No doubt about it, the words you use to tell the story are the most important part of blogging for business. Where visuals come in, whether they’re in the form of “clip art”, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos, is to add interest and evoke emotion.

Personally, in blogging for business, I like clip art.  Sure, those commercial images are not original to my client’s business or practice and they don’t actually depict the products, the services, the colleagues, or the customers of that business or practice. Clip art can’t show the “before” and the “after”.
What clip art does accomplish, better than anything else, in my opinion, is capture concepts, helping me as the blog content writer express the main idea I’m articulating in the post. You might say that any form of visual can reinforce a point made in the text of a blog post, summarize a set of statistics (as in a chart or graph), or add emotional impact. But I particularly like to use clip art as metaphors for concepts I’m discussing in the blog.

Crisis communication:  Any business or professional practice can exercise journalistic crisis control through blogging.

“The No.2 is definitely No. 1 in the pencil market”. When you’re blogging, you’re talking to a friendly and interested audience about things that might help them.. Let the useful and interesting information you offer to readers of your blog bring out the specialness of the product or service.

 

 

Consumers want different content at each stage of their research. For prospects at this beginning stage, content should be light, educational, and product-neutral. Blog posts can focus on industry-relevant topics rather than on product.

 

 

 

In corporate blog posts, focus on one story, one aspect of a business, using three examples, rather like a stool that has three supporting legs.

 

 

 

 

One company I personally use to buy clip art is Getty Images’ istockphoto.com. Last month istock’s marketing department “turned the tables” on me by emailing me a concept photo to remind me to buy more stuff from them. The picture showed the front part of a truck with no back half to it, and the caption read “Don’t Get Caught Short”. Well, they got the point across…..

“If you’ve been writing awhile, you’ve probably heard all the rules. Don’t switch point of view. Or switch only after you leave a few blank lines. Or switch whenever you like, as long as it’s a weekday,” jokes Alicia Rasley in “The Power of Point of View”.

Rasley’s message: writers need to choose a POV that’s ideal for their type of writing and which fits in with their readers’ expectations. For business blog content writers, Point of View, or POV, becomes a tool for engaging online visitors and “positioning” them to respond to an appropriate Call to Action.

POV becomes very important in mystery novels, Rasley goes on to explain, because the key element is that “both reader and sleuth have access to the same essential information.” In other words, a big element in the pleasure of reading mysteries is that the reader is engaged in using the clues to figure out possible solutions to the crime.

Architect/artist David Byrne understood audience engagement. Playing the Building is a sound installation in Minneapolis in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument controlled by viewers. “There are no ‘Do Not Touch’ warnings,”  reporters pointed out.

As a business blogging trainer, I was captivated by that development. In today’s world of marketing, we need to understand, it’s not enough to “hand out” material about a business.  The best blogs, basically, rather than “sing to people”, invite them in to make music. Blogs, in other words, are not only for reading, but for acting and interacting.

All of that interaction relates to the Point of View presented in the blog. Crime stories, as Alicia Rasley teaches, succeed by “pitting the reader against the villain”.  Other breeds of novel, Rasley explains, created a primarily emotional experience, again facilitated by the POV.

Fellow blog trainer Alyssa Gregory advises bloggers to have a point of view. ”Sometimes,” she says, “all it takes is a little controversy to get your blog on the map.” More important for today’s discussion, Gregory says, “Make a point to invite readers to weigh in and share their opinions.”  Even when their viewpoint differs from your own, make sure to acknowledge them, she adds.

Are you doing all you can to use POV as a business blog writing tool?