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Going for Words that Sell in Business Blog Writing

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Words That Sell book

 

I like calling attention to books I’ve come across that are must-reads for business blog content writers, and Words That Sell, by Richard Bayan certainly falls in the must-read category. Words, after all, are our basic tools in conveying our business message to online readers.

After all, as I remember social media consultant Jason Falls commenting way back in 2009, when he discussed with business owners why they wanted to use social media, the answers came down to one thing – selling more stuff.

On the other hand, as business coach Jack Klemeyer pointed out, going directly to the selling stage without first satisfying all the prerequisites such as establishing rapport and gaining a complete and mutual understanding of the client’s needs is probably going to mean failure. Plus,
“Online marketing is about help, not hype,” Mitch Meyerson writes in the book I highlighted earlier this week in my blog.

It’s important, then, to find word that do some of the selling for us, and that’s where Bayan’s tips and categories can be so useful to us content creators.

Open with a challenge:

  • Prepare yourself for…..
  • Beware of….
  • Join the…..
  • Recapture the…..
  • Take a deep breath and…..
  • For once in your life…..

Appeal to their sense of belonging:

  • You’ll stay in the loop….
  • You’ll be privy to….
  • You’ll join the ranks of…..
  • You’ll feel the warmth of….
  • You’ll build strategic alliances….
  • Take part in….

Avoid wordiness:

  • Instead of “at the present time”, say “now”
  • Instead of “on the grounds that”, say “because”
  • Instead of “be in receipt of”, say “get”
  • Instead of “during the time that”, say “while”
  • Instead of “make use of”, say “use”
  • Use provocative question openers:

Use provocative question openers:

  • Have you thought about….
  • Are you drowning in a sea of…..
  • What’s the most effective way to…..
  • Did you ever ask yourself…

Go for words that sell in your business blog writing!

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Your Blog Has Three Jobs: Solve. Excite. Speak

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Frong Prince lipstick

“Things aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince!” Those rather unoriginal observations are attributed to Poppy King, founder of Lipstick Queen, the company that gets heads turning with Frog Prince, “a remarkable lilypad green lipstick that transforms lips into a pretty rosebud pink”.

I’m not exactly into the green lipstick thing, but I do absolutely love the statement I heard Poppy make during an Evine TV promotion:

“Every company,“ Poppy said, “has three jobs to do:

  • Solve the problem.
  • Excite the imagination.
  • Speak the truth.”

As profound a statement as I believe I’ve ever heard in a sales pitch, Poppy’s words certainly apply to the work we do as business blog content writers.

Solve the problem.
People are online searching for answers to their problems and solutions for dilemmas they’re facing.  If your business consistently posts content offering valuable information and advice, those people are going to find you and  at least some will want to become your customers..

Excite the imagination.
Readers came online searching for information, products, or services, and they are not going to take the time to read the full text of your blog post without assurance that they’ve come to the right place and that this will be a short, fast, exciting read. Use the title to establish a “hook” to excite visitors’ imagination.

Speak the truth.
Myth debunking is a great use for corporate blog content. That’s because in the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or service often surface in the form of customer questions and comments.

Your blog has three jobs:  Solve. Excite. Speak.

 

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Stop Asking for More in Business Blogs

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Hand writing A to Z with marker, business concept
“The more information you offer to people, the more likely they’ll be confused.  When people are confused, they don’t become customers,” warns Neil Patel in his quicksprout.com blog.

I couldn’t help remembering those words while enjoying the humor in a recent Dilbert comic strip. Carol’s  babysitter canceled, but Wally said “I will not watch your kids tonight.” “I was going to ask you to adopt them,” Carol said.  “Absolutely not,” Wally says. “The best I can do is watch them tonight.” This seems to demonstrate that, if you ask for a lot more than you want, you might get the customer to agree to what you really wanted in the first place.

Sorry, folks, that just won’t work in blog content writing.

What can work, says kissmetrics.com, is, in your marketing message, teaching your leads how to move as close as possible to Z (the point they want to reach) before you ask for their money or their commitment. The closer you get them on the road from A to Z, the more likely they are to buy from you in order to go the final few steps needed to arrive at their desired end result.

Even more powerful, advises kissmetrics, is using the pain motivator, showing your prospects all the dangers on the road from A to Z, and how your product or service is the weapon they need to defeat those dangers and discomforts.

In “Say This, Not That”, Christine Georghiou advises salespeople to justify a request or statement with the word “because”.  That word immediately answers the question on every prospect’s (and every online reader’s) mind – “What’s in it for me?”

Your team will love our software because we offer email response tracking.

“Emphasize value over price when presenting your product,” adds Georghiou. Value is results-oriented, and results are precisely what you want the prospect to be pondering, not price (which highlights what he/she will lose).

