Say It For You | Say It For You

Tamping Up in a Corporate or Professional Business Blog

Rhoda Israelov — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Negative developments are sooner-or-later things, I’ve found in six years of blog content writing for business owners and professional practitioners. But by being proactive and doing what David Meerman Scott calls “getting in front of a media crisis”, I encourage those owners and professionals to keep in control. In fact, as I explain to new Say It For You clients one very important function of your blog is correcting readers’ false perceptions and inaccurate press statements about your company, your practice, or your industry in general.

“The world sees what the search engines say about you,” says removeyourname.com, a reputation management service. Ethical forms of reputation management, says Wikipedia, includes responding to customer complaints and asking sites to take down incorrect information”.

As a blogging trainer, I had reason to think about the power of negative press while reading this month’s issue of Indianapolis Monthly Magazine, which resurrects some very negative – and 40-year old – press about Indiana legislator Marilyn Schultz charging the then all-male member Columbia Club with gender discrimination.

That Indianapolis Monthly Magazine article is an extreme case, I think, because the news is so very old, and because Columbia Club has since come so far in welcoming and promoting women. But sooner or later, with such oceans of content being posted online every second, from every possible source, every practitioner, owner, and organization leader will face the challenge of responding to negative content.

It’s ironic, in a way. One goal of SEO marketing blogs is to move a company, a practice, or an organization UP, meaning in the direction of the top of Page One of Google. But, when there’s been some negative press, the goal becomes to “tamp DOWN” those negative search results with more positive content, in hopes searchers will come upon that newer content first.

How do you exercise journalistic control through business blogging? It’s a matter of timing. Even the best-designed websites are rarely flexible enough to allow day-to-day, even hour-by-hour updating.

Business blogging help can turn out to help with customer relations. When customers’ complaints and concerns are recognized and dealt with “in front of other people” (in blog posts), it gives the “apology” or the “remediation measure” more weight.

With blog posts, businesses have the ability to put out the news about themselves – now, and with their own “spin” on it!

Variety is the Spice of Sentence Length in Blogging for Business

Rhoda Israelov — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:06:00 +0000

Fashion designers think about it; blog content writers should, too. Varying lengths, that is.

One rule that is of business blogging help in particular is keeping sentences short. Short sentences have power, and, particularly in titles, can more easily be shared on social media sites.

While Brandon Royal, author of The Little Red Writing Book agrees, he reminds us that not every sentence needs to be kept short. Instead, Royal advises writers to weave in short sentences with longer ones. Every so often, he suggests, a “naked” (extremely short) sentence can add a dynamic touch.

Ever on the alert for examples of excellent business writing, I found a gem in a recent USA Today issue. In “Stocks soar, so do Treasury prices; what gives?” reporter Adam Shell hits the bulls-eye in length-varying.

In fact, in my next corporate blogging training session, I plan to use Shell’s first paragraph as a rather extreme demonstration of the power of varying sentence length in business blog posts. The entire paragraph consists of one 48-word sentence followed by a six-worder.

“Not that Wall Street price moves ever make total sense, but what was odd about Monday’s rally, which powered the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to another record high, was the fact that the yield on the 10-year Treasury note plunged to its lower level of the year. “That means bond prices rallied, too,”

That entire USA Today article, I couldn’t help noticing, happens to be 148 words long, only half the ideal length for the typical SEO marketing blog. Its three paragraphs are 54, 35, and 59 words long, respectively, effectively offsetting the long and short of it.

The third paragraph does even better, interspersing “naked sentences” with longer statements:

What gives? (2 words)
At one point Monday, the yield on the 10-year note fell to 1.65%, eclipsing Friday's prior low of 1.66%.(20 words)
It closed at 1.67%. (4 words)
At the start of 2013, the yield was 1.76%, and seven weeks ago, it hit a high for the year of 2.06%. (22 words)
The lowest closing yield on record was 1.4% on July 24, 2012. (12 words)

In fashion design, and in writing blogs for business, varying lengths engage interest!

Let Business Blog Readers Self-Test

Rhoda Israelov — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:01:00 +0000

Blog readers tend to be curious creatures. What’s more, that curiosity factor is highest when readers are learning about themselves. As a longtime Indianapolis blog content writer, I’ve found that “self-tests” tend to engage readers and help them relate in a more personal way to the information presented in an SEO marketing blog. Popular magazine editors appear to agree as well, because current issues are full of tests, games, and quizzes.

