Arming Your Blog With the 4 A’s

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“Use the four A’s – Acronym, Analogy, Anecdote, Alliteration – to catch the reporter’s ear and help the reader remember what you said,” Janet Falk of Falk Communications and Research advises business professionals going to a conference.

Acronyms
While Sharif Khan, writing in the American Marketing Association’s Business Writing Tips for Professionals thinks readers might find company acronyms annoying, at Say It For You, our content writers use acronyms to add variety, presenting information to readers in a different way.

Analogies
Matching our writing to our intended audience is part of the challenge we business blog content writers face. Using an analogy to link an unfamiliar concept to something that is familiar can help the reader better comprehend what we’re trying to say. For example, blogging can be compared to a parhelion (an atmospheric optical illusion consisting of halos of light around the sun, showcasing rather than obliterating the shine). Approaching the same topic in different ways can help your content appeal to different audiences, still highlighting the central message.

Anecdotes
Stay alert for anecdotes about customers, employees, or friends who are doing interesting things or overcoming obstacles. Real-people stories of you, your people, and the people you serve are always a good idea in your business blog. Anecdotes and examples lend variety to the blog, even though the anecdotes are being used to reinforce the same few core ideas.

To demonstrate that you understand the problems the online searcher is dealing with, it can be highly effective to relate how you personally went through the same failure stages. Next best to the business owner or professional relating an “I” experience which drives their passion, is anecdotes and testimonials from employees, customers, or vendors..

Alliteration
Using alliteration (consonant repetition) and assonance (vowel repetition) in blog titles has the effect of making those titles more “catchy”. In a sense, readers’ are both seeing the repetition and “hearing it”. Making a subtle but strong impact on readers is is precisely the focus of our content work at Say It For You is all about.

Content writers, try arming your blog posts with the 4 A’s!

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Boxing Day For Bloggers

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Day after Christmas is when Boxing Day is observed in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada, a time for retail sales, special sporting events and for making gifts to the poor. In a way, though,  for business people, today, the day after New Year’s, is our “Boxing Day”, our first best chance to put all those resolutions into practice….

Our big challenge
As content writers, our big challenge moving forward is overcoming “content shock”, which, as readable.com explains, is “the experience of being desensitized to perfectly good content by the sheer volume of texts being thrown our way every day due to technological advancement”. The secret is to make content accessible, written in a way that is easy to understand, the Readable authors advise.

Keeping it conversational
Formality may be appropriate for whitepapers, but for blogs, an informal style is preferred. At Say It For You, I stress first person business blog writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the business owner, practitioner, or the team standing ready to serve customers. Still, all content writing in blogs is actually “second person” in that every piece of information offered has to be about the readers. I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting”.

Keeping it readable
According to Readable.com, the golden rules for readability are:

  • Write at the correct reading level.(An eighth-grade reading level is recommended for most blogs. Web FX cautions).
  • Shorten your sentences. (Short sentences have “pow!”, and, particularly in titles, can be easily shared on social media.)
  • Reduce the number of long words. (Blog readers are scanners, and their eyes will focus on the most important words, the ones relating most directly to their search.)
  • Scrub your copy of jargon and acronyms. (While jargon is admittedly a handle-with-care writing technique, I believe it’s important to add lesser known bits of information, giving readers a feeling of being “in the know”.)
  • Don’t overuse adverbs.(The shorter and more direct a statement, the more impact it will have.)

Today,  the 2024″blog content writers “Boxing Day”, is the first day we have to put all these writing tips and New Year’s business-building resolutions into action….

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Oops! There Goes Another Misspelled Word

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The staff at my local grocery store obviously meant to convey the message that they don’t ACCEPT returns.  In fact, I found out later, the word “accept” did not make dictionaryscoop.com‘s list of 12 Most Common English Spelling Mistakes, which includes the words accommodate, apparent, acknowledgment, calendar, colleague, entrepreneur, led (past tense of “lead”), necessary, receive, successful, and withhold. CNBC adds conscientious, experience, guidance, occurrence, and fulfill.

“Spelling seems like such a minor thing,” Kathy and Ross Petras admit in the CNBC piece, “but It’s actually one of the most problematic issues we deal with in the business world.”  Bad spelling can put a dent in your professional reputation, the authors caution, citing a survey showing that 79% of recruiters and HR managers said spelling and grammatical mistakes “were the biggest deal breakers in job hunting.”

Along with spelling mistakes, grammar errors can make a content writer “look dumb”, as Brian Clark of Copyblogger emphasizes, pointing to your/you’re, it’s/its, there/their, and affect/effect.

“We’re all busy, and we all make mistakes,,” Clark admits, but if you want to be taken seriously, it’s important to get serious about grammar.

