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What This Blog Isn’t

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This week’s Say It for You posts were inspired by James Marshall Reilly’s book One Great Speech, in which he describes his challenges in locating and identifying “experts” in varying fields, based on the requests of buyers and event sponsors.

In the introduction to his book, James Marshall Reilly makes sure readers know exactly what to expect.  In fact, the author provides three checklists:

  1. Who is this book for?
  2. What this book will teach you
  3. What this book isn’t

While it may not be practical for blog content writers to actually provide readers such a checklist for each post, it’s a great self-check mechanism for content creators.

Who is this blog post for?
Not only must a marketing blog be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and towards those who will want to do business with you, each post should have a specific type of reader in mind. That way, the content will clearly demonstrate that the business owner or practitioner and the staff understand the readers’ concerns and needs, but know how to meet those needs and solve those very problems.

What this post will teach you
The title of a blog post indicates what readers can expect to learn. There are two basic categories of blog titles, we’ve found at Say It For You. The first is very direct, using keyword phrases that match up with what a reader may have typed into the search bar. The second category gives only the barest hint of the content to follow and is meant to arouse curiosity A compromise I teach is to use a combination of a “Huh?” title to get attention and then an “Oh!” subtitle to make clear what the post is actually going to be about.

What this post isn’t
Of Reilly’s three lists, this one may be the most important for blog content writers to consider and at least indirectly, make clear in the content:

  • This is not an advertisement or a list of claims about a product or service.
  • This is not a news report (although it may be based on a news report, offering a fresh perspective on that news).
  • This is not a ”put-down” of our competitors’ products and services.
  • This is not a thinly veiled attempt to capture contact information from you.
  •  This is not a mere re-hash of widely accessible information.

Very much like a sculptor who “reveals” the shape by cutting away “excess” marble, blog content writers can craft effective posts by cutting away what the content is not!

 

 

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Comparative Marketing for Blogs

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“As long as the value of one product or service is being communicated through its comparison to another product or service, it qualifies as comparative advertising,” Conor Bond writes in Wordstream. The goal, as with all advertising, is to communicate value, but in the case of comparative advertising, that value is conveyed not only from quality, but from the disparity in quality between one product or service and another. The other company or provider serves as an anchor, Bond explains, something concrete to use as a reference point.

Bond offers examples of comparative advertising, including:

  • Mac portraying its own users as immune to the viruses that commonly attack PCs
  • Verizon portraying its own customers enjoying online games and YouTube videos on their phones while ATT&T customers suffer lack of access
  • Wendy’s tweeting about MacDonald’s beef patties still being frozen
  • Popeye’s “dinging” chick-fil-A for being closed on Sundays

Two companies that choose to compare themselves against an amalgam of others rather than a specific rival, Bond notes, are Dove (treats your skin with care, unlike the others who treat it harshly), and Allstate using Mayhem to show that they outdo competitors in preparing customers to deal with unpredictable events.

Can comparative marketing work for blogs? At Say It For You, we teach, negatives against competitors are a basic no-no. It’s almost axiomatic that, in writing for business, we want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition.  In getting the point across that readers should want to choose this business or this practice, or these products and services over those offered by the competition, staying positive is still important. In fact, sometimes knowing what not to include in your business blog writing makes you a better blog content writer.

The “Golden Rule” advice Advisor Today gives to financial planning practitioners applies here: “say only those kinds of things about specific competitors that we’d want them saying about us!” The high road in blog marketing strategy and tactics development is what Bing Crosby used to croon, “Accentuate the positive…latch on to the affirmative.”

One format I’ve found useful is the “Some……but we….”

  • “Some stylists are in the practice of ……, but at Shirley’s Salon, we believe …….. is best.”
  • Some housecleaning companies require you to provide your own products, but at ABC, we supply our cleaning staff with green products.”

    In other words, accentuate the positive. Comparative blog marketing means explaining why you do things the way you do, letting readers draw their own conclusions.

 

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Blue Man Group as a Model for Blog Content Writers

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As Chip Munn writes in Financial Planning magazine, financial advisors can take several tips from the Blue Man Group entertainment act, begun in the 80s, which incorporates comedy, music, and humor performed by three men, with heads and faces painted blue, who speak not a single word in the course of their stage performances. There are valuable business lessons for financial planning practices Munn believes, which can be derived from the Blue Man business model. For blog marketers, there are lessons as well:

You need to understand what people you’re looking for on your team and in your audience. (In addition to being skillful stage performers, Blue Men performers need to be of fairly uniform height and build.)

In blog marketing, the bottom line is knowing your target audience. Intelligence about your reader base needs to influence every aspect of the blog – its look, its style, its length, its frequency. As Seth Godin points out in his book All Marketers Tell Stories, “great stories are rarely aimed at everyone”.

You need to own your image and your equipment. (Blue Man group created their own unique instruments.)

