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Give Blog Readers Something to Walk Away With – But Add Something to Act On
“Give your audience something to walk away with,” Lindsay Kolowich Cox advises in a HubSpot piece called “Blogging Tips for Beginners”. “Your goal in creating content should be to provide value to your readers,” Peg Fitzpatrick asserts in another blogging advice piece, suggesting printable checklists and the sharing of expertise. At Say It For You, we suggest adding value by aggregating materials from different sources, then adding the blog content writer’s own unique twist on the concepts presented.
Earlier this month, a networking friend of mine used her blog for the first week of September to recount the history of Labor Day, explaining that the special day had been planned by the Central Labor Union in New York City back in 1882. I enjoyed the material and felt the blogger had offered value – I had “walked away with something”, for sure. What was missing, though, was the Call to Action. In other words, there had been no attempt to tie the subject (the history of Labor Day) to the sender’s own business (investment planning).
In corporate blogging training sessions, I do often recommend including interesting information on topics related to your business (or, if you’re a freelance blog content writer, related to the client’s business). If you can provide information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, so much the better. Tidbits and “startling statistics” are important in blogging for business, because that information helps engage online readers’ interest. Still, the connection between the material and the business relationship (or potential relationship) between the sender and the reader needs to be related to the information.
So, although the piece my friend had included in her blog post about Labor Day was interesting and appropriately timed, that information was not tied to the reader’s problem or need, nor was there any call to action. No sentence indicated why the writer herself cared about the information, nor was there anything explaining why that information should be of special help to readers.
Blog content writing has an enormous advantage over traditional “push marketing” tactics, because, what blogging does best is deliver to corporate blog sites customers who are already interested in the product or service they’re providing! However, there needs to be an “ask”, and in blogging for business, the “ask” comes in the form of calls to action.
Give blog readers something to walk away with, but add something they can act on!
In Blogging for Business, the Operative Word Isn’t “Anyone”!
“What do you notice when you visit a model home in a new development? Often you will find wonderfully furnished and decorated rooms that anyone could live in.” So begins an article I received the other day from my realtor friend Gadi Boukai, stressing that “the operative word is ‘anyone’”. Professionals who set up a model home make it anonymous for a reason, the article goes on to explain. They want buyers to view it as their potential home, not someone else’s. Those professionals know – based on decades of experience, that this strategy helps sell houses faster and at a better price.
Interesting, because, at Say It For You, we realize that with blog content writing, the exact opposite might be the case. Your blog can’t be all things to all people, any more than your business can be all things to everybody. The blog must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who are most likely to want to do business with you. Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry – all of it.
The home viewers my friend Gadi is describing are clearly already interested in buying a home; they know what overall indoor and outdoor space and amenity needs they have, and they are looking to “match” those needs with the home they’re viewing. The “blanker’ the canvas, the easier it will be for that “match” to take place. Similarly, the only prospects who are likely to visit your blog are those searching for information on precisely what you sell, what you know, and what you know how to do.
The difference is, the blog content needs to ‘hit the spot” with visitors in a very targeted and individual way, differentiating your products or services from those offered by your competitors. With millions of other blogs out there for searchers to find, it’s only highly specific evidence that will resonate with the right visitors. Not only is having a focused topic important in each blog post, writing content with a specific audience in mind (rather than appealing to anyone) will make the difference between success and failure.
Gadi’s customers need to “see themselves” living in the home they’re touring, making their own mental and emotional “match” with those surroundings. With blog visitors, it’s the same, yet different. Your website content and blog posts can demonstrate that you’re offering all the right products and services, the ones your online visitors need. Despite that, you might still be experiencing a very high “bounce rate”, meaning that visitors to your blog are thinking to themselves “No, that’s not what I meant!” As part of their visit to your site, you have to appropriately signal to your visitor that you understand, serve, and most important, understand the situations and challenges they have faced in prior situations of using your type of product or service.