As a content marketer at Say It For You, my favorite recommendation to both business owners and the freelance blog content writers they hire to bring their message to customers is this:

Prevent blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions”, including grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors. Blogs (as I’ve often taught) are more personal and more informal than formal letters or even home pages on websites, but they shouldn’t be sloppy.  Unlike your sixth grade teacher, internet searchers won’t “correct your paper”. They may very well navigate away from your blog and find somewhere else to go!

When it comes to common grammar mistakes, the pairs I find are most often confused are these:

Who/that

“Who” always refers to a person; “that” refers to a thing.

Between/among

“Between” refers to the space or difference between two things: “among” refers to the difference among three or more things.

Lay/Lie

“Lay” means to set something down; the verb “lie” means either to tell an untruth, or to assume a horizontal position.

Advise/Advice

“Advise” (with the “s” pronounced like a “z”) is a verb meaning you offer “advice” (counsel).

Allow the next spelling or grammar error to be something you find in someone’s else’s message, not your own!

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Blog to Give Them a Taste

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“New Garfield Park business Skosh seeks both coffee fans and home décor shoppers,” the IBJ reported last week, looking for customers “who appreciate a pour-over coffee while in the mood to buy a couch, lamp, or piece of art”.

Appealing to one or more of a prospect’s five senses is a great way to increase sales, Tru Vue marketing analyst Audel Ortega believes.

  • Sight – a well-structured layout of a store will guide customers, and showcase the most creative aspects of the merchandise.
  • Hearing – music should fit the brand identity.
  • Taste – offer finger food and drinks during events and sales.
  • Smell – candles, flowers, and fragrance oils can enhance the visitor experience.
  • Touch – It’s very important for buyers to feel the texture of a product.

The Skosh store gets all that and then some. “Skosh encourages you to embrace the art of slowing down, presenting an authentic blend of craft beverages and lifestyle furnishings for a unique experience.”

Product demos are a great way to give prospects a taste of what your product or service can do for them by showing them how it works and what benefits they can expect, Anibal Mijangos writes in LinkedIn. Similarly, we teach at Say It For You, think about how online visitors are going to experience your blog posts, and how your content can offer a “taste” of the benefits they stand to enjoy when using your products and/or services.

Just as visitors to a coffee shop need an “experience” – crackle, aroma,and  color, (and as visitors to a furniture store experience plushness, dimension, design, and color), online visitors to your blog need to get a sense of what they are likely to experience as a customer of yours. Word tidbits, unique points of view, special how-to tips, links to unusual resources, humorous touches, and particularly success stories –combine to make a blog post visit an “experience” for readers..

Coffee and lamps? For Skosh, that works. Can a similar tactic work for your blog marketing? In his book, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Gary Vaynerchuk points out that content writing doesn’t always need to be about your brand, but can explore other topics, making unlikely, but interesting and memorable connections.

To give a blog that needed extra boost, for example, the content can reflect topics trending on social media, using marketing touches, or “jabs” to establish connection between entrepreneur and reader, giving them a taste of the relationship to come.

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Crafting the Bottom Line of a Blog Post

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Earlier this month in our Say It For You blog, we noted how the editors of Harvard Business Review’s Special Issue use “Idea in Brief” inserts or “callouts” to summarize the main concepts discussed in each feature length article…..A similar technique (I noticed in a later issue of the magazine) is “The Bottom Line”, in which an insert at the bottom of a long article summarizes the primary concept emphasized in the text.

Why might you want to summarize any article in the first place? Virginia Kearney of owlcation.com poses that question and then offers several answers:

  • to show how the author’s ideas support your own argument
  • to argue against the author’s ideas
  • to condense a lot of information into a small space
  • to increase your own understanding of the article

Back in 2008, I explained in a Say It For You post that blogs, unlike client newsletters or online magazine articles, tend to be shorter and more concise, adopting a more conversational tone than other forms of printed and online communication. In that sense (as I found myself explaining fifteen years later), each blog post might be considered an “Idea in Brief”.

Still, within each blog post itself, the closing line assumes the function of an “Idea in Brief” or a “The Bottom Line”. While it’s extremely important in blogging for business to have great titles and strong openers, each post needs a catchy, memorable ending line to sum up and emphasize the importance of the content “takeaway”.

All of Virginia Kearney’s “reasons” for summarizing an article apply here, with the closing: statement serving to reinforce your stance (either pro or con an argument), and to enhance readers’ understanding of the material.

Over the years, I’ve often referred to the opening line in blog content writing as “the conductor’s downbeat”. Using that analogy of a musical performance, while the blog post itself may take the function of a a “Bottom Line” or “Idea in Brief” insert, the closing line of each blog post itself represents the final “Ta-dah!” notes of your “symphony”.

To achieve maximum impact, carefully craft the bottom line of each blog post.

 

 

 

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