One of the very important purposes of any business blog is to demonstrate “only-ness” to readers. To have any hope of engaging readers’ interest, blogs must provide fresh, relevant content, a challenge due to the sheer volume of information on the Web. Two strategies include bringing in “unique instruments” – less well-known facts about familiar things and processes, and suggesting new ways of thinking about things readers already know. Taking a stance, using the blog to express a firm opinion on issues, is a way to leverage your uniqueness.

Stay close to your clients. (Blue Man founder Chris Wink would periodically leave the executive suite to perform and remain involved.)

People tend to be comfortable associating with professionals and business owners who give back to their community. Blog content can focus on personal anecdotes and on the personal values of the business owners and of the people delivering professional services, alluding to current community happenings and concerns.

Plan growth in small increments. (Blue Man group began in Chicago, and scaled to become a global entertainment force, ultimately purchased by Cirque du Soleil.)

The people who find your blog are those who are already online looking for information, products, or services that relate to what you know, what you have, and what you do! Your online marketing challenge is not to seek out the people, but to help them seek you out! In blog marketing, keep telling your story consistently and frequently, honing it all along the way, and allowing time for your “reach” to grow.

Blue Man Group can be a model for us blog content writers!

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For Humor and Allusions in Blogs, Make Sure Readers Don’t “Huh?”

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“Know your audience. Not everyone will think every joke is funny,” advises Michael Strecker in the book Young Comic’s Guide to Telling Jokes. Strecker’s advice applies to blog content writing, as we’ve learned through experience at Say it For You.

One reason certain jokes fall flat with certain audiences, I’m convinced, is not that those jokes are offensive or unfunny. It’s that many jokes are based on a cultural allusion that is simply not familiar to that audience.

A cultural allusion is an indirect reference to a person, place, or idea that is not directly described. Here are a few of Strecker’s jokes that will be funny to you only if you happen to recognize the allusion to history, literature, mathematics, geology, or the Bible…….

  • What was the sea creatures’ strike called? Octopi Wall Street.
    (The allusion is to the protest movement against economic inequality that started in New York City and which was named Occupy Wall Street.)
  • Who invented the ball point pen? The Incas.
    (The allusion is to the ancient Incan empire in the country of Peru.)
  • Why was the precious metal so silly? It was fool’s gold.
    (The allusion is to the metal pyrite, which has no value, but which resembles gold in its appearance. Many treasure-seekers foolishly mistook pyrite for gold.)
  • How did the dentist pay for his vision exam? An eye for a tooth.
    (The allusion is to a passage from the Bible about punishing a man who injures another – “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…)
  • What do you do at a math party? East pi and square dance.
    (The allusion is to pi, which is the ration of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, approximately 3.14.)
  • What do you call a street where Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and James Patterson live? Writer’s Block.
    (The allusion is to three famous writers and to a psychological “block” in which a person represses painful thoughts of memories.)

In blog marketing, we might choose to use an allusion to get a point across without going into a lengthy explanation. Or, we might want to get readers thinking about our subject in a new way. We might even use allusions to cement a bond between our client and the blog readers, showing the business owner or practitioner has experienced some of the same problems and obstacles as their customers now face.

There’s only one problem – an allusion does not describe in detail the person or thing to which it’s referring – readers have to recognize the allusion. As content writers, we need to gauge our readers’ areas of interest and even their level of education. If they simply don’t know the underlying story, literary tale or other reference point, we could be leaving them scratching their heads, and asking “Huh?”

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In Blogging, Clarity Depends on Contrasts

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blog selling
The following true story, shared in Daniel Pink’s book To Sell is Human, involves a blind man sitting on a bench in Central Park with a can for contributions labeled “I’m blind”. With the addition of only 4 words, an ad exec realized, the sign would move more people to put money in the can. When the sign stated “It is springtime, but I am blind”, people were able to feel pity – here they were, enjoying the gorgeous spring day, while this poor blind man was totally unable to savor its beauty….

“One aspect of contemporary society is that people are stimulus-rich and context-poor,” Pink explains. They don’t know what the information means. By contrasting the experience of the passersby with that of the blind man asking for change, viewers saw the man’s situation in perspective.

In the book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely talks about the importance of comparing one thing with another. People want to make their own decisions and own them, Ariely believes. For that reason, he advises, if you want to sell Product A, you must create an Option B, so that customers feel they are choosing A because it contrasts favorably with B.

In blog content writing, with the goal being engaging online visitors’ interest, we can create contrast between analytical content and emotional content, toggling back and forth among It helps to remember that most people are only interested if what you do fits with what they need or want; otherwise they are not interested. You must tell readers, not only how your product or service can benefit them, but how you can do it better or differently than others who do what you do.

The blind man in Daniel Pink’s story needed help creating a Unique Selling Proposition. In carving out your own USP, make sure your message tells visitors not only who you are and what you do, but why you’re different from other providers – and why that difference should matter to them.

In other words, in begging or blogging,  clarity depends on contrasts!

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