Sage Advice on the Benefits of Local Content Marketing Services

(This text was primarily created with ChatGPT. For the story behind the text, read my previous post.)

Inland Empire West business owners, gather around and listen closely, for I bring you a message of great importance. In this age of technology and information, the art of storytelling has become more vital than ever before.

By Mack Male – originally posted to Flickr as Ontario Convention Center, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9512928

The way a tale is told can determine its success or failure, much like a business in the marketplace. A business must be able to captivate its audience, and draw them in with a story that is both compelling and relevant. This is where content marketing services come in.

By providing services that are tailored to the specific needs of a local community, businesses can reach their target audience more effectively. By understanding the unique culture and values of a region, businesses can craft stories that resonate with the people who live there.

Think of it like planting a seed in fertile soil. When the soil is rich and the conditions are right, the seed will take root and flourish. Similarly, when a business connects with its local audience through the power of storytelling, it will grow and prosper.

So heed my words. Invest in local content marketing services from Bredemarket, and watch as your business flourishes. The world is full of endless possibilities, and by harnessing the power of storytelling, you can tap into that potential and achieve great success.

The journey may be long, but the reward is great. Embrace the power of local content marketing services, and watch as your business blooms like a lotus in the sun.

If you are on the path seeking a talented marketer who has lived in the Inland Empire West for nearly 40 years to help you market your local business, consider Bredemarket.

Behind the Scenes: Harnessing the Power of ChatGPT for Bredemarket

On Wednesday I successfully logged into Bredemarket’s ChatGPT account.

If you’ve been following stories about how overloaded the free version of ChatGPT is these days, you can appreciate the magnitude of my accomplishment.

This allowed me to conduct some tests that I’ve wanted to perform for some time now. Since these tests related to creating content for my day job, I can’t share them with you here.

But after completing those tests, I took a few seconds to conduct a test for Bredemarket.

You’ll recall that Bredemarket identifies as a “sage” personality, and that Bredemarket has pivoted to providing services for local Inland Empire West businesses.

So here’s the prompt that I provided to ChatGPT:

Write in the style of a sage about providing local content marketing services.

OK, maybe ChatGPT took the “sage” persona a bit farther than I would. I’m imagining Tim Kazurinsky from his turn in “Gandhi and the Bandit.”

Here’s the original text that ChatGPT created, followed by my lightly edited version. The titles are my own.

A sage’s advice on local content marketing services, the ChatGPT version

Wise ones, gather around and listen closely, for I bring you a message of great importance. In this age of technology and information, the art of storytelling has become more vital than ever before.

The way a tale is told can determine its success or failure, much like a business in the marketplace. A business must be able to captivate its audience, and draw them in with a story that is both compelling and relevant. This is where local content marketing services come in.

By providing services that are tailored to the specific needs of a local community, businesses can reach their target audience more effectively. By understanding the unique culture and values of a region, businesses can craft stories that resonate with the people who live there.

Think of it like planting a seed in fertile soil. When the soil is rich and the conditions are right, the seed will take root and flourish. Similarly, when a business connects with its local audience through the power of storytelling, it will grow and prosper.

So heed my words, wise ones. Invest in local content marketing services, and watch as your business flourishes. The world is full of endless possibilities, and by harnessing the power of storytelling, you can tap into that potential and achieve great success.

The journey may be long, but the reward is great. Embrace the power of local content marketing services, and watch as your business blooms like a lotus in the sun.

Bredemarket’s advice on local content marketing services, the edited version

For the edited version, see this post.

But what if I’m caught?

If you’ve heard about ChatGPT, you’ve probably heard that it leads to the downfall of civilization since students will use it to complete school assignments, professionals will use it for proficiency examinations, and someone could even try to use it in court proceedings.

So what if someone detects that I didn’t write the post on local content marketing?

Writer.com has a tool called the AI Content Detector, and I ran it on two lightly edited ChatGPT samples, including my Bredemarket local content marketing post.

For the other sample, the AI Content Detector accurately estimated that only 6% of the text was written by a human.