Salvatore Didato’s book, “Who Are You? Test Your Personality” offers no fewer than forty quizzes to “reveal the real you”. It’s not just the variety of quizzes that I found so helpful about this book; it’s the way each is presented that can serve as a model for business blog writing.

“How Daring Are You?” is the header for Didato’s Quiz #1, but rather than diving directly into the series of questions, the author whets his readers’ appetites with an introduction, citing a study done at the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry showing that 1/2 to 2/3 of risk-taking propensity is probably inherited. Blog writers, too, can whet readers’ curiosity with a little-known statistic or fact at the beginning of a post.

Didato then continues with a ten-question true/false test containing statements such as “When shopping, I usually stick to known brands.” But, for business bloggers and business owners who are conveying information to online readers, what is most important is Didato’s commentary following that risk-propensity self-test.

“Studies of group dynamics confirm that a pattern called ‘risky shift’ occurs when members of a group bolster each other’s daring and shift to more risk taking than when they are alone.”

I once heard WIBC Radio”s Denny Smith make a comment that I considered very relevant for business blog content writing: People are looking to their advisors for more than just information, he said. They need perspective. In providing information to searchers, remember that they need some guidance as to what they can do about those facts, and ways in which the information can make a difference to them.

As a corporate blogging trainer, then, I’d remind bloggers to be “tour guides”. The quiz, test, or survey, engages their curiosity. The next step is “nudging” readers towards a point of view – or a course of action!

Food, Not Gadgets, Keeps Your Corporate Blog Alive

Rhoda Israelov — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

An old joke revisited in the Reader’s Digest Humor Collection reminded me of one important lesson for Indianapolis blog content writers:

A lonely woman buys a parrot so she’ll have someone to talk to. After a week, the parrot hasn’t uttered a word. The woman goes back to the pet store and buys a mirror for the parrot’s cage, thinking that might stimulate a reaction. Nothing. The woman buys a little ladder for the cage. Still no communication. A swing elicits not a peep. A week later, the parrot, lying on the floor of the cage, dying, whispers, “Don’t they have any food at that pet store?”

When it comes to blog content writing, we’re often advised that we need to create content that’s engaging, different, and unique. And yes, those are qualities to strive for in blog content writing. But offering very basic, usable information is quite OK. After all, first-time readers, (who probably constitute the majority of visitors to anyone’s SEO marketing blog site), came online seeking information about a particular thing.

(At the risk of belaboring the metaphor), the joke reminded me that, while the ladder and the swing and the mirror added interest to the parrot’s cage, the first task the pet owner needed to address was to provide food.

In “Twelve Tips for Writing Better Marketing Brochures”, local marketing maven, Al Trestrail, offers more valuable advice for content creation: “Putting (basic)helpful information in your brochure will encourage the reader to keep it, refer to it often, or pass it on to other people”.

Simplifying your topic makes your blog content reader-friendly. Offering online visitors easy-to-understand, usable information on the subject of their search, helps convert them into customers. In blogging, B is for basics!

There's No Kinda-Sorta in Blogging for Business

Rhoda Israelov — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:08:00 +0000

Among his “Top 10 Most Annoying Speaker Habits”, leadership coach David Lim lists kinda-sorta statements. “Either you did it or you didn’t,” he observes, and using “kinda” statements undermines your own authority.

“Authority” is an important term in SEO marketing blog writing. For one, Google’s algorithms are sensitive to authority when selecting which content to match with a reader’s search in any given category.

Perhaps even more important, readers visit your blog for answers and for information they can trust. The success of your blog marketing effortso will be very closely aligned with your:

Being perceived as an expert in your field
Positioning yourself as a go-to source of information
Presenting a definite perspective on your industry

Related to taking a definite stance is avoiding another David Lim no-no: being fake. “Speakers are nothing without authenticity,” he says. “You can’t communicate with someone who’s not real, or who’s acting like someone else.”

As a corporate blogging trainer, in fact, I teach newbie blog content writers in Indianapolis how important it is for readers to “meet” the “man or woman behind the text”. In fact, that’s the enormous advantage of using first person pronouns in business blog writing - they reveal the people behind the posts, introducing the personalities of the business owners.

