Accentuate the Negative?

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“Eliminate the negative an’ latch on to the affirmative” was Johnny Mercer’s musical advice back in 1945.dog food Playing to one’s strengths has, in fact, been a popular fad in management development circles. As a blog content writer, though, sometimes I wonder.

The latest issue of Modern Dog magazine features eight article titles on its cover:

  • How Not to Train Your Puppy
  • Gift ideas galore
  • Big Dogs and their Puppy Counterparts
  • Winter Survival Tips
  • Great Gear
  • I’m Adoptable
  • Find a New Best Friend
  • Why is My Dog Staring at Me?

Guess which one attracted my attention the most – Yeah, gotta admit… it was the negative one telling me how NOT to train my puppy. And guess what? It’s not just me.  People are drawn to articles with negative titles, my friend and fellow blogger Lorraine Ball pointed out a year ago. Posts with negative titles stand out in a blog roll, on a Twitter feed or LinkedIn page, and the negative posts are more likely to be shared, retweeted and read.

What’s with us? Well, “edgy language draws attention”, Lorraine explains. (Lorraine’s title “Why Your Blog Titles Suck” is a bit too edgy for me, but I get the idea. I do.) Fact is, I would’ve picked “Why is My Dog Staring at Me?” before “How to Train Your Puppy”.  It was that How-NOT-to that drew my attention.

But that doesn’t jibe at all with Rich Brook’s advice on socialmediaexaminer: “The how-to is the most powerful of all the blogging archetpyes.”  Your prospects and customers have a problem and you can help them solve it by creating a step-by-step post that walks them through a solution, he says. That may be true, counters Lorraine Ball, but fear of failure is core to who we are as people, and it’s hard to resist reading material about how to avoid it.

Could it be that accentuating the negative, and only then latching on to the affirmative is the best advice for us business blog content writers?

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Are You Blogging as a SME or a Thought Leader?

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When it comes to blogging for business, positioning ourselves (or our business Lowner/professional practitioner clients) as  Subject Matter Experts is obviously a worthy goal.

We might be able to go one better, though, according to strategist Neen James. Writing in Speaker Magazine, James describes a 90-day action plan for going from expert to thought leader. Is that mere semantics? Not at all; as a leadership expert, James’ focus is on helping her meeting planner, speaker, and coach clients be more influential while getting more done.

A Subject Matter Expert or SME (pronounced “smee”) knows something, explains James. A thought leader, by contrast, is known for something. “The thought leaders know how to package ideas in a way that appeals to a marketplace craving direction or solutions to a problem. Those ideas often shift conventional wisdom,” she goes on to explain.

Now, Neen James is not addressing blog content writers per se, but she could have been. “Audiences are educated and sophisticated, and they are overwhelmed, overstressed, and overtired,” she tells speakers. (She might as well be describing online readers.) In fact, as a corporate blogging trainer, I find every one of the steps James describes relevant for creating good content.

Step #1: Clarify your message: What do you know? What is your message to share with the world?
Step #2: Define your market.  Who values your expertise? Who are the clients you could work with all day?
Step #3: Select your method for delivering your expertise. Will you be a trainer, helping people learn a new skill? Will you be a facilitator, drawing out others’ ideas and opinions? Or will you share your method directly for greater influence and engagement?

As someone involved full time with online content writing, I realized I was being reminded of a really important point as I read James’ article Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to contain opinion and insight, not only information and products. There’s a saying that comes to mind:  “There’s a big difference between having to say something and having something to say.”

Our readers need even more from us than expertise, I’m convinced. Yes, we’re giving them subject matter, but they need help processing that subject matter. They need thought leadership!

 

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Blogging to Tell Them What to Think About

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Thinking manHara Estroff Marano, writing in Psychology Today, says she won’t tell you what to think, but will tell you what to think about.  While in this article the psychologist is offering food for thought in the sphere of dating and self-motivation, I couldn’t help but love that line of hers, realizing how very apropos it is for us business blog content writers.

In fact, this is the very point I often stress in corporate blogging training sessions – whether you’re blogging for a business, for a professional practice, or for a nonprofit organization, you need to voice an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers. In other words, blog posts, to be effective, can’t be just compilations; you can’t just “aggregate” other people’s stuff and make that be your entire blog presence.

On the other hand, if you, as a business owner or professional practitioner, try telling people what to think, that’s a surefire way to lose friends and customers in a hurry. Yes, your blog is your “podium”, meaning you get to showcase your business so customers will want you to be the one to provide them with the product or the service they need. But they need to arrive at that point as a result of their own thinking.  Dr. Marano hit the nail on the head – don’t tell readers what to think; give them all the facts they need to think about.