What of Bredemarket’s post?

I have no idea why this sample appears to be 100% human-generated, even though the true estimate is closer to 6%.

But AI is constantly improving, so maybe if I test it again in a few days I’ll get caught.

I can use ChatGPT…but should I?

Of course, there’s the question of whether I should use ChatGPT for content creation.

In my writing, especially my writing for Bredemarket, I have a clearly identifiable tone of voice, casual yet technical. Anyone reading the ChatGPT-generated “sage” text who has read my other writing will detect a distinctly different style.

And does ChatGPT save time? In some instances it might save time in standard text generation, but I’ll probably have to perform extensive rewriting to avoid the AI detectors and to personalize the text for my specific needs. In the end, it probably won’t save me much time at all.

One potential way to use ChatGPT is to generate the text. and then pick out a phrase that I like and incorporate it into self-written text. Things like “captivate its audience” and “power of storytelling.”

Hey, it beats quoting snippets of text from Mel Brooks movies.

Why static web page changes aren’t that shocking

This morning I was preparing to reshare my “Who I Am” page to my Bredemarket Facebook page and the associated Facebook groups for identity, technology, and the Inland Empire. (I need to get more active on Facebook; hold me accountable if I don’t.)

But I thought I’d better check the “Who I Am” page before resharing it to Facebook. And it’s good I did, because I realized that it required one important update.

Well, perhaps the page didn’t require the update, but I personally thought the update was necessary. I’ll let you judge for yourself.

By Fir0002 – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2380067

Regardless of whether this edit was needed, static web pages certainly can change.

The “Who I Am” page before the change

If you haven’t seen my “Who I Am” page, it starts with a description of me and my writing background, then transitions into the story of how Bredemarket came to be. After describing the events that prompted me to establish Bredemarket, I concluded the section as follows:

So I formally registered Bredemarket with the City of Ontario and San Bernardino County, and with other private businesses that allowed me to offer my services.

And here we are.

From https://bredemarket.com/who-i-am/ as of January 13, 2023

The “Who I Am” page after the change

It’s a nice little story about the establishment of Bredemarket in the fall of 2020, but as originally written the “Who I Am” page doesn’t describe the changes to the company that took place in the spring of 2022.

So I just inserted some material between the two paragraphs reproduced above.

For nearly two years, Bredemarket was my primary source of income.

Then I accepted a new employment position in May 2022. While this has required me to pivot my business away from certain biometric customers, and while the time that I spend on Bredemarket is dramatically reduced, I’ve continued Bredemarket as a part-time side gig with a new emphasis on local (Inland Empire West, California) customers. (Although I’m still serving my former customers, as long as they’re not involved in finger/face/secure document identity.)

From https://bredemarket.com/who-i-am/ as of January 14, 2023

And…here we are.

Why I’m not performing a complete overhaul

Now some of you would probably argue that the “Who I Am” page needs some more extensive edits, or perhaps a wrecking ball.

Well, that would be a change in Bredemarket’s marketing persona. Sage it ain’t. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8

But for now, I’m sticking to incremental changes.

  1. As mentioned above, I have limited time to spend on Bredemarket, and revamping the entire website is not the best use of my time.
  2. Of course I could pay someone to do it, but Bredemarket’s revenue is also limited.
  3. There are also SEO considerations. Some time ago I knew of a company that performed a complete (and necessary) website revamp, despite the hit that it would deal to the company’s search results. And yes, search results did take a hit.

So I’m not going to chuck the existing Bredemarket website and start over.

By ericskiff/Glitch010101 – This image was originally posted to Flickr as Uprooted bonsai (just a bit cropped), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=666469

However, I am going to try to slowly refresh the existing static web pages (currently 39) as I encounter them, so that the existing search results will be improved.

And here we are.

Bredemarket’s Two Step Target Segment (Persona) Definition Process

I’ve said before that there are six critical questions that you need to ask before creating content. One of those six questions is to ask who the target audience will be for the content.

