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Blog About How You See Wildlife or Whatever, Not About What You Sell

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Two penguins Gentoo.

A Canon commercial on the back cover of an old issue of National Geographic reminded me of a piece of blogging advice that will never grow old: The best blog posts are never about yourself, your company, your services, or your products, but about why you see things the way that you do.

There are many newer examples of this Canon campaign, but the one I came across was from the December 2012 issue. The photo featured a penguin couple, and the opening line of text consisted of two words: “Teamwork works”.  By dividing responsibilities, male and female royal penguins give their young the best start in life, I learned.

  1. The parents alternate two week shifts in incubating the egg.
  2. Once the egg hatches, the mail does guard duty while the female forages for food.
  3. After about 20 days, the chick joins a crèche, free both parents to bring meals home.

The problem: The food sources on which the penguins depend are becoming uncertain due to the effects of climate change.

Anticipating readers’ question “Why is a camera company telling me all this?” the authors go on to explain: “Raising awareness of endangered species is just one of the ways we at Canon are taking action for the good of the planet we call home.”

The “advertorial” ends with a Call to Action: Visit canon.com/environment to learn more.

This Canon campaign is a wonderful example for blog content writers. When I offer corporate blogging training sessions, I try to make sure, especially when it comes to corporate blog writing  “newbies”, that they understand the importance of conveying business owners’ core beliefs through their blogs.

Why is that such an important element in creating effective content? In general, blogging can help achieve quite a number of goals:

  • Building good will
  • Staying in touch with existing customers and clients
  • Defining
  • Announcing changes in products and services
  • Controlling damage when it comes to negative PR or complaints
  • Recruiting employeesOf all these goals served by writing for business, though, the most important might be ”humanizing”.  Existing customers need their trust reinforced. Online searchers need to come away with the impression they will be dealing with real, likeable people, not just with ”a company”.

    Blog about how you see wildlife – or whatever – not about what you sell!

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Words You Never Use in Blogging for Business

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Never - word written in colorful chalk

“It’s more important than ever before to be mindful not just of what your company says to customers online, but HOW it is said as well,” asserts Jay Baer, author of Hug Your Haters. “Minor shifts in words choice can mean the difference between a great customer interaction and an unruly, offended mob.” There are three categories of potential trouble, Baer explains:

  1. words that lack humility
  2. words that diminish the customer
  3. words of argument and avoidance

Baer’s words certainly apply to the work we do as business blog content writers, as we try to create great online interactions with customers and prospects.

One word Baer believes lacks humility is “our”. Bair thinks that word implies that the speaker (or writer, in this case) is speaking on behalf of the collective business.  “We” and “our” lack humanity and the personal touch, Baer says, advising customer service people to use “I” and “me”.

When it comes to business blog content writing, I don’t mind the word “our”, because it’s part of first person writing. I’ve always preferred first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting”, because I believe people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when they can relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

I absolutely agree that the customer or prospect must never feel diminished. While mythbusting is one important function business blog posts can serve, writers should never imply that readers are unable to fully grasp the information or that they have been easily misled in the past. “The word “misunderstanding”, Baer says, is often used as a polite way of saying “you didn’t listen or read well enough.”

Addressing misinformation in a company’s blog shines light on the owner’s special expertise, besides offering information that is valuable to readers. Still, a certain level of anger might arise at having one’s beliefs challenged, so it’s important to throw readers a “bone” by offering some intriguing information that nobody could reasonably have been expected to know. The customer, as Baer explains, may have been completely wrong, but “proving” that is no way to win a friend.

Words to never use in blogs are words that boast, diminish, argue, and avoid!

 

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Using News Tidbits to Blog About Aging

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Serenading His SweetieWhen he was almost 76, Mandela was elected president of South Africa in the first election that was open to all races in that country’s history. On his 80th birthday he married his third wife, Graca Machel.

In 1979, at age 69, Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work.

The first edition of Roget’s Thesaurus was published when Roget was 73, and he oversaw every update until he died at age 90.

At the age of 89, Doris Haddock began walking the 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. to raise awareness for the issue of campaign finance reform.

Grandma Moses, a woman who didn’t begin to paint until the age of 76, turned out more than a thousand paintings over the next 25 years.

(Source: How Stuff Works)

In corporate blogging training sessions, I often recommend including interesting tidbits of information on topics related to your business (or, if you’re a freelance blog content writer, tidbits related to the client’s business).

