Balancing the Bullet Points in Your Business Blog

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“Keep your bullet points symmetrical,” advises fellow blog content writer Brian Clark.to do list One way to do that, Clark explains, is to keep all bullet points in a group the same approximate length. That’s easier on online readers’ eyes, he adds.

That bullet points in general are a good fit for blogs is actually something I stress in corporate blogging training sessions.  By most accounts, search engines like bullet points.  Even more important, I’ve found over the years as professional ghost blogger, bullet points keep everyone on track, especially the writer.

It’s interesting that, just the other day, I was helping a student team at Ivy Tech learning lab put together a Power Point presentation on the subject of effective studying for tests. I noticed that their textbook recommends that students organize their notes using bullet points.

Clark offers a second bullet point-related tip that can relate to corporate blogging for business. “Practice parallelism,” Clark says, meaning that each bullet point should begin with the same part of speech and should maintain the same grammatical form.

This “honey-do” list in a blog by Cypress Media is a good example of Clark’s two rules (All the bullet points are one short line long, and all begin with a “command” verb):

  • Take out the garbage
  • Feed the dog
  • Drop off dry cleaning
  • Wash the car
  • Buy stamps

Cypress’ Catherine Hibbard explains that using numbers in place of bullet points would imply an order of importance; with bullet points, all items have equal value. Like Clark, Hibbard recommends beginning each bullet with an action word where that’s appropriate, but in all cases making tenses and verbs consistent.

There’s no doubt bullet points are of business blogging help, but be careful not to overuse the technique.  I remind Indianapolis blog writers that SEO marketing blogs need to be conversational and personal in tone.  Truth is, we don’t tend to converse in bullet points!

Going back to that Ivy Tech textbook recommendation about organizing material, it seems to me that bullet points’ highest and best use is as organizers. That means the bullet points can be good tools for freelance blog writers whether those bullet points find their way into the finished blog posts or not!

As someone who offers business blog writing services, here’s how I’d sum up the subject of bullet points:  By all means, practice symmetry and parallelism, but consider also practicing restraint!

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Should Professional Ghost Bloggers Target People Paying to Get Scared?

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Researchers used to think people paid to get scared (as a population, we here in the UShorror just finished spending close to $3 billion on Halloween) because they get a high off the relief at the end. But, as Science Daily reports, a new study shows horror fans are just “happy being unhappy”.

People getting “scared” into action is an important topic in marketing, including SEO marketing blogs. Specifically, business owners and those providing blog writing services need to weigh the effectiveness of fear tactics in galvanizing customers into action.

Shock advertising can, in fact, move people to action, I learned, reading reports from the British Department of Health on the anti-smoking campaign “Get Unhooked” (which was banned because the ads caused fear and distress in children). In business blog writing, though, while it’s important to appeal to readers’ need to avoid pain, you’re more likely to “win friends and influence people” in your blog posts by giving searchers a “feel” for the relief and comfort they’ll gain after using your products and services.

One very old selling strategy involves digging for pain points, and then creating a need for what we do or what we sell.  At Say It For You, we lean more towards the view offered by salesproductivityinsider.com, which is more in line with the sort of blog writing services we like to offer our client companies:

“Selling is not a horror show. We can professionly increase
the sense of urgency
to action without ‘scaring’ them.”

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Corporate Blogging A’ la State Farm

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I plan to use the State Farm goodneighborEXTRA e-newsletter I received the other day as a positive example to blog writers.  And, while of course a newsletter covers more topics than should be shouldered in any one blog post, there were several aspects of this particular newsletter issue worth emulating in SEO marketing blogs.

When providing business blogging assistance, one piece of advice I often give is to provide valuable, put-into-practice-right-away information to readers. Interestingly enough, that very piece of advice is the one that encounters the most resistance from business owners thinking of starting a blog. Owners of personal service businesses, in particular, voice fears of giving away valuable information “for free”. What happens in the real world, though, is quite the opposite.  Business owners can use corporate blogging for business to position themselves as “go to” people in their field.

Freelance blog writers may want to use only one main piece of advice in each post, but the State Farm newsletter included no fewer than six different advice articles:

  • Trouble-Proof Your Roof
  • What To Do With a Windfall
  • Reversing the Dropout Rate
  • Watch for Animal Crossings This Fall
  • Make Your Home Workshop Safer
  • 3 Steps to Winterize Your Home

The State Farm newsletter editors apparently agree with my advice to those providing business blogging services:  Include Calls to Action in each post. With the click of the mouse, readers could register for the StateFarm Nation Rewards program, email their agent (Jim Guffey is my own longtime agent), or visit him online.