By David Shankbone – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2786722

How do you decide who your target audience is?

And how do you decide who the target segments are within that target audience?

The professional marketer’s way to define a target segment

A few months ago, some marketers were writing eight pieces of content. At one point, they stepped back and defined personas that corresponded to these eight pieces of content.

Personas? What’s that?

Let’s use Aurora Harley’s definition:

A persona is a fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user of the product. A persona is an archetype instead of an actual living human, but personas should be described as if they were real people.

From https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona/

Harley shared an example of a persona (go to her article to see it) that incorporated a lot of detail:

  • A name (in this case, “Rosa Cho”)
  • Biographical details (job title, age, city of residence)
  • Behavioral details (what motivates her, her frustrations, her goals)

Why all the detail? Because this detail allows us to think of this abstract persona as a living person. As marketers design their product, they can reference this persona and ask themselves if Rosa Cho would like this content.

So all you have to do is build the personas.

But how do we create Rosa Cho and her persona friends? Do we need weird science to perform this feat?

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

How to create a professional persona in 9 steps, or 4 steps

When professional marketers at large companies create personas, they often use a persona creation process.

For example, Arthur McCay has defined 9 steps in persona creation, as an aid to people who are befuddled with the whole persona creation process.

  • The first of these 9 steps is to perform research to obtain reliable data (rather than mere hypotheses) about your persona. This research may be based on your own knowledge, on interviews with customers and customer-facing salespeople, or on data sources (including web analytics).
  • The remaining 8 steps use this research to segment the audience into individual archetypes, decide on the layout (what the persona will contain), and fill in the details. I’m not going to reproduce all of McCay’s content; you can see all 9 of his steps here.

If you’re someone who thinks that 9 steps is too many steps, perhaps you’ll prefer Louis Grenier’s 4 step process. Although frankly it’s pretty much the same.

  1. Choose questions for your survey
  2. Set up a survey on a popular page
  3. Analyze your data
  4. Build your persona

OK, the emphasis is slightly different, but in both cases you assemble data (McCay uses multiple sources, Grenier uses a survey), analyze it, and then create the personas.

And I’m sure there are a variety of other methods to create personas. If you want to go down the persona creation route, choose the one that works for you.

Why personas?

But why create personas?

Because marketing research emphasizes that persona creation is better than the alternative.

As every professional marketer knows, the data-driven method of persona creation is necessary to create accurate personas. As McCay states:

It is important to keep in mind that a persona is a collective image of a segment of your target audience (TA). It cannot be the face of the entire TA. Nor can it be just one person. You need somewhat of a golden middle.

From https://uxpressia.com/blog/how-to-create-persona-guide-examples

Note that you should never base your target segment on the attributes of a single person. That’s going to skew your data and perhaps overemphasize some quirk of the individual person.

  • For example, if your company were marketing to part-time consultants, and chose to market to me rather than a persona created from data, then your company would erroneously conclude that all part-time consultants have prior experience with FriendFeed and an interest in orienteering.
  • This is not accurate for other part-time consultants, 99.99999% of whom have never heard of FriendFeed and think that orienteering is some form of Japanese study. (It isn’t.)

If you aspire to be a professional marketer, don’t read this

As professional marketers will tell you, using a real person rather than a constructed persona to define your target audience (or target segment) is an absolutely terrible thing to do.

But be terrible.

For some of you, I recommend that you consider using a real person as a starting point.

Large multi-million dollar businesses can devote the resources to the surveys, interviews, analytics, and other steps necessary for thorough persona creation.

But what if you’re a small business and don’t have the time or resources to do all that?

Don’t tell anyone, but you can cheat.

Don’t read this either: two steps to define a target segment

So you’ve read the warnings above, but you’re ready to ignore them and forgo you chance at a Super Duper Marketing Research award (application fee $899, not counting the cost of the awards dinner).

Without further ado, here are Bredemarket’s two steps to define a target segment.

