Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

If ever you’re tempted to become cavalier about the quality of your blog writing, just remember – it’s up to us professional content writers to counterbalance stuff such as this:

“So here’s an contra-growing old additionally anti-itchiness do-it-yourself solution which causes your body robust and as well as minimizes our itchies in icy temperatures, waterless local weather, ensure that it is a component of an article rewrites Christian louboutin men shoes craigs list program for sprouting younger and you wont amount to an prepare such as calf.”

(Can that be for real? Unfortunately, yes.  And a lot more like it is crowding our business blogging air space, too.)

As a corporate blogging trainer in Indianapolis, my favorite recommendation to business owners and to the freelance blog content writers they hire to help bring their message to their customers is something I learned from my sixth grade English teacher: “Autograph your work with excellence.”:

I confess that when I began to come across incomprehensible online content, my first “take” was that it must have been created by non-native speakers of the English language. Business owners or professional practitioners had needed content writing help, I concluded, and had chosen to outsource the work overseas to save on costs.

When I learned about “spinned content”, I realized that the “gibberish” effect in some of the incomprehensible text I was finding could well be the work of a computer program, not of some overseas content writer. (Spinned content is reproduced by replacing words with synonyms, for the purpose of re-using content and repeating keyword phrases many times with an eye to “winning search”.)

I can recall the time that, as a new member of the National Speakers Association, I was first introduced to the phrase, “the privilege of the platform”. Along with the privilege of addressing an audience, taking people’s time and attention, I was being taught, comes the duty to offer quality material and to present it in a quality manner.

Today, decades later, I realize that there’s a privilege to blogging, too.  That privilege comes with a duty we freelance blog content writers have to offer usable, high-quality, well-researched content, presented in quality fashion.  Our online readers have a right to expect no less.
 

From friends Julie and Kim, owners of Outside the Box Papers, I learned an interesting tidbit about a Victorian paper toy. The description of the thaumatrope reminded me of the way individual blog posts work together, over time, to convey content marketing “leitmotifs”, or themes, to online readers.

A thaumatrope consisted of a card with a picture on each side. The card was attached to two pieces of string.  Twirling the string made the two pictures appear to combine into a single image.

One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that focus is what helps blog posts stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website. What helps the separate posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy are the blog "leitmotifs". 

In German, the word leitmotif means "leading theme".  In music, the leitmotif is used when the composer wants listenes to recall a certain character, place, or concept, Chloe Rhodes explains in the book A Certain "Je Ne Sais Quoi.

At Say It for You, when our Indiana freelance blog content writers are sitting down with business owners or professional practitioners who are preparing to launch a blog, one important step in that launch is to select 1-5 recurring themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts. The themes may be reflected in the keyword phrases they use to help with search engine optimization.  But, more than that, themes are broader in scope than just key words.

• Letimotifs reflect the core beliefs of the owners, the reason they got into their fields in the first place.
   
• Leitmotifs reflect owners’ unique slant within their industry or profession.
   
• Leitmotifs are “dominant colors” that tie together different product descriptions, different sets of statistics, and different processes used to deliver a service to clients.
   
• Leitmotifs unite different testimonials from customers and clients.

In content marketing, each blog post is like one side of a thaumatrope.  Looked at in isolation, each side of the card presents one picture.  As blog content writing continues over weeks, months, and years, there will be a cumulative effect. Those many separate blog posts, ”tied together” through letimotifs, will create a beautiful, “Who-We-Are” picture!