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When Blogging, Be Prescriptive, But Be Present

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Understanding how the point of view differs in three different types of personal narratives is crucial in telling a story effectively, William Kenower explains in Writer’s Digest.

  1. A memoir is how we tell a story about something that happened to us in the past.
  2. A personal essay describes a solution to a problem the author sees in the world and lays out how the solution should be brought about.
  3. In a prescriptive, the author is an instructor and the article or piece is an instruction manual.

“Though the author may use stories to illustrate their lesson, in a prescriptive piece, the reader expects and understands that the author will be the one delivering the knowledge. To write these kinds of pieces, the author must feel comfortable in the rule of a teacher or guide,” Kenower says. But even in telling a story, he adds, an author is driven to write because of what experience has taught them.  

“Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his latest book All Marketers Tell Stories.

Not all stories succeed, Godin points out, because not all stories have the following essential elements:

  • Great stories are authentic
  • Great stories are subtle, allowing the target audience to draw their own conclusions.
  • Great stories appeal not to logic, but to the senses.

In business blogs, when we tell the story of a business or a practice to consumers, we “frame” that story in a way that will appeal to the target audience. The business owner or professional practitioner is the “teacher”, driven to write because of what experience has taught them.

Blog marketing is prescriptive, offering how-to advice on solving a particular problem or filling a particular need. At the same time, we’ve learned at Say It ForYou, blogging is a very personal form of communication, and our clients’ corporate messages need to be translated into human, people-to-people terms. The blog is the place for readers to connect with the people behind the business or practice.

Because of what experience has taught me, my advice to bloggers is to be prescriptive, but be present!

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Blog to Generate Feelings of Familiarity and Liking

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An experimental psychologist in the US asked a group of people to view various Chinese characters that were displayed on a screen. The volunteers were asked to return a few days later to look at a further batch. Some of the characters they viewed this time around were those they’d been shown the week before; others were new to them. Asked which ones they recognized from the week before, the subjects had absolutely no idea.

In a second experiment using a different group of volunteers, participants were not asked which characters they recognized from the week before. Instead, they were asked which images they liked best. The “mind-boggling fact’, relates John Cleese in his book Creativity, is that the ones the participants said they liked best were those show to them the week before! In the unconscious mind, familiarity generated a feeling of liking. 

Cleese wasn’t talking about blog marketing, but there’s a very important connection here. Precisely because blogs are not one-time articles, but conveyers of messages over long periods of time, they serve as unique tools for building a sense of familiarity (and ultimately trust) in readers. As Hubspot’s Corey Wainwright puts it, “If you consistently create valuable content or articles for your target audience, it’ll establish you as an industry leader or authority in their eyes”

 

A second point Cleese stressed is that “the language of the unconscious is not verbal. Instead, it shows you images. There’s no question that visuals are one of the three “legs” of the business blog “stool”, along with information and perspective or “slant”. Social marketing maven Jeff Bullas lists at least two rather startling statistics to demonstrate the reason images and photos need to be part of any business’ marketing tactics:

  • Articles with images get 94% more total views.
  • 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business when an image shows up in local search results.

Just as marketing professor Demetra Adam explained, increasing the number of “cues” increases prospects’ perception of their own knowledge, making it easier for them to buy (see our post of Feb. 22). Combining verbal and visual “cues” in a blog post increases that feeling of familiarity and “liking”.

Blog to generate familiarity!

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Aiming for the “Me, Too!” Effect in Blog Marketing

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“All salespeople present themselves as problem solvers yet most never ask clients to vividly describe the problems they are experiencing,” Paul Cherry maintains in the book Questions That Sell. An outstanding salesperson, the author teaches, will offer clients the opportunity to open up and vent their frustrations. “You will have success building a relationship with your potential customers only when you can get into their world and identify the forces at work in their lives.”

In blog marketing (where prospects are meeting you before you’ve had the chance to meet them), as Jeremy Porter Communications teaches, the goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message. He names seven emotions and their opposites that marketers can tap into to get an audience “from where they are to where you want them to be”:

  • anger/calmness
  • friendship/enmity
  • fear/confidence
  • shame/shamelessness
  • kindness/unkindness
  • pity or compassion/indignation
  • envy/emulation

At Say It For You, we understand that, in blogging for business, face-to-screen is the closest we blog content writers will come to our prospective buyers of our clients’ products and services. On the other hand, we’re conscious that behind every decision, there is always a person, a being with feelings. One of the most direct access paths to prospects’ feelings is through stories. “Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his book All Marketers Tell Stories.

