Writing for your audience
Every blogger does it from time to time. We write a blog post with the assumption that everyone reading that post knows what we know. The problem with this position is that if everyone that reads your blog actually did know what you know, they wouldn’t need to read your blog. Now would they?
What it comes down to is knowing your blog readership and writing for them. Yes, you are the expert, and they are looking to you for guidance and instruction. But don’t confuse instruction with techspeak. Getting off into too technical a realm will cost you the loss of some of your blog readers, therefore costing you business.
Because business is what your blog should be all about. Part numbers and techspeak might make you look intelligent to a few, but unless your market is restricted to a totally technical audience, you need to write your posts much more simply.
You need to write to your audience. But to do that, you need to figure out who your audience is. An even better question, who do you want them to be?
Because how you write your company blog will directly determine it’s reader base. If you write nothing but white papers and technical jargon, you’ll get nothing but tech heads wanting to have technical conversations. Likely competitors. Rarely customers.
Because customers don’t really need to know all the technical aspects 99% of the time. They only want to find a company that can fulfill their needs. A consultant or expert that can provide them a service that they cannot provide for themselves. So in order for your blog to be an effective sales tool, you need to talk to them. Not the technicians or other specialists in your same field or industry.
You need to talk to them in a language they understand. Don’t assume that they know what you know. Don’t assume that they know all the little details behind your product or service. Explain it all if you can, but make sure that your average non expert will understand what you have written.
A test I often use is this. I have a 19 year old son living in the house with us. He’s studying literature at college, but is not technical in any sense of the word. He uses the internet, but not nearly in the same way I do. He looks for music and prose mostly.
So if I’m unsure how clear a particular blog post might be, I have him read it. I then ask him to tell me what it means to him. His responses sometimes surprise me. Because if I have gone off the technical jargon deep end, it’s clear in his interpretation.
So my advice to you is this. If you are prone to getting too technically heavy from time to time, get a non technical proof reader. A friend or a neighbor. A family member or an employee. It really doesn’t matter who it is, a second set of eyes is almost always good. Having somebody look over your post before you print it might just improve your blogs performance. It might just improve your company’s sales too.