Want to know more about online persuasion and how you can write content that gets results? Here’s a quick one minute video promoting my Content Marketing with Blogs ebook, newly revised. The formatting and design was done by my son-in-law, expert graphic designer and creative genius, Scott Krakoff. Tell me what you think…
If you haven’t downloaded it yet, be my guest: Content Marketing with Blogs…
The Content Marketing Institute has hit another home-run with their question to content experts, “How do you make content more engaging?” Ten experts responded, including moi, and their answers are illuminating, especially for anyone charged with creating quality content for blogs, social media, and writing for the Web.
In my opinion and experience, marketing that engages is emotional.
The human brain is emotional at its very core.
While women process messages with more emotions than men, both must be engaged emotionally for a message to be remembered and acted upon.
Marketers must uncover the key emotional triggers their product inspires and pinpoint them in their messages.
Here is a summary of what other content marketers think about this important question:
Just as there is no single definition of engagement, there is no single way to engage with your audience:
- Focus on what is important to your ideal reader, which is often different than what is important to your business.
- Actively listen to your audience and respond to their needs.
- Create buyer personas to capture key information about your readers.
- Try to connect with your readers emotionally. Read More→
How do you write engaging content? How do you unlock the minds of your readers?
For that matter, how can anything you write or say actually work to market your business and bring in potential customers? Let’s face it, you’ve probably been saying some of the same things for a while now, and … so have your competitors!
How can you be engaging to your clients if your competitors are all talking about the same thing?
I wrote about this important $64,000 question last week, and I’m immersed in research about what makes content engaging right now. One of the books I’m reading is Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. He says we should start our messages with the big WHY… why we’re in business, why do we do what we do. In other words, make it clear what your higher purpose is.
“Your higher purpose is where your talents and the needs of the world meet.” ~ Aristotle
Don’t you love it when a good quote for today’s busy world comes from a 2,400-year-old guy? Here’s the content marketing version from Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute and Junta42:
“Your higher purpose is where your expertise and the needs of your customers meet.” ~ Joe Pulizzi
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. Read More→
Content marketing with blogs isn’t as easy as it used to be. But like you, I can complain all I want to. It doesn’t matter.
The good news is there are more people going online to read things they need to know, to solve the problems they have.
The bad news is there are more blogs, more competition for attention.
What do you need to do to win the battle for attention and survive the WIIFM flter?
Doug Kessler and the boys over at VelocityPartnersUK ask this question in the B2B Manifesto. (You can get your copy here.) And they answer it. For example, they suggest 5 imperatives for B2B marketers. I think this is essential advice for anyone using a blog for business, not just B2B marketers.
Here’s an excerpt and my interpretation of what this means for my own business:
1. Get a World View:
Before you can sell a product or service, you need to sell a world view.
But very few marketers spend any time at all clarifying their world view.
What is a world view and why is it so important? Read More→
The rules haven’t changed, but it’s surprising how many people start creating content to market their business on the web without regard for the basics. Many people focus on the medium, the latest shiny tool: the blog, the Twitter tweets, and Facebook updates, without regard for the basic rules of writing copy for the Web.
Content marketing isn’t a buzz word because marketing people just like new buzzes. Content marketing is a requirement for anyone doing business because it beats writing advertisements that get ignored.
Smart marketers know the rules and never forget them. Even if the Internet changes at lightning speed, the writing basics are the same.
I’ve only been writing online copy for ten years. Before that, I was a journalist and a psychologist so I learned to write differently. Writing content for the Web is different. It’s designed to deliver information in ways that engage readers to take an action, most often click to register or buy.
Every once in a while, I go back to the basics. A standard learning tool for many copywriters is Maria Veloso’s Web Copy that Sells, published in 2004. The 2nd edition is now out and I’ve been reviewing and re-reading it. Good stuff.
