Business Blog Writing By the Numbers for Both Men and Women

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“To freshen up blog post content, start with one idea about your product or service, then. try putting a number to it” is one piece of blog content writing advice I’ve been sharing with business owners and professional practitioners ever since an O Magazine cover  three years ago drew my attention with the title “100 Things That Are Actually Getting Better.” 

The point of using numbered lists, I explained to blog content writers, is to demonstrate ways in which your product or service is different, and to provide valuable information that engages readers, helping them see you as a go-to guy or gal to solve their problem or fill their need. Truth is, that numbering technique had been a staple for women’s magazine covers for as long as I could remember, and in corporate blogging training sessions, it was easy for newbie bloggers to emulate the technique of using numbers to entice.

14 home remedies

17 room décor tips

 6 knottiest marital problems

 2 discipline problems to fix first…

Just name an issue, I posited –  some women’s magazine editor will be serving it up with a number attached! 
 

Just the other day, though, I found out we women aren’t the only ones onto the numbers game. Browsing the local CVS magazine rack (As a professional “ghost blogger”, I’m constantly on the hunt for content idea triggers), I focused this time on the MEN'S magazine section.  To my surprise, I found no fewer than seven magazine covers sporting list-based titles:

Robb Report:  50 Great Escapes

Men’s Health: 15 Foods That Fight Fat

Muscle Mag:    5 Reasons Your Arms Stopped Growing

Men’s Journal:  Eight New Discoveries

Golf Magazine: 6 Longest new Drivers

Sporting News: 300 Top Prospects

GQ: The 100 Sexiest Women of the 21st Century

“64% of sophisticated blog readers believe that using a number in a post title is so pathetically obvious that it couldn’t possibly still work,” says Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communication. Fact is, Simone explains, posts with numbers consistently bring in more traffic and more referrals than posts without.

Do you really need any more statistics than those to try business blog writing by the numbers?
 

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Business Bloggers Can Take a Lesson From Seventh Grade Teachers

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The teachers’ guidebook THINK LITERACY: Cross-Curricular Approaches suggests that 7th and 8th grader should be taught to look for “signal words” to get information about the meaning of the text.  Signal words give valuable clues about:

  • Time
  • Location
  • Sequence
  • Importance
  • Comparison
  • Contrast


Although the majority of readers of SEO marketing blogs don’t tend to be junior high students, as a corporate blogging trainer, I realized that online readers need “signposts” to help them get the most meaning out of our business blog content.

Based on my own experience as both a teacher and then with Say It For You blogging clients from many different industries and professions, I find it’s a challenge to find the precise style of communication that will best connect with target readers. (While this is especially true in business-to-consumer blogging, even with suppliers and distributors, you want to avoid anything that is a barrier to understanding.) “Huh?” is hardly the reaction blog content writers aim to elicit in readers,

“Signal graphics” such as bolding and bullet points in the text can be a big help, but signal words help readers following along with your message. Words such as

  • before
  • after
  • during
  • next
  • during
  • in addition


    help readers link ideas together and understand the flow of ideas.

If you think about it, business owners and professional practitioners are taking the role of teachers in their blogging, and the point I want to stress to content writers in Indianapolis is simply this: The clearer the words in the title are to the searcher, the easier it will be for them to engage, navigate, and transact.
 

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Ingenious Internal Re-Purposing Tactic for Business Blog Content Writing

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Continually creating new content can pose quite a challenge for busy business owners and professionals. Even Say It For You clients who’ve invested valuable resources to have us help with their content creation need assurance that the result won’t be a use-one-time-and-discard product. That’s precisely where re-purposing comes into play.

Make no mistake – all business and practices are generating content and doing it all the time. Letters? Content.  Email to customers and suppliers (and from customers and suppliers? Content.  Brochures and flyers? Content. Instructions for product use? Content.  Power Point presentations and DVD/s? Content.  Radio and TV advertising copy? Content.  You get the idea…

All that content can be re-purposed into blog posts. And, even more important for our discussion today) – all those blog posts from months and years ago (all still residing on the Internet) can be repurposed into emails, ads, letters, and videos.

One way to re-purpose is to create “best-of-breed” resource lists. In former blog posts, newsletters, or even emails, you may have “curated” material from other people’s blogs and articles, from magazine content, or from books. Now collate those references into categories, summarizing the main ideas you found useful and inviting readers to explore further. Sure, your readers could do a Google search on their own, but you’ve already played “reviewer” and are offering a hand-picked list – how convenient is that?

