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Blog to Bring it Home

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One in five media journalists lives in New York, Los Angeles, or Washington D.C., the New York Times reports. “This is a huge loss for regional journalism as local stories—what’s happening in our own communities, towns, and regions, is arguably the most important for our everyday lives,” Alison Hill mourns in Writer’s Digest. 

“One of the most common – and most effective – ways to get consistent hits on your blog is to tie your content to current events,” Ray Access suggests. “If you’re writing about food poisoning, for example, tie that in with the latest headlines about cruise line food poisoning outbreak,” The practical suggestion Ray Access offers to content writers is to get in the habit of scanning headlines of a daily news website, using “newsworthy keywords to get a search engine’s attention”..

When it comes to engaging readers’ attention, at Say It for You, we take the Ray Access general concept a step further, recommending tying blog content, wherever possible to local events and issues.

(Communication policy scholar Christopher Ali explains that “localism” (can be spatial, based on geographic location, or based on shared interests. While many of these Say It for You blog posts have been focused on the importance of understanding your “community” in the sense of your target audience – wherever they may be located – today I want to focus on the home town meaning of “local”.)

Getting personal is a huge element in the success of content marketing. A huge part of engaging readers is reflecting and even directly alluding to current happenings and concerns in the local community. What’s more, people tend to be comfortable associating with professionals and business owners who give back to the local community and who are actively participating in home town events.

The more focused a blog is on connecting with a narrowly defined target audience, the more successful it will be in converting prospects to clients and customers. “Leverage your community, Susan Solovic of Constant Contact advises. Blog marketing, we teach newbie content creators, is really nothing more than “meeting” strangers and helping to turn those strangers into friends.  Blogging really is all about community!

Blog to bring it “home”!

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Blog Marketing – Defining to Attract

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In a Schwab benchmarking study for Registered Investment Advisors, it was found that firms who had documented an ideal client persona for targeting their marketing efforts attracted 42% more new clients. “In order to drive growth over the long term, any company has to understand what type of person they are perfectly designed to serve,” When providers focus on the unique needs of their target audience, they can develop an experience that is perceived as valuable by those clients, was the takeaway.

That advice about targeting your market is right on target for content marketers, we know at Say It For You. Your business or practice can’t be all things to all people. Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for your ideal customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry, all must focus on things you know about your target market – their needs, their preferences, their questions – and only secondarily on how wonderful you and your staff are at satisfying those needs and preferences.

To go about creating an ideal client persona, Schwab urged its advisors to:

  • identify favorite clients, clients who are engaged, profitable, and loyal, and from whom “you get real joy and energy”.
  • create a composite of the best characteristics of those clients, identifying commonalities such as concerns, personality traits, communication preferences.
  • create a value proposition that “resonates with that composite profile”. Paint a picture of why those clients will look back and be grateful they made the decision to work with you.”

Ten years before that Schwab survey, I had shared insights from an article in the Journal of Financial Planning explaining that financial advisors have three basic roles:

  1. As listeners, advisors’ goal is to uncover and address the source of clients’ concerns.
  2. As connectors, their goal is to help clients connect the different aspects of retirement planning, and when necessary, connect clients with other professionals whose expertise they need.
  3. As resolvers, their goal is guiding clients to decisions.

In marketing, focus is everything. As content writers, we cannot position ourselves (or our clients) within the marketplace without studying the surroundings for our target audience. For blogs to be effective, they must serve as positioning and differentiating statements. We need to know our readers, and our readers need to know we know.

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How Not to Write a Letter or Blog Post

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“When you write a business letter to a stranger, never keep to the point,” is Anna Stevens Read’s tongue-in-cheek advice to authors. “Indulge in lengthy discussions – for all you know, the person may not have the average amount of intelligence.”

While dripping in sarcasm, Read’s piece actually emphasizes a number of important points which content writers of every ilk would do well to heed:

Keeping to the point
In a sense, focus is the point in blog content writing. At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the “Power of One”, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience. Decide up front what your point it, then stick to it, is our advice to content creators.

Respecting readers’ intelligence
Over-explaining is symptomatic of authorial insecurity, K. M Weiland tells book authors.  As a corporate blogging trainer, I agree. We have to assume our online readers are a) intelligent and b) by definition, interested in our subject. The University of North Carolina’s Writing Center is saying much the same thing, telling students to write their essays in a manner that treats their instructors as an intelligent but uninformed audience.