When it comes to corporate blog writing, I teach indianapolis blog writers to make the “ask”  in the form of a CTA, inviting readers to add a product to their shopping cart, download something, request information, subscribe to the blog or newsletter, or register a “Like” on Facebook. Remember, what we’re discussing here is corporate blogging for business!

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Corporate Blog Writing Lets You Go a Little Wild – But There Are Rules

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pet alligator“Hoosiers can have exotic animals, but a state permit or USDA license is required,” explains reporter Mary Beth Schneider in the Indianapolis Star.  Indiana blog writers don’t need licenses, but there are some basic rules I’ve found I should emphasize in offering business blogging assistance.

Rule #1 for blog content writers should be the (admittedly subjective) Rule of Good Taste. While the tone of blog posts can (and should) be more conversational and less formal than the tone of your website or company brochure, it’s better not to risk offending the fussiest of readers by using poor grammar or just plain bad language. Claims about the company’s products and services should come across as reasonable and provable, with the use of “special effects’ technology kept in modest proportion.

One lesson I’ve learned as a professional ghost blogger comes from the fashion world, where understated style tends to create a better overall impression .  Yes, in business blog writing you can go “a little wild and exotic” in terms of  showing your uniqueness within your field, but accomplishing that within the bounds of good taste is always a good idea.

Rule #2 for freelance blog writers is to always stick to “white hat” techniques in the effort to “win search”. While SEO marketing blogs are meant to improve visibility, attract more online traffic to the website, and generate sales, above-board blog content writing is above all relevant, providing the sort of on-topic, useful information that searchers need. At the extreme, “Black hat” techniques such as link manipulation can result in getting a client website banned (by a search engine) from search results altogether. On the other hand, explains Wikipedia, “SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, …and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience.”. 

Rule #3, I stress in corporate blogging training sessions, is simply the Rule of Good Writing.  Following Kurt Vonnegut’s advice “Every sentence must do one of two things – reveal character or enhance the action”, I tell Indianapolis blog writers ton keep the content compelling by leaving no doubt in readers’ minds how much you care – about your industry, your products, and your customers. Clarity and focus lend power and strength to the material, while variety in adjectives and sentence structure keep posts interesting.

“State Lets You Go a Little Wild – But There Are Rules,” reads the headline of Mary Beth Schneider’s article about exotic animals.  Corporate blogging for business, I might add, works the same way!

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Indianapolis Blog Writer Shares the Secret of Patience – in Puzzles or Corporate Blog Writing

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For me, playing with words isn’t confined to providing blog writing services. I love word puzzles of all kinds.

what's left word puzzlesOne puzzle type is called “What’s Left?”, where there’s a grid with 60 different words, and each clue tells what categories of words the solver should cross off.  For example, “Cross off all 8-letter words in columns B and D that can be divided into two 4-letter words.”  If I’ve followed all the directions correctly, I’m left with a wise saying.

Well, I’ve just finished solving one of these puzzles, and the saying I revealed is one that I think could be a very appropriate one for all of us Say It For You content writers in Indianapolis to remember:

“THE SECRET OF PATIENCE IS TO DO SOMETHING IN THE MEANTIME.”

The most obvious connection is that corporate blogging for business takes patience – lots of it. Any activity that necessitates sticking to a task week after week, month after month, year after year – well it takes perseverance.  Blogging for business takes patience as well, because (despite some business owners’ unrealistic expectations) even the best of SEO marketing blogs may not be rewarded with instantaneous Google Page One status.)

So what are some of the “in the meantime” activities that can be of business blogging help?

Work on your overall marketing plan. Remember, your blog is just one piece of the strategizing you do with your web designer, marketing consultant, ghost blogger, managers, employees, networking colleagues and customers.

Systematically collect ideas. “The best blog ideas often happen during a conversation, in the shower, or while listening to a seminar. Don’t fight it. Instead, have a method for capturing these ideas so you can save them for later,” advises friend Michael Reynolds in a Say It For You guest post.

Ponder. What’s your special slant in your industry? What are some of the values you want to embody in the way you serve customers?

Read, Listen. Learn.  One of the deceptively simple insights I’ve gained over the years of providing business blogging help and which I share in corporate blog training is that the more you know about, the more you have to blog about.

Business owners and freelance blog content writers – whenever you’re feeling as if your patience is stretched and that blogging is a puzzle –  the solution is to do something in the meantime!

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