“There are two sides to every story,” my grandmother Sadie was fond of reminding us. So what about, in blogging to promote a business or a professional practice, presenting both of those sides?

As a corporate blogging trainer, I’m always considering different ways of communicating with online readers.  Basically, I think of myself and my writers at Say It For You as offering a sort of matchmaking service that helps our clients “meet strangers” and hopefully convert at least some of them into friends and customers.

In order to do that, though, we must incorporate one important ingredient – opinion. Taking a stance, I’ve found, is what gives a blog post some “zip”. Being an influencer rather than winning a popularity contest, as Doug Karr puts it, means gaining the chance to build real relationships.

That is such an important point for all freelance blog writers and business owners to keep in mind – reveal your opinion. . Whether it’s business-to-business or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.

Today, though, I came across a piece in Businessweek that added a whole new dimension to my thinking about “opinion-piece” blog posts.  In answering the question “How important are the physical spaces in which people work?” one expert, Jim Harter answered, “One thing that stuck out to me the most in the research we’ve done is that people want a space they can call their own… If you build a workplace space where there’s noise and it gets distracting, that can relate to disengagement.”

A second workplace analyst disagreed. Tom Eich’s take was that “Private offices can become horrible hiding places…They need personal storage, but they actually really want that team space.”

In blogging for business, I’m now wondering, why not present both sides of an issue, allowing for the merits of each.? In other words, make clear that this business or professional practice has chosen to carry on in a certain way, but that there were other options. Let readers come to their own conclusions about which approach is more in tune with their needs and opinions. Of course, that’s precisely what they’ll do, anyway!
 

This week I’m devoting my Say It For You blog posts to information I gleaned at this month’s meeting of the National Speakers Association of Indiana.  Humorist Jeff Fleming ran a workshop on “Humor Secrets for Improving Presentations”. Always on the alert for good material to use in teaching corporate blogging best practices, I found quite a number of valuable points to share.

Fleming explained the “Rule of Three”, in which the first two statements serve as a “set-up”.  Then, the third statement or item is not what the listeners are expecting.  That “misdirection” causes surprise, which is what makes whole thing strike listeners’ funny bones.

“Ask yourself what you want the reader to know about your topic….Think of three details or three examples for each idea,” says Quick Study, referring to student essays.  With blog posts typically much shorter, less formal, and less detailed, content writers can still use three examples or details to emphasize the one main point of each post.

So how can that element of surprise and misdirection “wake up” blog readers and keep them engaged? Putting ingredients together that don’t seem to match, I teach Indianapolis blog writers on the search for fresh blog content ideas, is an excellent tool for engaging readers.It’s helpful, in getting readers to understand your “unique value proposition”, to compare the unfamiliar with things with which readers are already comfortable.

Misdirection, on the other hand?  I don’t advise it, given the very short attention span of the average online reader.  In fact, our challenge as content writers is to keep readers on track. First-time readers (who probably constitute the majority of visitors to any blog) came online in the first place with a particular need, not to be amused.

Directing readers’ attention to a problem can be done with statistics. Once readers realize the problem, the door is open for you to show how you help solve that very type of problem for your customers!

Directing readers’ attention to business owners’ or professional practitioners’ unique slant on their fields of business can be done by pointing out incongruities in the way their competitors are choosing to serve customers . I advise business owners to avoid "putting down" the competition. Instead, I teach, accentuate the positive: Some dry cleaners return clothes to you…. At ABC Cleaners, we believe…….is best."

Directing readers’ attention away from the path leading to solving their problem? That may lead to a laugh, but will it lead to a click?