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.).
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 iterativeprocess 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.
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:
Why?
How?
What?
Goal?
Benefits?
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.)
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.
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.”)
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?
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?
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
If you want a content marketing expert to write for your business, do you just say “Write this, and make it viral”?
Not THAT viral. (Too soon?) By Alexey Solodovnikov (Idea, Producer, CG, Editor), Valeria Arkhipova (Scientific Сonsultant) – Own work. Scientific consultants:Nikitin N.A., Doctor of Biological Sciences, Department of Virology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University.Borisevich S.S. Candidate of Chemical Sciences, Specialist in Molecular Modeling of Viral Surface Proteins, Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Chemical Physics, Ufa Institute of Chemistry RASArkhipova V.I., specialization in Fundamental and Applied chemistry, senior engineer, RNA Chemistry Laboratory, Institute of chemical biology and fundamental medicine SB RAS, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=104914011
Six words of instruction will not result in great content.
Even if you just say “Write this” and leave off the viral part, this will not work either.
You and your content creator have to have a shared understanding of what the content will be.
For example, as I indicated in a previous post, you and your content creator have to agree on the tone of voice to use in the content. The content creator could write something in a tone of voice that may not match your voice at all, which would mean that the content would sound horribly wrong to your audience.
Imagine a piece for financial executives written in the style of Crazy Eddie. Ouch.
And that’s just one thing that could go wrong when you and your content creator are not on the same…um, page.
Bredemarket’s content creation process includes six questions
When Bredemarket works with you to create content, I use a content creation process. I’ve revised my original content creation process severaltimes, and I’m sure I’ll revise it more as I work with more of you.
But as of today, Bredemarket’s kickoff meetings with clients begin with six high-level questions that set the scene for everything that follows.
Question One: Why?
As I noted in my Simon Sinek post, the “why?” question needs to be answered before any other question is asked.
Before you ask a content creator to write a case study about how your Magnificent Gizmo cures bad breath, you need to understand why you’re in the good breath business in the first place. Did you have an unpleasant childhood experience? Were you abandoned at the altar? WHY did you care enough to create the Magnificent Gizmo in the first place?
(As I write this post, I’m going to look at how each of these six questions can be answered for the post itself. After all, it’s fair to ask: Why does Bredemarket do what it does? Short answer: because I write. You can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands. For the longer answer, read the “Who I Am” page on the Bredemarket website.)
Question Two: How?
You also need to make sure your content creator can explain how you do what you do. Have you created your own set of algorithms that make breath good? Do you conduct extensive testing with billions of people, with their consent? How is your way of doing things superior to that of your competitors?
Once these are clear in your mind, you’re ready to talk about the “what.” As Sinek notes, many people start with the “what” and then proceed to the “how,” and may or may not even answer the “why.” But when you ask the “why” first and the “how” second, your “what” description is much better.
(Again, you may be asking what Bredemarket does. I craft the words to communicate with technical and non-technical audiences. For additional clarification, read “What I Do,” which also notes what I don’t do. Sorry, finger/face/ID document vendors.)
Question Four: Goal?
Once the Golden Circle is defined, we’re ready to dig a little deeper into the specific piece of content you want. We’re not ready to talk about page count and fonts, yet, though. There’s a few other things we need to settle.
What is the goal of the content? Simple awareness of the product or service you provide? Or are you ready for consideration? Or is it time for conversion? The goal affects the content dramatically.
(In the case of this post, the goal is primarily awareness, but if you’re ready for conversion to become a paying customer, I won’t turn you away.)
Question Five: Benefits?
I’ve written ad nauseum on the difference between benefits and features, so for this question five about benefits I’ll just briefly say that written content works best when it communicates how the solution will help (benefit) the customer. A list of features will not make a difference to a customer who has specific needs. Do you meet those needs? Maintain a customer focus.
(Bredemarket’s primary benefit is focused content that meets your needs. There are others, depending upon your industry and the content you require.)
Question Six: Target Audience?
This one is simple to understand.
If you’re a lollipop maker and you’re writing for kids who buy lollipops in convenience stores, you’ll write one way.
