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Take a Few of the 100+ Writer Prompts and Call Me in the Morning

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Writer’s block is like being stuck at a truck stop parking lot, unable to start your car, the editors of The Writer magazine understand. For online content marketers, writer’s block may put its victimes in een greater pain, given that frequency is so crucia to the success of online marketing through blogs. At Say It For You, .after years of being involved in all aspects of blog writing and training, one irony I”ve found is that business owners who “show up” with recently published content on their websites are rare.  there’s a tremendous fall-off rate, with most blogs abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. Pity, because in all advertising and marketing, as Mark Zimmer of Zimmer Marketing explains,  the more often a customer is exposed to a message, the more of a sense of “omnipresence” there is.

The fear of “saying old things” is one many business owners and professional practitioners have when it comes to their blog. Even if they understand the overall marketing value of having a blog, their concern is that, sooner or later, they (or their blog content writer) will run out of things to say. In blogging training sessions, I need to explain that it’s more than OK – in fact it’s a good idea – to repeat themes already covered in former posts. The trick is to adding a layer of new information or a new insight each time.

For the benefit of my Say It For You readers, I’m using this post to highlight just four of the Writer prompts that seem most applicable to blog content writing:

“Take something you have recently learned – a fact, a skill – and give it one of your characters in a significant way.”
One point I’ve consistently stressed in these blog content writing tutorials is how important it is to provide valuable information to readers, while avoiding any hint of “hard sell”.  It’s helpful to collate helpful hints from a variety of experts, offering those as a “gift” from the business owner to blog visitors. Even more impactful, though, is sharing valuable lessons learned by the professional practitioner or business owners based on their own hard-won experience and expertise.

“Use a line from poetry to inspire new work”
When it comes to blogging for business, reading poetry teaches content writers clarity and precision. T. S. Eliot’s “April is the cruellest month” can inspire a piece about preparing one’s hoe for spring, about college application essays submission, or about tax planning..

“Create an unconventional graveyard scene with a surprising outcome.”
While a funeral company’s “green burial” practices might be the subject for its content marketing, an estate planning attorney might use an anecdote to stimulate thoughts about estate planning,

Write the sequel to your favorite fairy tale. Does money really buy happiness for Jack and his beanstalk? Do Snow White and the prince end up getting a divorce?
Online readers likely to find your blog through organic search will be those who already have a need for what you have to sell and for what you do. On the other hand, at Say It For You, we’re convinced blogging for business is the perfect tool for introducing those readers to newer applications and uses for your products and services One important function of a blog is to “point picture’ of the consequences of inaction.

With a main key to business blogging success being simply staying on task, you may find writer prompts may be just the ticket!

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Are You Targeting Cat Owners or Dog Owners?

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Reading through the Harvard Business Review the other day, I discovered a startling piece of scientific information that content marketers need yo know: Cat owners are more cautious consumers than dog owners! Professor Xiaojing Yang of the University of Southern California explains that consumer behaviors are driven by two opposing mindsets:

  • a promotion focus (eagerness, risk seeking, desire to maximize gains) – Dogs’ openness and adaptability are associated with a promotion focus.
  • a prevention focus (caution, risk aversion, priority on minimizing losses – Cats’ wariness and aloofness are association with a prevention focus.

Given the prevalence of pets in our society, Yang concluded, “:they’re an important part of our socialization”. How can this understanding be put to use in marketing products and services? When the features and benefits are mostly promotion-related, Prof Yang suggests, companies might feature dogs in their marketing materials. When they have more to do with prevention, cats would be a better choice.

Calls to Action in persuasive blog posts, as we know at Say It For You, can succeed only if our content has tapped into an underlying need or “desire” on the part of the reader. In the book Well Spoken, Kevin Mayer lists possible “wants”, or persuasive appeals to help prospects be willing to move forward and take the desired action, including approval by others, cleanliness, convenience, safety, health, or safety, each goal may be understood from either a promotion focus or a prevention focus.

No blog – and certainly no blog post – can be all things to all people. Each post must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who are most likely to want to do business with you.  That way, the appeals, as well as the way they are presented, can be chosen specifically for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, even the title of each blog entry.

In your content, are you targeting cat owners or dog owners?

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To Be Original, Be Well-Versed

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“Originality is important for publication, and to be as original as possible, you have to be well versed in what has already been done,” Ran Walker, author of 28 books, tells writers in a Writer’s Digest piece. With millions of people working in the horror novel genre, for example, “it’s easy to go for the easy scares or gross-outs. It’s good to be inspired by other writers, he admits, but that inspiration needs to guide you into new and uncharted territory.

When it comes to online content marketing, Camille Allegrucci has a slightly divergent view, citing “the myth of originality”. Your voice, Allegrucci says, is more important than new ideas, and no “original” idea is truly original, anyway. (Would anyone seriously contend that Anna Karenina lacks originality or is not worth reading because of the plot points it shares with Madame Bovary?) The question to ask yourself is not “How can I say something that has never been said before?” but rather “How can I express myself in the best way that my voice allows?”