  1. Start with a real person.
  2. Adjust.

If you read above, you realize that this method has severe problems, especially if you skip the second step altogether. By starting your focus with a real person, you could inadvertently create marketing text that emphasizes individual eccentricities that are relatively unimportant.

Is your content true north, or magnetic north?

But if you use your smarts to adjust and generalize the original person, you have a quick and dirty way to create your persona.

Rather than collecting extensive survey results and deriving an artificial persona from those results, you start with a real person.

An example

For example, let’s say that my company Bredemarket is targeting local businesses that need content or proposal creation.

I could start with a real local person who could use Bredemarket’s services, and then adjust that real biography and behavioral attributes as necessary to remove the oddities.

Or I could start with a non-local person and adjust as necessary to make the person a local person, filling in biographical and behavioral details as needed.

Either way, the end product is a quick and dirty persona that Bredemarket can use to target local businesses.

But what do professional marketers do in reality?

But are quick and dirty personas too dirty to use? Shouldn’t we stick to professional marketing techniques and create fictitious personas?

For example, when you create your Rosa Cho persona, how do you depict the persona? Do you use an illustration, or do you use an image of a real person?

One response from a content marketing expert:

Personally prefer illustrations…

From https://www.designernews.co/stories/69356-ask-dn-do-you-use-real-peoples-photos-for-creating-user-personas-or-you-go-for-illustration-option

Another from another content marketing expert:

I prefer real photos. I think they help people empathize with the persona more than an illustration.

From https://www.designernews.co/stories/69356-ask-dn-do-you-use-real-peoples-photos-for-creating-user-personas-or-you-go-for-illustration-option

Obviously both answers are wrong, however. Right?

  • A real photo is obviously a terrible thing to use, because it is based on a real individual and ignores all of the research that you performed to create the rest of the persona.
  • And illustrations can be fallible, since chances are that they don’t incorporate all of your research either. (Does the median 34 year old freelancer from Seattle really look like the illustration? Or does the illustration more accurately depict a 35 year old from Tacoma?)

Let’s face it: persona creation is not merely a science, but also an art. And sometimes you may take artistic license. This content marketing expert gives you permission to do so.

TL;DR Do what you want

There are valid arguments for a 4 step, 9 step, or 96 step (heh) persona creation process.

And there are valid arguments for just winging it.

The important thing is to target somebody when creating content, or having someone create content for you.

Which is why Bredemarket asks customers who their target audience is in the first place. It’s all in Bredemarket’s most recent e-book; read this post to find out how to download the e-book.

Thoughts on friction from 2019 and 2022

I’ve been going through some of my other blogs and finding things that I forgot I wrote. For example, I wrote something on my Empoprise-BI blog entitled “When retailers INTRODUCE friction.”

It’s not surprising that I was writing about frictionless experiences in 2019. After all, my then-employer IDEMIA was promoting the touchless fingerprint reader MorphoWave and its use in places like dining halls.

By Tim Reckmann from Hamm, Deutschland – Frau mit Einkaufswagen, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83154908

But I was surprised that my Empoprise-BI 2019 post started with a discussion on online shopping cart abandonment.

And there’s a dramatic financial incentive to make shopping frictionless – roughly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned without the customer purchasing anything, a potential loss of revenue for the company. The same thing can happen at old-fashioned physical stores, except that in this case the abandoned shopping carts are real shopping carts – and if there’s frozen food sitting in an abandoned shopping cart, you have to deal with both lost revenue and lost inventory.

From https://empoprise-bi.blogspot.com/2019/04/when-retailers-introduce-friction.html

Why was I surprised? Because three years later Allen Ganz (a now-former coworker at my current company) discussed shopping cart abandonment, emphasizing the need for a frictionless experience.

In identity proofing, friction results when it takes significant effort for a person to prove who they are. If it takes a user too long to prove their identity, the user may become frustrated and give up. This hurts businesses that depend upon digital onboarding for their customers.

From https://incode.com/blog/removing-friction-from-capture-when-proving-identities/

Whether you conduct business online or in-person, it’s wise to take an audit of your business practices to make sure you’re not throwing up roadblocks that keep your customers away. And not just the identity stuff; are there other things that make it hard for customers to buy from you?

