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In Your Post, It Pays to Explain Why

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This week, my Say It For You blog posts were inspired by speaker and humorist Todd Hunt…

 

Both signs outside a store convey essentially the same message – but do they?

  • Sign #1″ No dogs allowed!
  • Sign #2: Unfortunately, the Chicago Health Department will not allow us to have dogs in our shop.”

In content marketing, calls to action (CTAs) often use imperative verbs. Why? To provoke readers to take immediate positive action, from requesting further information to actually signing up for a newsletter, to actually making a purchase. The CTA aims to create a sense of urgency around the offer.

But, just as Todd Hunt demonstrated, the “No dogs allowed” sign is a big turn-off. Online visitors who’ve found themselves at your blog want to know why they ought to keep reading and why they should follow your advice. Because the second sign answers the “why”, it overcomes resentment and skepticism, Todd Hunt explains.

Some of the answers web visitors are going to need include:

  1. Why me?  Why did you target this particular market?
  2. Why you (the author)? What is your expertise and experience?  Why do you care?
  3. Why this (the offer)? What are the specific solutions you provide?
  4. Why now (the urgency)?
  5. Why this price (the value)?

Even more important, we teach at Say It For You, can be explaining the reasons behind your policies, your way of “running your shop” as compared with others in your field. There’s one caveat – while you want to compare your products and services to others’, it must be done in a positive way, explaining why: We offer…..We believe…. We value…….  Rather than devaluing other companies’ products and services, stress the positives about you and yours.

In store window signs and in blog posts, explaining the “why” can make the difference between a turn-off and a turn on!

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Blogging This or That

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For the same amount of money, Jeana Harris explains in Indianapolis Monthly, you could have a four-bedroom Roaring Twenties foursquare in Meridian-Kessler or a sleek two-bedroom downtown condo just five blocks from Mass Ave. Would you prefer a view of peaceful streets sheathed with mature trees, or a sixth-floor view of the city coming alive at night?

Unlike upselling, which involves encouraging the purchase of anything that would make your customer’s purchase more expensive with an upgrade, enhancement, or premium option, Sophia Bernazzani explains in Hubspot.com, cross-selling pitches other products or services that work together with the ones already owned by the client or customer. Investopedia.com points out that both methods are “suggestive”, requiring only marginal effort on the part of the sales professional compared with the potential additional revenue.

“Having a larger number of choices makes people feel that they can exercise more control over what they buy. And consumers like the promise of choice: the greater the number of options, the greater the likelihood of finding something that’s perfect for them,” Sheena Iyengar and Kanika Agrawal assert in The Art of Choosing. But not everyone agrees. “More Isn’t Always Better”, says Barry Schwartz in the Harvard Business Review. Research now shows that there can be too much choice, inducing “choice paralysis”, with consumers less likely to buy anything at all.

Can business blogs help potential clients and customers make better, sometimes complex, decisions? A possible path to achieving that precise result, we have found at Say It For You, involves suggesting questions readers can ask themselves while choosing among many options. (Do they want ease of use? Current functionality? Future capabilities?)

No, more isn’t always better, but companies that get the balance right will be amply rewarded, Schwartz concludes. Due to the natural “drip effect” of blogs .consistent posting of informational “this-or-that” content can help consistent marketers achieve that Goldilocks “Mmm…just right” result.

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Resisting the Urge to Repeat? Not!

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Ask a question and wait for a response, no matter how long it takes, is one piece of advice given to newbie salespeople. In other words, resist the urge to repeat your question, instead waiting- wait for an answer. Your prospect will inevitably feel moved to fill the silence, is the theory. Some health experts agree, citing repetition compulsion, or called trauma reenactment, which involves repeating physically or emotionally painful situations that happened in the past.

Not all sales trainers are on board with the advice about waiting for prospects to respond. “The mistake many people make–including me–is not following up often enough,” Minda Zetlin writes in Inc. Magazine. “When customers don’t hear from you for a while, they’re liable to forget you just at the moment when you want to be top of mind,” she says. Ask yourself, Zetlin advises, if there’s a follow-up note you can send with additional metrics or other information that will help your potential customer make a decision. Meanwhile, the trainer adds, “You don’t want to make the classic mistake of losing customers you already have while you’re busy landing new business.”

