In my last blog post, Blog Business Plan: Your Unique Selling Proposition, I covered the following three perspectives for creating a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for your blog:
- Assembling a tribe;
- Recruiting a small army;
- Your 1,000 true fans;
As promised, in this post I’m going to cover three more perspectives for creating your blog’s USP.
Here they are:
- Your blog’s mantra;
- Your blog’s kinetic quality;
- Your elevator speech.
Your Blog’s Mantra
Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of the venture capitalist firm “Garage Technology Ventures”. He was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc., and is the author of nine books. Guy recommends that entrepreneurs create a three or four-word mantra for their business (and if you want to monetize your blog, you should definitely regard it as a business).
A mantra will capture the essence of your organization in three or four words. (Source). As an example, here are some mantras Guy would suggest for well-known corporations:
- Wendy’s: “Healthy fast food.”
- FedEx: “Peace of Mind.”
- Nike: “Authentic Athletic Performance.”
- Mary Kay: “Enriching Women’s Lives.”
Guy adds that his personal mantra is “Empowering Entrepreneurs”. What’s your blog’s mantra? A great place to put your mantra is in your tag line.
Your Blog’s Kinetic Quality
In his blog post “art, the kinetic quality and social objects”, Hugh MacLeod–from gapingvoid.com–argues that instead of having a unique selling proposition, you should be able to answer the following: “By Interacting With . . . ”
Here are five examples he provides:
- By interacting with Gerber, she becomes a better-informed mom.
- By interacting with The Wall Street Journal, she becomes more tuned into the world of capitalism.
- By interacting with Apple, she brings her entrepreneurial dreams closer to reality.
- By interacting with McDonald’s, her busy schedule is made slightly easier by avoiding a lot of fuss over lunch.
- By interacting with gapingvoid, Vinny Warren [or whoever] becomes better able to articulate his own worldview to himself and to people around him.
Now come up with an answer for your blog. What do people walk away with after interacting with your blog?
Your Elevator Pitch
Back in April 2009, Darren Rowse from “Problogger” created a “31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge”. On the first day of the challenge he asked his readers to write an elevator pitch for their blog. The idea behind an elevator speech is that we sometimes meet important people, whom we normally don’t have access to, in the elevator. You wouldn’t want to blow your big chance by standing there rambling incoherently.
Prepare a speech about your blog which you could give in the time that it takes an elevator to go from the top floor of a building down to the lobby, or vice versa. It has to be short, but it has to make an impression and be interesting enough that the person is left wanting to know more.
Coming up with an elevator speech is one way to make sure that you’re very clear on what your blog is about, and that you can communicate this core message to others.
Darren adds that he has two elevator pitches: a very short one, and a slightly longer one that is about a minute long. His short one is simply “ProBlogger helps Bloggers Build Exceptional Blogs”. The longer one expands on that by including some of the specific topics he writes about and some concrete ways in which he helps others to improve their blogs.
Here are some elements to keep in mind when crafting your elevator speech:
- Make it concise.
- Make it memorable by creating a visual image with your words.
- Make sure you answer the following question for the listener: “What’s in it for me?”
- Can you illustrate your point with a short story?
Try running your elevator speech by some people whose opinion you trust and get their input.
Editor’s Note: My blog has a beautiful new header, so if you’re reading this by email or on a reader stop by and take a look. In case you’re thinking of getting a logo for your blog, it was made for me by Peter Anderson over at logosforwebsites.com. It was very reasonably priced and Peter provided timely and courteous service. All of the other design changes you see on the blog were made by me, which is possible for someone who knows very little about technology–OK, close to nothing about technology–since I have the Thesis theme, which provides a lot of design flexibility (I’m an affiliate of Thesis).
Related Posts:
- Blog Business Plan – 35 Creative Ways to Market Your Blog
- Blog Business Plan – Monetization
- Be Remarkable: Creativity Insights From Seth Godin
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