Maybe your business hours aren’t convenient for people, like the restaurant that wasn’t open during breakfast and dinner hours, or…

…or the business consultant that wasn’t open weekdays.

400 Words Are Worth Many Pictures

As I pivot Bredemarket’s writing services (due to my exit from some biometric writing) and return to a more regular blog posting schedule, I’ve discovered that Bredemarket isn’t the only Inland Empire West business that could use some additional text content.

There are local business websites with blogs that are nearly dormant. And that’s not good.

Sure, some of them have active image-based accounts on popular social services (Instagram, TikTok, etc.).

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Bredemarket has an Instagram account of its own.

But their websites have blogs that are gathering dust.

Imagine if those blogs had a regular cadence of content, attracting content to YOUR website – not Mark Zuckerberg’s website or Bytedance’s website.

Content that not only describes what you do, but how you do it and why you do it.

Content that answers a lot of questions about your business – six questions in particular. Actually more than that, but there are six questions that will get you started with your personal content creator. I know; I wrote the book on it.

The answers to those questions launch an iterative process to create your blog content. Perhaps a one-time post, or better yet a blog post every month, attracting customers on a regular basis. Your own secret salesperson, as it were.

I offer the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, a package that starts with a kickoff session and ends with between 400 and 600 words of blog or social content.

By Unknown author – postcard, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7691878

Can you use Bredemarket to attract new customers?

If so, let’s talk.

Don’t Send ALL Your Traffic to Zhang Yiming and Mark Zuckerberg

Most of you don’t know Zhang Yiming.

But you promote him anyway.

If you use TikTok to promote your business, you are sending traffic to tiktok.com.

Zhang Yiming’s website.

Or maybe you don’t use TikTok, but instead promote your business on Instagram, sending traffic to instagram.com.

Mark Zuckerberg’s website.

Not yours.

By Lobo Studio Hamburg – https://pixabay.com/photos/phone-display-apps-applications-292994/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126385924

If you own a business, don’t you want at least some of your traffic to go to your website, rather than their websites?

For example, this blog post attracts people to bredemarket.com, Bredemarket’s website. People who read the post can see other things on the Bredemarket website – who I am, what I do, where I do it, and why things like customer focus and benefits are important.

People who read Instagram posts learn why the metaverse is important to Mark. They don’t learn why you do what you do.

So how can you use blog posts to attract traffic to your website?

I’ll tell you how in a future post.

Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You: the e-book version

I love repurposing.

So I’ve repurposed my October 30 blog post into an e-book.

This gave me an opportunity to revisit the topic and add critical information on wildebeests, George (H.W.) Bush, and Yogi Berra.

But more importantly, it allows me to share my thoughts with a wider audience.

If you missed the October blog post, I state that there are six critical questions that your content creator must ask before creating content. These questions apply whether your content creator is a consultant, an employee at your company, or you.

The e-book discusses each of these six questions:

  1. Why?
  2. How?
  3. What?
  4. Goal?
  5. Benefits?
  6. Target Audience?

And as I note in the e-book, that’s just the beginning of the content creation process.

Whether you intend to use Bredemarket as your content creator, use someone else as your content creator, or create your own content, the points in this e-book are helpful. They can be applied to content creation (case studies, white papers, blog posts) or proposal work, and apply whether you are writing for Inland Empire West businesses or businesses anywhere.

And if you read the e-book, you’ll discover why I’m NOT sharing it on the Bredemarket Identity Firm Services LinkedIn page and Facebook group.

You can download the e-book here. And you can be a content marketing expert also.

(UPDATE OCTOBER 22, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)

Does Every Blog Post Need a Call to Action?

Does every blog post need a CTA?

No.

Let me explain.

What is a call to action?

No, not the Western Electric kind of call. By Jonathan Mauer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50534668

For those who are not familiar with the term, a “call to action,” abbreviated as CTA, is just what it sounds like: a summons to do something. So if you want to call it a STDS, feel free. (Although I wouldn’t.)

