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Business Blogging Tips Out of Consumer Reports Magazine – Part B

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blogging tips

 

“My TV prompts me to do updates, but I often ignore the requests.  Is that bad?”  That question was the headline of an article in the March issue of Consumer Reports Magazine.

Think about that tactic for a moment as applied to blog marketing – using a customer question as a headline, then using the blog post content to answer that very question! Hardly new, that “Dear Abby” idea (in my former career, I used that very question answer format for 24 years in my weekly financial planning column).

I tell new Indianapolis blog content writers that, in creating content for marketing blogs, we need to keep in mind that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and solutions for dilemmas they’re facing.  But, even if those searchers haven’t specifically formulated a question, I suggest we do that for them by presenting a question in the blog post title itself.

Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide thinks that giving away information to get clients in just this way is a good idea: “By providing visitors with free and valuable information and services, you entice them to return to your web site often, and in doing so you increase the number of selling opportunities you have with each individual visitor.”

Specifically, the question in the title “grabs” readers, not only demonstrating what they can expect to find in the blog post, by showing that you understand the dilemmas they’re facing and how to solve those.

Question-answer is actually a very good format for presenting information to online readers. But there’s no need to wait until readers actually write in their questions. (Were all the Dear Abby questions actually sent in by readers?  Does it matter?) Every practitioner hears questions from clients; every business owner fields customer queries daily. Sharing some of those in blog posts reminds readers of challenges they face – and the solutions you have to offer!

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Question/Answer Blogging Benefits Readers and Bloggers

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question-answer blog posts

 

The one-page advertorial in the February issue of Indy Kids’ Directory could serve as the perfect model for any professional practitioner’s blog post, I thought. The page is headed by a parent’s question: “My child is struggling with reading.  Could it be related to his speech difficulties?”

Yes, begins the answer. The speech pathologist, owner of Speech Connections, follows up by citing study results showing that as a group, preschoolers with speech sound disorders are at increased risk for reading disabilities and developmental dyslexia.

The rest of the page consists of a chart listing guidelines for speech sound development at each age.  For example, by age 1 ½, children typically develop the sounds P, M, H. B. and N, while the sounds “sh”, “ch”, and “z” may not be developed until  as late as age 8.

“The above chart is a general guideline,” the author cautions, following up with a gentle Call to Action: “If your child is not able to say sounds in his or her age range, then a consult with a speech-language pathologist is recommended.”

Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide thinks that giving away information to get clients in just this way is a good idea: “By providing visitors with free and valuable information and services, you entice them to return to your web site often, and in doing so you increase the number of selling opportunities you have with each individual visitor.”

Some business owners, I’ve found, are afraid that, if they share too much information about their field, clients won’t need to pay them to provide expertise! “Many advisers won’t share information with potential clients until they’ve been hired. But, by giving very useful information to parents about how to judge their children’s sound development, pathologist Boyer is establishing her own credibility.

A second concern business owners often express to me is that they don’t want to come off boastful and self-serving in their blog, or be perceived as using hard-sell tactics to promote themselves. Think about it, though. That information about children’s speech development is highly useful and may galvanize parents into taking action on behalf of their own kids. “We have to sell ourselves to potential clients so that they choose to work with us rather than the competition, Steve Wamsley writes in his book Stop Selling And Do Something Valuable.

Question-answer information blogging can benefits both reads and bloggers!

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Business Blog Writing to Boost Readers’ Brains – and Your Own – Part B

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helping blog readers remember

The deeper I delved into that delightful little book. Brain-Boosting Challenges, the more I realized how right I’ve been about the “training effect” of a business blog.  As you’re busy describing your accomplishments and reviewing the benefits of your products and services, you’re keeping them fresh in your own mind, constantly providing yourself with training about how to talk effectively about your business.

The many brain-boosting ideas and memory “hooks” the book offers hint at techniques business blog content writers can use, including this one:  “A useful technique when learning facts is to contrast them in some way.”  Compare-and-contrast is one of several structures we blog writers can use to help customers and prospects derive the greatest use out of the information we’re presenting. Use what they know, comparing your ”new” solution to traditional “old” solutions to the problem your company solves. Compare unfamiliar things to things with which readers are already comfortable.