Best-of-breed lists can be grouped by categories (books, blogs, magazines, websites), or by topics.  The idea is to for your blog to become the “go-to” place that tells readers where to “go to” when they want more complete information on any topic you’ve discussed.

Over the past five years in this Say It For You blog, for example, I’ve quoted from many books about writing:

As a blog content repurposing tool, best-of-breed lists can certainly be best-of-breed blogging tactics!

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Should We Say Goodbye to the Old Blogging?

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"Say goodbye to the old IT," I was told in the Data Center News Digest. (No techie I, I nevertheless follow my own advice by "reading around" in fields related to blog content writing.)

Data Center was explaining that information technology has not only gotten faster and better, it's gone from being the underpinning for business operations to be a driver of business success.

That article got me wondering whether blog writing for business isn't going through a similar metamorphosis.  Yes, online content creation involves being at the ready with information on topics typed into search bars.  But now, I believe, it will be important to explain to business owners, professionals, and freelance blog writers that blogs now need to go beyond being information "underpinnings" to being thought "drivers".

 

 

What forms will the New Blogging take?

  • Blogs will have a strong, "opinionated" voice: Whether it's business-to-business blog writing or business-to-consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.  In other words, blog posts will go far beyond Wikipedia-page-information-dispensing to offering the business owner's (or the professional's, or the organization execuritve's) unique perspective on issues related top the search topic.
     
  • Blogs will survey alternative views related to their topics: 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".  New Blogging will consider controversy a tool for thought leadership.

It's still going to be true that, if readers have arrived at your business blog, it's because they already have an interest in your topic – they've already "drunk the Kool-Aid" and are ready to receive the information, the services, and the products you have to offer.  And, it's still going to be up to you to assure those visitors, through the words and pictures in your business blog content, that they've been steered to the appropriate site.

The style of blog writing won't change – blogs will still be best served up in an informal and personal tone, focused on just one aspect of a business, product, or practice.  But, as online readers become more sophisticated, used to vast quantities of information being available to them on every topic imaginable, they are starting to need more from us.  That "more", I imagine, will be measured not in quantity, but in depth!

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OPW on Writing Best Business Blog Openers

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How better to wind up the week of Say it For You blog posts devoted to crafting opening lines than by serving up some OPW (Other People’s Wisdom) on the subject?

“Don’t even waste your time. No matter how good your blog posts are, if the intro doesn’t grab attention, it’s no use,” Tara Horner pronounces. After all, she notes, the opening line is the first thing readers see other than your title, and what’s the point, she asks, of tweeting a post if no one gets past reading the first sentence or two?

Like Horner, both Darren Rowse of Problogger and Hector Cuevas (blog.2createawebsite.com) suggest starting with a question as one way to engage readers.

  • Did you know….?
  • How do you….?
  • What’s one of the most common problems that…..?
  • Do you want to learn how to…?
  • Have you ever…?
  • Do you ever wonder if…?


A twist on the question strategy whick Rowse mentions, a tactic I’ve made use of on behalf of professional practitioners who are Say It For You clients, is answering readers’ questions.

Jeanine asked Atlanta chiropractor about what high back pain meant versus pain in the lower part of the back…

What Cuevas calls the “shock and awe approach” to business blog content writing involves starting posts by ”disagreeing with what is commonly accepted as the norm”. This, he suggests, “builds an instant sense of curiosity and brings up questions that your readers need answered.” The caution, he adds, is that your content needs to clearly explain your point of view.

As a corporate blogging trainer, the caution I’d add is that, while In many SEO marketing blogs the blog content writers focus on appealing to consumers’ fears, if the goal is to appeal to the “right kind” of customer (who buys for the right reasons and remains loyal), blogging for business should be targeted towards readers’ logic, with an eye to fulfilling those readers’ legitimate needs.

Opening with a quote is a technique recommended by all three bloggers. Quotes, as I explain to Indianapolis bloggers, can be used to reinforce your points, show you’re in touch with trends in your field, and (precisely what I’m doing in this very post), add value for readers by aggregating different sources of information in one spot.

In writing for business, suggests Tara Hornor, the goal is to have your opening statement “leap off the page” and “turn heads”.

The challenge, as every busy business owner, professional practitioner knows, is that sustained “feeding of the blog beast” can be daunting. Hopefully, a shot of Other People’s Wisdom every so often can help rejuvenate that blog content writing drive!
 

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