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Writing for humans

Updated: Dec 6, 2020


Marketers increasingly find themselves at the keyboard, attempting to produce regular blogs or LinkedIn articles for their business. It’s understandable – these are powerful elements of a content marketing strategy that help to engage potential and existing clients.


People walking

That’s not a problem if you’re used to the writing life, but the white page can seem icily empty when you sit down to face it. Having spoken to several marketers tackling this very challenge, one of the questions we often discuss is the right tone for a B2B blog.

There is quite a lot of advice out there for bloggers aiming to connect with consumers. It’s all about projecting personality and making a human connection with the people on the other side of the screen. Much advice tells B2C marketers to create an ‘emotional connection’ with their readers. But is this right if your buyers are businesses – or the managers who work in them?

On the other hand, avoiding any emotional element to your writing, with a very rational approach, may leave y


our readers regarding your brand a bit cold or distant. Worse, your blogs may read too much like a technical brochure or long sales pitch. That will leave potential customers uninterested and liable to drift off.

LinkedIn’s Sophisticated Marketer magazine tackled this topic, saying that B2B marketers should not ‘leave the personalisation and emotion to the consumer brands’. It’s sound advice because emotionally connected customers have a lifetime value that is three times higher than disconnected readers. If readers warm to you, they’re also more likely to stay with the business 50% longer and are 57% more likely to recommend it.

My blog on personas addressed the vital issue of getting to know the target audience for your content.


Part of that is to remember that they are people who want to connect to your brand in some way.

The LinkedIn B2B Institute (https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute) examined the sort of emotional messages that work in B2B content and offered some examples:

* We provide the human touch in a technical world

* We empathise with the loneliness of business leaders

* It’s a tough world, but we’re right with you

* We’re the obvious choice – so you’re safe with us/our products

* We champion the small business managers

* Fear of missing out

When you write for a medium like LinkedIn, it’s easy to focus on the massive numbers using the site: 675 million each month. But wherever people find your blog, when they read it’s a one-to-one moment: Just your words and them. It’s essential to have that in mind when you’re blogging and to remember that you’re writing not for a persona, but a person.


(Image credit: Adobe.com/IRStone)



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