How can blogs help potential clients and customers make better, sometimes complex, decisions?

  • By suggesting questions readers can ask themselves while choosing among many options. (Do they want ease of use? Current functionality? Future capabilities?)
  • By “mapping”, meaning showing how choices are related to consequences.  How much sooner will your mortgage get paid off if you add $100 each month to your payment. How should the prospect feel about the purchase (Relief? Trust? Premier status?)
  • By offering easy ways to make choices, so that the decisions are not pressure-packed.

You might say the art of blogging consists of supplying facts, and then putting those facts in context.  As bloggers, we’re giving them the raw materials to think about, but we need to go one step further, demonstrating why those facts matter, suggesting ways readers can use the information for their own benefit.

To the woman concerned that the man she’s been dating has been legally separated for the past twenty years, Marano suggests, “Could it be that your online friend values clinging to the comfort of the status quo?”

What are you giving your readers to think about?

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Blogs are Bricks in Decision-Making Architecture

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bFinancial planners don’t slay dragons. Instead, they do battle with biases.

Now retired from my career as a CFP®, I stay interested in behavioral finance, which is using science to move individuals in the direction of better decision-making. In fact, I see my present work as content writer for business blogs as very similar – helping readers gain access to – and process – the information they need to make good buying decisions.

In the latest issue of the Journal for Financial Planning, researchers Dave Yeske and Elissa Buie discuss “decision architecture”, a fascinating concept that goes beyond describing “the cognitive systems that people use for interacting with the world”, to actually helping individuals  support rapid – and intelligent – decision-making in the face of a changing environment.

We humans think both fast and slow, the authors explain.  The automatic system is fast, using shortcuts and relying on information that is easiest to recall. “Slow” decision-making is based on policies and principles that help us make more complex decisions.

So how can blogs, by definition short, personal, and conversational, help potential clients and customers make better, sometimes complex, decisions?

  • By suggesting questions readers can ask themselves while choosing among many options. (Do they want ease of use? Current functionality? Future capabilities?)
  • By “mapping”, meaning showing how choices are related to consequences.  How much sooner will your mortgage get paid off if you add $100 each month to your payment. How should the prospect feel about the purchase (Relief? Trust? Premier status?)
  • By offering easy ways to make choices, so that the decisions are not pressure-packed.

Linda Gorchels at the Wisconsin School of Business reminds us that, while customers don’t like being sold, they do need help in making buying decisions. “Arm them with the necessary tools to convince themselves and others that this is the correct decision.”

Blogs don’t make up an entire marketing structure, but blog posts serve as bricks in the decision-making architecture!

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Hitting the Right Thing With Your Blog Hammer

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“The village blacksmith hired an enthusiastic new apprentice willing to work long, hard hours.  He instructed the boy, ‘When I Forging hot irontake the horseshoe out of the fire, I’ll lay it on the anvil.  When I nod my head, you hit it with the hammer.’ The apprentice did exactly as he was told, and now he’s the new village blacksmith.”

Huh?

According to the Writing Center at The University of North Carolina, “In order to communicate effectively, we need to order our words and ideas on the page in ways that make sense to a reader. The problem, well-defined by WebAIM.org, is that “Writing clearly and simply has never been either clear or simple.”

The blacksmith story is simple enough.  The problem lies in the “it”. Since the word “head” is closer to the “it” than the word “horseshoe”, the apprentice can hardly be blamed for hitting the wrong thing.

To avoid having your business blog posts convey the wrong message, try following a few of WebAim’s common-sense suggestions:

  • Stick to the point
  • Assume your readers are intelligent, but do not assume that they know the subject matter as well as you
  • Write cohesive paragraphs constructed around a single major idea
  • Use familiar words and word combinations
  • Make sure the sentence construction is consistent within itself
  • Avoid multiple negatives
  • Write short sentences

In the blacksmith story, “it” is what is called a referent pronoun, because it refers back to a noun.  The blacksmith intended, of course, to refer back to the noun “horseshoe”. However, because the noun “head” was closer to the referent pronoun, the blacksmith never got the chance for a rewrite.

All well and good for us to laugh at the apprentice in the tale, but the moral of the story is a serious one for blog content writers.  We want online searchers to get the message, not be left scratching their heads (or getting them hit with a hammer)!

 

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