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How to Hug Customers in Your Blog

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“It’s not location, location, location,’ Jack Mitchell writes in Hug Your Customers. “It’s service, service, service.” Sure, a decent location with reasonable traffic, convenient to get to, and more than adequate parking – will do just fine if you learn to ‘hug” your customers. Personalized attention to customers is the proven way to achieve sales results, is the thesis of Mitchell’s book, based on Mitchell’s Family of Stores’ clothing and jewelry business.

Since the first publication of his book, the author admits, much has changed, with the most significant of those changes being the growth of Internet sales for all industries. One thing that has not changed, Mitchell, claims, is the need to deliver personalized customer service. People still yearn for at least a smile and a thank-you from an actual human being, he says. Actually, people do more than merely yearn when it comes to personal service – research shows that customers are willing to pay more for a product if they receive better customer service during and after a purchase.

At our content marketing company, we absolutely agree. The challenge we blog content writers take on is translating those “smiles” and “thank-you’s” into digital messaging. As part of the business blogging assistance I offer through Say It For You, I’m always talking to business owners about their customer service.  The challenge is – EVERY business says it offers superior customer service! (Has any of us ever read an ad or a blog that does NOT tout its superior customer service?)  It’s not enough to say it – you have to specifically illustrate ways in which your company’s customer service exceeds the norm.

There’s more. Personalized service includes teaching customers new skills, and some blog posts can take the form of actually tutorials and step-by-step instructions. Stories of all kinds –help personalize a business blog. Even if a professional writer is composing the content, true-story material increases engagement by readers with the business or practice. Case studies are particularly effective in creating interest, because they are relatable and “real”.

In Journalism 101 class, we were taught to “put a face on the issue” by beginning the article with a human example  A case study takes that personalization even further, chronicling a customer or client who had a problem or need, and taking readers through the various stages of using the product or service to solve that problem. What were some of the issues that arose along the way? What new insights were gained through that experience, on the part of both the business and the customer?

You might not think of simplifying your website navigation as another way to “hug” customers, but it absolutely is. Marketing blogs are all about getting found,, but now they’ve found you, both both the content of your blog posts and the navigation paths on the blog site had better be easy, calling for fewer keystrokes and less confusion.

When writing content for your own blog or when planning content with the individuals you’ve hired for business blogging assistance, keep in mind that online readers might decide at any point that they’re ready to learn more, that they have a question to ask, or that they’re ready to take advantage of your products and services.  Make the process feel like a smile and and a hug!

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Blogging to Make Them Want to See Things the Way You Do

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Communicating with pictures and words is what Dan Roam’s little book for speakers, Show and Tell: How Everybody Can Make Extraordinary Presentations is all about. The purpose, the author says, of creating and delivering a report pitch, or story, is t make it s captivating that our audience wants to see things the way we do.

That’s a very hard thing for speakers to accomplish, Roam admits. (Blog content writers don’t have the advantage of facing the audience in person, using eye contact and gestures, which makes the task even more challenging!).

Dan Roam’s 3 Rules of Show and Tell can help, though, even if video clips are not part of the blog:

  • When we tell the truth in a presentation, we connect with our audience and we have self-confidence.
  • When we tell a story, complex concepts become clear, and we include everyone.
  • When we tell a story with pictures, we banish boredom and people see what we mean.

There are actually three kinds of truth, Roam points out, and as presenters, we need to ask ourselves: for this topic, for this audience, and for myself, which truth should I tell? I particularly like that observation, because at Say It For You, we emphasize the “power of one”, with each blog post having a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of the business or practice. Roam suggests presenters ask themselves the following question: “If my presentation could change them in just one way, what would that change be?”

There are really only four ways to move an audience, Roam adds:

  1. changing their information, adding new data to what they already know
  2. changing their knowledge or ability
  3. changing their actions
  4. changing their beliefs, inspiring them to understand something new about themselves or about the world

Which one of those four goals we choose determines the structure of our storyline in the content of the speech – or blog post.

Truth, story, and pictures – If we get those things right, Dan Roam assures fearful speakers, everything that follows will be a breeze. “When we trust our ideas and are confident, we will help our audience change.”

Change is what it’s all about, Roam says of presentations, and that’s certainly what it’s all about in blogging for business!

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Blogs to Inform and Lead

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts are based on Brant Pinvidic’s powerful little book The 3-Minute Rule….

The A part of a WHAC presentation (Are you sure?) has a very important job to do – answering the questions that are on readers’ minds about the validity of your claims, Brant Pinvidic teaches. In keeping with my own idea of spreading content over a series of blog posts, rather than presenting your entire “case” in one long piece, I appreciated the list of questions Pinvidic says he often uses to help ramp up the thinking process in planning a presentation.

Each one of these questions relating to the A can serve as the inspiration for an individual blog post:

  • What have you said that someone might not believe?
  • Has a third party verified your claim?
  • How do you know there’s a need for this?
  • How have people succeeded in this before?
  • When and how did you realize you were on to something?
  • Why is this not “too good to be true”?
  • Why can’t your competition do this better?

