Who Else Is Doing It? Business Blog Readers Will Want to Know

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“The Best Way to Filter Coffee” could have been a classic SEO marketing blog title rather than an article in Mental Floss magazine. Why do I say that?

Business owners, professionals – and those of us who provide blog writing services to them – need to include more usable advice, more about the core beliefs of the business owners, more “how to” and less “we do” than the website might include.

But, at the bottom of the page with the coffee-filtering history and advice, Mental Floss has a chart titled “The National Buzz”, which answers the question “Who hogs the United Nations’ coffee pot?” This mini-article is an example of a blog content writing technique I recommend – it provides some startling statistics.

There are several ways statistics provide value in blogging for business:

  • Grabbing blog visitors’ attention.
     
  • Mythbusting: (If there’s some false impression people seem to have relating to your industry, or to a product or service you provide, you can bring in statistics to show how things really are.)
     
  • Demonstrating the extent of a problem. (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!)

In this case, Mental Floss lets readers know the annual per capita consumption of coffee in different nations.  Finland is highest at 26 ½ pounds of coffee consumed by the average person over the year.  Norway is next at 21.8 lbs., and the US is next to last at 9.3lbs. a year average consumption per person.

Remember when we were kids, and we wanted to get our parents’ permission to do something “all the other kids” were supposedly doing? Grown-up blog readers still look at what others are doing when making a purchase of a product or service.  That’s why, in corporate blogging training sessions, I encourage content writers to include statistics about “all the other kids”.

“When buying products, consumers are influenced by references,” choosing products that appear to have a “higher status”, explains Professor Nienke Vlutters of the University of Twnte.

In blogging for business, don’t forget to tell them “who else is doing it”!

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Share New Thinking With Business Blog Readers, Then It’s Their Move

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“Reading around” for my blog is a habit I’ve developed, one I highly recommend for all blog content writers. Having found a gold mine of ideas in the latest issue of Mental Floss magazine,  I’ve been sharing those insights over the past week and a half with Say It For You readers.

Today, though, I’ve some thoughts to share based on a gem I found in Women’s Health Magazine based on myth busting. One very basic strategy I teach business bloggers, is, in fact, myth busting. No matter what field you’re in, there are sure to be misconceptions about what you do and what you sell, and getting the word out about the real story is a fine application for business blog writing.

The Women’s Health article that caught my eye, “Healthy Dose”, used a three part format I hadn’t seen before, one that could lend itself very well to SEO marketing blog content:

  • Old thinking
  • New Thinking
  • Your move

Flossing one’s teeth is one example.  The old thinking is that there is a link between periodontal disease and hear disease, and that bacteria that collect between the teeth could enter the bloodstream, increasing the risk of heart attack.

The new thinking is that there’s no solid evidence to support the idea that poor oral hygiene causes heart disease. One condition doesn’t cause the other.

Your move, Women’s Health informs readers, is to floss on!  Why? Flossing reduces the risk of gum disease, and prevents foul breath.

It’s the Your move” part that I think can be a great technique for writers to include in the content of SEO marketing blogs. By gathering information on their topic and presenting it as part of their blog, online content writers are providing a valuable service, but to go the next step, each blog post has to offer some perspective. WHY is this information important to the reader? What can that reader “do about it”? 

As a college career mentor, I have students write “Reflections”, summarizing an experience they’ve had, using a “What, So what? Now what?" format.

The “Your Move” is the “Now what?” part of the blog content writing.  It offers the reader a new way of looking at things based on the knowledge and experience business owners or professionals have shared in their blogs.  Most important, it gives readers a road map for using that information.  It’s their move!.

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Is It Smart to Make Your Blog Readers Into Maltsters?

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In Mental Floss magazine’s “In Praise of Light Beer”, Jed Lipinski may have taken things a bit far, at least where blog content writing is concerned.

On the one hand, I’m quick to assure business owners and professional practitioners that writing about what they do almost never leads readers to want to “do it themselves”. On the contrary, the valuable, detailed information they offer in their SEO marketing blog showcases their own expertise and specialized knowledge.

The other side of it, though, is that effective blog posts keep things short. Lipinski’s “Let There Be Lite: A Step-By-Step Guide” is, itself, 150+ words long, within a five page article – hardly “lite” fare!  One detail of the article is interesting: Lipinski introduces the term “maltster”, describing a person who makes beer professionally.

