More of the Say It For You Magazine Challenge

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The magazine challenge exercise is one answer to “bloggers’ block” (you know, that condition when, inevitably, blog content writers get stuck thinking up new ideas to keep their posts engaging). The idea is to use a magazine of your choice, combing its pages to find new ideas for business owners and professionals to explain what they do and how and why they do it.

This week, I’m using the People Magazine Style and Beauty Extra as my jumping-off point, because in it I found a number articles that suggest new ways of presenting familiar information. Of course, with business blogging demanding consistency and frequency, finding new ways of presenting familiar information is what our task is all about.

One useful article, I thought, was “Beauty Myth vs. Reality”. Style and beauty experts were asked to weigh in on which treatments used by actresses from Hollywood’s Golden Age stand the test of time. The article was organized by the purpose of the treatment. For platinum hair, for example, celebrity Jean Harlow used to apply a mixture of peroxide, ammonia, Clorox, and Lux laundry soap flakes.  She did that weekly.  The magazine then quotes modern hair expert Frederic Fekkai, who says that bleaching hair too often makes it turn coarse and dull.  The article continued in similar format, discussing treatments for shiny hair, to fight wrinkles, for glowing skin, for soft skin, and to close pores.

Organizing information in new ways is one important way in which business blog content can bring value to readers. Even using content from former blog posts, newsletters, or even emails, from other people’s blogs and articles, from magazine content, or from books, collating those into new categories and summarizing the main ideas you found useful can prove of great use and interest to readers.

What myth-vs.-reality items relating to your own business or professional practice can help organize information and advice?
 

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The Say It For You Magazine Challenge Revisited

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It all started two years ago in the Minneapolis airport during a two hour layover. I decided to challenge myself to find at least a week's worth of ideas for Say It For You blog posts in a single magazine issue (after all, what else is a freelance blog writer to do when she’s bored?). Long story short, that diversion sparked a challenge I issued to other blog writers, who came up with a host of interesting ideas relating to their own businesses.

Fellow blogger Serina Kelly of Relevate, for example, chose articles from Whole Living, to urge business owners to apply energy to make their business grow, avoid getting stuck in their daily routine, and to let people know you appreciate them.  

The basic idea behind my magazine challenge exercise is to combat “writer’s block” (you know, that time when, inevitably, blog content writers get stuck thinking up new ideas to keep their posts engaging), and to offer new ways to help business owners or professionals explain what they do and how and why they do it.

Now, two years after the original challenge, I happened to pick up the People Magazine Style and Beauty Extra (OK, It was the headline “Gorgeous at Any Age” that lured me on a personal level…) But on a business note, I found, this very publication screams “blogger magazine challenge”, because it suggests so many new ways of presenting familiar information.

First to catch my blog trainer’s eye was a one-page write-up of an interview with Jessica Alba, revealing the author’s beauty secrets, which has the interviewee completing sentences such as:

  • I can’t leave the house without….
  • I’m really good at….
  • I learned to love….
  • My beauty trick is….
  • I first wore makeup when…


What’s effective about that particular format?  First and foremost, it’s personal.  A real person is filling in real details about “I” and “my”. As a reader, I immediately started asking myself the same questions:  What can’t I leave the house without? What did I learn to love?

“‘Often personal examples go hand in hand with the use of the personal pronoun “I”,” explains Brandon Royal in The Little Red Writing Book. “Do not be afraid to use this pronoun; it’s personal and specific. Readers appreciate knowing how a situation relates to the writer in terms of his or her personal experience.”

Blog writers, take heed.  What can’t your business owners “leave the house without?”
 

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What’s in a Name When You’re Blogging For Business?

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“A good title makes all the difference in the world,” says Nolan Wilson of benchmarkemail.com. Wilson cautions blog content writers to

  • include keywords
  • be short and to the point
  • use power words
  • deliver on your promise in the body of the post

Since one area I always emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is post titles, I was fascinated to read in Mental Floss: the Book about the struggles movie makers go through in finding the right title for each film.

  • Back to the Future was almost re-named Spaceman from Pluto, on the grounds that no movie with the word “future’ in it had ever succeeded at the box office. Fortunately, the “keyword” was left in the title, which then was able to “deliver on the promise” in a big way.

Keywords can be very important to the success of a business blog, especially when used in the title and in the opening paragraph of the post.  In the title, the keyword phrases help signal – to both “spiders’ and readers that this post promises to deliver information on the information typed into the search bar.

