Blog Content Writing is Our Knowledge Test

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Up until a year and a half ago, I had been unaware that, in order to become a certified taxi operator in London, drivers must study up for what is considered to be the world’s most challenging exam, involving detailed recall of tens of thousands of streets, along with the locations of clubs, hospitals, hotels, parks, theaters, schools, restaurants, government buildings and churches. The “10 Things About Britain” article in Mental Floss Magazine was making the point that “Cabbies are smarter than Google Maps.”

At the time, I remember reflecting that online visitors searching for a product or a service typically have no idea what it takes for you as a business owner or professional practitioner to do what you do until you make them aware through your blog content.  Without your blog, those readers won’t realize how much effort went into acquiring all the expertise you’re now offering to use for their benefit.

In today’s click-it-yourself, do-it-yourself world, I observed, your blog content needs to demonstrate to online searchers that, in your field, you are smarter than Google Maps, or eHow, or Wikipedia.  What’s more, your corporate blogging for business must make clear, you’re a lot more caring of your customers!

Now, more than a year later, I’ve come upon another article about the “Knowledge Schools” where the cabbies train,  usually for four years or more. Author Barclay Bram was interested in “why, in the age of Uber and Google Maps, people would still put themselves through this process, and what it’s like to do so.” In fact, Bram points out, the Knowledge has been getting harder, as new railways stations, hotels, and restaurants are being built.

As a blog content writer and trainer at Say It For You, the most interesting fact I gleaned from the Bram article is this: Researchers have used MRI scans to show that the hippocampus of people who pass the Knowledge grows by more than 25%! “Retired black cabbies have one of the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s on Earth!” Yes, there is an infinite amount of knowledge which exists apart from us in a device, Bram muses, but shouldn’t we value having knowledge we have earned and which has become inextricably a part of us?

When you blog, you verbalize the positive aspects of your business in a way that people can understand. You put your recent accomplishments down in words. You review the benefits of your products and services and keep them fresh in your mind. In other words, you are constantly providing yourself with training about how to talk effectively about your business.

For bloggers, content writing is like preparing for our own knowledge test!

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Acing Your Next Blog “Interview”

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blog posts as interviews
“Want to ace your next interview and land that open job you’ve been seeking? experisjobsus asks job seekers. Go in prepared with five key selling points, along with examples of how you used those skills in real world situations.

At Say It For You, I’ve often remarked that business blogs are nothing more than extended interviews. Searchers are evaluating your content to judge whether your know-how, products, and services are a good fit for their needs.

The overriding message a successful interviewee wants to convey to a prospective employer has three elements:

  1. I understand the challenges of the job.
  2. I have the experience and expertise to take those on.
  3. I would like to start doing this important work.

While all the “data” about the candidate is to be found on the resume, what interviewers are trying do is understand what makes that person “tick” and decide if he or she will “fit in’ with the company culture. Often interviewers will ask candidates to “describe themselves”. Behavioral interviewers don’t focus on facts about the candidates at all. Instead, the purpose is to reveal the person behind the resume.

For that very reason, we encourage Say It For You clients to include “Who’s Who in our business/our office/our industry” blog posts. Apart from the typical “Our Team” landing page on your website, which introduces people by name with a brief bio, the blog might offer close-up views of the functions each person serves. And, if you’ve kept in touch with your “alumni”, I advise content writers, it would be a great thing to let your readers know you’ve kept in touch with them and their doings.

One important thing to remember is that, while a website presents the company’s or the practice’s “big picture”, in business blogging, each post is like one question at an interview. With many blog readers tending to be scanners, they need to find very targeted content showing they’re come to the right place to get precisely the information, products, and services they were seeking.

“Acing” your next blog interview can depend on showing you’re ready, willing, and able to start doing “this important work!”

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Mythbusting? Don’t Forget to Throw the Camel a Coat!

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mythbusting in blogs

“Was it daylight savings time this weekend?” Brett Molina asked a couple of weeks ago in USA Today. “Nope. But it was daylight saving time.” Molina goes on to explain (citing a post from the blog Grammar Errors), that “daylight savings time” is grammatically incorrect, and that, next time, we should lose the “s” along with that hour of sleep, because there are not multiple savings.  Grammar Cops is even more precise, explaining that we don’t really save daylight; the term Daylight Shifting Time would be more accurate.

Reading this little information-you-could-have-done-without essay, (with eyes simultaneously crossing and glazing over), I couldn’t help remembering a Say It For You blog post I composed almost ten years ago. In “Myth-Bust in Your Blogs, but Give the Camel a Coat”, the point was this: While mythbusting is a great use for corporate blogs, since addressing misinformation shines light on the owners’ special expertise, the technique must be used with caution.