Addressing “what they want to hear”
“Do not ask yourself what your friend wishes to hear. If her interest is in clothes, describe your houseplants.” Uh-uh. At Say it For You, we teach that, in addition to having a focused topic for each blog post, writers must have a specific audience in mind, choosing the best evidence for that target audience.  Smart blog content marketers know there are many subsets of every target market group, and that not every message will work on every group. Is the viewpoint you’re presenting relevant to a current need or conversation or trend?

Providing variety
“Never think of variety or of what kind of letter you last sent in that direction,” Reads quips.
In blogging, as we continue to write about our industry, our products, and our services, we’ll naturally find ourselves repeating some key ideas. But it’s the different examples we use – of ways our company’s products can be helpful or the ways problems are solved using our services – that lend variety to our blog posts. In addition, variety can be offered in sentence and paragraph length, and in the layout of the post itself.

Careful use of humor
“These directions, faithfully followed, will soon save you from the nuisance of writing letters,” Reads humorously summarizes. As a blogging trainer, I admit to having mixed feelings about humor in business blogs.  While I’ve no doubt about the power of laughter to forge connections, humor has to be handled with care not to offend.

No, it’s not funny…..Keeping to the point, respecting readers’ intelligence, and providing variety – those are the very skills successful content creators must master.

 

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What is Your Reader’s Deal?

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“What’s the deal here?”

Amy Collins, who represents both publishers and authors, says writers need to know “the deal”.  Writing a plot summary involves figuring out the goals and motives of both hero(ine) and antagonist.

  • What situation do we find the character in at the beginning of the story?
  • What do they perceive as their biggest enemy or problem?
  • Who or what is actually their biggest enemy or problem?
  • What is the biggest thing in the story that changes the situation?

The message for marketing content writers? Even if your (or your blogging client’s) products and services are highly differentiated from the general market, that’s not enough to keep content fresh and make conversions happen. It’s knowledge of the target audience that must influence every aspect of your content. “Great business stories are rarely aimed at everyone,” marketing guru Seth Godin stresses.“Your opportunity,” he tells marketers, “lies in finding a neglected worldview, framing your story in a way that this audience will focus on.”

Learning about your target customers includes gathering intelligence, not only about

  • their gender
  • their average age
  • their marital status
  • their educational level
  • their employment
  • their outlook on life
  • where they get their news

but also, just as Amy Collins explains to authors, about what that group of individuals perceives as their biggest enemy or problem. (Is that, in your perception, the biggest problem?) How can your insights, along with your products and/or services, help solve the “real” challenges they face?

There are two sides to the coin: content writers need to understand their clients’ own “deals”, too. Business and practice owners cannot be positioned within the marketplace without studying their surroundings, formulating their own position statements, then making their “deals” clear to readers. Each “visit” to the blog should conclude with readers understanding exactly what the owner’s unique philosophy or mission is, and why that approach can be beneficial to them.

One concern business owners have expressed to me is they don’t want to come across as self-serving or boastful in their blog posts. I explain that it’s crucial for prospects to find real reason to work with you rather than with your competition.

They’ve arrived at your blog site, in large part, because you’ve nade clear you understood their “deal”‘. Now that they’re here, help them understand yours!.

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You Don’t Have To Be a Blog Content Writer to Write

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“A writer writes, always.,” says the grand-prize winner of the Writer’s 500-word essay contest Michelle Y. Green. She doesn’t have to be at her keyboard or scribbling in a journal to write, she explains, because simply being curious and paying attention to details are any writer’s greatest tools.

In fact, several of Michelle Green’s pieces of advice for those new to writing are a perfect fit for blog content writers.

  • Many writers add one sentence, then subtract two or three words. Instead, just let the words flow.
    Blog content writing should be conversational and informal. Are second drafts even needed? Yes, but later, after you’ve let the thoughts flow, we tell content writers at Say It For You. Even more important than checking for spelling and grammar errors, though, is visualizing your target readers, and making sure your blog post is addressed to them, in their language, and that you’ve addressed their concerns.
  • Read what others are writing.
    Reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to your business field goes a long way towards keeping the blog “quiver” stocked with content ideas. Blog marketing involves knowing what’s being said by competitors, what’s trending, what aspects of your field are being discussed..
  • Enjoy research.
    To deliver quality writing of any kind, you’ve got to keep educating yourself, reading everything you can get your hands on, citing sources by paraphrasing and hyperlinking back to the page where the information originated. You then “translate” that information by putting it into context of your primary topic.
  • Notice details.
    Successful blog content writing is all about the details. Websites provide basic information about a company’s products or a professional’s services, but the blog content is there to attach a “face” and lend a “voice” to that information by filling in the finer details about the people behind the business and the choices they’ve made.   .

You don’t have to be a blog content writer to write – just feed your own natural curiosity – and take notes!

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