Here’s a recap of some really key nuggets from this book:
Before you write one word of copy, you must first:
I know this seems so common sense it’s not worth spending time on, but trust me, the time you take to write down a few notes on each of these things will be well worth it. Read More→
How can you learn basic search marketing for blogging in 5 minutes or less?
Scribe SEO Copywriting is a practical tool you install and use for each blog or web pages you want to publish. Once installed, you can get a report BEFORE you publish, which tells you how optimized your content is for search engines.
Before I started using Scribe, I assumed (because I’m pretty smart and I’ve been getting good search results) that if I wrote quality headlines and posts, using the keyword phrases I wanted to focus on, those little search robots would be pleased…
Wrong! By using Scribe, I learned which pages and posts were getting 100% scores… and which were only ranking 52%, 78%, and 90% with the little darling spiders. In seconds, after writing a draft, a report is generated, telling me what’s wrong with my headline, use of keywords, description, etc.
All I have to do is make a few corrections and usually I can get a 100% score on the 2nd try.
Trust me, I’m no geek. This is so easy a 3rd grader can use it. Do yourself a favor and try it out, you can always unsubscribe from the monthly fee ($27 for 300 analyzes a month). I am an affiliate, I recommend it, and I love it.
Here is a sample analysis… Read More→
How do you write compelling content that attracts and engages readers? Ahhh, that question again…(followed usually by how do you turn readers into buyers?) This is the job of good content marketing and the challenge for online professionals who write blogs, articles, and web pages.
First, let’s deal with the compelling content thing. Your content isn’t going to market anything if you don’t reach inside the heads and hearts of your readers.
Obviously it’s all about your readers. The better you know who they are and what they like, the easier it is to write content for them.
Use emotional words and phrases, and think about triggering their hot buttons. There are universal drives and human motivators. It doesn’t matter if your reader is a 20-year-old gamer or a 70-year-old retired professor.
Human beings are all driven by hot button motivators. (See the excellent book by Barry Feig for more about this: Hot Button Marketing: Push the Emotional Buttons that Get People to Buy). Some of these are:
What drives your readers? Do any of these hot buttons seem similar to your clients? How can you test your assumptions? Maybe you could push a few buttons to see what reaction you get? Read More→
Here’s my latest video about my executive coach blogging services produced by iFlashVideo.com. I think they do a good job, but unfortunately, because they are a monthly service with a one minute limit, the voice is a little rushed.
Instead, they could have edited out a few words to make it a little calmer, in my opinion. But since they are a standardized service, they don’t do any editing or make suggestions. They just deliver what you give them, even though as clients, we aren’t always knowledgeable about what the results will be like. What do you think?
I have several executive coach clients for whom I ghost write and manage their blog updates, including updates to social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn groups.
I absolutely love doing this, since I’m writing about leadership development, organizational change, and human behaviors. It keeps me on my toes with reading Harvard Business Review and the best business books around. Read More→
Content marketing, even with a strategy and a plan, has a lot of decision points along the way. It’s easier with a map and a system, but there’s still a million choices that need to be made.
How do you decide what to write about? You’re a busy professional, you have a lot to say, you read a lot, you think a lot. You probably work with a lot of clients and they have problems that you try to help them solve. All that is good stuff to write about and publish on the Web so you’ll get found, get known, get clients.
Wait a minute, let me be clear about what I’m really asking you. The question is how do you decide, how do you make a decision? Do you experience options in your mind, preview consequences, and decide?
Do you observe your mental processes as they unfold? Some people do, and others don’t, they just operate impulsively and intuitively.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. But I think the ability to stand back and watch your mental processes unfold is interesting and informative.
For one thing, if you know a few things about how you make a decision, you can also imagine what goes on in the minds of some of your clients and readers. Not everybody’s exactly like you, but some of them are. This gives you insight into possibilities.
This is important when you’re writing on the Web, when your composing blog posts. And you already know how important it is to get in the shoes of readers when you’re composing a sales or landing page. Read More→
