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More Content Lessons From the Stanley Cup

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This week in our Say It For You blog, I’m sharing valuable content writing tips based on Sean Hutchinson’s article in Mental Floss magazine …

Players avoid the “jinx” until they’ve won
Some hockey players are afraid that if they touch the Stanley Cup before having won it, they’ll jinx their team’s chances at the real prize.

Content writers have the power to soothe fears and debunk myths, addressing misinformation and superstitions standing in the way of prospects taking action, all while demonstrating the expertise and knowledge of their business owner clients.

Stanley Cup near-disasters
At a 1994 Pittsburgh Penguins victory party, winger Phil Bourque wanted to see if the cup would float and threw it into the host’s in-ground pool. (The trophy sank to the bottom immediately.) in 1924, on their way to a victory banquet, team members had to remove the Cup from the truck of the car to get to the spare tire. When time came to drink champagne from the Cup, they realized they’d left it at the side of the road, and had to go back to retrieve it. In 2022, defenseman Jack Johnson had his three kids baptized in the Cup.

In content marketing, not only do true stories such as this entertain and amuse, in blog content, stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, helping readers relate to the business or practice owners.

There are actually three Stanley cups.
The original Stanley Cup dates back to 1892, but, by the 1960s, it had become too brittle to handle and was relegated to a display at the Hockey Hall of fame in Toronto. The Presentation Cup was created and is the one awarded today. The final cup, a replica created in 1993, is used as a stand-in when the Presentation Cup is unavailable.

Whenever I’m sitting down with new Say It For You business owner clients as they’re preparing to launch a blog for their company or practice, I find that one important step is to select one to five recurring – and related – themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts.  Different “cups” are still centered around the same central themes.

The Stanley Cup, a hockey victory symbol, can turn content creators in the direction of success!

 

 

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Content Lessons From the Stanley Cup

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“Of all the major sports trophies, none can compare to the storied history and quirkiness of the Stanley Cup, Sean Hutchinson explained in a fascinating 2017 Mental Floss magazine article. Although hardly an avid hockey fan, I couldn’t help noting – and sharing with Say It For You readers – quite a number of valuable content writing lessons in Hutcheson’s anecdotes and observations….

A new Stanley Cup isn’t made every year.
Unlike other major league sports trophies, a new Stanley cup isn’t made every year.  Instead, after each championship, the names of the players, coaches, management, and staff of the winning team are added to the cup.

Unlike a personal diary written in a notebook, Artem Minaev explains in firstsiteguide, blog entries are displayed in reverse chronological order, with the newest post on top, pushing previous posts down the list.. Older posts remain on the site, accessible in the “archives”, providing valuable resources available to readers.

The cup is always changing.
Between 1927 and 1947, a new, more streamlined and vertical incarnation of the cup was used. with a cylindrical shape. But, by 1948, the trophy had become too tall to hold or put on display, so the shape was changed to the tiered version used today.

Unlike the more static web page content, blog posts allow new insights and information to be constantly added without losing the cumulative power of older posts. The content can  incorporate the company’s history while showing what is being done to adapt to modern trends.

The cups are not always perfect.
Many champion player and team names are misspelled on the Stanley Cup. The name of the 1980-’81 New York Islanders is misspelled as “Ilanders,” and the 1971-’72 Boston Bruins’ name is misspelled as “Bqstqn Bruins.” Most of the errors are left as they are—it would be too costly to fix the mistakes. However, after 1996 champion Colorado’s Adam Deadmarsh’s name was spelled “Deadmarch”, it was correct after he publicly stated he was heartbroken by the error.

One function of any marketing blog is updating and correcting information, including your own older entries. Mistaken data may have been inadvertently published on your business blog. There may have been updates in a company policy, or in one or more of the products. Or, there might have been a recent development in your industry that makes one or more of your former blog posts “incorrect”. At Say It For You, we recommend going back periodically to former blog posts and insert corrections, perhaps in bold type.  That way, when online searchers find that “old” post, they can see that the company is keeping its readers current. Failed links and misspellings can be fixed as well.

Watch for more Stanley Cup content lessons in Thursday’s Say It For You post!

 

 

 

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Everyday Employee Experience at the Heart of Blogging

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“Narrative gives us a sense of shared experience and humanity,” Hubert Joly (former CEO of Best Buy) writes in The Heart of Business.  “Telling everyday stories – stories of employees, customers, communities, and how they impact each other’s lives – fosters a sense of purpose and connection..” For that very reason, thehartford.com explains, “Your employees need to understand your company, its values, its goals and its priorities.”Surveys show 72% of consumers report feeling closer to a company when employees share information about a brand online.

