Blogging the “Real Truth” About Your Business

Is coffee good or bad for you? Turns out the answer is quite complicated, as Jenn Wood explains in Mental Floss Magazine.

“Excessive coffee consumption can lead to anxiety, depression, and frequency of psychophysiological disorders,” stated the journal article “Advances on Alcohol & Substance in 1984. Yet, by 2015. a study reported in “Heart” showed that “moderate coffee consumption was associated with a lower prevalence of subclinical coronary athereosclerosis.”

“Individuals with a genetic variation associated with slower caffeine metabolism appear to have an increased risk of non-fatal heart attacks with higher amounts of coffee intake,” warned the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006. Yet, by 2011, the Archives of Internal Medicine was reporting that “the risk of depression was 20 percent lower among women who drank four or more cups of coffee.”

“In the last decade alone, scientists have published hundreds of papers attributing both harms and health benefits to coffee,” observes Christie Aschwanden in slate.com. There’s one problem with all the studies, she says – they are observation, finding associations without establishing causality.

Helping readers sort truth from myth is one important use for business blogs.  In the natural order of business, many of misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves, and shining the light of day on misinformation shines light on your own expertise in your field.

Even when (as is the case with the ongoing good/bad coffee debate, there is no final answer, blog content writers can summarize the different schools of thought and recap the research that is being done in the field. That in itself can go a long way towards making your blog a “go-to” place for readers seeking information relating to your industry or profession.

Is blogging good or bad for you and your readers?  No complications there – the answer is a resounding yes.  Even where there really is no one “real truth”, it’s helpful to discuss what we know so far and how your business or practice is using the information that is available as of today.