Hubspot agrees with Zetlin’s approach, saying that following up on a sales call or email significantly increases your chances of getting a response. Research shows that if you add just one more follow-up email, you can increase your average reply rate by eleven percentage points. In fact, first followup emails show. a 40%-increase in reply rate in comparison to the first email.

At Say It For You, after years of being involved in all aspects of blog writing and blogging training, one irony I’ve found is that business owners who “follow up” with new content on their websites are rare. There’s a tremendous fall-off rate, with most blogs abandoned months or even weeks after they’re begun. Blog marketing maven Neil Patel reminds business owners and practitioners that “Google isn’t shy about rewarding websites that publish regular, high-quality content.” The “frequency illusion”, Mark Zimmer adds, means that each time a customer is exposed to the message there is a sense of omnipresence.

At least when it comes to blogging for business, resisting the urge to repeat is not the way to go!

 

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Your Blog is Part of Your Customer Feedback Loop

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According to one Forbes study, 86% of consumers will actually pay more for a better customer experience, Devin Pickell, writing for helpscout.com, reminds business owners and practitioners; one of the best ways to put your customer first, Pickett urges, is implementing a customer feedback loop. Constantly collecting feedback from customers and readers and following up on that feedback allows you to improve areas causing user frustration and do more of what’s working well. Customers need to “feel heard”.

Agreed. 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?)  Fact is, individual blog posts can become a valuable part of each content writing client’s own customer feedback loop.

  •  Blog content should include stories specifically illustrating why your company’s customer service exceeds the norm.
  •  Surveys and self-tests can be used in blog content to find out what negative, “pet peeve” experiences may have caused reader to contemplate changing providers.
  • Messaging must offer the opportunity for personalized service – both before and after a purchase (yes, even in the online product purchase world of today).
  • Customers value the ability to gain new insights and learn new skills. Blog posts that take the form of tutorials and step-by-step instructions tend to be valued by readers.
  •  In Journalism 101, I was taught to “put a face on the issue” by beginning articles with a human example  A case study takes that personalization even further, chronicling a customer or client who had a certain problem or need, taking readers through the various stages of how the product or service was used 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?
  • The navigation paths on your blog site had better to be “easy to digest”. I caution new clients. You may have hired us for business blogging assistance, but keep thi important factor in mind: At the very moment that an online reader decides 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, you must make it convenient for them. They may want something, but not enough to spend extra energy to find it!

Whether you use survey tools, life chat, social media monitoring, or analytics tools, HelpScout reminds owners, what’s important is that you actually collect feedback so that you know what you’re doing well and what to improve upon.

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Sharing Secrets Makes for Good Blog Marketing

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“Knowing the meaning of the three-digit code printed on every egg carton can help you choose a fresher product,” TasteofHome explains. You might think the best way to pick a carton is by checking the grade, size, and expiration date, but Kelsay Mulvery shares a “secret” – look for the Julian date.

Meanwhile, Michele Debczak of Mental Floss magazine, has a “secret” to share with readers as well: The tags or twist ties on bread are color-coded by day of the week, so grocery stores know how long a product’s been sitting on the shelf.

“Some manufacturers claim unrealistically small serving sizes to reduce the amount of calories they have to list on the nutrition label,” coach.nine.com reveals.

These three selections illustrate an important point about blog content writing: Sharing secrets makes for good blog marketing, but those secrets need to be useful to readers. “Find out what they struggle with, and what would make the biggest difference to their bottom line,” wisely advises Rich Brooks on creative-copywriter.net. A powerful secret-sharing manual for magicians, Roberto Giobbi’s Sharing Secrets book teaches “52 powerful concepts that let you learn, practice, and perform them.”

In blog marketing, accentuate the practical, we teach content writers at Say It For You. Go ahead and teach readers “secrets” of how to do what they want to do better, faster, and more economically. Since people like helping one another, offer “secrets” most likely to be shared at the dinner table, across a tennis net, or on the green. Through blog content, business owners and owners and professional practitioners can package their expertise into “secrets”, allowing readers to learn about and value them along with the nuggets of wisdom they’re sharing.

“After all, people are not coming to your blog just to acquire knowledge. They’re dropping by to visit you,” Dean Rieck observes in copyblogger.com. That means revealing a little about yourself, he adds. Most people reveal secrets to those they like and trust, as Jack Schafer, PhD. explains in Psychology Today. In sharing “secrets” in your blog, you’re demonstrating that you like and trust your readers, making it all the more likely they will like and trust you.

Sharing secrets makes for good blog marketing

 

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