At Say It For You, we know that, before employing any marketing tactic, we need to know what the common challenges are facing our client’s target customers and clients. We then decide then decide what one important point concerning that one challenge we’re going to emphasize in each post.

No room for kinda-sorta in blog content writing, no pretending. Readers need a specific problem solved; here’s the specific way this business or this professional practice goes about doing just that.

The Privilege of the Business Blogging Platform

Rhoda Israelov — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

If ever you’re tempted to become cavalier about the quality of your blog writing, just remember – it’s up to us professional content writers to counterbalance stuff such as this:

“So here’s an contra-growing old additionally anti-itchiness do-it-yourself solution which causes your body robust and as well as minimizes our itchies in icy temperatures, waterless local weather, ensure that it is a component of an article rewrites Christian louboutin men shoes craigs list program for sprouting younger and you wont amount to an prepare such as calf.”

(Can that be for real? Unfortunately, yes. And a lot more like it is crowding our business blogging air space, too.)

As a corporate blogging trainer in Indianapolis, my favorite recommendation to business owners and to the freelance blog content writers they hire to help bring their message to their customers is something I learned from my sixth grade English teacher: “Autograph your work with excellence.”:

I confess that when I began to come across incomprehensible online content, my first “take” was that it must have been created by non-native speakers of the English language. Business owners or professional practitioners had needed content writing help, I concluded, and had chosen to outsource the work overseas to save on costs.

When I learned about “spinned content”, I realized that the “gibberish” effect in some of the incomprehensible text I was finding could well be the work of a computer program, not of some overseas content writer. (Spinned content is reproduced by replacing words with synonyms, for the purpose of re-using content and repeating keyword phrases many times with an eye to “winning search”.)

I can recall the time that, as a new member of the National Speakers Association, I was first introduced to the phrase, “the privilege of the platform”. Along with the privilege of addressing an audience, taking people’s time and attention, I was being taught, comes the duty to offer quality material and to present it in a quality manner.

Today, decades later, I realize that there’s a privilege to blogging, too. That privilege comes with a duty we freelance blog content writers have to offer usable, high-quality, well-researched content, presented in quality fashion. Our online readers have a right to expect no less.

Content Marketing Blogs Explain What Not Everybody Knows

Rhoda Israelov — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

“Everybody knows that Goodwill helps people, but what NOT everybody knows is how.” The Goodwill Guy then proceeds to tell TV watchers the Goodwill ABC’s:

You give us the stuff you’re not using
We sell it to someone who’ll use it.
Then, we use the money to educate and employ people.

Now, as far as marketing content goes, that’s impressive! As an Indianapolis blog content writer and corporate blogging trainer, I think that Goodwill commercial model is exactly what every business owner or professional practitioner - and every freelance blog content writer - should aim for in blog content writing.

Step One consists of establsihing common ground. What is it about your business or practice that “everybody knows”? Blog opening lines need to be definitive rather than mysterious, making sure readers know they’ve come to the right site for the information, products, and services they’re seeking.

Step Two includes offering unique, less well-known information about your profession or industry. In blogging, whether you’re doing business-to-business writing or writing SEO marketing blogs for a professional practice, retail business, or not-for-profit organization, taking online searchers “behind the scenes” makes for content that is more compelling.

Step Three is the “why?”, the “what’s-your-purpose” question. What drives the passion?
When working with business owners to arrive at the right tone and the right emphasis for their SEO marketing blogs, I begin by challenging the owner of the business or professional practice with the following question: "If you had only eight to ten words to describe why you're passionate about what you sell, what you know, and what you do, what would those words be?"

Goodwill’s passion is educating and employing people. Give your online visitors the chance to get caught up in your passion.readers can get caughtknow exactly what your passion. I once wrote a reminder to eager-beaver business blogger newbies: In the dictionary, the word "belief" comes before "blog"!

Content Marketing Blog Posts are Thaumatropes

Rhoda Israelov — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

From friends Julie and Kim, owners of Outside the Box Papers, I learned an interesting tidbit about a Victorian paper toy. The description of the thaumatrope reminded me of the way individual blog posts work together, over time, to convey content marketing “leitmotifs”, or themes, to online readers.

