Content Marketing with Blogs: What Do You Believe?

Here’s a key element for writing content that inspires clients to take action:

What does your business believe in? More importantly, as an important part of your business, what do you believe is most important for your clients? What’s your true purpose?

This is not a philosophical question, although it is grounded in profound human needs and values. This is a marketing question. You need to know why you care, and you need to communicate that to customers in your content marketing and blogs.

This question makes sense because people don’t buy from companies, they do business with people. They don’t care about your products so much as what they will do for them. Clients want to connect with values that count.

And, in a culture with an overabundance of choice, with many companies and products doing the same things, customers will always choose to do business with someone who cares about them, their world, the world, and values.

More good advice from VelocityPartners, UK. They’ve just released their B2B Marketing Manifesto, and while this is key to professionals charged with marketing in the business world, it is especially crucial to entrepreneurs, solo professionals, and small businesses… anyone writing content marketing materials.

Think about it: why should people care what you have to say in your blog unless they can identify with your values? …Unless you express to them what you really care about and why?

It doesn’t matter if you’re “green,” dedicated to a charity or not. For myself, I am passionate about saving professionals time, energy and money because I believe that content marketing with blogs should be easy and effective for everybody, not just big companies.

Here’s an excerpt from the B2B Manifesto, the second imperative for content marketing:

2. Expose your beliefs

People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

Simon Sinek gave an  inspiring TED talk recently about the power of a company’s beliefs. The essence of Simon’s talk:

People won’t buy what you do: they buy into why you do it.

(and then justify their choice with all that rational stuff you gave them).

He bases this on brain research that shows that the part of the brain responsible for our rational processes (and language) is not the part of the brain that drives decisions (which are guided by a completely different thing – the limbic system).

In other words, when we throw features and functions at people, we can’t change their behaviour. But when we start with beliefs, we light up the part of the brain that drives decisions and behaviour. Then people can rationalize their feelings of trust and loyalty with the feature/function stuff.

Great leaders (like Martin Luther King) and great brands (like Apple) expose their beliefs right out front.

What does your company passionately believe?

Have you told anyone about it lately?

Related posts:

1. Content Marketing to a Caveman’s Brain
2. Content Marketing with Stories: Better than Facts
3. Content Marketing with Stories: Why We Tell Lies…
4. Business Blog Writing and Content Marketing:
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5. 7 Ways to Format Blogs to Engage Readers’ Brains