The thing to remember is that people are online searching for answers to problems or solutions for dilemmas. If, in encountering a blog post about a customer who went through a sort of pain and suffering akin to theirs (and who has now come out the other side), readers’ natural and highly emotional reaction might well be “Me, too!”.

Far sooner and more directly than descriptions of features and benefits of your offer, an emotionally charged story of suffering solved might well result in a “me, too” sale!

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Blogging What You Know NOW

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Despite the commercial success of the book (and then the movie) Jaws, author Peter Benchley deeply regretted making the great white shark into a deadly villain, Mental Floss authors relate. Before his death in 2006, Benchley remarked, “Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today. Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges.”

In this Say It For You blog, I’ve often written about the fact that myth-debunking is one great use for business blogs. Many misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves in the natural order of business, in the form of questions and comments from readers and customers. Shining the light of day on that misinformation shines light on your own expertise, and, if it’s done with finesse, rather than “showing up” readers, it can engage and keep them coming back.

But I think this story about Peter Benchley and the great white shark has an even deeper lesson to teach blog content writers. Later in his life, the Mental Floss authors relate, Benchley became a shark conservationist and oceanographer. His knowledge and understanding had grown and evolved.

I teach freelance blog writers to include stories of their clients’ past mistakes and failures. Such stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame not only adversity, but the effects of their own mistakes – and of their own previously mistaken thinking!

“The range of human emotion is massive, from positive emotions like joy, interest, and amazement, to the more negative, such as fear, anger, or sadness Campaigns need to be geared towards evoking and connecting with these real emotions,” Nadya Khoja writes in moz.com. “This is the time to update your buyer personas to reflect the new realities your customers are experiencing,” she adds.

The lesson, I believe, is that now may be the time to update our own “personas” to reflect not only the new realities in the marketplace, but our own revised understandings based on experience. It’s time to blog what we know NOW!

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All You Have to Do is Blog

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According to the 1-800-GOT-JUNK commercial, when you want something removed from your home or yard, “All you have to do is point” As a blog content writer, I love that commercial.

“Persuasive ads are advertisements designed to elicit a desired action,” Mary Lister writes in Wordstream. Ad campaigns for products or services are designed to communicate two main ideas:

  1. Problems your product or service solves
  2. Ways your product or service does that better/quicker/cheaper than that of your competitors.

Confession – for me as a consumer, there’s always been a third piece. I’m not handy. And, since I don’t know how to assemble, much less fix, mechanical devices or pieces of furniture, I’m always looking for what’s going to be required of me in the process of achieving a solution to my problem or fulfilling my need.

The 1-800-GOT-JUNK motto must have been made for people like me. Right up front, they’re assuring me that they will handle the issue, do the dirty work, figure it out. All I have to do is identify the problem.

All business owners and practitioners have products and services to sell. But sometimes, the marketing and advertising skips over the convenience factor.

A little over ten years ago, an editorial cartoon in the Indianapolis Business Journal showed a harried lady returning a gadget to a merchant’s Returns window. “It’s not that I don’t like the product,” she said – “I just can’t get it out of the package!”

  • Yes, you understand your target audience and the specific problems they’re facing.
  • Yes, your product or service provides a way to solve those problems.
  • Yes, your product/service compares favorably to others on the market.
  • Yes, but…but…but, just how much effort am I going to need to expend to “get it out of the package”?

Put yourself in the shoes of your online visitors:

How easy is it for them to navigate your website? Follow your Calls to Action? Set up an appointment with you? Pick up the phone and call if they choose to? (Is your phone number clearly displayed on the page?)

How easy is it going to be for a prospect to: get started on that program you’re touting? Start on the diet plan? Install the app or get the device to function?

Let them know – “all you have to do is…….._!

Borrowing the line from 1-800-GOT-JUNK, blog marketers’ new mantra might well be this:

All you have to do is blog!

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