A thaumatrope consisted of a card with a picture on each side. The card was attached to two pieces of string. Twirling the string made the two pictures appear to combine into a single image.

One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that focus is what helps blog posts stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website. What helps the separate posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy are the blog "leitmotifs".

In German, the word leitmotif means "leading theme". In music, the leitmotif is used when the composer wants listenes to recall a certain character, place, or concept, Chloe Rhodes explains in the book A Certain "Je Ne Sais Quoi.

At Say It for You, when our Indiana freelance blog content writers are sitting down with business owners or professional practitioners who are preparing to launch a blog, one important step in that launch is to select 1-5 recurring themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts. The themes may be reflected in the keyword phrases they use to help with search engine optimization. But, more than that, themes are broader in scope than just key words.

Letimotifs reflect the core beliefs of the owners, the reason they got into their fields in the first place.
Leitmotifs reflect owners’ unique slant within their industry or profession.
Leitmotifs are “dominant colors” that tie together different product descriptions, different sets of statistics, and different processes used to deliver a service to clients.
Leitmotifs unite different testimonials from customers and clients.

In content marketing, each blog post is like one side of a thaumatrope. Looked at in isolation, each side of the card presents one picture. As blog content writing continues over weeks, months, and years, there will be a cumulative effect. Those many separate blog posts, ”tied together” through letimotifs, will create a beautiful, “Who-We-Are” picture!

So Who's Counting in Your Content Marketing Blog?

Rhoda Israelov — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0000

This past Easter alone, infoplease.com informs us, Americans managed to consume some 90,000,000 chocolate bunnies. If, by this point in time, you’re thinking “Who cares?, Just try this fact on for size: 76% of those chocoholic citizens expressed the opinion that the bunny’s ears should be eaten first.

As is more than evident from social media and referral sites, people are unfailingly interested in who-else-is-doing-whatever-it-is-your-company-is-recommending-I-do. Blog readers in particular look at what others are doing when making an online purchase of a product or service. To put it another way, consumers are influenced by references.

Of course, when I’m doing corporate blogging training, I advise business owners and professionals to use statistics for three other reasons as well:

1. Attention-grabbing

2. Mythbusting (statistics help prove the reality versus the widely held misperceptions about your product or service)

3. Demonstrating the extent of a problem leads into showing readers ways you can help solve it

Online marketing executive Tom Pick agrees, saying that “the careful use of numbers is one valuable method for maximizing communication while conserving space. To my list of reasons why using numbers in SEO marketing blogs is a very good idea, Pick adds the following:

4.Numbers add precision. Words like “some,” “many,” “most” and “few” give us only a vague sense of quantity.

5. Numbers are shorthand. Numbers can convey a great deal of information with minimal verbiage.

6. Numbers are compelling. The precision of numbers adds weight to an argument or claim

So who’s counting in your content marketing blog? Are you??

Business Blogs - Both Exploratory and Confirmatory

Rhoda Israelov — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Always on the lookout for ways to improve our blog content marketing efforts on behalf of Say It For You clients, I regularly attend monthly luncheon meetings of the Indianapolis AMA .

At our table this month, the conversation turned to telephone surveys. Fellow member Tim Ittenback (of the marketing research firm SMARI) used terms I hadn’t heard before, referring to questions asked of homeowners who answered the calls. Closed-ended questions, with consumers answering yes or no or ranking something on a 1-5 scale, for example, are “confirmatory”. Open-ended questions, where consumers respond in their own words, are “exploratory”.

I’m reminded of a favorite quote from Shawn O'Donaghue of the Central Indiana Women's Business Center: "Successful business owners understand that the product or service they are selling is the answer to someone's problem."

In creating content for SEO marketing blogs, we need to keep in mind that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions for dilemmas they're facing. But even if those searchers haven’t specifically formulated their question, I suggest to newbie Indianapolis blog content writers, you can do that for them by presenting a question in the blog post itself!

Now that I think about it, I realize the blog questions can be either confirmatory or exploratory, and could even take the form of a survey or quiz. Unlike marketing research firms, business owners or professional practitioners are not out to gather consumer data; they want to engage their blog readers and show that they understand the dilemmas those readers are facing.

“Suffering from eye strain after long hours in front of the computer? Is the opener for a LensCrafters™ advertorial, for example.

“Did you know that 9 out of ten of your blog readers don’t get past the first line of your posts?” asks Problogger, explaining that the intent of that line is to have shock value and to “put a finger on the need we’ll be addressing.”

An Indianapolis Woman Magazine article a few years ago, contained a quiz, offering different options, multiple-choice style, for home buyers:

Your dream location is to live….

A. Downtown, in or near a big city
B. Close to the beach or in a rural area.
C. Doesn’t really matter if it’s in close proximity to others.

What you’re looking forward to the most about your home is…

A. Less cleaning. Your last place was too big.
B. Decorating. You can’t wait to get your hands on a paintbrush.
C. Meeting the new neighbors around you.

Business blog post questions can be confirmatory or exploratory – the purpose is to be engaging!

Calls to Action are Not Eye-Opening in Business Blogs

Rhoda Israelov — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0000

It’s eye-opening, the blog content marketing tips one can pick up at one’s eye doctor’s’ waiting room! A LensCrafters™ advertorial titled “Computer-Related Vision Problems Are On the Rise” in the AAA Magazine caught my attention, triggering the uncomfortable thought: that all of us freelance blog content writers spend far too many of our waking hours in front of computer screens.

As for the article itself – the structure, I thought, presents a perfect template for an effective post for a business or professional practice:

The opening line, “Suffering from eye strain after long hours in front of the computer?” That question tells the reader that the blog writer understands the issue and that the content will be dealing with the precise topic that triggered the search in the first place.

The next couple of lines establish a baseline of shared knowledge ( “You probably already know…. that a long day staring at your screen can sometimes lead to tired eyes and headaches…)

The writer then offers little-known information to add to that baseline: “But did you know these issues could be signs of CVS?” The author uses footnotes to properly attribute information which came from the American Optometric Association. In Say It For You corporate blogging training sessions, I explain how to use links (the equivalent of footnotes) for curated materials that were taken from other blogs, from websites, or books.

The next few paragraphs of the article provide usable information about steps readers can take to protect their own eyes and questions readers can ask their own eye doctors about UV coating on eyewear.

Only at the very end is there a Call to Action to visit LensCrafters™ and take advantage of a special discount.

So, does that last section, in which LensCrafters™ is asking for the customer’s business, invalidate the good information provided in the piece? Not in the least. When people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or on different websites, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business. But as long as the material is valuable and relevant for the searchers, they’re perfectly fine with knowing there’s someone who wants them for a client or customer.

Calls to action are not eye-opening in successful SEO marketing blogs!

Putting Your Business Blog's Most Flattering Face Forward

Rhoda Israelov — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0000

“New research shows that the left side of the human face is generally more appealing to others than the right side,” psychology professors Schirillo and Blackburn found. Why? “Results suggested that posers’ left cheeks tend to exhibit a greater intensity of emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing”.

That’s a fascinating finding, Huffington Post remarks, but does the study yield a practical take-away message for people who want to look their best? Yes, says Dr. Schirillo: "Practically, people should turn slightly so that they show more of their left than their right cheek when being photographed."

As a content marketer and corporate blogging trainer, I find this right-side/left-side research fascinating, too. More important, I can find more than one practical take-away messages for us Indianapolis business blog content writers.

The Nielsen Norman Group did their own study on how users read web pages, finding that users often use an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. First, users read horizontally across the upper part of the content. Next, they move down a bit and read across again. Finally, users scan the left side in a vertical movement. The take-away? The title and first ”pow” sentence of blog content are of crucial importance in readers’ split-second decision to read more or “bounce”.

Exhibiting emotion in content marketing is a good thing. In fact, emotional impact is an essential ingredient in all good writing. Brandon Royal, author of the Little Red Writing Book, comes back to that concept again and again. We need “close-ups”, he says, for emotional connection and impact.

Are you putting your business blog’s most flattering face forward?

Blog Content Writers - We've "Arrived"!

Rhoda Israelov — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:01:00 +0000

If you’re reading this post, I bet you thought social media had “arrived” long ago. They hadn’t, but now they have, (now that the SEC has “blessed” Facebook and Twitter and allowed investment information to be disclosed on those sites, that is)..

