is the most complex single object in the cosmos….what are we supposed to do with all that astonishing computing power? We think we know the answer – ask more questions.”

Appealing to blog readers’ fourth drive may be one secret to success in content marketing!

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