Ways to Feed the Blog Content “Monster”

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“There are two ways to “feed the content monster”, Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick suggest in their book The Art of Social Media:
  1. Content creation
  2. Content curation (finding other people’s good stuff, summarizing it and showing it)
However you’re finding – or ”birthing” your content, the authors tell us, there are dictates to follow:

Be valuable. (What happened? What does it mean? How can readers do that?)
One way to talk “value”, we teach at Say It For You, is to translate a benefit that a product or service has that isn’t typically expressed in dollar terms.

Be interesting. (Don’t assume your followers want to read about only a narrow band of subjects.)
Blog content writing is the perfect vehicle for conveying a corporate message using a a seemingly unrelated piece of trivia.

Be bold. (Express your feelings and agenda.)
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.
Be brief. (People make snap judgments and move along if you don’t capture interest quickly.)
While blogs should be “small” (readers should not need to scroll down to read “the rest of the story”), the way to make blogs exciting is to find the “bigger idea”.  
Be visual. (Every post should contain “eye candy”.)
Engaging blog posts need to contain visuals, whether they’re in the form of “clip art”, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos, to add interest and evoke emotion.

Be organized. (Structure information in chunks.)
Chunking is one way business bloggers can offering technical information in “chewable tablet form”, because it refers to the strategy of breaking down information into bite-sized pieces so the brain can more easily digest it.

Be a Mensch. (Make positive and intelligent comments, suggest resources.)
Providing external links from your blog post to a news source or magazine article or to someone else’s blog post on your subject shows you’re staying in touch with others in your industry and that you’re confident you have special value to offer within a competitive environment.
Feeding the content “monster” over weeks, months, and years is certainly a challenge. Luckily, as Shakespeare pointed out many moons ago, “There are “more ways on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in philosophy” Could the Bard have been foreseeing the art of social media?
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Too Humorous or Too Informal – Some People May Mind

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Sometimes in business email, Tony Rossiter advises in “Effective Business Writing”, a degree of informality and humor may be appropriate, but this should not be overdone. If you are too formal, the author observes, most people won’t mind. If you are too informal, on the other hand, some people may, in fact, mind.

What about humor in business blog content writing? Everyone likes to be entertained, Joshua Nite admits in toprankblog.com, but our content needs to serve a business purpose. There are ways humor can be valuable in blogs, Nite suggests, including showing you understand your audience and teaching lessons.

A conversational tone in your blog has the effect of making you seem approachable, Ali Luke writes in Problgger.com. Some hallmarks of that tone include

  • contractions such as “you’ll”
  • active voice
  • chatty phrases
  • short sentences and paragraphs
  • starting some sentences with “and”

    I often explain to clients and to newbie writers that that blogs (compared to, say, brochures, white papers, and newsletters) are casual and conversational. Humor, on the other hand, is a riskier proposition, and it’s best to focus it on your own weaknesses (that you’ve overcome) and on problems your company or practice can solve.

    Also, being personal in blog writing doesn’t necessarily mean being offensively over-casual, we teach at Say It For You. For us blog content writers, getting the tone exactly right for a new client is the big challenge. Then, as the blog writing continues over weeks, months, and eventually years, consistency is important.

    When it comes to blog content writing, I believe, there’s a very special purpose to be served by using first person pronouns and keeping it conversational in tone – even for very serious topics.  The blog is the place for readers to connect with the people behind the business or practice. Using first and second person pronouns helps keep the blog conversational rather than either academic-sounding or “sales-ey”.

    Tony Rossiter has it right, I have to conclude – when it comes to informality and especially humor – it’s best not to overdo.

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Never Use 2 Words Where 1 Will Do

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“However good a sentence is, you can often find a word or two, or a phrase, that can be deleted without any loss of meaning,” Tony Rossiter advises in “Effective Business Writing”. There are two specific ways to avoid this sort of duplication, he adds:

Dump qualifiers.
Qualifying adjectives and adverbs (like the first in each of these two-word expressions) should be dumped:

  • important essentials
  • past history
  • quite impossible
  • advance warning
  • usual habit
  • future prospects

Insert full stops.
By way of making content easier to read, use short sentences without extra subordinate clauses, Rossiter continues. In this case the arithmetic is reversed – better to use two direct, easy to understand, sentences rather than one that is overly complex and difficult to follow.

“Don’t get lost in long sentences,” warns business writing expert Lynn Gaertner-Johnston. “In business writing, readers want a short, clear path to understanding.” In place of the long sentence “I hope you will be able to attend, and if you need more information, please call or email me, and I will be glad to help you”, Gaertner-Johnston suggests using three short sentences. Don’t forget to “take a breath,” she advises bloggers, and give your reader one, too.

