The Secret Life of Blog Words

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humanizing through corporate blog writing“The smallest words in our vocabulary often reveal the most about us,”asserts James Pennebaker in “The Secret Life of Pronouns" (in the September 2011 issue of Science in Society). Hidden inside language, explains Pennebaker, are “small, stealthy words that can reveal a great deal about your personality, thinking style, and connections with others.”.

No information could be more important for blog content writers, since words are the power source in blogging for business. As I explain in corporate blogging training sessions, words and pictures are the tools we use in business blogging to create connections with others.

James Pennebaker, I learned, is a social psychologist who developed a computer program to analyze the language people use, discovering that words associated with positive emotions have therapeutic value.  From the vantage point of the freelance blog writers I train, however, the most important discovery to come out of this research involves the use of pronouns.

The Pennebaker team’s most striking initial discovery was that the more people changed from using first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my) to other pronouns (we, you, she, they), the better their health became!  The scientists went on to discover that gender, age, social class, and leadership ability al related to their choice of pronouns.

These discoveries could be of the most amazing business blogging help, I realized. One of my own discoveries in abandoning my generational bias towards long, individually composed pieces of business correspondence and traditional marketing brochures was that the core “mission” of blogging for business is to humanize online communications.

In four and a half years of providing business blogging services in Indianapolis, I’ve realized that whether the business owner him or herself is doing the writing, or whether they’re collaborating with a ghost blogger partner, the very process of deciding what to emphasize in the blog is a process of self-discovery!

And, since engaging readers’ interest in blogs is about expressing your understanding of their problems or dilemmas (“It’s- not-just-you-we-solve-this-problem-all-the-time”), pronouns in your business blog are your way to “get down and human”!

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Vague vs. Clear in Business Blog Writing

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question marksShort vs. long – that is the question.  At least that’s what Indianapolis bloggers might conclude from my Say It For You business blog post earlier this week.  There’s more to that question, of course, and lots more to the answers, as Brandon Royal demonstrates in The Little Red Writing Book.

Royal warns writers that “Vague language weakens your writing, because it forces the reader to guess at what you mean.”  “Choose specific, descriptive words for more forceful writing," he advises. Sometimes, the author adds, “to be specific and concrete, you will have to use more words than usual.  That’s OK.”

I particularly liked the examples Royal culled from interviews with job candidates. (Besides doing corporate blog writing and offering corporate blogging training, I serve as Executive Career Mentor at Butler College of Business, and our program trains students in interviewing skills.) A common job seeker’s mistake, he points out, is using a “shopping list” of traits, rather than using concrete examples of strong points:

Candidate:  “Not only did I develop important operational skills in running a business, I experienced the challenges entrepreneurs face on a daily basis.” 
Question left in interviewer’s mind:  What challenges are those?

Candidate: “Growing up in both the East and the West, I have experienced both Asian and Western points of view.”
Question left in interviewer’s mind: What are those Asian and Western points of view?

Candidate: “I am energetic, loyal, creative, responsible, and ambitious.”
Questions left in interviewer’s mind: Really?  How can I tell?  Why don’t you support a few of those traits with concrete examples?

Anyone involved in business blog writing should try some of the writing exercises Royal offers in the book, to practice replacing vague language with words that are specific and concrete.

Vague: “Firms should advertise to increase sales.”
Specific: “Billboard advertising is low cost and has been shown to increase sales as much as 10% in a given region.”

Personalizing examples makes them even more memorable and specific, a piece of advice that can be applied to any SEO marketing blog.  Back to the short-vs.-long question, stories and testimonials take up more space, but make for far more impact than general marketing claims.

Short vs. long, clear vs. vague, specific vs. general – who ever said this blog content writing thing would be a breeze?

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Blogging for Business – the Long and the Short of It

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long and short“This is one of the holy wars in the world of blogging,” says Dave Taylor, referring to the question: “Are long blog entries better than short ones?”

Who decides what’s too long and what’s too short?  Either the reader or the writer, says Taylor.  In corporate blog writing, he explains (and as we content writers in Indianapolis know), there are no editors, layout people, or government regulators to dictate the length of any SEO marketing blog post.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I felt my own approach to the subject was vindicated when Dave Taylor cited a common piece of editorial advice about how long a book or article should be: “Write just enough to cover the material at the appropriate level of detail, then stop.” That dovetails nicely with the rule I cite when offering business blogging assistance:

“Make blog posts as long as they need to be to get the point across (choosing  just one point to emphasize in each post to begin with),
but not a single sentence longer”.

