Blogs Are Not Scrabble

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"Regardless of what you’re writing, whether it’s a sales letter, blog post, company history, or proposal, the golden rule of clear communication should be communicating clearly," Indianapolis Business Journal’s Jim Cota reminds us.

At an annual National Press ceremony, the Center for Plain Language (whose goal is to get government and businesses to communicate more clearly with citizens and customers) presents two awards: ClearMark (the best), and WonderMark (the worst), the latter so named because the judges were left wondering what the writers were thinking!

Cota’s conclusion: In the interests of clarity, "Save the long words for Scrabble!".

The author I featured earlier this week in my blog, Lynne Truss, might add, "Use punctuation". As a professional ghost blogger and business blogging trainer, I’d have to say both pieces of advice are rock solid for writing blog posts to drive business.

Save the long words for Scrabble:
If the purpose of your blog posts is to welcome prospects who’ve found you online and convert them into customers, the language you use must be easy to understand. Always keep them and their needs in mind.

Use punctuation:
The last award you’d want for your blog is the WonderMark.  Minding your commas and apostrophes in blog posts will avoid having online searchers wonder what, exactly, you were trying to say (or, worse, where – or if – you learned eighth grade English)! 

There’s only one kind of wondering you’d like for readers of your blog to be doing:
wondering if there are even more reasons why what you have to offer is what they need to have!

 

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Eats, Shoots, and Blogs

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New York Times bestselling author Lynn Truss takes a zero tolerance approach to punctuation.

If ever it occurred to you to downplay the importance of commas, get ready to change your mind after reading the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves. To understand the book’s title, think of:

  • a panda or koala, who eats the shoots and leaves of plants
  • a cowboy who enters a diner, eats, shoots (his gun), and leaves (departs)

Without proper punctuation (in this case a single comma), readers would have a hard time understanding what the writer had meant to convey.

According to Compendium Blogware CEO Chris Baggott, blogging for business is about instant customer gratification. So, think about this for a moment: If online searchers can’t tell whether you’re referring to a panda or a cowboy, they will simply click and leave! Ignoring clarity by failing to use proper punctuation in blog posts is done at business owners’ peril.

In her chapter That’ll Do, Comma, Truss explains that commas serve two functions:

  • to illuminate the grammar of a sentence
  • to point up rhythm and tone

Basically, commas can help your blog post (as Niecy Nash might put it on Clean House) do "what it came to do", which is to clearly convey what you do and what you’d like readers to do about that..

Speaking of "you’d", as a business blogging trainer I preach reading ten other blogs or articles for every post you write.  If you try that, paying attention to punctuation, you’re sure to notice that the apostrophe is the most misused punctuation mark in our language.

(More about the apostrophe in a later blog post, but IT"S a shame about ITS abuse, isn’t it?

 

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When You Do X, Y Happens. Blog About Z.

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Calls To Action, or CTA’s, are a vital component of business blogs. Future’s Now Brendan Regan says business owners’ marketing outreach needs to extend from the driving point through to a "conversion". 

On a blog page, the CTA can be on the right margin (Call 1-800……, Contact ———, sign up for RSS, etc.).
Or, the Call To Action can be in the body of the blog post (To buy now, click here…).

To me, though, each whole blog post is in itself a Call To Action. I was thinking about that after hearing Julie Reed of Miller’s Health Systems talk about managing productive conversations with employees. Reed suggested using the formula "When you do X, Y happens. I prefer Z". (This approach avoids any hint of personal criticism of the employee, but explains why the outcome of certain behaviors is nonproductive, and then suggests a better way of doing things.)

Myth-busting is a very good use for blogs, because you’re opening the eyes of readers to a new way of thinking about your product or service. Addressing misinformation is one way of shining light on business owners’ expertise.  At the same time, people generally don’t like to have their assumptions challenged.  The Julie Reed formula can come in handy here.

When you do X:  When you, the blog reader (hasten to assured readers many people have the same misunderstanding or are making the same natural mistake) do a certain thing…

Y happens: Describe the problems that can arise from that course of action, that type of shortcut, that product, etc.)

Suggest Z: Describe a better way of using the product you sell, or a better solution your company offers for their problem.

Whatever your "Z"  is, it will become the Call To Action for your blog post!


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Building Your Blog Muscle Through Repetition

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The same philosophy of simplifying a marketing message that’s behind your elevator speech (that 15-20 second description of your company’s product or service that you could rattle off while in an elevator with a stranger) works for print and electronic marketing, advises Julie Williams of Green Jays Communications.

"Don’t try to say too much", Williams went on to explain at the All Things Marketing and Sales  seminar I attended last month. "Better to stick with your elevator speech and keep repeating it – verbally, in print, and on your Web site."  The idea is that eventually people will come to recognize the message as yours, which builds your brand.

Sticking to elevator-speech simplicity and using repetition are both absolutely excellent pieces of advice for business bloggers. In order to win search, it’s crucial to maintain frequency and consistency in posting content on the Web; both of these are measures search engines use in ranking a blog, and a higher ranking makes it easier for you to "get found" by your potential customers.

After more than one year of building muscle at weekly weightlifting sessions at Exercise, Inc., I can certainly relate to the metaphor of building blog muscle through repetition. The benefits of the Exercise, Inc. program come from lifting significant weights and doing that consistently.

Elevator speech or weightlifting – choose your metaphor. Building blog muscle takes simplification and repetition!

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Winging It In Your Business Blog

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I was attending a convention a couple of weeks ago when the inevitable happened – equipment failure. One of the main presenters was using Power Point with a video embedded in it, and, just as he was trying to make an important point, the sound system hookup malfunctioned. Of course, we in the audience were unable to understand what the people in the video were saying.

So what happened? Rather than just going on to deliver his message without benefit of A/V, the distressed speaker put the audience "on hold" while the hotel’s technicians fiddled unsuccessfully with the controls for a long ten minutes. Needless to say, the momentum of the presentation was lost. ("Winging it" without the Power Point would have been s-o-o much more powerful!)

That little mishap started me thinking about different forms of presentations, and, since I’m a professional ghost blogger and blogging trainer, I came around to pondering the differences between business blogs and traditional websites. Websites are typically more formal, with a lot more thought and planning devoted to headlines, content, graphics, and layout. In that sense, websites are like the Power Point presentation the speaker had prepared.  Not that I’m implying that websites "break down" – it’s just that they tend to be more static than blogs.

Blogs, by contrast, are more nimble.  The content changes frequently (ideally several times a week), and that content is presented in a tone that’s conversational and informal. The comparison that occurred to me during that 10-minute awkward wait for the Power Point to be restored is this: Websites are ongoing. Blogs are for the here-and-now.

If business owners thought of blog posts as conversation, simply sharing a tip, discussing something in the news, explaining how their products work – just "winging it", in other words, I can’t help thinking that there’d be a whole lot more blogging going on, with a lot more engaged online searchers!

 

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