As a trainer in corporate blogging, there’s another reason I think the Dilbert ask-for-more-than-you-want technique would fail miserably in blogs:  Carol doesn’t like sitting for his own kids, but is trying to get someone else to want to do it. Blog content is at its most compelling when the writer is immersed in the lifestyle whose participants they’re trying to attract as customers. “It’s not an essential key to a successful business but it does help that you are immersed in the lifestyle of it, says Steve Watts on Shopify.com.

Stop asking for more in business blogs; focus, instead, on moving prospects closer to Z!

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Tips on Business Writing for Bloggers – Part B

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All Or Nothing Keys Meaning Entire Or Zero

This week, I’m sharing Susan Adams’ “Ten Tips on Business Writing”, offered in Forbes Magazine, with my Say It For You readers (again, I’ve added my own thoughts in italics):

Start by asking yourself what you want the person to do as a result of reading this post.
Each business blog post should impart one new idea or call for a single action. Focused on one thing, your post has greater impact, since people are bombarded with many messages each day. Respecting readers’ time produces better results for your business.

Avoid using big $10 words because you want to sound intelligent.
Unfortunately, as a blog content writing trainer, I see a lot of the kind of overused buzzwords hiring expert Carina Chivulescu sees on resumes, such as “best of breed”, or “results-driven”. “Employers want to see words and phrases that clearly and succinctly define your skills, experience, and accomplishments,” Chivulescu explains. That’s precisely the type of words and phrases your business blog readers need to find when they visit your site.

(The last three of Susan Adam’s tips have to do with English grammar)

Choose pronouns wisely. “Send the memo to Bob and myself’” is incorrect.                                                                                                           Think how you would word the sentence if you removed mention of other people. In fact, as “Grammar Girl” Mignon Fogarty points out, the pronouns a writer chooses, she explains, set the point of view and the tone of a passage. 

Know when to use “that” and “which”.                                                                                                                                                                           “Which” introduces extra information and it isn’t essential to the first clause. In a sentence such as “Computers are the only products that we sell,” the clause “that we sell” is essential to the meaning of the sentence, so the correct word is “that”.

Affect is a verb meaning “to influence.” “Effect” is a noun that means “result.”
What’s the big deal? Grammar mistakes in content writing for business call attention away from the kind of impression we intend to make on behalf of our businesses or professional practices. 
Would your latest blog post pass the Ten-Tip test?

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Recommended Reading for Blog Content Writers – Part D

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My “bloggers’ recommended reading list” is something I’ve been putting together for a decade. My most recent three Say It For You blog posts focused on books about writing, about tidbit treasures, and about selling techniques. In this final post of the series, let’s talk about the nitty-gritty of writing content geared towards online readers. I have three books to recommend as resources for blog content writers:

I still go back to one of the early additions (2010) to my resource library, Corporate Blogging for Dummies, by Douglas Karr and Chantelle Flannery, Corporate Blogging for Dummiesfor guidance on best practices. Many of the authors’ “tips and tricks to maximize your impact” will never go out of style.  Here are just three examples:

  • Businesses that serve other businesses tend to see a drop in traffic over weekends and during typical vacation periods and holidays…Take advantage of other companies not publishing content and continue to schedule or publish posts on weekends and holidays.”
  • Use alt tags effectively for image searches and keyword placement.
  • Blogs typically rank well for a keyword if that keyword is in the domain name..

Internet Marketing an Hour a DayUnderstanding what types of searchers your business is likely to attract can be very important in keyword selection, Matt Bailey explains in Internet Marketing an Hour a Day.  “Is your website an ‘impulse’ site, where you can get a quick sale? Or, is it a content-based website where searchers can learn more, leading them gradually to the decision-making point?” he asks. The book offers step-by-step instructions and action plans for website optimization, and integrating social media and blogs.

 

The newest addition to be resource library is the book Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, a collection  Mitch Meyerson has putsuccess secrets together of articles from many different only marketing experts.

  • From John Janitch of Duct Tape marketing:  “Your blog is the absolute starting point for your content strategy because it makes content production, syndication, and sharing so easy.”
  • From Ian Cleary of Razor Social: “Use Ahrefs (www.ahrefs.com) or similar tools to find out which on their (your competitor’s) website have the most links pointing to them.”
  • From Bob Barker (Guerilla Music Marketing Handbook): The three E’s of communication are to educate, to entertain, and to enlighten.

Hiring the extra “brain” relieves the “drain” on the business owner’s (or the professional practitioner’s) resources of times and energy. And what relieves the drain on the blog content writer?  A constant supply of ideas. But where do you get ideas – day after day, month after month, year after year – for blog posts? My answer is – everywhere! One aspect of the “everywhere” is books. In these last four Say It For You blog posts, I’ve provided links so that you can take a look for yourself at some of the wonderful books I’ve been collecting.

I don’t know about the ‘rithmetic part, but reading and blog ’riting definitely go together!.

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