As I related in an August Say It For You blog post, when I’m working with a company to set up a business blogging strategy, encouraging that company’s employees to post blogs, quite often I hit a wall of resistance, with employees viewing blogging as just one more task to add to their work load. Should employees be required to write blog posts? Marcus Sheridon of SalesLion.com thinks so. Since one goal of content marketing is to produce as much content as possible, the more hands are put to the task, the better. With content that answers consumers’ questions so valuable, it stands toathat employees who deal with consumers every day should be the ones to write about it. Human nature being what it is, he says, if it’s not required, they won’t do it.

Sure, but after fifteen years of providing blog content writing services to dozens of different businesses and professional practices, I’ve come to the same conclusion as Stan Smith of pushingsocial.com: “Blogging is writing, and writing, for most people has a fear factor right up there with public speaking.  You can coach, bribe, threaten all you want but in the end, you’ll be writing most of your blog posts.” That’s precisely why I found Joly’s account of how things worked at Best Buy so inspiring. At every meeting, people would tell their own personal stories and how they personally had been able to make a difference to someone.

At Say It for You, as our team provides content writing services to business owners and practitioners, one way we involve employees is to highlight specific accomplishments in a blog. That brings a two-way benefit: When readers learn about an employee’s enthusiasm and how that person put in extra time and effort in serving customers, that tends to cement the customer’s relationship with the company or practice. As featured employees proudly share those write-ups with friends and family, the blog becomes a gift that keeps on giving.

Far from being a contradiction to concept of authenticity, we help readers “meet” the actual team of employees who are providing the product or service, the ones whose daily activities result in the benefits customers enjoy.

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When Blogging, Be Prescriptive, But Be Present

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Understanding how the point of view differs in three different types of personal narratives is crucial in telling a story effectively, William Kenower explains in Writer’s Digest.

  1. A memoir is how we tell a story about something that happened to us in the past.
  2. A personal essay describes a solution to a problem the author sees in the world and lays out how the solution should be brought about.
  3. In a prescriptive, the author is an instructor and the article or piece is an instruction manual.

“Though the author may use stories to illustrate their lesson, in a prescriptive piece, the reader expects and understands that the author will be the one delivering the knowledge. To write these kinds of pieces, the author must feel comfortable in the rule of a teacher or guide,” Kenower says. But even in telling a story, he adds, an author is driven to write because of what experience has taught them.  

“Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his latest book All Marketers Tell Stories.

Not all stories succeed, Godin points out, because not all stories have the following essential elements:

  • Great stories are authentic
  • Great stories are subtle, allowing the target audience to draw their own conclusions.
  • Great stories appeal not to logic, but to the senses.

In business blogs, when we tell the story of a business or a practice to consumers, we “frame” that story in a way that will appeal to the target audience. The business owner or professional practitioner is the “teacher”, driven to write because of what experience has taught them.

Blog marketing is prescriptive, offering how-to advice on solving a particular problem or filling a particular need. At the same time, we’ve learned at Say It ForYou, blogging is a very personal form of communication, and our clients’ corporate messages need to be translated into human, people-to-people terms. The blog is the place for readers to connect with the people behind the business or practice.

Because of what experience has taught me, my advice to bloggers is to be prescriptive, but be present!

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Aiming for the “Me, Too!” Effect in Blog Marketing

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“All salespeople present themselves as problem solvers yet most never ask clients to vividly describe the problems they are experiencing,” Paul Cherry maintains in the book Questions That Sell. An outstanding salesperson, the author teaches, will offer clients the opportunity to open up and vent their frustrations. “You will have success building a relationship with your potential customers only when you can get into their world and identify the forces at work in their lives.”

In blog marketing (where prospects are meeting you before you’ve had the chance to meet them), as Jeremy Porter Communications teaches, the goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message. He names seven emotions and their opposites that marketers can tap into to get an audience “from where they are to where you want them to be”:

  • anger/calmness
  • friendship/enmity
  • fear/confidence
  • shame/shamelessness
  • kindness/unkindness
  • pity or compassion/indignation
  • envy/emulation

At Say It For You, we understand that, in blogging for business, face-to-screen is the closest we blog content writers will come to our prospective buyers of our clients’ products and services. On the other hand, we’re conscious that behind every decision, there is always a person, a being with feelings. One of the most direct access paths to prospects’ feelings is through stories. “Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his book All Marketers Tell Stories.

The thing to remember is that people are online searching for answers to problems or solutions for dilemmas. If, in encountering a blog post about a customer who went through a sort of pain and suffering akin to theirs (and who has now come out the other side), readers’ natural and highly emotional reaction might well be “Me, too!”.

Far sooner and more directly than descriptions of features and benefits of your offer, an emotionally charged story of suffering solved might well result in a “me, too” sale!

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