Blog content writing, I believe, is at its best on the middle ground between over-simplification and maltsterdom. In reading business blogs about a product or service, online searchers want to:
 

  • Find out what they’ll get if they buy
  • Discover whether the product is a good match for their needs
  • Gain perspective about how the pricing and the quality stacks up against the competition

In short, your blog content needs to address the “Why you?” and “Why now?” questions. What those readers really don’t need to – or want to – know is that in order to make beer, they must steep barley in water, dry it in a kiln, boil malt together with hot water and hops in a copper kettle to produce wort, add yeast and let in spend weeks fermenting.

Indianapolis blog writers (and the business owners and professional practioners who hire freelance bloggers) can be reassured: Readers want to know you’re the maltster – they just need to relax and enjoy the end result!”

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Business Blogs Worth the Glass They’re Bottled In

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Read around, learn around, is my ongoing advice as a corporate blogging trainer. Ideas are all over the place, all of the time, in fact, but you've got to "hear" and make the connection. This week, I found several examples of Other People's Wisdom (O.P.W.) in the October issue of Mental Floss magazine tto share with Indianapolis blog content writers.
 

            On a hot summer night in Manhattan, some young beer connoisseurs came to the sad conclusion   that three of the top-selling light beers in America – Bud Light, Coors Light,
 and Miller Lite – were “barely worth the glass they’re bottled in.”

Over the next four pages, the article “In Praise of Light Beer” reveals all the intricate steps that go into the making of light beer, ending with the following: “This level of precision exerted over so many millions of barrels of beer is stunning.  And while it may not convince you to pull a cheap six-pack off the shelf, it should help you see the brew in a new light.”

“Stunning” visitors to your site and helping them see what you have to offer in a new light is, very simply, the not-so-simple job of your SEO marketing blog. I explain to business owners or professionals launching a blog that online searchers may know what they need, but they lack expert knowledge in your field.

I explain to freelance blog content writers in Indiana that buyers want more than just products. Blog content writing can introduce readers to their clients’ businesses and practices, explaining the owners’ specialty or niche within their field, their special “philosophy” about their area of practice or their industry, and their unique approach to providing client services.

In short, the art of business blog writing lies in the showing what goes into the product or service , answering the unspoken reader question– “What does it take to do what you do?”

 

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Using Business Blogging to Let Readers Define Your Brand

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Last week wasn’t the only close presidential race in American history.  Back in 1840, Mental Floss magazine reminds us, when Whig candidate William Henry Harrison campaigned to unseat Democrat Van Buren, an interesting thing happened. Not only does my finding blog fodder in this political story illustrate the process of “learning around for your business blog”, there’s a real lesson here for Indianapolis blog content writers about handling reader comments.

Read around, learn around, is my ongoing advice as a blogging trainer. Ideas are all over the place, all of the time, in fact, but you've got to "hear" and make the connection, using Other People's Wisdom (O.P.W.) to help visitors to your blog understand what it is that you do, what you sell, and what your business is really all about.

Sometimes, though, it goes the other way, with your readers helping you better understand what they would like to receive from your business or practice.

As Mental Floss relates the story, in the 1840 campaign, Harrison was derided by a newspaper editor as a “poor farmer who would be happy with a pension, a log cabin, and a barrel of hard cider.”  Rather than trying to combat this “attack ad” (shades of our own recent political races!), Harrison, who was fairly wealthy and didn’t drink hard cider at all, embraced the brand, campaigning as the “log cabin and hard cider candidate” who understood the common man better than the snooty New Yorker Van Buren.

The lesson for blog content writers in Indiana?  “Get feedback from your customers,” as corporate trainer Roger Dawson advises. Using testimonials in blog posts, capturing customer success stories, and welcoming comments to your blog are all ways to get feedback.

And if the comments are negative? (This is one of the big fears business owners and professionals confide they have about starting an SEO marketing blog in the first place.) A blog is the perfect vehicle for putting your own "spin" on reports about your cmpany, is my answer. Through blog content writing, you can exercise control over the way the public perceives any negative developments and correct any inaccurate press statements.

The Harrison story deserves a place in corporate blogging training sessions.  You can't embrace either kudos or criticism if you don't know about them.  Blogging for business is the perfect way to let readers help you define your own brand!

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