The Long and Short of Blog Sentences

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“This is one of the most helpful pieces of social media I’ve seen. It’s not a meme. It’s a grammar lesson”, Jeremy Ross Miller commented on a LinkedIn post by David Plough, advising writers to “make music” by using a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Readers’ ears demand variety Plough explains. Short and medium sentences should be used with the greatest frequency. Only sometimes, when he is certain the reader is rested, will Plough engage him with a sentence of considerable length, one that “burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, sounds that say listen to this, it is important”.

Like Miller, I appreciated this gorgeously written “music lesson”, particularly the advice about long and short sentences. In the blog content writing world, of course, the long/short debate is never-ending.

Opinions about long and short in blogging

Jasmine Gorden of Lean Labs cites just a handful:

  • Medium – The ideal length of a blog post is seven minutes or 1,600 words.
  • SERPIQ – Top three Google results are between 2,350 and 2,500 words.
  • Neil Patel – Posts of at least 1,500 words earn the best SEO and social sharing results.
  • Write Practice – posts of 275 words are best for eliciting comments.

At Say It For You, we consider ourselves “done” composing a particular post if:

  1. we’ve covered at least one aspect of the topic in depth
  2. we’ve offered more value than the competition
  3. we’ve incorporated high-quality visuals
  4. we’ve verified our research and facts

Does length matter in business blog post titles?
The most effective length for any one blog post title is as long as it takes to signal to online searchers that “right here” is where they will get answers. I teach the importance of keeping a very specific focus within each post. Describing that focus dictates the title’s length.

Length and brevity – both tools in blog post sentences
As a general rule, we bloggers need to keep our sentences not only short, but active. Sentences in the active voice have energy and directness. Blog content writing needs to be personal and conversational, not terse. Don’t just be short; be sweet, is the mantra at Say It For You.

Mr. Plough, your LinkedIn post was an inspiration. In just a few short paragraphs, you definitely made sounds that said “Listen to this, it is important”.

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Can the IKEA Principle Work in Blog Marketing?

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“One of the most popular business cases I’ve ever written about,” says Youngme Moon, author of Different – Escaping the Competitive Herd, is IKEA North America. One of the most popular consumer brands in the world, IKEA, Moon explains, has built its reputation around a set of negatives, service elements it has deliberately chosen to withhold from its customers. Rather than trying to offer more features and benefits than its competitors, IKEA offers what Moon calls “a reverse brand”, with:

  •  minimal variety (the furniture comes in only four basic styles)
  • very little shopping assistance
  • no delivery
  • no assembly
  • no promise of durability

Moon’s theses is that a reverse-positioned firm refuses to get on the augmentation treadmill, constantly trying to offer more than other companies, when customers don’t necessarily care about all those bells and whistles. A reverse brand offers something less, but focuses on those things their target buyers care most about.

At Say It For You, we know that the blog for any business or professional practice needs to be targeted towards the specific type of customers they want and towards those most likely to want to do business with them. Everything about the blog should be tailor-made for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry – all of it.

In any field, there will always be controversy – about best business practices, about the best approach to providing professional services, about acceptable levels of risk, even about business-related ethical choices. Rather than ignoring the controversy, bloggers need to comment on the different views and “weigh in” with their own.

Helping online readers know the difference between you and your competitors is certainly a core function of blog content writing. Exactly what factors distinguish your products and services from everyone else’s? But, even more important, what features and benefits have you chosen to de-emphasize or eliminate entirely and why?

For example, at Say It For You, we pointedly do not offer Search Engine Optimization analyses, instead taking guidance from our clients’ webmasters or SEO consultants. We do not offer video services opting to focus on the “word-smithing” piece of the content marketing challenge.

The Harvard Business Review has this to say about Youngme’s book: “it will inspire you to rethink your business strategy, to stop conforming and start deviating.” Could the IKEA strategy work for your blog marketing?

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Tidbits, Not Tag Lines, Work Best in Blog Marketing

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In content writing, word tidbits and tag lines are both designed to help readers remember something– a concept, a company, a product, a service. Just the other day, when I came across examples of both, I realized just how important the difference is between a tagline and a word tidbit when it comes to blogging for business…..

“We wanna see-‘ya in a Kia” – is a tag line. It’s catchy, it’s memorable – it’s advertising. Thing is, that tagline tells me nothing about the car, about the company, about any one dealership or salesperson, nothing about the experience I would have if I chose to purchase and drive a Kia.

Contrast that with a word tidbit I caught last week in a local news bulletin about the fact that Edwards Drive-In restaurant is closing after more than sixty years in business, but that their food truck business will be continuing. “We’re selling the store, not the soul”. So much more than a tag line, this word tidbit captures the sense of “we” (the owners of the store) and how much the owners care about continuing their decades-long relationship with customers.

Fully fourteen years ago, with Say It For You in its n infancy, I’d mentioned a word tidbit found in Daniel Gardners’ book The Science of Fear. “We report the rare routinely, and the routine rarely,” he said. That powerful combination of everyday words unified concepts I already knew, but which I hadn’t synthesized into any true understanding about the media.

