Posts

In Blogging – the Devil is in the Details

/0 Comments/in /by

 

 

“Whether you’re measuring engagement in terms of blog comments, social media interaction, or a combination of metrics,” James Parson opines in contentpowered.com, “ there’s one universal constant. You want more engagement.”

Engagement facts, Parson thinks, are some of the most interesting, because analytics reveal that details as seemingly insignificant as the placement of a punctuation mark can make a big difference.

“Devilish details” include these:

  • Including a hyphen or a colon in the middle of a blog post title can increase search engine click-through by as much as 9%. (Notice what I did in the title of this post?)
  • 54% of blog posts that rank well include an image or video.
  • Best time of week to bring a blog post “live”? Tuesdays and Wednesdays (What day is it today, again?). What time? 9:30-10AM Eastern.
  • “Listicles” beginning with an odd number outperform lists beginning with an even number by 20% (Who knew?)
  • Blog headlines with only 8 words do better than those with a different word count. (Words in my title – count them!).

Entertaining and, to an extent, enlightening info, to be sure. Can’t help thinking about what Neil Patel had to say about “over-optimizing” a website or blog, which is “Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.”

Main thing is, as we teach at Say It For You, content is meant to be written for people. Sure, you want good ranking so more people see your blog link, but first and foremost, you’re writing blog content to solve problems and appeal to customers, clients, and prospects. So, yes to the listicles, the short headlines, and the images, and certainly yes to providing “snippets” to give web searchers snippets a preview of your content.

With those “devilish” details in mind, still it pays to never lose sight of the essence of content marketing: creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content.

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

In Blogging for Business, Remember the Golden Rule Conundrum

/0 Comments/in /by

“Most of us were taught in childhood the so-called golden rule,” Garrison Klueck writes in this month’s MENSA Bulletin. The basic directive, he reminds us, is to “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”. What could possibly go wrong with that easy-to-grasp call to altruism and empathy, Klueck asks? Where’s the conundrum?

The basic problem, Kleuck points out, is that the golden rule assumes all people want the same type of things “done unto them.”, and that is clearly not the case. We’re like pet cats bringing dead mice to their owners. The cats consider the mouse a gift and expect their owners to be pleased, but instead, they’re horrified.

Hurt feelings, misunderstanding, disputes, and conflicts arise from the disconnect between how we treat others and how they would like to be treated, Klueck concludes.

Precisely the same conundrum applies in blogging for business, we’ve learned at Say it for You. “A blog’s target audience is the group of people who will find its content most helpful,” writes Mo the blog coach. “Putting specific demographics on your audience helps you to think of them as a real person with real problems and not abstract people.” In other words, the more you can learn learn what your target readers want “done unto them”, the more successful your blog marketing is likely to be.

“If your marketing is not getting enough people into the pool, you’ll find the problem is in one of three places. You’ve either got the wrong STORY, the wrong STUFF, or the wrong AUDIENCE,”  iTeam CEO Thaddeus Rex once told me. “No marketing succeeds if it can’t find the audience that already wants to believe the story being told,” is the way Seth Godin puts it.

Understanding what blog visitors want “done unto them” will ultimately affect every aspect of your blog, including what it looks like, the style of writing, the length and frequency of posts, and how you present calls to action.

In blogging for business, remember the Golden Rule conundrum!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Create Tension in Blogging for Business

/0 Comments/in , , /by

“Even a small amount of tension in your writing can move it from flat to fascinating,” Mary-Kate Mackey tells writers in Write Better Right Now. Just as bending a flat metal rule into an arc, she advises, think “arc” in setting up questions in readers’ minds. In a well-written paragraph, each sentence launches from the last, with paragraphs positioned along the larger arc of the whole piece.

Because our Say It For You team focuses its writing on blog marketing, I particularly appreciate one marketing example Mackey offered. The assignment – a travel agency pitching the town of Lily Pond, Arkansas.

The first version lacks tension:
“The small town of Lily Pond offers much for anyone willing to leave the interstate.” That’s a yawn, Mackey says – lots of places have lots of amenities to offer.

A better version, one with tension:
“FUN THIS WAY – That sign doesn’t exist on the interstate exist for Highway 58. But it should.”

