The Wax Blog

By Beth Graddon-Hodgson

If you look at many of the top business blogs, you’ll find that use of lists within blog posts is a very common format. I’m a big advocate of this format as well, and there are a number of reasons why it works.

1. People are inherently lazy – people don’t read in full until something really catches their eye; they skim. If you have interesting information lumped into long paragraphs, trying to skim it is just too much work. Lay it out in a way that the eye is drawn to each point and you’ll capture interest and convince them to actually read.
2. You look like an expert – whether or not it’s actually the case, a list-style article naturally reads like a kind of ‘How To Guide’. If you’re dishing out advice, you’ve obviously got something intelligent to say.
3. Social media likes them – drawing off of #2, blog posts that give readers a take away are the kind of things that people like to share on social media. This, my friends, is always good!

You may not think that a simple thing like the format of your blog posts can add much value to how well they perform. But a simple change that really doesn’t alter the way you write, can make all the difference!

While your blog might be filled with helpful information, you’ve still got to sell yourself a little and tell your readers why they care about what you have to say. In recent weeks, we’ve talked a lot about over-selling, so you’re walking a fine line, but there are a few things you can do to make people take you seriously:

1.     Ask for a testimonial – you need to ensure that you present this in an appropriate way, and this is not something that will be suitable for all blogs/websites so proceed with caution. But the bottom line is having a testimonial placed on your site, written by someone else that tells readers why you rock, will go a lot farther than if you try to brag about your own accomplishments. When this isn’t appropriate, a simple biographical statement with a link to an ‘about me’ or testimonial page works too!

2.     Have someone else’s endorsement – if you have a column hosted by another blog or website, that’s a great way to show that you’ve got the endorsement of a credible business, person, or online publication.  Nothing even needs to be said, because as it stands, their reputation is riding on you so clearly they take heed of what you have to say and everyone else should too!

3.     Don’t be afraid to link to mentions of you – if you’ve been quoted in an article or mentioned in a post online, go ahead and link it in your blog with a brief introduction to it!

4.     Toss in some stats – people don’t know what kind of following you have when they can’t see the reports. Sometimes tossing in your Alexa ranking with a subtle banner on your site may be a good idea. If you’ve got a following, then it’s obvious to readers you’ve got some good things to say!

What else have you found helps enhance your credibility with your readers even before they start following you?

I love this post….the Wax blog is quite popular in the UK for some reason . Does our humor seem British? BH

Last year I wrote about a few things that you should consider when you’re using language to reach your target audience. Since this blog has a large international following, it’s a topic worth revisiting to learn how you can ensure that your blog appeals to your readers from the UK and other international destinations!

Here are a few things to consider whether you’re a US business trying to have more worldwide appeal, or you’re an international business trying to appeal to that core target audience: (more…)

By Beth Graddon-Hodgson

not Beth's husband

Most businesses use blogging as a marketing tool, and that’s the way it should be; but people are uncertain exactly what that means. Do you use traditional rules of marketing when you’re writing your blog posts? Write for a target audience? Try to sell a product? Include a call to action?  Well, those are more questions than I can answer here, and I’ve answered many of them before. But to summarize, yes to be an effective marketing tool you do have to think as you would when writing marketing copy (identify your target audience, make statements that are appealing and capture interest,  and she some light on your business). But the similarities end there.

By Beth Graddon- Hodgson

It’s essential that you maintain your brand values and image on your blog, but when the world is your oyster when it comes to blog topics, it can be hard to know where to draw the line for relevance.  Typically with blogs to attract the greatest number of readers within the target audience, I suggest that we look at topics that are relevant to the broader industry not a very specific niche.

A good example to illustrate what I mean is retailers that dispense ‘healthcare’ products like reading glasses and hearing aids. The specific niche topics that would be relevant on these blogs would include choosing reading glasses, determining the strength, trends in fashion, how hearing aids work, the different types of hearing aids etc. Expanding to other industry-relevant topics to appeal to a target audience would involve writing about eye health and hearing loss, because these are things that individuals shopping for these items would want to know, logically.

Some businesses worry that expanding the scope of topics is betraying their brand image. Using the examples above, reading glasses retailers worry that people will make assumptions that they are doctors or experts in eye health and hearing aid retailers may have similar concerns.  You always want to stay in line with your brand values, but going this route does not put you off course, and here are some points to help you remember how and why that’s true.

• Just because you’re sharing resources about other things relevant to your business but beyond your niche doesn’t misrepresent who you are or what services you provide. Sharing these resources does prove you’re an expert in your industry, and that you’re in touch with everything that’s important and relevant to it.
• By providing additional resources you’re simply anticipating the needs of your target market. It’s logical that people shopping for reading glasses would like to learn more about eye health and vision loss. If you’re proactive in presenting this information, they’ll appreciate that you’re going that extra mile (even if the information is coming from other resources and not your own personal knowledge) to provide for their needs. If you don’t offer up this information, they’ll just find it somewhere else anyway.
• While your blog does indirectly market your business, you don’t need to follow the specific rules of marketing. Every post doesn’t need to support your brand only by pushing your services.
• It’s harder to get readers for very niche topics. Your loyal blog visitors already invested in the industry might be interested, as would those specifically searching for the types of services you offer. But, if you’re serious about attracting others that could become future clientele, only focusing on the niche topics just isn’t going to do it for you.
• If you’re only focusing on the niche topics, you may be overselling as far as your readers are concerned, and they won’t keep reading if they feel that way.

My suggestion to those that understand the above, but still aren’t 100% convinced, is to continue to maintain the balance between niche and industry general. But you can always make it very clear with footnote style references (rather than post body text links) that some of your general information is coming from other sources that way they know exactly what your intentions are.

A few weeks back, I wrote about the top mistakes that business bloggers make that can hurt rather than help their business. After quite a bit of discussion in the comments from readers wondering what constitutes overselling, I thought it would be a great subject to dive  a little bit deeper into. The thing is, it is kind of a touchy subject, because the promotional limits of one blog may not be the same as another. At the end of the day, it’s all about what appeals to your readers and that can lead to big variations in strategy from one blog to the next. There’s no way to give you a guidebook to avoid the potentially fatal mistake of overselling on our blog, but here are a few things you need to think about. (more…)