Of course, calls to action have been used long before the digital world appeared. For several decades, automobile dealer Cal Worthington (and his dog Spot) wanted people to come to his car dealerships, so in between the entertaining animals, the call to action “Go see Cal” was repeated in commercials like this one.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hT2oP–NSU

And things haven’t changed in the 21st century, except that most of us have retired the dog Spot. For example, some of my blog posts include the following call to action:

These three bullets, when used, are preceded by a statement such as “If I can work with you to create your written content, please contact me.” Or whatever makes sense for the particular blog post.

But not all of my posts include the three CTA bullets.

Posts for awareness don’t need CTAs

(UPDATE 7/24/2023: Upon further reflection, I should have said “Posts for awareness don’t ALWAYS need CTAs.” See my updated blog post, “Awareness Calls to Action.”)

Take my post from last Saturday, “Candy Street Market is coming.”

Candy Street Market, 110 W Holt, Ontario, California

This post simply talked about a new candy store in Ontario, California, but never talked about Bredemarket’s content creation or proposal writing services.

So why did I write a post that doesn’t directly lead to business?

For the awareness.

The awareness of Bredemarket doesn’t equal the awareness of Kleenex. But I’m working on it. By kimubert – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40263441

Ever since I exited some of my prior identity-related markets in the spring of 2022, I’ve pivoted my marketing activity and am concentrating more on serving local firms in California’s Inland Empire. This isn’t a new activity; I’ve targeted local businesses since September 2021. But since I am no longer serving my former clientele of companies that identify individuals using fingerprints, faces, and identity documents, the local business is obviously extremely important.

But the locals need to know that I’m here.

Hence I wrote about a local candy store to provide awareness to businesses that Bredemarket is out there.

If their curiosity is piqued, then perhaps they’ll subscribe to the blog or explore what I do to find out what Bredemarket can do for them.

And even if not, at least the readers know another place to get candy in downtown Ontario.

CTAs on some posts wouldn’t be prudent

And then there are posts in which a CTA plain doesn’t belong.

I already linked to one such post above: my April 22 post announcing my change in business scope.

In short, the post let people know all of the business that I wouldn’t accept in the future.

Why post a call to action after announcing that?

And how would I word it? “If you are a biometric identity company that needs content marketing or proposal writing services, don’t call me”?

It comes down to goals

But you don’t need to detailed list of do’s and don’ts to determine which blog posts need CTAs.

It all boils down to one simple question:

What is the goal of the blog post?

As I stated in October, one of the six questions that you (or your content creator) should ask before starting work is about the goal for the piece of content.

  • Do you want people to keep you in mind if they need your product or service in the future? (“That guy knows Ontario, and he writes content; maybe he can help me.”)
  • Do you want people get more information on something (such as a service description)?
  • Do you want people to contact you personally if they want more information?
  • Do you want people to pull out their credit card immediately and buy something?

The answers to those questions will shape the final content, whether a CTA is needed, and the type of CTA.

This post DOES have a CTA

So let’s say you’re an Inland Empire business that needs a content marketing expert to write a blog post for you.

And let’s say that you have specific goals for this blog post.

And you’re targeting a particular audience for this blog post. (Maybe candy lovers.)

And you realize that buyers aren’t persuaded by a list of features you offer, but by a list of benefits for them. (Yes, benefits are important.)

Before Bredemarket writes a blog post for you, I’ll ask you about these items and others (see the list here), to make sure that my work is aligned with what you need.

So do you want to talk to me about that blog post that your business needs?

Here’s the call to action. Talk to me.

Candy Street Market is coming

The store has announced a soft opening, but it’s apparently very soft; I went by at 11:15am today (Saturday) and the door was locked with no hours posted.

But stay tuned to its Instagram account candystreetmarket for updates.

Candy Street Market is at 110 W Holt in Ontario, next to the Honduran restaurant.

Candy Street Market, 110 W Holt, Ontario, California