BlogRevolter.com offers a different and very interesting take on the optimal length for blog posts. “In a short blog post, sometimes the writer neglects to provide information…Write the entire article and allow it to stretch,” is the advice.  “That way, searchers will get their entire question dealt with.”

So, as a professional providing blog writing services, to what side of the “holy war” do I lean?  Both! 

Reminds me of the old tale of two men who came to their rabbi for help settling a dispute.  After hearing the first man’s story, the rabbi declared “You’re right!”  Then the second man told his side, and the rabbi exclaimed “You’re right!”  A third man was puzzled.  “Rabbi, they can’t both be right!”  Said the rabbi, “You know, you’re right, too!”

In corporate blogging for business, it’s important to offer enough information in each post to convincingly cover the one key theme of the post. When posts start pushing the 450-500 word mark or beyond 500 words, it might be time to downsize. Remember the Milo Frank rule: “The attention span of the average individual is 30 seconds.”

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Business Blog Writers’ Challenge – Creating Interest Through Stories

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storytellingThe trick to business blog writing is telling stories.  The trick to finding story ideas for writing business blog posts month after month, year after year may be, as Malcolm Gladwell says in What the Dog Saw, “to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell.”

Gladwell discusses the biggest challenge any SEO marketing blog writer faces – the human instinct to assume that most things are not interesting 

Gladwell reminds us that we:

  • flip through the channels on the TV
  • go to a bookstore and look at 20 novels before picking one to buy

We have to be choosy, he explains; there’s just so much out there. And, in fact, during every corporate blogging training session, I have to remind would-be blog writers of that very challenge.  To counteract the fear of reader ennui, I add Gladwell’s words of inspiration: “If you want to be a writer, you have to fight that instinct (to assume most things are not interesting) every day.”

Clicking on – or away from – any one web site or blog post is much easier than browsing through 20 novels and even easier than flipping TV channels, I caution Indianapolis blog writers.  In fact, online searchers tend to be scanners rather than readers, making any SEO marketing blog writer’s task even more of a challenge.

So, is it a challenge that can be overcome?  Is it a challenge worth overcoming? Make that a resounding “Yes!”. Apparently, business owners agree. According to HubSpot.com, corporate budgets for blogs and social media are up more than any other aspect of marketing expenditures.  

“Call it noise, call it the next big thing, or just call it stupid….Blogging has become a huge thing in today’s world,”, says blogger Ryan Farley, stating that nothing gives him more confidence in a company than to see the knowledge of its employees via their blogs. “Corporate blogging gives you the opportunity to communicate with your customers and potential customers in an entirely new way… You will establish your company or yourself as a voice of authority and expertise in your industry and your customers will be there to witness it first hand.”

Blogging has  become so strong that the word “blog” made Merriam-Webster’s 2004 Top 10 Words of the Year list, Farley emphasizes. That fact alone should be enough to spark interest on the part of business owners.  The blog writers’ challenge is to engage the interest of online searchers with recent, relevant, and story-based content!


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Todd Hunt Teaches Blog Writers About Negative Surprises

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Todd HuntAnyone involved in corporate blogging for business should read the latest e-newsletter by business speaker Todd Hunt, who warns readers that Five Guys Burgers and Fries has an unusual application for the word "little".  If you order a Five Guys hamburger, I learned, you’re served two beef patties, while their "little hamburger" order contains only one.  (Anywhere else, Hunt points out, two patties is called a "double".)  So, I thought (not to be "punny"), what’s Todd Hunt’s "beef"? That the customer discovers the anomaly only after he’s ordered, paid, and then opened the foil package, Hunt explains.

As a professional involved in providing both blog writing services and corporate blogging training, one principle I emphasize to business owners and freelance blog content writers is to deliver on the implied promise of the blog post title.  In other words, online readers should not "open the foil package" by clicking on a title only to find that the content doesn’t match up. 

Todd Hunt implies that two thin patties is not a good thing when you were expecting just one fatter one (even if the quantity of beef is the same).  Since online searchers tend to scan rather than read, the "impatience factor" makes surprises even less welcome when it comes to SEO marketing blogs.

An interesting study out of Rensselaer Polytechnic and Texas Tech University addresses the writing of navigation in online help systems.  Overall, the largest problem participants reposted in using the help system wasn’t in processing the information, but in the frustration they experienced in finding the correct help topic!

While this may not constitute a perfect parallel, I think the findings in this study could be useful to blog content writers.  Providing startling statistics or surprising insights in business blogs is a very good way to add value and engage readers.  But those readers are likely to experience only frustration if there are surprises when it comes to the blog post content not matching the title of the blog post! Surprises aren’t fun after you’ve "opened the foil"!

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