Just about a year later, I blogged about another “grabber” tidbit from a review of Maxine’s Chicken & Waffles restaurant: “And, wow, those wings…the breading was crispy and well-seasoned without overpowering the tender meat.” (Here’s the tidbit: “Maxine’s wings are nothing like the fast-food varieties that are more batter than bird”.

That word tidbit made me think about business blogging: Searchers arrive at your blog seeking information about what you do, what you sell, and what you know. The “batter” might be the way the blog site is laid out, the pictures and illustrations, and even cleverness in the writing. But, when it comes right down to it, the “meat” is the well-researched information, and the links you provide readers to sources they might not have thought to research themselves.

What a blog should aim to do is capture concepts relating to your business, putting words together is a new way, sharing an “aha!” experience with your readers that helps them know the subject better, but also helps them get to know you a little better.

Taglines may help them remember it, but word tidbits force them to think about it!

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Making Heroes in Your Blog

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“Say ‘thank you’ often. Make heroes and heroines of employees who glorify your company’s values, “Jackie and Kevin Freiberg write in Nuts!:Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success. At Southwest Airlines, saying “thank you” is not just good manners; it’s essential to creating an organization filled with vitality.

At Say it For You, we encourage our blogging clients to use their blog as an employee recognition tool. Highlighting employee accomplishments in a blog brings a two-way benefit: When readers learn about an employee’s enthusiasm and how that person put in extra time and effort in serving customers, that tends to cement the customer’s relationship with the company or practice. As featured employees proudly share those write-ups with friends and family, the blog becomes a gift that keeps on giving.

Do you have a team member who should be praised by you to your readers?

… for finding unexpected resources?
…for finding new and better ways to do things?
…for thinking beyond the basics?
…for leading and advising with empathy?

As a business owner or practitioner, you may find that blogging helps you realize your own “heroism”. After all, when you create content for your blog, you’re verbalizing the positive aspects of your business or practice in a way that people can understand. As you put your recent accomplishments down in words, you’re reviewing the benefits of your products and services, keeping them fresh in your mind. In other words, in the process of blogging, you are constantly providing yourself with training about how to talk effectively about your business!

As blog content writers, our Say It for You team is providing content writing, which seems like a contradiction to the idea of the readers meeting the actual team of employees who are providing the product or service. But even though the owner is not doing the writing, employees themselves can provide anecdotes and information, and different blog posts can feature different employees and owners.

Through blog marketing, business owners and professional practitioners have the power to make heroes – and be heroes as well! 

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Placement Smarts for Stores and Blogs

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Blog marketing and placement of goods in a grocery store have a lot in common, it seems.

Consumer psychologists have found that shoppers need a little time to get into the shopping mindset. That’s why you’ll often find magazines, books, and flowers near the front of the stores, to get shoppers into a more relaxed frame of mind, authors of The Big Book of Secrets explain. Then, since frequent customers who buy the same staples each week might ignore other items, stock is rotated frequently to lure shoppers to consider new items. Placement on shelves is super-important, because study after study has shown that items put at eye level are most frequently purchased. For that reason, smart merchandising involves placing the most expensive items on eye level shelves; suppliers may be charged extra for placing their goods at eye level,

Welcoming readers to the store or the blog
Just as shoppers arrive at the grocery store because they are interested in finding certain goods, online readers will have landed on your blog because they are interested in finding information on your topic and possibly making a purchase. Unlike the grocery shoppers described in the Big Book of Secrets (who know they’re in the right place, just need to be put into a more relaxed frame of mind), online searchers need immediate confirmation that they’ve come to the right place. To that end, according to blog mavens Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos, key words and phrases should be among the first words in your blog title and then reappear in your first lines of the post.

Staying at eye level
In comparison with putting grocery goods at shoppers’ eye level, eye-tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a page top to bottom and left to right, looking for information that matches what they typed into the search bar.

Putting the thesis and conclusion on the “end caps”
Grocery marketing studies have shown that placing items on end caps (the shelves at the outer end of each aisle), can boost sales by as much as a third. When it comes to blogging for business, I teach at Say It For You, the “end caps” of blog marketing are titles and closing lines. in helping high school and college students write effective essays, I often suggest they introduce their readers to both their topic and their thesis, doing both those things on the “end cap” where they’ll get the most attention. That way, I teach each the student writer, your readers will understand not only what issue will be under discussion, but towards “which side” of the argument you’re trying to steer your readers. In business blog writing, for the opening “end cap”, you may choose to present a question, a problem, a startling statistic, or a gutsy, challenging statement. Later, on the “back end” of your blog “aisle”, your “pow” closing statement ties back to the opener, bringing your post full circle.

Checking out
In a grocery store, even shoppers who leave totally empty-handed must pass by the checkout counters. In blog marketing, the equivalent is an “enticing, well-written Call to Action, as written.com suggests.

Just as if your were managing a grocery store, use your placement smarts in blogging for business!

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