Richard Anderson’e Powerful Writing Skills makes the same point about conveying a sense of enthusiasm through your writing. “Don’t be satisfied with putting down data and results or observations and opinions,” Anderson says.“ Find a way to make this information meaningful to your reader.”

But, really, can that be done? Can we, over months and years, continue to “have something to say” related to our field, keeping our blog posts relevant over long periods of time without losing reader excitement and engagement?  The answer (extraordinarily simple, yet extraordinarily difficult): We have to keep learning, constantly adding to our own body of knowledge – about our industry or professional field (and in the case of our content writing team, about those of our clients).

One interesting parallel is found in ballroom dancing, my own beloved hobby over the years. “Dancing would be impossible without a certain amount of tension,” explains danceforums.com. “In time and with practice you will learn to match your leader’s arm tension: when it’s relaxed you will be relaxed, when he is increasing his tension, you will fill it, you’ll match it, and you’ll know he’s up to something,” an instructor explains to females..

In blogging for business, a simple arc gets readers to want to know – What’s the consequence of this tension? What is the business owner or practitioner leading me to? What’s at the end of the arc?

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

In Business and in Blogging, Differentiation is the Key to Success

/0 Comments/in , , /by

“There are many ways to differentiate yourself,” writes Michael Hill in Measuring Ourselves. “Become the idea guy, the best manager, the highest-producing sales-person. Find your passion and use it,” he advises.

“Blog differentiation is one of the best ways to get more attention for your brand, Dave Taylor agrees. Starting a blog these days is easy, he admits. However, with millions of blogs that are already popular, it’s difficult to stand out from the crowd. Taylor lists several aspects of blog differentiation, including topic, demographic target and content style.

Collectivedge.com offers a number of differentiation suggestions that, at Say It For You, I’ve found to be very effective in blogging for business:

“Connect with your readers by always writing in the first person” 
In blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

Don’t be afraid to be controversial.
In any field, there will always be controversy – about best business practices, about the best approach to providing professional services, about acceptable levels of risk, even about business-related ethical choices. Rather than ignoring the controversy, bloggers need to comment on the different views and “weigh in”.

Borrowing from successful writers allows you to pick up handy techniques and tricks.
Business bloggers, I teach, need to spend at least as much time reading as writing, in order to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing. Plus, when you link to someone else’s remarks on a subject you’re covering, that can not only reinforce your point, but add value to readers by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog.

Make it pretty – blog posts with images get twice as many shares.
No doubt about it, the story line is paramount in blogging for business.. Where visuals come in, whether they’re in the form of “clip art”, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos, is to add interest and evoke emotion.

As content writers, we help business owners and practitioners differentiate themselves. In fact, blog content is the ideal vehicle for adding explanations, offering more details and updates, telling stories, and expressing owners’ beliefs about what’s most important to them in serving clients and customers.

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Starting – and Sticking With – Blogging for Business

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

While launching a business blog is a fearsome thing for many, sustaining the process is even harder, as Seth Godin discusses in The Dip.

Too many business owners and professional practitioners embark on blog marketing in recognition of its power to generate interest in their products and services. What gets them down is the week-after-week work of creating new, relevant, interesting, and results-producing…blog posts.

In the face of all the compelling reports demonstrating the value of blog marketing, Caslon Analytics tells us that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month!, 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days. The average blog, Caslon remarks ruefully, “has the lifespan of a fruitfly”.

Problem is, as we well know at Say It For You, in blog marketing, it’s just not OK to quit. Those abandoned blogs belong to those who don’t recognize what Seth Godin describes as the “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”. Google and other search engines tend to give more weight to websites that update their content regularly and that “keep on keeping on.” In fact, it’s the constant, consistent stream of new content that gives blogging its edge over other forms of marketing.

After years of being involved in all aspects of corporate blog writing and corporate blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that blog content writers who do nothing more than “show up” are exceptional! That’s because business owners who are able and willing to maintain consistency and frequency in posting to their blog are so rare. Remember, a company or practice might be achieving exceptional results, but potential customers and clients don’t yet know that, and that’s the message that needs to come across in the blog (and the latest entry cannot be six months old!).

Readers and search engines each know to “expect” fresh content. Freelance blog content writers are helping their business owner and professional practitioner clients build equity in keyword phrases over time, helping clients achieve those “extraordinary benefits that accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most”.

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail