Define Your Blog’s Mission in One Sentence
You’ve got less than ten seconds to communicate to me why I’m reading your blog. Are you prepared to tell me exactly what’s in it for me, without blinking or stumbling over your words? Prepare your answer in advance, and use it everywhere as the cornerstone of your marketing plan. Go!
The Elevator Pitch
While the concept of a Mission Statement is quite literal in the non-profit sector, in the business, marketing, and publishing worlds you may hear your Mission Statement called an Elevator Pitch.
The Elevator Pitch takes its name from the scenario of an entrepreneur seeking funding or venture capital, unable to get a proper audience with a Decision Maker, forced to steal the only minute he can find to speak with the Powers That Be — an ambush on an elevator.
Even if you’re not seeking financing from a potential backer, you need to be able to communicate who you are and what you do — what your blog, your book, your ministry, or your philanthropic service DOES — in less than a minute.
You’ve got about 9 seconds to communicate your mission. Considering the attention span of the web surfer, in the online environment, you have much less than a minute to communicate the benefits and the focus of your blog — current estimates by those who study User Behavior suggest that you have only 9 seconds from the time your web page loads to convince your visitor to stick around.
Define your Mission in a single sentence and you can beat this time limit. Most writers do not create Official Business or Marketing Plans for books, articles, columns, and blogs — probably even fewer for those who are blogging as a labor of love, or feel called to share their wisdom from a spiritual motivation. Even churches must market themselves. The thought process you go through when distilling the essence of your creative projects into a single sentence can serve as stand-in for these more formal documents.
Why should I read your blog?
If you can’t answer this question, I certainly can’t. I won’t stay to find out.
The remainder of this article breaks down the Mission in One Sentence and provides some working examples.
Formula for A Mission Statement
“For ______ [target reader - your niche] who ______ [further qualify target client and her problem or need] our book | product | service | publication _______ [state the product | service | book | etc] provides ______ [key benefits], unlike _______ [competitors] our product | service | publication _______ [serves the target customer | niche by doing what?]______”
You obviously want to modify the language to suit the context:
For example, a solo entrepreneur or blogger would say I, my, and mine — instead of using the ridiculous Royal We, our, ours, etc.
Please, if your blog is authored by a single person — You — don’t use the Royal We because you think it will make you seem more official or credible somehow. On the Web, formal language is a turn off; conversational, personal Voice is ideal.
Here’s an example of my (old) first-draft PageCoach Mission Statement in One Sentence:
PageCoach teaches writers, aspiring authors, and creative entrepreneurs how to use low-cost and free web-based resources and tools they already have — like blogs and email — not to mention cheap spiral notebooks and packs of index cards — to build, manage, and maintain a real web site — without knowing any html or coding languages — and how to effectively promote themselves with a professional web presence that looks, feels, and works like a million bucks, but costs next to nothing.
Break it down, now.
Once I have this mouth-full of a mission, I can simplify it further into something like:
PageCoach — Web Publishing Tutor — Learn how to use simple tools you already have access to like blogs and email to transform who you are and what you love to do into valuable, marketable information content.
Short and Sweet
An even blurb-ier tagline that’s ripe with advertising speak came out of this process:
PageCoach — Web Design and Internet Marketing for Self-Publishers —
You don’t need a webmaster — you need a Coach!
You need to be able to communicate who you are and what you do — what your blog, business, product, or service does — in less than a minute.
Actually, you’ve got about 9 seconds to make me want to stick around and keep reading.
Want some help tweaking your mission statement? Schedule a consultation, send me the roughdraft, mouth-full, messy version of your mission and I’ll help you distill it down into a succinct, focused sentence you can use in your author by-line, your email and forum signature, your about page…
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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