Blonde Productions Group

What makes a magazine inviting to pick up and worthwhile to read?

Blonde Productions Group completed two focus groups in October for a national women’s magazine that focuses on healthy living, relationships and prosperity.

Two groups of 10 women each participated. Ranging from their 20s through 70s, the participants reviewed four issues of the quarterly publication prior to meeting jointly. Discussions were facilitated by Nancy Clark of Blonde Productions Group.

The purpose of the focus groups was to ascertain whether the publication’s original intent was being achieved, according to reader perceptions. Other than a focus group, the publisher had no real way to formally assess readers’ responses to their efforts. Sure, subscription numbers are a telling way to determine whether a publication is hitting the mark, but that takes years to tally and requires an advertisement investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Studies show that people will register a complaint more frequently than a compliment and that complaints travel nine times faster than positive reviews. In a competitive publishing world, the focus group findings can be used to exponentially improve the attraction, reach and results of the publication. Now, rather than too late.

Clark guided the two focus groups through the publication, recording participant’s comments and input. She then assessed that data comparatively, drilling down to the common denominators and differences between the two groups. Finally, Clark was able to prioritize suggestions with an overlay of how the publication could use the data to net ownership of market share.

Often people limit their thinking about marketing to the front-end contact with customers, clients and buyers of their service or product. The fact is that customer retention (in this case, reader retention) is less expensive than it is to attract new customers.

Apply this to your own business, whatever that might be, by asking customers and clients:

• How did you find out about us in the first place?
• What can we do to help you?
• How can we improve?

Remember to look the customer in the eyes when asking these questions. Most people have become desensitized to the inquiry “How are you?” The auto-responder is, “Fine.” Business owners have to be brave to ask customers what it is they’re doing best as a business or what could be improved within their business operations. Some of the feedback can be painful. Realize that you won’t know what to improve upon if you don’t ask for customer input.

Hire Blonde Productions Group to perform your Focus Group and get feedback that will help you do business better in the future. Contact nancy@blondeproductionsgroup.com for details on customizing a focus group to gather data on your enterprise.

The novelty has worn off. Blogs have become so ubiquitous that it’s tough to find tightly-written, purposeful blogs.

If you want your blog to be a standout, start by outlining the points you want to convey. Connect the dots by filling in the facts. Elaborate. Then once you have a first draft, perform a word count and downsize your blog by half. A wise journalism professor explains it this way, “Pretend as though each word costs money.”  Write like you are putting together a paid newspaper obituary and odds are you will be brief.

By now you may be thinking this is a blog, not a thesis. Only seasoned bloggers write off the cuff. If your blog is boring or pointless it will be significantly harder to develop a reader following. Like a newspaper column, the objective in blogging is to find a niche and cultivate a loyal audience.

A successful blog is distinguished by writing style. A salty, yet relevant tone can be tough to achieve. Humor is a wonderful gift, but don’t over-do it.

The most important thing to consider is how to make your blog googlable. (Dear Google, Thank you for having such a relevant company name that “google” is now recognized by Webster’s as a verb and an adjective). Consider what potential readers are likely to search relevant to your subject matter and deploy those words and phrases as often as possible in your blog.

If you need more tips on how to make it googlable (also known as optimized for search engines), consult with SEO expert Jarod Clark of Unleaded Software. He can be reached at jarod@unleadedsoftware.com.

PR-in the moment

Consider what “press release” means: information officially released to the press for the first time. The key is to make it newsworthy.  No matter the topic, it must be written as if it is important that moment. If stale or trite in the least it will be cast aside for more urgent communications. Oh, and don’t forget to put it in the standard format.  See a sample at http://blondeproductionsgroup.com/blog/.

Web writing done right

As important as it is to be concise in a blog, it is even more crucial in writing copy for websites.  No one wants to wade through text-heavy web copy. Use a bold san serif font and make use of white space to achieve aesthetic appeal. Yes, you need a brief attention-getting headline and introductory sentence, but other than that, rely on highly direct copy. Avoid type that is hard on the eyes because it is a proven fact that it takes longer to read text on a computer screen than on paper.

No matter what

It is important to proofread more than once. When a reader finds typographical, grammatical or spelling errors, it discredits the author/source.