Today, there are many businesses and practices that serve the aging members of our population. Any of the interesting stories of senior accomplishments mentioned above could serve as “triggers” to discuss the importance of staying mentally and physically active in one’s later years.  Who might use this material as good blog marketing fodder? For starters….

  • a  Long Term Care insurance company
  • a geriatric medical practitioner
  • a senior residence facility
  • a spa
  • a home healthcare agency
  • an estate planning attorney

(Don’t be afraid to get creative. The Mandela story might be used to promote wedding services for seniors and 50th wedding anniversary party catering, while Doris Haddock’s trek might be the subject of a blog for gym stair-stepping equipment!)

Blog writers need never run out of ideas if they keep a file of interesting tidbits of general information on hand.  And blogging about aging – that will never get old!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Creating Community Through Blog Conversations

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Purple pink Community puzzle“You create community by having conversations with people who are excited about the same thing as you are,” says Elizabeth Gerber, associate professor of design at Northwestern University.  Gerber is one of many scholars exploring what really compels people to give to other people online through crowdfunding. As much as crowdfunding is a modern economic phenomenon, writes Elizabeth Kelsay in Psychology Today, it’s also a social and psychological one, fueled by fundamental human impulses.

As business blog content writers, we have reason, I think, to be intensely interested in this research on the crowdfunding phenomenon. Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside, believes the secret is that giving online appeals to the essential need to feel like part of a group.

Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School studied nearly 7,000 articles in The New York Times to determine what was special about those on the most-emailed list. He found that an article was more likely to become viral the more positive it was. When we share information, we create an energy exchange, Berger says, that amplifies our own pleasure.

Kevan Lee of bufferapp.com says we measure blog traffic by digging into analytics, but don’t pay enough attention to the immeasurable elements of blogging which cannot be quantified. Instead of tracking how many “views”, “likes”, and “clicks”, Lee says, we should be asking whether the content:

  • is so good you’d bring a coworker over to see it
  • you’d email it to a friend
  • the reader will learn something new

“The only people in a community are those that believe they are, not those that have a completed a registration in 30 seconds,” observes Richard Millington in MOZ. Increasing a sense of community means adding an explicit, shared goal to the group. Increasing a sense of community means asking individuals what skills and experiences they can contribute to the group, Milligan says.

How is that best done? Ask a question for your readers at the end of posts, suggests blogger Melyssa Griffin. Add a poll or reader survey and share the responses, she says.

In a way, as bloggers, we start out ahead of the game; the readers who found their way to our blog are, by definition, excited about the same thing as we are.  Now it’s up to us to foster that sense of community.

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Blogs and Book Reviews – Brothers Under the Skin

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Book Label Concept
There are 6 Must Have Steps to writing a book review, writes Francesca of the Sway Group:

  1. Introduce the subject, scope, and type of book.
  2. Briefly summarize the content.
  3. Include graphics (be aware of copyrights).
  4. Provide your reactions to the book.
  5. Provide links.
  6. Be honest about your review, passing along a recommendation to your audience.

In a way, I’ve often reflected, what we do when we write business blog content offering information and opinion is comparable to a book review. “Sometimes you will need to include background to enable readers to place the book into a specific context,” says Francesca under #1 step of reviewing the book. “For example,” she says, “you might want to describe the general problem the book addresses and how it provides solutions.”

Online visitors are “test-reading” your company or practice through reading your blog posts. They want to see whether you understand their problems and can quickly and effectively help solve those.

Provide your reactions to the book, Francesca advises. “Your” is the operative word here in terms of blog content writing, I’d say. A review is more than a mere summary. Whether you’re blogging for a business, for a professional practice, or for a nonprofit organization, you’ve got to have an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers. In other words, blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations; you can’t just “aggregate” other people’s stuff and make that be your entire blog presence.

Provide links, Francesca cautions reviewers. In your own work, I teach blog content writers, you can “curate” – gather and present – information from many sources that you believe will be relevant and helpful to your readers. How do you give credit to the sources of your information? The blogging equivalent of citations in academic writing  is links.  So even if you’re putting your own unique twist on the topic, give your readers links to websites from which you got some of your original information or news.

All 6 of the Sway Group’s steps to writing a book review are perfectly appropriate in business blog content writing.  Blogs and book reviews must be brothers under the skin!

 

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