Why Business Blogs Shouldn’t Sport Spadeas

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“Spadeas wrap the Pioneer Press sections, which means they get read first,” a Twin Cities advertising department explains to prospective advertisers.”  In fact, readers MUST open your Spadea Section before they can read the paper. This means readers see and interact with these innovative ad pages before they read that day's news.”

A spadea fold is a separately printed, unbound broadsheet that is folded around a newspaper or other periodical, or around one of its sections, appearing as a partial page or flap over the front and back. The New York Times implemented a spadia ad campaign for the first time back in 2007, I learned.

In blogging for business, I guess, the equivalent of a spadea might be the call to action. But, is it ever a good idea for readers to see and interact with the call to action before they read “the news” (meaning the useful and current information you provide in the content of the blog post itself? Not.

I teach new Indianapolis blog content writers that, when people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or website pages, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business. But at Say It For You, we know that the secret of successful business blogging is not coming on too strong. To the extent a blog has any similarity to a spadea, it’s that the blog is an “advertorial”, while the spadea is its brasher “cousin”, an advertisement.

To the extent that a blog post is “wrapped” in something, that something should be the leitmotif, or unifying theme of the entire blog.

Leitmotif means "leading theme" in German. In music, "the leitmotif is heard whenever the composer wants the idea of a certain character, place, or concept to come across," explains Chloe Rhodes in A Certain "Je Ne Sais Quoi",

Whenever I'm sitting down with business owners as they're preparing to launch a blog for their company or professional practice, I find that one important step is to select 1-5 recurring themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts. The themes may be reflected in the keyword phrases they use to help drive search, but themes are broader in scope than just key words.

In choosing “wrappers” for blog content writing, don’t think spadeas; think leitmotifs!
 

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Are You Delivering on the Implied Promise of Your Business Blog Post Title?

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My June Hunt’s Headlines e-newsletter made a point worth repeating to all blog content writers: Don’t let your titles mislead your audiences.

“Customers who bought tickets to the Broadway show ‘Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo’”, starring Robin Williams, “were understandably disappointed,” Hunt observes.  The play was a drama about the war in Baghdad, not the comedy they’d expected, he explains.  And, while “Bengal” received critical acclaim, communications expert Hunt thinks that’s no excuse for giving the play its “misleading” title.

I’m not sure I’d pay the price of a Broadway ticket without reading reviews, but as a professional blogger and corporate blogging trainer, I agree 100% that a title constitutes a promise of sorts, and that the content needs to deliver on that promise.

“A good title makes all the difference in the world,” says Nolan Wilson of benchmarkemail.com. Included in Wilson’s list of tips for writing engaging blog post titles, along with including keywords, being short and to the point, and using power words, is the warning to “Deliver on your promise in the body of the post.”

A concept that’s important for business owners and freelance blog content writers to keep in mind is keeping the title and the actual blog post content congruent.  I like to share a funny anecdote from a Jerry Seinfeld CD I own. Jerry thinks having the airline captain come on the PA system to detail the flight plan is ridiculous. “Just end up where it says on the ticket!” says Jerry. Come to think of it, that’s a very good rule for business blog writing.

Remember – online readers haven’t read “reviews” of your “play”. The title of our blog post, Wilson reminds us Indianapolis freelance content writers, is the first thing that readers see, and, as the old saying goes, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression!”
 

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Is Your Blog Too Convincing?

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“If you want to convince someone about something,” says Rolf Dobelli in The Art of Thinking Clearly, don’t focus on the advantages; instead, highlight how it helps them dodge the disadvantages. That’s because, he explains, research shows that, emotionally, a loss “weighs” about twice that of a similar gain.

Of the six techniques a second author, Steven James, suggests writers use to create suspense, the one that appealed to me most as a corporate blogging trainer was this: “Put characters that readers care about in jeopardy.”

In business blogging, I think the lesson here for content writers is to identify ways in which something potential customers value could be in jeopardy. We then assure searchers they’re not the only ones to find themselves in this predicament and show them we’ve solved these precise problems for customers and clients many times before.

On the other hand, I’ve found, in too many SEO marketing blogs, the content is meant to scare consumers, with the message geared towards creating enough fear about a particular problem that readers will be moved to do something about that fear – now!

The middle ground, I teach Indiana freelance blog content writers is to identify ways in which something customers value could be in jeopardy.  (Do that without making dire threats or predictions.) Go on to demonstrate that your business owner or professional practitioner blogging client has solved these precise problems many times before.