  • Woody Allen originally chose the name Anhedonia for his film (Anhedonia is the scientific term for the inability to experience pleasure).  United Artists insisted the term was unmarketable, and the name was changed to Annie Hall.

 Of course there are no keyword phrases here.  The point, though, is that a good blogger, as Erik Deckers points out, must be able to put your business message into simple language customers can understand.

  • 3000 was the original name of the Julia Roberts movie about a prostitute (referencing the amount of money she was paid).  Disney wanted to lighten up the script and changed the name to Pretty Woman.

Disney was protecting its own brand, I believe. When we freelance bloggers work with business owners, we need to arrive at the right tone and the right emphasis for the blogs. Whether the business owner him or herself is doing the writing, or whether they're collaborating with a professional blogger partner like me, the content needs to be consistent with that business’ brand.
 

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The Ultimate Business Blogger’s Crime is Often Committed by Accident

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Speakers and blog content writers have an awful lot in common, I‘m constantly reminded as I read through my monthly copy of Speaker magazine. And talk about a grabber title! “How to Stay Out of Speaker Theft Jail”, this one read.

After a 30-year business career in sales and marketing, Kordell Norton, Certified Speaking Professional, was shocked when another veteran speaker implied that Kordell had stolen some of that other speaker’s material. (To his relief, Norton discovered he had not, but the scare inspired him to compile a list of practices to avoid in creating content.) As a corporate blogging trainer, I realized that list might very well apply to us blog writers.

Off limits:

  • Other people’s stories.
  • Other people’s taglines and phrases (Norton gives Zig Ziglar’s famous “See you at the top” as an example.)


“Build speaking around your own life experiences,” advises Norton. That’s perfect advice when writing blogs for a business or a professional practice. One very positive “side effect” is that the very process of formulating stories to tell your “public” helps you clarify the meaning of those stories for yourself and your employees.   

True stories about mistakes, ironically, are very humanizing. I teach freelance blog writers in Indianapolis to include stories of their clients’ past mistakes and failures. Such stories actually have the potential to create feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or who overcame not only adversity, but the effects of their own mistakes!

In what appears at first to be a stunning about-face, Kordell Norton goes on to recommend CASE, standing for “copy and steal everything.” You can, and should, he reminds us, steal great ideas from your environment." That’s on the line of the advice I always give about “reading around for your blog” and “curating” material. 

But the sort of “stealing” Norton’s talking about includes attribution, meaning giving credit where credit is due.  Check origins of work on the Internet, he cautions, and when in doubt, leave it out.

Quoting others in your blog adds value in and of itself – you’re aggregating resources for the benefit of your readers. Still, that’s hardly enough; as business blogging service providers, we need to add our own “spin” to the material based on our own business wisdom and expertise.

 

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What Can Make Business Blog Content “Stick”?

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Creativity is connecting dots in new and meaningful ways, Tamara Kleinberg asserts in Speaker magazine. And for speakers, she adds, it’s “what makes your message stick and your content meaningful.”

I think what she calls the “mind-stretching questions” Kleinberg likes to use in her own presentations would be good ones for us Indiana blog content writers to ask ourselves:

  • If I couldn’t use words, how would I communicate the story?
  • If all my technology failed, what else would I use to bring the story to life?


Of course, Kleinberg isn’t suggesting presenters use no words, only that they add gestures, body motions, and facial expressions to enrich their stories.  In sharing information about a business or a professional practice, we blog writers can use visuals, including video clips, photos, charts and graphs, even clip art to emphasize the concepts we want trying to convey.
 

  • If I were to do the opposite of everyone else, what would I do?
  • How can I deliver this story in a way that would surprise the audience?


Think about starting a post with a WOW that creates surprise and interest. Remember that, while, in any SEO marketing blog, it’s the keyword phrases in the title that start the job of getting the blog found. But, once the online visitor has actually landed, it takes a great opener to fan the flicker of interest into a flame. In fact, a big part of blog content writing, I’ve found, involves getting what I call the “pow opening line” right. One tactic is to use an anomaly, a statement that, at first glance, doesn’t appear to fit the topic.

  • If I were in the audience, how would I want to participate in the story?


Offering surveys and allowing comments in corporate blogging for business is a good idea, if for no other reason than to engage readers. Asking qualitative survey questions that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no invites interaction with readers.

At least some of our readers may already know quite a bit about our subject.  What they’re looking for is new perspective on the subject, new ways to connect the dots.
 

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