For any document to be easily understood, the writing style has to be clear, simple, and direct, we teach at Say It For You. Lyricist Sean Hartley says the same thing about song lyrics – they need to be original, yet succinct in a way that appears effortless. For blog content writers, simplicity involves sticking to the point, using largely familiar word combinations and sentence structure.

Ironically, Tony Rossiter ignores his own advice, summing up the matter of effective sentence writing by using a qualifier – Don’t write in impenetrable gobbledygook!

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Turning Annoyance Into Advantage in Business Blog Writing

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Earlier this week, my Say It For You blog focused on how-not-to tips when it comes to annoying blog readers. While as Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman point out in National Geographic, few scientists have explained the mild anger we call annoyance, we content writers know annoyance is not the reaction we’re seeking from our readers.

That very annoyance, though, can be turned to our advantage in business blog content writing. One way to form a bond with customers is by commiserating about their daily pain, identifying something that customers hate, empathizing with readers’ unhappy plight, and then offering solutions.

To be sure, our content itself has the potential of rubbing readers the wrong way. People generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they came to a website seeking information on a particular subject. That’s because part of us resents being told that something we’d taken for granted is in fact a lie. Empathizing with prospects’ annoyance without putting them “in the wrong” is the sweet spot for which writers need to aim.

Searchers on the web may be frustrated by poor results they’ve experienced in the past or by a series of searches which turned out to be non-productive for them. Still they may not be ready to make a commitment.  If, in your business blog, you can convey the idea that there are different levels of involvement possible, and that “ultimate decisions” need not be made the moment a potential client or customer “steps into” your website, visitors can overcome any initial annoyance.

For a salesperson, an objection from a prospect means there is enough interest to engage with you (and share their annoyance), says Steli Efti in blog.close.com, meanwhile giving you the opportunity to demonstrate that you understand their concerns.

Certainly, on the content creation end, we’re aiming for annoyance minimization. On the other hand, readers’ frustration, dissatisfaction, and annoyance is precisely what drives them to seek the very solutions our blogging clients stand ready to provide.

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Look-Ahead Words of Wisdom for Blog Content Writers – Part B

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This week, with an eye to the year to come, I’m sharing more words of wisdom from ”my bookshelves”, along with the links to the authors and book descriptions…

Sketch out an outline of events leading to a typical client needing you.
Choose a client from a typical demographic you serve, suggests Paul Smith in The Ten Stories Great Leaders Tell. Your sales story, Smith explains, relates what you did for one of your customers that is so impressive, other people will want to buy what you’re selling as well.

Build a blog post or two around a customer success story. Say you’re a realtor, and today you’re blogging about how important “curb appeal” can be when you’re marketing a client’s home to potential buyers. Rather than just offering advice, you can tell the story of how you guided Sam and Susie towards a successful sale by encouraging them to plant colorful flowers and painting their front door an attractive red. As a final touch for your blog, you can link back to the full version of Sam and Susie’s testimonial which is already part of your website. Customer success stories boost your credibility with new prospects, helping them decide to do business with you.

Our core values are… We pride ourselves on… We commit to… We encourage and reward…
The right phrases have the power to engage and develop employees, Laura Poole explains in Perfect Phrases for Coaching Employee Performance. Language has the power to establish personal connections, develop and reinforce strengths, provide constructive feedback, and encourage commitment to the company’s goals.

The best website content and the best blogs give readers insight into a company’s core beliefs in addition to information about products and services that company offers, I teach at Say it For You. Just as it’s important to tell readers what you have, what you know, and what you know how to do, it’s even more important to explain what you believe. Why have you chose to pursue this field or industry? Why do you choose to do business or conduct your practice in certain ways?

Customers want personalized solutions for their unique needs and preferences.
Driven by tighter budgets and dwindling natural resources, companies are now seeking new ways to appeal to their customers, Navi Radjou, author of Frugal Innovation posits. Products and services can be “co-created”, he says, with empowered consumers and external partners.

Try this highly useful exercise – make a list of ways your business individualizes and personalizes services to customers and clients. Drill down, I’d say to everyone offering blog writing services, to actual cases of clients’ personalized customer service, recalling times when unusual problems got solved, and when standard procedures were put aside to get the job done for that one customer..

By now you should have become a convert to the “reading around” habit. Over the past two weeks we’ve sampled a dozen precious gems that can motivate content writers and infuse blog posts with sparkle and meaning. But these represent just a sampling – blogging gems are all around, just waiting for each of us to add our own unique twist!

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