The word “highlight” in Rolf Dobelli’s statement is key.  On the one hand, when people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or on different websites, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business. That means it’s OK to highlight how your product or service can help them dodge losses and disadvantages. Highlighting, though, is hardly the same as “hitting them over the head” with a hard-sell.

In SEO marketing blogs, “convincing” (as measured in clicks to the shopping cart or obeying Calls to Action) may mean allowing online visitors to do their own “weighing” of the plusses and minuses of taking action now.

 

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Intro, Please! Why-A-Blog-About…

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Most often, I’m so anxious to get into a book that I skip over the introduction.  I’m awfully glad I took the time to read Rolf Dobelli’s introduction to “The Art of Thinking Clearly”. Not only did that intro section help me put into perspective all the information I was going to be reading, it helped me realize how important our opening blog posts are when it comes to content writing for business blogs.

In fact, I thought Dobelli’s introduction section accomplished many of the things we need to include in opening blog posts.

  • The author shares reasons he felt compelled to write the book.
    When we Indianapolis freelance blog content writers are beginning to create content for a marketing blog, we need to share with readers why we’re doing that.  WHY a blog about   (accounting, sinus conditions, long term care insurance, mattresses, divorce counseling, furniture…whatever the industry or profession or product or service)?  
     
  • The author shares his own struggle to accept his findings and the process by which he arrived at his unique perspective. 
    “This is not a how-to book,” cautions Dobelli. “I think of myself as a translator whose job is to interpret and synthesize what I’ve learned.” Sharing the “why” helps personalize the blog, so that readers can feel a connection with a real person.(In Why a Blog About Juliana?, another author, Juliana Playwright reveals how seeking the answers to simple questions about the time periods she was writing about ended up becoming more complex than she might ever have imagined.)
     
  • The author clarifies his end goal for the book.
    “Indeed, my wish is quite simple. If we could learn to recognize and evade the biggest errors in thinking – in our private lives, at work, or in government – we might experience a leap in prosperity. “When setting out to blog, it is important that you first set goals,” explains bonsaimediagroup.


“I'm hoping that I'll be able to get across some of my ideas about how clients who need debt help should expect to be treated, and how important I know it is to just listen to people when they need to talk about their business or their family or their health problems. So, I'm going to be here blogging, debunking, explaining, and helping. I hope you'll be here, too…”
(This is an example of the opening blog for a debt consolidation lawyer.)

Mack Collier sums it up nicely in “How to write your first blog post”: Tell them who you are, he advises, why you are blogging, what you will be blogging about, and how to leave feedback.

Whatever you do in blogging for business, don’t skip over the introduction.  Over my years of reading blogs and providing corporate blogging training, I’ve learned one thing – there’s absolutely no substitute for figuring out and then translating into words – the Why-a-Blog-About……
 

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Indiana Business Bloggers Wanted for Translating and Interpreting

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“I don’t have my own lab,” writes Rolf Dobelli in the forward to his book The Art of Thinking Clearly.  In fact, in writing the book, he explains, he thought of himself as a translator.
 

How very apropos, I thought, coming upon the author’s self-description. All of us Indianapolis freelance business blog content writers, after all, are doing a job that is exactly what Dobelli says his job is – to interpret and synthesize what he’d read and learned and to put it in terms others can understand.

On a resume, I realize in retrospect, my years of experience crafting messages for different businesses and professional practices might very well have fallen under the job descriptor “translator/iinterpreter”.

And, while I hadn’t thought of content writing for business as “interpreting” per se, I think that bloggers for business now need to go beyond providing information and become “thought drivers". Whether it's business-to-business blog writing 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. In other words, blog posts will go from information-dispensing to offering the business owner's (or the professional's, or the organizational executive's) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic.

One other important aspect of using blog content writing as an interpretation mechanism has to do with curation. When I link to outside sources, that allows me to add breadth, depth, and credibility to the ideas I’m expressing on behalf of Say It For You client companies. In what way?  Introducing  another blog content writer’s comments about the subject of my client's blog is a way to reinforce my points and show those owners and professionals are staying in touch with others in their respective fields.

 Naturally, the more technical the subject, the greater the importance the “translation and interpretation” function of the blogger . As content writers, we understand that online readers have access to more technical sources than our blog posts.  Our job, though, is to help those readers (and that includes B&B prospects of our SEO marketing blogs) make sense out of the ocean of available information.

Like author Rolf Dobelli, at Say It For You, we “don’t have our own lab” or a staff of researchers. And like him, our job on behalf of our business owners, practitioners, and organizations is to interpret and synthesize what we’ve read and learned and put those understandings in terms that will help readers understand and be moved to action.

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