Are You Talking to Me?

The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles made headlines, but not the kind to which anyone involved in corporate blogging for business would ever aspire. 

The feature story “Dear BMV: Are you talking to me?” centered around a big fat “Oops!”, because 58,000 people across the state had received postcards urging them to renew their drivers’ licenses.  The postcards arrived, all right, but the intended courtesy of the effort was lost when recipients discovered each card had been addressed with the correct last name and address, but with the wrong first name. 

For every business owner, marketing director, and freelance blog writer, there’s a real takeaway in this communication-gone-wrong story. Blogging for business, as I stress in Say It For You corporate blogging training sessions, is an aspect of “pull marketing”.  That means one of the main motivators for having an SEO marketing blog in the first place is to “get found” by the ‘right people”.  (Who are those? People already interested in what you have to sell, what you know, and what you know how to do.) Until they are matched up with your blog, though, those potential customers don’t know you exist and they certainly don’t know that, in your blog content writing, you’re talking to them!

That’s precisely where “targeting” comes in. Without marketing research, corporate blog writing can all too easily fall into the same Are-You-Talking-To-Me “Oops” as the BMV.  The “postcard” arrives (meaning the search engine delivered the online reader to your blog post or website), but you got the “first name” (the message) wrong.  Your blog might written in too formal – or too casual – a style for your market demographic. The “buzzwords” might strike the wrong note for the age group you’re targeting. Significant “disconnects” between your readership and your business blog content writing can cause the blog visitor to think “This content doesn’t sound as if you’re talking to ME!” 

Ironically, business blogging can serve as a form of market research in itself, as smallbiztrends.com points out. “Start a blog on your company website, tell your customers about it, and post information about your products and services.”  Afraid customer comments might be negative? Just the opportunity to show how you respond to customer concerns.