If you’re a lollipop maker and you’re writing to the convenience stores who could carry your lollipops, you’ll write another way.
Now sometimes content creators get fancy and create personas and all that (Jane Smith is a 54 year old single white owner of a convenience store in a rural area with an MBA and a love for Limp Bizkit), but the essential thing is that you understand who you want to read your content.
(This particular piece is targeted for business owners, executives, directors, and managers, especially in California’s Inland Empire, who have a need to create focused content that speaks to their customers. The target audience not only affects how I am writing this post, but also how I will distribute it.)
What if you use a different content creator?
I am forced to admit that not everyone chooses Bredemarket to create their content.
Maybe you create your content yourself.
Maybe you already have access to content creators.
Or maybe you have a limited budget and can only pay a penny a word to your content creator. Let’s face it, a five dollar blog post does sound attractive.
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use these six questions. I did publish them, after all, and they’re based on questions that others have asked.
If you create your own content, ask yourself these six questions before you begin. They will focus your mind and make your final content better.
If you have someone else create your content, make sure that you provide the answers for your content creator. For example, if you seek a content creator on Upwork or Fiverr, put the answers to these questions in your request for quotes. Experienced writers will appreciate that you’re explaining the why, how, what, goal, benefits, and target audience at the very beginning, and you’ll get better quotes that way. If someone knows your target audience is crime scene examiners, then you’ll (hopefully) see some quotes that describe the writer’s experience in writing for crime scene examiners.
And if you provide the answers to those six questions and your content creator says, “That doesn’t matter. I write the same for everyone,” run away.
I have done a little bit of acting in my life, and have learned that acting often involves removing aspects of yourself and replacing them with aspects of your character. Just like donning a mask to cover parts of your head.
Perhaps the character you are playing as an actor may be dramatically different from your own self. To my knowledge, Carroll O’Connor did not insult non-white people like his character Archie Bunker did.
Yet at the same time, the character necessarily acquired some traits from the actor, and the actor identified with the character.
When we spoke to (O’Connor) prior to his death, he explained to us that he constantly had to battle writers who thought they understood the character better than he did.
But this post is not about “All in the Family.” It’s about “All in the Business.”
When a business’ archetype is not your own
I’ve previously written about archetypes before, in the August 2021 post “Why is Kaye Putnam happy that I’m IGNORING her marketing advice?” That post describes how I took an online test to see which of twelve brand archetypes matched the personality of Bredemarket, and also myself. The results clearly showed that I was primarily aligned with the Sage archetype.
(Ignore the political ramifications. Stay with me here.)
So how do you doff a “Sage” mask and don a “Maverick” mask, or perform some other archetype switch?
You need to understand the brand archetype you are targeting, and consciously adapt your communication to fit that archetype rather than your own.
So perhaps I might write a sentence like this in my normal Sage mode:
Finding the perforations in the wrapper, I carefully unwrapped the ice cream sandwich.
But how would a Maverick open an ice cream sandwich?
Removing the barriers that separated me from the final product, I boldly unwrapped the ice cream sandwich.
In the past, I guess I’ve subconsciously absorbed the tone of voice for a client or employer for whom I was writing, but in most cases I never thought of this in archetype terms.
What is your archetype? And should you care?
So when Bredemarket or another content marketing expert starts to write something for you, should you fret and fuss over what your archetype is?
If you feel like it. But it’s not essential.
What is essential is that you have some concept of the tone of voice that you want to use in your communication.
And how do you know what tone you want to use? You have to answer some questions.
For years, I have been working with computer systems that are used by people. Sometimes I forget that, but then someone like Mike Rathwell reminds me of this fact. Just like Jake Kuramoto reminded me of that fact 12 years ago. It’s all about customer focus, after all.
Rathwell begins by asking why people administer Atlassian systems (or, frankly, any system).
…the real reason we are around to administer this particular system is because real humans are using this system to do real things. Without humans using this system to do real things, administering it is purely an academic exercise. As such, we are here to ensure that this particular system supports, and continues to support, doing these things.
