Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Three Powerful Ways That Blogging Can Help You Follow Up After a Networking Event

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Business-handshake Have you ever met someone at a networking event who would be an ideal client for you? Yet you struggle with how to follow up without seeming “sales-y” or putting any pressure on the person?

Imagine returning home from a networking event and calmly sending an email like this:

Hi ______ (Fred, Anne, John, etc.),

It was great meeting you this morning at the ______ (name of event). I wanted to follow up with some resources about what we chatted about.

You mentioned that _______ has been a challenge for you. Here is a blog post that I wrote about that very problem. It includes some basic information and some suggestions for how to apply it. (#1) You can view the post at _________ (link to the specific post). (#2)

Please let me know if you have any questions! You can reach me at ___________ (phone number). Or feel free to connect with me on ________ (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.).

See you soon, _________ (your name)

P.S. If the blog post was helpful, feel free to sign up for my weekly updates, from the top right-hand corner of my website. That way you’ll see my newest posts with similar information. (#3)

Congratulations! You’ve just deepened your relationship and shortened the distance between blogging and business.

(#1) Sending helpful information exactly when it’s needed creates goodwill with your contact. It also shows that you were listening and that you care. NOTE: At some point during your conversation, you will have needed to ask, “What is your biggest challenge when it comes to ______ (YOUR area of expertise)?”

(#2) Your well-written, focused blog post establishes you as an expert at solving the exact problems this person is dealing with. NOTE: Be sure to provide the permanent link (“permalink”) to the specific post, which you can get by visiting your blog, clicking on the blog post title and then copying the URL that appears in the address bar of your web browser.

For example, the permalink of this post is https://contentmasteryguide.com/2011/06/how-blogging-can-help-you-follow-up-after-a-networking-event.html – do you see it up there in your address bar?

(#3) Inviting the person to your blog/website gives the person a non-threatening way to find out more about you and your services. NOTE: You can turn your blog into a website (a “blogsite”) by adding just a few crucial details. See my simple writing tips for your blogsite pages. ALSO: Be sure there is a subscription form for your email list on every page of your website or blog.

With a mountain of high-quality content on a blog to draw from, following up with new networking contacts is as easy as 1-2-3.

Let’s turn down this thought leadership pressure cooker!

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Writing-about-a-new-idea-100-88 Since last week's Wealthy Thought Leader conference (I attended via simulcast this year), I've been thinking about innovation. It started when we were watching a very creative presentation from Jennifer Lee of Artizen Coaching, when one of my colleagues declared that she's simply "not creative."

Then, we heard from Michael Port that as entrepreneurs, we are already being creative.

That brought me back to a question I asked previously about writing thought leadership posts: "Do you need to be a thought leader?"

If you're feeling pressured to come up with something new and exciting every time you post to your blog, no wonder you're having trouble keeping up.

Let's turn down this pressure cooker and take a reality check!

Consider your readers:

  • Are they really expecting or wanting to read something innovative every time they hear from you? Or are they are looking for concrete and practical information that will help them solve whatever problem they're experiencing right now?
  • Are they exposed on a daily basis to the newest work from all of your industry colleagues (like you are) or are you their only link to these ideas?

So relax, please. When it's time to write a thought leadership post, you'll know it (and here are some tips that will help). In the meantime, just keep building your mountain of content, one solid, boring, helpful post at a time.

How to Write For Different Learners

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Multiple-choicew200-h313 While I was researching and preparing for the presentation call "How to Write So People Will Learn," I was thrilled to find Marcia Conner and the resources on her website.

Most people love taking self-assessments, and I'm no different. I tested and wrote about my own learning style in this previous post, How Do You Like to Learn?

Thanks to Marcia, we've got four new juicy assessments to help us learn about and improve our own learning process.

Here are the four assessments, along with my suggestions for how to gear your writing to people with different learning styles.

(1) What's Your Direction Style?

To make sure your content appeals to both global and linear learners, balance your blog with both thought pieces and "how to" pieces.

(2) What's Your Engagement Style?

Think-to-talk learners will probably appreciate the opportunity to interact with your new ideas by studying them alone. For talk-to-think learners, you may want to offer additional opportunities for them to discuss the ideas with you one-on-one or in a group.

(3) What's Your Motivation Style?

For readers who are goal-oriented, remind them of the results they may see if they apply what you're suggesting. For people who are relationship-oriented, give them the opportunity to share their learning with others. Or remind them of how your solutions will improve their business or personal relationships.

For readers who are learning-oriented, offer plenty of links for them to continue reading and learning.

(4) What's Your Learning Style?

For visual learners, consider incorporating graphs, images or video into your blog posts. For audio learners, try recording your post with Audio Acrobat. For tactile/kinesthetic learners, close your article with active ways they can implement what they've learned.

While you won't apply each of these strategies to every blog post, there are plenty of ideas here to help you stretch your writing to appeal to a wider range of learners.

These four assessments were published in Marcia's 2004 book, Learn More Now: 10 Simple Steps to Learning Better, Smarter, and Faster. Marcia has continued to write and teach about the topic of learning, including a blog on the Fast Company website and a new book, The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media (with Tony Bingham, forward by Daniel H. Pink).

 

A Passionate Case for Educational Content Marketing

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In a shining example of how a high-quality blog post can generate attention for years to come, I want to share something I found when I was researching "How to Write So Readers Will Learn," for the Content Mastery Action Day Presentation call.

Chalkw200-h188 Tech writing expert (and fellow Typepad user) Kathy Sierra posted Marketing should be education, education should be marketing back in February 2007, and actually stopped posting to this blog just a couple of months later (but that's another story).

Kathy's blog, Creating Passionate Users, was designed to explore how the science of learning could help tech writers (and others) make "users" (of products/services) more passionate about the product/service, as well as the rest of their life.

I really loved the case that this post made for marketers and educators to borrow from each other's techniques for the good of all. I can certainly see the potential for getting kids excited about learning.

I also appreciated the reinforcement of the idea that educating readers about our services and products will help us to make a deeper connection.

Check out Kathy's post and let me know what you think!

Marketing should be education, education should be marketing

Update (September 16, 2011): Here is a new video by Kathy Sierra, that I found on Tim Grahl's website about online marketing for authors.

How to Make a Three-Dimensional Connection on a Two-Dimensional Blog

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A blog is a special kind of website that is (hopefully) frequently updated with text, images, audio or video. Each of those updates is a post.

As a business owner, you update your blog and hope that your current and future clients will visit, look at your content, and like it enough to start or continue a relationship with you.

By their essence, blogs are really impersonal things. You're over here, your reader is over there, and there's no live interaction between you.

Reaching-w200-h300 Here are three tips for shortening the distance between you and your readers:

  1. Put a little love in your blog. When you sit down to write, think about the positive difference you'd like to be making in your readers' lives. Think about one ideal client, and how this might help him or her.
  2. Reach out and touch somebody's smartphone. Here's one more reason to be focused and brief in your blog posts: You never know where and when people might be connecting with your content. Make it easy for people to grasp your message quickly when they're on the go. If you make that connection, they'll come back when they have time to look more closely.
  3. Teach your readers well. If you help your readers learn something that's useful and valuable to them, that leads to positive feelings about you. The next time they see your name in their Inbox or social networking account, they'll remember that feeling and build from there.