“Chunking” is a memory device that binds sequential digits or words into groups. Telephone numbers, for example, are usually both written and pronounced in groups, the Brain-Boosting authors explain. Chunking is one way business bloggers can offering technical information in “chewable tablet form”, because it breaks down information into bite-sized pieces so the brain can more easily digest it. The “reverse” form of chunking is to take individual pieces of information and show how they are related, perhaps in ways readers hadn’t considered.

Bullet points represent a graphic way to organize information, and it seems content writers either love or absolutely abhor them.  Myself, I’m kind of partial to those little black dots as a way to keep readers’ attention on track. Like anything else, of course, bullet points can be overused, but they’re certainly visually attractive.

The idea, of course, when it comes to marketing a business or practice through blogging, is not to have the readers memorize your content, but to have them find it – and by association – you, memorable. If the writing style is clear and simple, triggering familiar associations in the readers’ minds, those memorable business blogs can improve their memories, and, quite possibly, your own bottom line!

 

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Business Blog Writing to Boost Readers’ Brains – and your Own

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blog writing to boost memory

Turns out I was right about the “training effect” of a business blog. When you blog, I like to say, you verbalize the positive aspects of your business in a way that people can understand. You put your recent accomplishments down in words. You review the benefits of your products and services and keep them fresh in your mind. In other words, you are constantly providing yourself with training about how to talk effectively about your business.

“Learning to express yourself clearly and compactly is useful not just in terms of coming across well when speaking to others, but it also helps you to think with great clarity,” the Paragon Books Brain-Boosting Challenges explains.

“When we think we can remember a first letter but no more, there’s a good chance we’re actually correct,” the authors say. The first letter of a word is a critically important part of our ability to identify it.”  Two creative writing techniques that can make your blog post titles, as well as some of the text content, memorable and interesting are alliteration and assonance. Alliteration repeats the same consonant (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers) or the same vowel sound (Honesty is the best policy).

“To help make a memory stronger, when you go back over the same material, it’s helpful to try presenting the content to yourself in a difference way to force yourself to think it through from a fresh angle.” Isn’t that precisely what business blogging is, continually approaching the same core topics from different angles?  What you can do with the blog is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts. 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.

As a blogging trainer, one concern I hear a lot from business owners or professional practitioners is that sooner or later, they’ll deplete their supply of ideas for blog posts. “I’ve already covered my products and services on my website – what else is left to say?” is the common thread in the questions I’m so often asked.

That’s when it’s important to remember the readers. Smart blog marketers know there are many subsets of every target market group, and that not every message will work on every person. At Say It For You, we realize online searchers need to know we’re thinking of them as individuals.

Repeating the same information in different forms is not only  good for your own memory – it helps your blog readers remember YOU!

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Can Business Blog Writing “Make the Man”?

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ShakespeareWhen Shakespeare’s Polonius was sharing his wisdom with Laertes, he mentioned how important clothing is in making a good impression:

“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.”

Generations later, Mark Twain quipped, “Clothes make a man.  Naked people have little or no influence in society.”

But clothes affect not only the impression we make on others, Dr. Jordan Gaines Lewis points out in Psychology Today. What we wear affects how we perceive ourselves. Lewis cites a study done at Northwestern University that revealed that when researchers wore a white coat when interacting with participants and parents, they not only received more respect, but subconsciously felt more professional.

“How we behave is clearly affected by the clothes we wear,” Dr. Helene Pavlov opines in the Huffington Post. It is important for individuals to realize that maybe the clothes DO make the man or the woman!

I’ve actually expressed something of the same sentiment on the Say It For You website.   “When you put up a blog with excellent content that engages your potential and current customers, you will typically receive the following four types of benefits: An SEO benefit, a promotional benefit, a credibility benefit, and (this is the one that comes closest to the “clothes make the man” concept), a training benefit.

The way I explain the training benefit is this: When you blog, you verbalize the positive aspects of your business in a way that people can understand. You put your recent accomplishments down in words. You review the benefits of your products and services and keep them fresh in your mind. In other words, you are constantly providing yourself with training about how to talk effectively about your business.

Can it be that the words in which you “clothe” your business or practice, as you are presenting it to the world in your blog, will have an effect on the passion with which you  actually run your business or practice?

Can business blog writing “make the man”?

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