Perhaps there are those that think that the users of an Atlassian system are required to serve the needs of the system. That’s backwards. The Atlassian system is required to serve the needs of its users.
Even if they do stupid things and ask stupid questions.
For those who think “Dumb and Dumber” is too complicated, there’s always the panned prequel. The poster art can or could be obtained from New Line Cinema. Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3132477
Except they don’t.
Rathwell emphasizes that users do NOT ask stupid questions.
Be sure to read the rest of the article, which states that “techsplaining” is a bad idea also.
But I’m going to travel back in time to another instance in which users were called “stupid.”
Jake Kuramoto says that users are not stupid
Perhaps some of you remember this one.
Most of us access social platforms by performing some type of “login” process. Now logins can take many different forms (password, fob, biometric, whatever), but the process is basically the same.
You go to a place on the Internet.
You “login.”
You are now able to access your social platform of choice.
Now some of us intuitively understand how to “go to a place on the Internet” and “login.”
And back in 2010, there was a group of people who had a sure-fire method of doing this. Specifically, they would go to this thing on their computer (they didn’t know what it was called, but it was on the computer), type “facebook login,” click on the link that came up, type in their login and password, and access Facebook.
Now “this thing on their computer” was the Google search page in their web browser of choice. And they would search for “facebook login,” and the first search result would happen to be facebook.com. Once they made it to facebook.com, they would type in their login and password.
This was a method that people had perfected, and it worked 100% of the time.
So what broke down? When a new page became the top search result, people would NOT end up at facebook.com, but would instead end up at a ReadWriteWeb blog post. This blog post did NOT have anywhere to enter your Facebook login and password. So…Facebook is broken!
Now most if not all of the people reading my post right now know that you need to go to the facebook.com URL to log in to Facebook, and that you cannot log in to Facebook via (then) readwriteweb.com. But then again, the people that are reading my post right now actually know what the acronym “URL” means. (If you don’t, it stands for Uniform Resource Locator.)
Now find someone who doesn’t know the difference between a computer monitor and a web browser and explain to that person what a Uniform Resource Locator is.
Now there were two schools of thought on the whole ReadWriteWeb / Facebook login episode.
The one school of thought maintained that anyone who thought that they could login to Facebook via ReadWriteWeb was stupid, and that everybody should know to bookmark the facebook.com URL or type it into their browser rather than searching and running into an unbelievably successful SEO campaign.
But that school assumed that everyone knew what a URL is, or what SEO is. (Search engine optimization. Try explaining that one while you’re explaining Uniform Resource Locator.)
And Jake, despite his technical chops (he was with the Oracle AppsLab when he wrote this post), stated the same thought that Mike Rathwell would echo twelve years later.
I think it’s fair to say that computers shouldn’t make people feel stupid.
If you want to get to your favorite social platform, you shouldn’t have to know acronyms like SEO or URL or HTTPS. The only thing that you need to know is the name of the platform you want to access. (Otherwise you’ll end up at MySpace. Or Grindr.)
I’ll take it one step further. If the myriad of systems that make up your computer can’t figure out what you want to do, then it’s the computer and its many systems that are stupid, not you.
Now I just have to take Rathwell’s message to heart and avoid “techsplaining” myself.
And when I write, I need to continuously keep my customers (or, more accurately, my customers’ customers) in mind. I’m writing for them, not for me. Create messages that resonate with them. And if the audience is non-technical, don’t assume that they know what SEO and URL and HTTPS mean.
Last week I enjoyed a three-day vacation from my day job, so I had the opportunity to join SMA’s weekly Town Hall. (I am still officially an SMA Associate, on inactive status.)
SMA Town Halls usually begin with an “Art Talk,” and last week’s Art Talk focused on art in Las Vegas.
Coincidentally, I was leaving for Las Vegas later that day.
Sarah Kane’s presentation last week covered the Mob Museum.
Coincidentally, I had reservations to visit that museum on Saturday.
When I shared this in the Town Hall chat, Ajay Patel requested that I share pictures of my visit. Here they are.
This parking lot wall depicts the history of Las Vegas. Kane had nicer pictures in her Art Talk; cars obscured much of the wall when I visited.