One particularly fascinating piece of selling advice offered in this book is this – “Don’t open with the hook”. Many sales books and coaches teach that the hook is precisely what you open with, Pindivic says. (In terms of blog content, many believe the hook should be in the title.) This is called, Pinvidic explains, the state-and-prove method – you get someone to desire the outcome, then convince them your statement is true. What you want to do instead, he suggests, is start with the facts, allowing the audience to reach the conclusion that this is a good deal and form the “hook” for themselves rather than trying to poke holes in your assertions. Rather than state-and-prove, the author teaches, use the inform-and-lead approach.

At Say It for You, when our Indiana freelance blog content writers are sitting down with business owners or professional practitioners who are preparing to launch a blog, one important step in that launch is to select 1-5 recurring themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts. The themes may be reflected in the keyword phrases they use to help with search engine optimization. Individual posts can focus on just one aspect of a theme (which might center around one of those questions under the A category of their WHAC).

Looked at in isolation, each blog post is designed to have one central focus. Yet, as blog content writing continues over weeks, months, and years, there will be a cumulative inform-and lead effect. And, yes, you can be sure of that.

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Blogging to Make the Reward Worth It

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“Make the reward worth it,” Nancy Duarte advises business speakers in her book Resonate. “No matter how stimulating you make your plea, an audience will not act unless you describe a reward that makes it worthwhile.” The ultimate gain must be clear.”

Duarte lists 7 basic types of reward:

  1. Basic needs – include food, water, shelter, and rest. (Concern for others’ basic needs prompts generosity.)
  2. Security – includes physical, financial, technological, and psychological.
  3. Savings – includes savings in time, labor, and money.
  4. Prize – includes personal financial reward, privilege, market share.
  5. Recognition – People relish being honored for both individual and collective efforts.
  6. Relationship – a sense of community with a group of people who support each other and make a difference
  7. Destiny – includes fulfilling lifelong dreams and reaching one’s potential.

Since one important function of any marketing blog is converting lookers to buyers, and since I train Indianapolis blog content writers, this concept of perceived rewards really piqued my interest. The things that motivate people to buy are product or service features they want, of course, and, as I explain to new clients, when readers arrive at your business blog, it’s because they already have an interest in your topic and are ready to receive the information, the services, and the products you have to offer.

However, I caution the content writers, whether the blog leads to success in converting lookers to buyers will in large part depend on the rewards those readers perceive are in store for them. Remember, there’s so much information out there for searchers to use, so many bloggers telling what they have to offer, how it works, and how they can help. What needs to come across loud and clear is that the business owners or practitioners understand the readers and those readers’ specific needs and problems.

But more than that is required for success. The focus of each blog post must be on the end result from the recipients’ point of view. Help readers know how good they’ll feel (whether in terms of security, savings, recognition, or basic need fulfillment – after using your (or your business owner or professional practitioner client’s) product or service.

Blog to make the reward worth it!

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Don’t-Bother-With….Blogging for Business

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blog formats

 

At Say It For You, I’m always on the lookout for different “templates”, not in the sense of platform graphics, but in terms of formats for presenting information about any business or pro practice.  Possibilities include:

  • how-to posts
  • list posts
  • review posts
  • op ed opinion posts
  • interview posts

By varying the format or template, you can revisit topics related to your field over long periods of time without being repetitive.

The “nucleus” around which business blog posts are formed is their topic, showing the expertise and products that business offers. The key words and phrases around that topic are what brings readers to the blog posts. But, even though the overall topic is the same, there is endless variety that can be used to make each blog post special, and one way to differentiate blog posts is by using different templates.

Just the other day, for example, I ran across two new uses of a template, both in the February issue of Oprah Magazine:

  1. In “Finish Strong”, the author presents four rules for getting the most out of a workout.  Following each recommendation, there are two subsections: Do and Don’t Bother With. For example, under the rule “Heal Thyself”, the Do is to keep moving, which is “the only proven antidote” to delayed onset muscle soreness following a workout.  Under Don’t Bother With, the author lists products promising to flush out lactic acid, ice baths, and potions to reduce inflammation. Similarly, content writers, while advising blog readers on solutions, can add “what not to bother with”, in order to give the information a new twist.

2.  In “Fill Your Cup”, author Aleisha Fetters is giving advice about get-well teas, using the template “If    You Have…” If you have a tickle in your throat, use Echinacea tea.  Fetters than lists some of her recommended product choices. There are if-you-have recommendations for nausea, congestion, cough, and fever.

From a strategic standpoint, there are two different and compelling reasons for varying the template or format of your blog posts:

To create interest:
“You may find the information interesting, but unless you make it interesting to your readers, you won’t have any readers,” cautions Zhi Yuan in rankreview.com.

To use long tail keywords:
Long tail keywords tend to be more detailed, with a more narrow focus on one aspect of your product or service. Over long periods of time, your business blog content can become ever more focused and detailed, as you present the information using new and different “templates”.

Definitely DO bother with new templates in blogging for business!

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