I must tell you: As a 27-year veteran of the compliance-top-heavy financial planning profession, now a professional ghost blogger and content marketing trainer, I got a giant chuckle out of the Wall Street Journal headline “SEC Embraces Social Media.”

In case any of my Say It For You business blog readers missed the big announcement, “…the Security and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that postingson sites such as Facebook and Twitter are just as good as press releases and company websites, as long as the companies have told investors which outlets they intend to use.”

It was obvious that the SEC watchdog people had happened upon Roger Laing’s new book “Social Media Marketing Made Easy.” Laing defines blogs as “online journals for individuals and businesses.” “Blogs and bloggers often rival major media companies as sources of information,” Laing adds, much to the delight of all of us Indianapolis business blog writers.

Blogging for business, Laing proclaims, “lets you share knowledge and expertise to boost sales and promote your business, both directly and indirectly.” What’s more, he explains, the blog allows you to show your value as a commercial partner.

Promoting businesses and professional practices, sharing knowledge and demonstrating value – that’s what we freelance blog content writers are out to do! (Boy, that SEC blessing has us beaming!)

Blog Content Writers Like Martha Washington's Household Staff

Rhoda Israelov — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:09:00 +0000

We business blog content writers are rather like First Lady Martha Washington’s household staff.

Of course, with dozens of kitchen and dining room servants, Mrs. Washington didn’t have to actually prepare the meals served in the first presidential White Houses (in Mt. Vernon and New York). On the other hand, we’re told, she personally supervised the staff to be sure every dish was prepared precisely as called for her family heirloom cookbook.

So where’s the analogy? As Indianapolis freelance blog content writers, I and my Say It For You colleagues are part of a relatively small, elite group of specialty writers for hire. The reason modern business owners and professional practitioners use bloggers is that there’s not enough time, discipline, or writing skill for them to do it themselves. Still, as was the case with Mrs. Washington, it’s important for the business owner to provide some “supervision” and to set the tone and direction for the blog writing.

Actually, George Washington, like his wife, had writing help, using several very famous ghostwriters, including Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison to compose his political speeches and writings.

What I have found over the years of content marketing through blogs, social media, and PR pieces, is that each Say It For You business client has an important message to spread. The blog content writer needs to ‘buy into” business owners’ or professionals’ passion and special slant on their industry or profession and put a “voice” to those concepts.

Like Martha Washington’s household staff, we content writers actually prepare the food. The recipe, though? That needs to take inspiration from the owner or practitioner and from the employees!

The AWAH Template for Writing a Blog

Rhoda Israelov — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:11:00 +0000

Truth be told, I’m not crazy about slide presentations. But at the AWAH (Art With a Heart) fundraising breakfast a couple of weeks ago, there was one particular slide in Executive Director Andrew Lee’s Power Point that I liked. I liked it a lot, as a matter of fact. The slide was titled “What We Do”, and I found myself thinking what a great template it could be for business blog content writing.

The slide had four bullet sections, with an arrow pointing downward from each to the one below:

WHEN people give us money…..
WE send an experienced art teacher to a school
WHERE they give fun, high quality art classes to underserved kids
THAT educate, inspire, provide hope

What did I find to like about that message?

First, as a corporate blogging trainer, I teach new Indianapolis blog content writers to help readers follow their logic to a conclusion. Online searchers rarely read. Instead, they scan. With a minimum of effort on their part, those searchers need to be able to discern what it is you do and that they've come to the right place.

Second, there are many personal pronouns: “People give US money…WE send teachers…THEY give classes... Blogs are more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces. Your readers want to meet the people behind the blog. The message is “WE will be taking care of YOU!"

That slide makes very clear what we can expect AWAH to do, and the “template” is one that freelance bloggers can easily use in marketing a business, a professional practice, or an organization:

WHEN YOU (the writer is telling readers)…hire a professional realtor/bankruptcy attorney/cleaning service/cosmetic surgeon/house painter/massage therapist….. like (name)
WE….take the following steps
WHERE….we....provide the following products and services
THAT….benefit you in the following ways……

It’s really quite a simple formula, that AWAH template. Translated into my own business, it means that when we offer business blogging help to Say It For You clients, we’re helping them tell their prospects, “Here are the results you can expect when you give us money!”