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Content Creators – Craftsmen, Not Artists

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“If you build something for a specific purpose, you measure success by how well your creation serves that function. If you make pure art, your accomplishment is exclusively determined by how the creation makes you feel,” posit the authors of The Big Book of Big Secrets. “A craftsperson also follows a creative spirit, but his or her desire for artistic fulfillment is secondary to the obligation to make something that is functional.”

By that definition, I realized, all of us business blog content writers can definitely call ourselves craftspersons in that we follow a creative spirit in making our content functional for both our clients and their customers. In fact, Marc Prosser of SCORE names some very practical, functional reasons for business and practice owners to keep their business blogs active, including:

  • to drive traffic to your website
  • to inform customers about the good work you do
  • to promote a positive employer brand
  • to share testimonials to earn the trust of new clients
  • to establish your authority in your field

A functional professional blog, content strategist Laura Lynch of buildcreate.com adds, does all these things most effectively when it is presented in an attractive design. Images are what calls attention to high value content, Lynch asserts.

In fact, we’ve found at Say It For You, creating business blog content involves a mix of craftsmanship and artistry. Researchers at the University of Bath actually devised a score for ads that involves two measures: information power and emotive power. While I continually preach that blog posts are not ads, establishing connections is our function as content marketers.

As craftspersons, then, we content writers do what Jonah Berger, in his book Contagious, describes, which is offer useful, practical, functional advice and information. That kind of information and advice has utility, meaning it is useful, saving time, saving money, or improving health. Another form of “utility” is social currency, Berger explains, meaning the content offers ways for people to achieve visible symbols of “insider” status, helping them keep up with prevalent trends.

What is this “craft” called content marketing? We use creativity, not to satisfy our own creative urge, but to keep on telling the business’ or the practice’s story in its infinite variations over long periods of time. We know that readers who end up as clients and customers have self-selected rather than being persuaded.

 

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It’s Not the Blog That Makes You Rich

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“I’m not the guy that makes you rich; I’m the guy that helps keep you from being poor”. That unusual self-intro by financial advisor and insurance agent Jeffrey Eric Frank from Wayne, Pennsylvania really captured my attention at a recent virtual networking meeting, Of course, as a former financial advisor myself, I immediately understood the truth in Frank’s “motto” when it comes to wealth. Focused these days on marketing, though, I couldn’t help making a comparison with blogs…

Their very nature makes blogs ideal for marketing, Randy Duermyer explains in thebalancesmb.com, naming the following characteristics:

  • Blogs are inexpensive to start and run.
  • Blogs build website traffic.
  • Blogs are easy to use.
  • Blogs improve search engine rankings.
  • Blogs engage your market.

Blog marketing, though, is hardly a direct route to guaranteed marketing success; while starting a blog can be done quickly and easily, Duermyer cautions, it’s the ongoing management that will take time and patience. What’s more, blog marketing is not designed to “close” deals in the same way as a face-to-face encounter between a prospect and sales professional might do. Going back to our friend Jeffrey Eric Frank, the blog, however well-planned and executed, is “not the guy that makes you rich”.

What can and will happen, as Hubspot blogger Corey Wainwright explains, is that prospects who have been reading your blog posts enter the “sales funnel” more educated on your industry and what you have to offer. What business owners and professionals are doing with the blog is taking advantage of the main reason use the Web in the first place – to find answers and information.

Rather than running traditional ads for your brand of hats, vitamins, or travel, you provide lots of information on the history of hats, on why vitamins are good for you, and about exciting places to go on safari.  Consumers interested in your subject, but who never even knew your name come to see you as a trusted resource, possibly as a business to do business with!

No, New York Life’s JE Frank doesn’t for a moment pretend to be the guy who’ll make you rich. And, at Say It For You, we approach blog marketing with the same sort of practical wisdom in mind. Blogging is a very good “back door” approach to sales, helping you cultivate an audience of people who may well move on to become buyers.

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Blogging to Help X Do Y

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“Ultimately, your company profile matters. It can intrigue a new visitor to check out your products or services in more detail, and nudge potential customers into choosing your business over competitors,” Caroline Forsey writes. Forsey uses the Starbucks company profile as an example, incorporating the company’s mission, background story, products, and even folklore regarding its name.

All that material makes excellent fodder for website content, I thought. When it comes to blog marketing, however, I liked the very simple model for a business profile offered by Linked In sales enabler Missy Parrish: – “We help X to do Y”.

