I sat in the audience at the Financial Planning Association meeting the other day wearing two “hats”. I reflected on the fact that my present career as professional ghost blogger grew out of my years of language teaching followed by a second career as financial planner and financial writer.  What that meant was that while I was attuned the information about taxes, health care, estate planning, and real estate that was offered, as a corporate blogging trainer, I was analyzing the techniques used by each of the four speakers to engage the audience’s interest.
(Today, I’ll talk about the first two speakers, leaving the other two for a future Say It For You blog post .)

“Chunking refers to the strategy of breaking down information into bite-sized pieces so the brain can more easily digest new information,” explains e-learning coach Connie Malamed. “The reason the brain needs this assistance is because working memory, which is where we manipulate information, holds a limited amount of information at one time.”

The first FPA meeting speaker, CPA William R. Owen Jr., offered “Top Ten Tax Planning Tips for 2012”. Owen was using the “list” technique that is very useful in freshening up blog post content: starting with one idea about your product or service, then putting a number to it, such as “2 Best Ways To …,”  “3  Problem Fixes to Try First….”, or “4 Simple Home Remedies for…”
The point of the "lists", of course, is to demonstrate ways in which your product or service is different, and to provide valuable information that engages readers.

The speaker knew, of course, that any of us could have turned to more technical sources, to find information, but that we wanted him to help us make sense out of the ocean of information out there about tax law.

Speaker #2 was Professor William Evans of the University of Notre Dame, speaking about the Health Care landscape”. Out of the 24 Power Point slides Evans used for his very dynamic talk, fully 17 of them contained visuals – either photos or charts.

With more than 15 years of financial planning seminars using pictures and charts under my belt, I heartily approved of Evans’ approach. In training new freelance blog copywriters,  I stress that, whenever you can include an actual photograph illustrating the content of your business blog post, that adds power to the words of the blog. In fact, online readers will not necessarily understand the significance or interpretation of the chart or photo without your help, I explain. (While all of us financial planners could have read the charts, we were looking to Prof. Evans to elaborate on the source of the information in each chart and to demonstrate why that information would be important in our work with clients.).

In every business or profession, there’s no end, it seems, to the technical information available to consumers on the Internet. But it falls to us business blog content writers to break all that information down into chewable tablet form!

Does Heinz really have 57 varieties? asks Don Vorhees in the Book of Totally Useless Information. The answer is no! At one point the H.J. Heinz Company produced over twenty times that number of food products, Vorhees explains. Riding the elevated train in New York City, Heinz saw a billboard advertising 21 varieties of shoes.  Catching on to the special power of using a number on a billboard or in a title, Heinz decided that the number 57 had a certain ring to it.  The rest is merchandising history.

Numbers do have that special “ring” when used in blog content writing for business, especially when the numbers are used in the title of the post. One way freelance bloggers can freshen up their content is to start with an idea about the product or service and then put a number to it:

• Two best ways…
• Three problems that often arise with…
• Four simple steps to….
• 25 tips for…
• The eight honest phrases

Not only do numbers add that “zing” to SEO marketing blogs, there are ways you can use numbers to educate your blog readers and demonstrate your own expertise. Numbers help debunk myths. If there's some false impression people seem to have relating to your field or your product – bring on the numbers to prove how things really are.

In corporate blogging training sessions, I advise newbie blog content writers to use proof in the blogs to build belief. Statistics constitute that proof, showing the extent of the problem your product or service helps solve.

An important caution, though:
Even if you do have 57 varieties in your product line, or know 25 tips that could be really valuable to your clients, remember that online readers do NOT want to read about them all in any one blog post!  In fact, at Say It For You, our professional ghost bloggers preach the Power of One:

In fact, blog posts have a distinct advantage over the more static website copy by being narrowly focused. Even if you use a statistic to make your point, or a catchy number for the title, the content itself in corporate blogging is best focused on just a single aspect of your business. Make sure to convey that you have 57 varieties (of information, products, or services), but that today, you’re focusing their attention on just one!