The museum is located in a historic Post Office building that also hosted a courtroom. More on that later.
Mugshots, early 20th century.
This wall was the backdrop from Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. The bricks were subsequently relocated to Las Vegas.
If you don’t know why this ticket from the 1919 World Series is in the National Mob Museum, look it up.
If you’ve worked for a couple of facial recognition/video surveillance companies (the I and N companies come to mind), you’ve probably compared a picture from an early Whitey Bulger arrest to a later picture of Bulger. He ended up in prison in his later years, and did not survive the experience.
I finished my visit to the Mob Museum in a speakeasy. Special medicines may or may not have been consumed. Sorry, no pictures of any alleged consumption.
Bredemarket has always restricted its business to the United States. (Lately I’ve focused more on California’s Inland Empire West, but that’s another story.) So everyone in my target market is celebrating Labor Day today.
Theoretically.
It’s important to note that most other countries celebrate the contributions of labor on May 1, but for several reasons the United States chose a different day. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO page that explained this no longer exists, but I quoted from that page in a tymshft post a decade ago:
Despite the popularity of May Day and the appeal of an international holiday, the American Federation of Labor pushed to secure Labor Day as America’s primary celebration of its workers. This was due to the more radical tone that May Day had taken. Especially after the 1886 Haymarket riot, where several police officers and union members were killed in Chicago, May Day had become a day to protest the arrests of anarchists, socialists, and unionists, as well as an opportunity to push for better working conditions. Samuel Gompers and the AFL saw that the presence of more extreme elements of the Labor Movement would be detrimental to perception of the festival. To solve this, the AFL worked to elevate Labor Day over May Day, and also made an effort to bring a more moderate attitude to the Labor Day festivities. The AFL, whose city labor councils sponsored many of the Labor Day celebrations, banned radical speakers, red flags, internationalist slogans, and anything else that could shed an unfavorable light upon Labor Day or organized labor.
So for over a century, most Americans have chosen to celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday in September.
Well, some Americans.
I took a walk.
My employer for my day job is closed today (at least for its U.S. workers), so I kinda sorta took it a bit leisurely, waking up at…5:35 in the morning.
You see, this is the last week of my company’s wellness challenge, and because of the current heat wave in Southern California, I wanted to get my walking in while the temperatures were still in double digits (on the Fahrenheit scale; that’s something else that Americans do differently than the rest of the world).
I didn’t take any pictures of myself walking today, but here’s one that I took Saturday while I was walking inside (at the Ontario Mills indoor mall).
At Ontario Mills, Saturday, September 3, 2022. It was about 25 degrees cooler inside than it was outside.
Other people were working.
But while I took my early morning Labor Day walk, I ran across a lot of people…working.
There were the people at the Starbucks in downtown Ontario, busily supplying breakfast sandwiches and drinks to people.
There was the woman at a 7-Eleven in Ontario, letting me hydrate with a cold drink. (She may have been the owner, but owners deserve a day off too.)
Finally, I passed two men who have been working on and off on a residential wall, and today was apparently one of the “on” days. I hope they’re not working in the afternoon.
The truth is that, even in the midst of COVID, the entire workforce can’t shut down entirely. Some people have to work on days when many people don’t work. Remember that even in “blue law” states, preachers certainly work on Sundays.
Me too.
But still my morning walk was somewhat relaxing, because even though it was a weekday, I didn’t have to end the walk by 8:00 to start my day job. So while I got my steps in, I did so somewhat leisurely.
And after I write the post, there’s an email that I need to send.
So I guess I didn’t completely take the day off either.
But at least I’m not buliding a wall out of doors.
Oh, and I work on Saturday mornings also.
Of course, since I’m employed full-time, Bredemarket itself is a weekend job for me. My official office hours fall on Saturday mornings, for example.
While this is work, in a way it’s not work, because it’s a refreshing change from my normal work. (And since I enjoy my normal work, that isn’t so much work either. If you’re not working at something you enjoy, then you’re working.)
And if you don’t enjoy creating written content, let Bredemarket help you create it.
Bredemarket 