You see, just prior to writing that original blog post, I’dread in the Book of General Ignorance that camels do not store water in their humps – they store fat. Far from appreciating the new insight, my reaction was a bit resentful – something I’d taken as true for all of my life, was, in fact, a lie. But then, authors Lloyd and Mitchelson “threw me a coat” in the form of interesting new information about camels: When a camel builds up resentment towards human beings, a handler can calm the animal by handing over his own coat to the beast, who “gives the garment hell”, biting it, jumping on it, and tearing it. After that pressure is relieved, the authors explained, “man and animal can live together in harmony again.”

Now ten years later, I felt an identical twinge of resentment about Brett Molina’s correcting the Daylight Savings Time misnomer. Business blog writing lesson relearned: When debunking myths, follow up by throwing readers a “coat” in the form of some intriguing, little-known information related to your industry.

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Saint Patrick’s Blue Blog Content Writing

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Okay, so you wore that green tie or green jacket on St. Patty’s day and had yourself a good time, but now, almost two weeks later, I think you might be ready for the truth. Several truths, actually. Since at Say It For You, I teach that mythbusting is one very legitimate and important function of blog writing, I want to pass along a few super-busts straight out of one of my favorite sources – Mental Floss magazine.

For starters, St. Patrick wasn’t Irish. (He did introduce Christianity to Ireland back in the year 432, but the man himself was born in Scotland or Wales.) His real name wasn’t even Patrick – it was Maewyn (he changed it to Patricius after becoming a priest.) What’s more, though we’ve come to associate Kelly green with the holiday, the saint’s official color was St. Patricks blue. (The color green was linked to St. Patrick’s Day only later, during the late-18th century Irish independence movement.) Perhaps the most startling “bust” has to do with the fact that St. Patrick’s Day started out as a dry holiday; up until the 1970s, pubs were closed on that national holiday!

So, what’s the point of all this? Well, mythbusting can be used to counteract counterproductive thinking, and I’m a firm believer that a big function of business blogs is doing just that. In the normal course of doing business, you’ve undoubtedly found, misunderstandings about your product or service might surface in the form of customer questions and comments.  (It’s even worse when those myths and misunderstandings don’t surface, but still have the power to interrupt the selling process!) By myth-busting, blog content writing can “clear the air”, replacing factoids with facts, so that buyers can see their way to making decisions.

Myth-busting is also a tactic content writers can use to grab online visitors’ attention. The technique is not without risk, because customers don’t like to be proven wrong or feel stupid.  The trick is to engage interest, but not in “Gotcha!” fashion. Business owners and professional practitioners can use their blogs to showcase their own expertise without “showing up” their readers’ lack of it.

‘Course you’re still going to wear green, not blue, next March, but at least that decision will be based on the facts!

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Who-Else-Is-Doing-It Blogging for Business

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The mini-article “Hosts with the Most” in the Perspective section of the AARP magazine suggests an interesting way blog content writers can use statistics to sell. “Maybe more of us want to run bed-and-breakfasts when we retire than we thought…Americans over 60 are the fastest-growing group to become Airbnb hosts.”  In fact, we learn, there’s been an astounding 102% one-year growth in Airbnb hosts age 60 and up, with senior hosts capturing 13% of the total market.

If this little magazine were a blog post written to persuade retirees to become Airbnb hosts, it would tie back to the theory of social proof, meaning that, as humans, we are simply more willing to do something if we see that other people are doing it. In other words, people reference the behavior of others to guide their own behavior. When using statistics in business blog posts, we teach at Say It For You, it’s important to include the source, providing the answer to readers’ unspoken question: “Why should I accept these statistics as proof?”

To be persuasive, statistics must be combined with other kinds of evidence, Stephen Boyd cautions public speakers. You might state a statistic and then give an example reinforcing the number he says, or show what the statistic might mean by comparing it to something with which the audience is already familiar. In offering a dollar figure, for example, say “That amount would be like supporting your child through four years of college.”

The “Hosts with the Most” article does something even better – it paints a picture of results:  “Older Americans get more five-star ratings than any other demographic.” When you’re composing business blog content, I tell writers, imagine readers asking themselves – “How will I use the product (or service)?” “How will it work?” “How will I feel?”  In other word, the focus of a bog post written to persuade readers to buy must be on the end result from the recipient’s point of view.

To be sure, opening your post with a startling statistic can be a way to grab visitors’ attention, and statistics can often serve as myth-busters. (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). Statistics can also serve to demonstrate 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!

But my experience has shown me that statistics, even the startling sort, aren’t enough to create positive results for any marketing blog. Why not? The fact that a serious problem exists (even if the searcher suffers from that very problem) is not enough to make most readers take action. And in the final analysis, of course, the success of any blog marketing effort depends on that action. What blogging does best is deliver to corporate blog sites customers who are already interested in the product or service you’re providing! And while statistics may not galvanize prospects into action, they can be used to assure readers they are hardly “alone” in their need for solutions to their medical, financial, or personal challenges

Assuring readers that not only have they come to the right place for help, but that lots of other people have found your solution helpful, will bring who-else-is-doing-it, social proof business blogging success. 

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