At Say It For You, we teach, blog content writers’ initial focus must be on the X. Even if your products and services are top-rate, that’s not enough to keep content fresh and make conversions happen. Your knowledge of the target audience has to influence every aspect of your blog. In fact, the very essence of content marketing is not “pitching” prospects and customers, but providing content that is truly relevant and useful to them

What about the Y? Most of the time, I explain to newbie blog content writers, at stage #1 of their search, online readers don’t know the name of the individual, the business, or the practice they want. What most consumers are likely to type into the search bar are words describing:

1.  their need
2. their problem
3. their idea of the solution to their problem
4.  a question

That means telling those visitors (the X) about the things you can help them learn and the things you can help them do (the Y) is what is most likely to lead to a next step. Always keep in in mind that, when you’re blogging, you’re talking to a friendly and interested audience about things that might help them (as opposed to forcing your message in front of people who are trying to avoid it).

What if you have more than one X and more than one Y? In fact, most business owners and professional practitioners tell me they have more than one target audience for their products and services. There may be one demographic that accounts for the majority of their customers, but they also have “outliers” who bring in just enough revenue to matter.

That is precisely the beauty of blog marketing. In fact, what you don’t want is an all-in-one marketing tool that forces a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 99 wonderful services your company or practice has to offer.  Each blog post will offer just enough to convey to individual searchers they’ve come to the right place (which they will have, based on the search terms they used).

Your welcome to those very visitors is the message conveyed in that very blog post: You help X’s like them to do Y!

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Don’t Keep Yourself a Secret in Your Blog

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“What we’re marketing is Y-O-U”,” career strategist Diane Wingerter reminds clients, subjecting their personal profiles to her “’red pen review”: It’s a mistake to introduce yourself to a prospective customer or employer with a laundry list of all the things you do, she teaches . In order to focus on how you want the reader of the profile to feel about you, weave your bio into a narrative that reveals your personality.

In fact, two P’s of business blogging, we remind clients of Say It For You, are Passion and Personality. As compared to brochures and advertisements, blog posts are ideal for revealing, while imparting valuable information to visitors, the unique personality and core beliefs of the business or practice owners.

Used to be, the emphasis in marketing was on conveying a USP, a unique selling proposition. Today, however, we should move in the direction of ESPs – emotional selling propositions,” Jeanette McMurtry cautions in Marketing for Dummies. And, in online communication, while need may have brought visitors to your blog, it’s their want (their desire to do business with you) that will move those visitors “down the sales funnel”.

Based on my years as a college career mentor, helping students secure internships, I have come to compare blog posts to long interviews. Searchers on the web are “recruiting” help, and just as in a face-to-face interview, they evaluate your content in light of their own needs. It’s more than that, as Diane Wingerter so aptly emphasizes. What interviewers really do, as the Helium Jobs & Careers website says, is “get a look at your personality.”

Business blog posts, shorter, less formal, and more personal than websites, are the perfect venue to showcase your personality and your unique approach to your field. Yes, a marketing blog must demonstrate what you have, what you do, and what you know how to do, but, whatever you do – don’t keep yourself a secret in your blog!

 

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Blog Reading Based on Different Motivations

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“There was a time when archaeology was commissioned privately by wealthy individuals,” I learned from the incredibly fascinating tome of trivia, Publications International’s The Big Book of Big Secrets. One of the most interesting chapters described the day in 1922 when, some 300 years after the death of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, a way to enter the tomb of “King Tut “was discovered. (I remember visiting the “Golden King” exhibit of these artifacts at the Children’s Museum back in 2009 right here in Indianapolis.)

From a blog marketing standpoint, I was fascinated by The Big Book authors’ insight into the differing motivations those wealthy individuals had for their ongoing efforts, spread over many years, to open the tomb. “Some of those benefactors desired to advance historical knowledge, while others simply hoped to enhance their personal collections of antiquities.” As things turned out, both types were rewarded for their efforts: Ancient plunderers raided the tomb for smaller items, making huge profits from mummies and from recovered items, while the historians were able to “catalog piles of priceless artifacts”.

Firstmondayorg, reporting on a study for the motivations of blog readership among recent college graduates, observes that readers used blogs for step-by-step instructions for hobbies, do-it-yourself household reports, and money management. ”Today, blogs mean a host of things to bloggers, blog readers, and new media researchers.”In the survey, most graduates said blogs were useful in helping them pick up skills they had not learned in college but which they now needed for their careers. Some interviewees reported that blogs provided them with essential professional tips. According to some interviewees, blogs served as niche learning resource tailored to their information problems.

At Say it For You, one valuable coaching tip we offer to blog content writers is to tailor individual blog posts – or series of posts – to different segments of the customer base (as opposed to trying to reach them all in any one post). In a way, each time you post you’re pulling out just one of those attachments on your “Swiss army knife” and offering some valuable information or advice relating to just one aspect of your business. Another day, your blog post can do the same with a different “attachment”.

Brenda Stoltz of Ariad Partners suggests accomplishing that very goal by designating “days” for different targets: Corporate accounting Mondays, Small Biz Wednesdays, or Freelance Fridays. As a variation on the concept, we’ve advised setting aside a section on the website for blog posts for certain specialty readers.

Just like the archaeologies of old, some historians, others antique dealers, blog reading is based on different motivations.

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