It helps to bring in less well-known facts about familiar things and processes, and even more when you suggest new ways of thinking about things readers already know. New ideas may not be “a thing”, but new insights and opinions can be. At Say It For You, our advice to business owners and their content writers is that you must offer an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up to readers. No, it’s not “new information”, and you’re not re-inventing the proverbial wheel. What’s “new is the clarity of your views on the subject.

There may, in fact, be “millions of people” working in the horror novel genre, as Ran Walker points out, but there are 4.4 million new blog posts being published every DAY! So, as Allegrucci claims, it may not be about “originality” after all, but more about “un-packaging” information already out there, proactively interpreting content in ways that are not only understandable, but usable by readers.

The other “piece” of being well-versed to be original involves the research into emotive power responsiveness. Researchers at the University of Bath, working with Nielson, came up with two ways to score ads.

1. Information Power Score – measures what the consumer perceives as the value of the message
2. Emotive Power Score – measures if the emotion is going to change feelings about the brand

The “originality” of effective blog posts, I teach at Say It For You, consists of offering the business owner’s (or the professional’s, or the organizational executive’s) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic and their unique experiences and insights gained.

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Behind Each Marketing Content Piece Lies at Least 1 of 5 Key Interview Questions

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“Interviews are a vital aspect of nonfiction writing,” Don Vaughn explains in Writer’s Digest. He’s discovered five questions that “help add detail, color, and heft to our work”. At Say It For You, we’ve learned, these same questions inspire content marketing, as business and practice owners “introduce” themselves to their potential buyers.

1. What was your inspiration?
Almost always, there’s an important incident or insight that give birth to the birth of an enterprise. The insight can come from a negative experience or a positive one, and sharing that with readers serves to humanize and personalize the post, adding power to the value proposition.

2. Why is this important?
Someone who has accomplished something remarkable inherently understands why that accomplishment is important, Vaughn reasons, but readers may not.. Often blog visitors don’t know how to “digest” the claims you’ve “served up”.  They simply don’t have any basis for comparison, not being as expert as you are in your field. Spend time providing that “context” that clarifies why what you’ve done – and what you’re doing – is important.

3. What were the greatest challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?
“Asking sources how they dealt with overwhelming challenges in pursuit of success can often form the heart of an article,” Vaughn teaches. Passion and personality give blog posts a big advantage as compared to brochures, ads, or even the website, and owners’ recalling the obstacles they’d needed to overcome lends power to the marketing narrative.

4. What do you get personally from your work?
Using first person (the pronouns “I” and “we”) allows the marketing content to come across as intimate, unique, and conversational. And while no one likes people who speak of nothing but theselves, It’s important to show the person behind the posts, revealing the personality of the business owner or practitioner standing ready to serve the customers.

5. Who else would you suggest I talk to?
Quoting others to support your points and show you’re in touch with trends in your field is a good idea. Aggregating different sources of information on a topic is a way to add value to content readers.

Behind every content marketing piece is at least one of those five key interview questions!

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Retelling Your Marketing Story

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Of course they’ve heard it before, and reusing ideas is certainly nothing new, Toni Fitzgerald explains in the Writer magazine. “From Biblical stories to Homer’s Odyssey, conceptsget adopted and tweaked for the audience.” And just why do writers retell stories?

  • to honor a work that made a big impact on them
  • to amplify an important message
  • to explore a theme from a new direction
  • to add diversity and additional context
  • to force readers to rethink things they may have taken for granted

“Stop us if you’ve heard this one,” Fitzgerald tells readers: Headstrong young woman bucks the expectations of society and of her family. She meets a young man who seems immune to her charms, falls in love with him, learning that things are not always what they seem and that being vulnerable is the only way to move forward… Sure, that’s the story of classic novel Pride and Prejudice, but that plot also fits Bridget Jones’ Diary. The big advantage of recasting a novel is that, since people are already familiar with the story, you spend less time setting up the plot, earning automatic “buy-in” from the readers.

Storytelling is a strong business skill, SCORE explains, with the power to boost business in a number of ways, creating product awareness, improving customer loyalty, and increasing profit. Business stories today, the authors add, are created around eight topics:

  1. Who we are
  2. Why us
  3. Our vision
  4. Good business
  5. What we have learned
  6. How we design it
  7. How we do it
  8. Meet our customers

“Transferring values and beliefs is done through your story’s character having an epiphany because your audience will also experience this,” the SCORE authors explain  As Fitzgerald sees it, “We all want to be the heroes of the story.” But, because different segments of your audience will experience your story in different ways, audiences must be attracted with different “digital honeypots”, on24.com explains. To create a compelling story, you need to understand your readers and who will respond and take action, defining your “buyer persona(s)”, Hubspot advises.

“As marketing strategists, we stress the importance of repetition. Retelling your story – through traditional and digital media, advertising and face-to-face sales – is the only way to ensure your value points are heard, understood and remembered,” says Robin Miller of publicity.com. “If you’re going to be in the marketing or advertising business, if you’re going to be in sales, you’ve got to tell your story over and over, and over and over, and over and over again. Then you’ve got to tell it one more time,” he advises.

Of course they’ve heard it before, we explain to our Say It For You clients. The very secret of success lies in the retelling of your marketing story!

 

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