Home buyers (at least it was that way pre-COVID-19!) are typically are left to roam the home on their own, “seeing” if this is the place for them. In contrast, with blog marketing, the content needs to put out targeted ‘prompts”. The business owner or professional practitioner is in essence telling the visitor -“To me, you’re not just anyone – I see you. I really see you!”
Blog Posts May Not Close the Deal, But They Deliver Sales Results
“Sales professionals are expected to generate the best possible win rates for their effort,” explains Adam Wiggins in a Hubspot blog post. Choosing the right phrases to seal a deal is crucial, because the close is “the final verdict determining whether or not your efforts will amount to anything at all.” Wiggins reviews seven close types:
- Now or never close (some special disappearing benefit prompts an immediate decision)
- Summary close (reviews value and benefits)
- Sharp angle close (prospect asks for price reduction or add-on, but you agree only if they close today)
- Question close (“Does what I’m offering solve your problem?”)
- Assumptive close (salesperson monitors prospect’s engagement throughout, assuming a close)
- Takeaway close (remove a feature or service if customer balks on price)
- Soft close (low impact question: “If I.….would you be interested in learning more?)
Will blog marketing “close: deals in the same way as a face-to-face encounter between a prospect and a sales professional? The answer is obviously “no”. Interestingly, a second Hubspot blogger, Corey Wainwright, explains the indirect selling benefits of blogs and their place in the sales process:
- If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes.
- Prospects that have been reading your blog posts will typically enter the sales process more educated on your place in the market, your industry, and what you have to offer.
- Salespeople who encounter specific questions that require in-depth explanation or a documented answer can pull from an archive of blog posts.
In the book Close the Deal, authors Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman suggest that a salesperson faced with a demanding prospect ask “What concession do you need from me to close the deal right now?”
In blogging for business, of course, such an exchange would not be taking place between the business owner/practitioner and the reader/customer. On the other hand, one purpose of the content is to persuade the reader to act. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses prospects’ unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”
The traditional selling sequence of appointment, probing, presenting, overcoming objections, and “closing” may be totally dead, as Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible, asserts. What has replaced it, Gitomer says, is a step-by-step risk elimination, a process for which blogs are well-suited. Business blogs, I “preach” at Say It For You, are nothing more than extended interviews, and blog posts are an ideal vehicle for demonstrating support and concern while being persuasive in a low-key manner.
Contagion on Purpose Through Blogging
In recent months, the word “contagious” has certainly taken on frightening meaning. But in his book Contagious, Jonah Berger explores ways to create contagion around good ideas, products, and services. “Regardless of how plain or boring a product or idea may seem,” Berger says, “there are ways to make it contagious.”
Every one of Berger’s ideas for achieving contagion, I found, is directly applicable to blog marketing:
1. Find inner remarkability (break from what people expect from the experience of using the product or service). For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”
2. Leverage game mechanics (use elements of a game to keep people engaged, motivated and wanting more. A core mechanic is the essential play activity players perform again and again in a game. Each business blog post should impart one new idea or call for a single action.
3. Make people feel like insiders (scarcity and exclusivity drives desirability). Hitting precisely the right “advertorial” note is the big challenge in corporate blog writing. Exclusivity is one of the five “key copy drivers” which business content writers should use to enhance audience response.
4. Use “triggers” to keep ideas and products fresh in the minds of consumers, associating your product or service with some familiar aspect of life. In your blog content, link your products and services to prevalent trends.
5. Use emotional content to evoke feelings that drive people to share and to act. Evoking emotion creates a feeling in your audience of being connected with you and the people in your business or practice.
6. Provide practical information that helps others save time, energy, and resources. Chunking, or breaking down information into bite-sized pieces , allows readers to digest and more easily use new information.
7. Embed your ideas in stories that people want to hear and retell. Let stories about people tell the story of your company, your products, and of the services you provide.
When it comes to spreading ideas through blogging for business, the word contagious can be a very good thing indeed!
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