Business Blog Tidbits Far From Useless

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love and togetherness
So, why do I find seeming “useless” tidbits of information so very useful when it comes to blog content writing? Let me count the ways:

1. Tidbits can be used to describe your way of doing business, to clarify the way one of your products works, or explain why one of the services you provide is particularly effective in solving a problem. It’s interesting when business owners or practitioners present little-known facts about their own business or profession.  In “Keep It Cool,” for example, Mental Floss magazine reviews the history of air conditioning, telling the story of how, when President Garfield was shot and lay dying in the White House, inventors rushed forward with devices they hoped would help, using a contraption to blow air over a box of ice into a series of tin pipes, eventually using a half-million pounds of ice. History tidbits in general engage readers’ curiosity, evoking an “I didn’t know that!” response.

2. One thing I suggest stressing in blog posts is best business practices.  While one goal of any SEO marketing blog is to help your business “get found”, once that’s happened, the goal changes to helping the online readers get comfortable with the way you do business. Mental Floss Magazine highlighted the making of the 1991 movie “The Silence of the Lambs”, in which the serial murderer is obsessed with collecting rare moths.  Animal rights groups might have protested the exploitation of harmless insects just to make a film, but, thanks to animal wrangler Raymond Mendez, the 300 tomato hornworm moths traveled first class, were kept in a room with special heat and humidity settings, outfitted with tiny harnesses during high speed stunts. Blog content writing is the perfect vehicle for conveying a corporate message like this one, starting with a piece of trivia, presented to make a point.

3. Common myths surround every business and profession.  If you notice a “factoid” circulating about your industry, a common misunderstanding by the public about the way things really work in your field, you can use a little-known tidbit of information that reveals the truth behind the myth. In Mental Floss Magazine, I found a cute myth-debunking article about the “Eskimo kiss”. Popular wisdom claims that Eskimos rub noses (because kissing on the lips would cause their mouths to freeze together). The myth started in Hollywood when the director of the 1922 movie “Nanook of the North” saw Eskimo women giving their babies “kuniks”, pressing their noses against their babies’ cheeks and breathing in their scent. Truth be told, Eskimos kiss on the lips just like everyone else. That Eskimo kiss debunk would be perfect for the blog of a lip balm company, a lipstick manufacturer, or a candy company around Valentine’s Day.

For clarifying and debunking, and to add variety and fun, tidbits of information are far from useless!

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Don’t-Worry-We-Organized-Them-For-You Blogging for Business

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Cleopatra

“Turns out someone left a whole world of ridiculously interesting facts out there. Don’t worry! We organized them for you,” Mental Floss magazine editors assure readers. How? Well in the May-June issue, seemingly diverse pieces of information are organized by tens:

“10 Ways Beauty Gave History a Makeover: covers topics ranging from pharma discoveries based on ancient Egyptians’ eye makeup to Winston Churchill’s meeting with women’s magazine editors to frame the wartime rationing of textiles as the new stylish and patriotic fashion in dress; “10 Services You Never Knew You Needed” discusses gift certificates for unusual services, from lawn-mowing goats to grandma rentals.

Using a unifying theme to organize different pieces of information is called chunking. Chunking is, in fact, a good way for business bloggers to offer technical information in easily digestible form.

Just as the Mental Floss editors took separate anecdotes from history, and separate units of product descriptions, relating them to a unifying theme, bloggers can use chunking to show how individual units of information about their industry or business are related, perhaps in ways readers hadn’t considered.

Mental Floss is also using the “list” technique that is so very useful in freshening up blog post content: Starting with one idea about your product or service, put a number to it, such as “2 Best Ways To …,”  “3  Problem Fixes to Try First….”, or “4 Simple Remedies for…”

The point of the “lists”, of course, is to demonstrate ways in which your product or service is different, and to provide valuable information that engages readers and makes the information easy to grasp and retain.

In every business or profession, there’s no end, it seems, to the technical information available to consumers on the Internet. It falls to us business blog content writers, though, to break all that information down into chewable tablet form, helping readers make sense out of the ocean of information available to them.

Looking for information on a particular topic? Don’t worry, business owners can reassure their blog readers – we organized it for you!

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Business Blogging More Than a Matter of Facts

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facts“While most organizations believe they must safeguard all data and treat it as an invaluable corporate asset, the truth is that data has no intrinsic value. Data isn’t an asset at all; the real value lies in the information behind the data,” writes Pedro Cardoso of Enterprise Apps Today.

Instead of focusing on “managing data”, Cardoso concludes, it important to look at what types of information will be game changers for the business and your customers. When you start leading with solutions that focus on delivering business value, something magical happens, he says. What any business wants is “a lineup of anxious customers who want some of ‘what that other customer is having’”.

Typically, websites are used to provide data – what products and services the company offers and in what “packages”, who the players are, in what geographical area the company operates, and (on the better sites), data pertaining to the owners and the history of the company. All this is valuable stuff from a searcher’s standpoint, to be sure.  The real value, though, just as Cardoso expresses, is in the information behind the data, which is the stuff that makes any enterprise stand out from its peers.

One excellent technique for departing from the facts, yet staying on topic is storytelling. When you get right down to, the information behind the data is best absorbed through emotion rather than through logic. One Oscar-winning producer liked to put it this say: “Hits are made in the heart, not the head.”

To harness the power of that emotional appeal and direct it towards the marketing strategy of a business or practice, there’s no better way to tell series of stories than the blog. The stories actually serve as calls to action for readers.

Business blogging is more than a matter of facts!

 

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Effective Blog Writers Establish Structure

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glass and steel structure

 

“Now that you’ve created meaningful messages,” Nancy Duarte cautions professional speakers in Resonate, “they must be arranged in order to have impact. It’s unwise to merely dump a pile of unstructured information onto the laps of your audience.” That’s advice business blog content writers need to keep in mind as well, I couldn’t help thinking.

While our first instinct might be to follow a linear structure, that’s not the most effective way to present ideas in every situation, Duarte explains. To help your audience “see the overarching structure, move out of the linear format and ‘cluster’ content,” she advises.

Duarte, of course, is addressing presenters about offering spoken material to a live audience, using Power Point slides. Blog writers, though, can adapt the technique of varying organizational structures by:

  • spreading a message across a series of blog posts
  • using subtopics with a “read more” format, so readers can select those aspects of a topic most applicable to them

Some of the different ways to structure content – for both speakers and blog writers – include:

  1. Chronological (arranged according to time progression)
  2. Sequential (step-by-step instructions)
  3. Climactic (arranged in order of ascending importance)
  4. Problem/solution
  5. Compare and contrast
  6. Cause and effect
  7. Advantages/disadvantages

A blog itself is a web page made up of short, frequently updated posts that are arranged in reverse chronological order. Complex topics can be broken down into several parts and presented chronologically, sequentially, or climactically. Compare/contrast, cause/effect, advantage/disadvantage structures all help customers and prospects derive the greatest utility out of your information about the products or services you offer.

In creating effective and impactful business blog content, establish structure!

 

 

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A Tale of Two Ad Titles – Part Two

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Yellow sunglasses isolated on white background
The second of two advertisements that appeared in Science News Magazine illustrates a second set of lessons about blog titles and blog content writing in general.

(The first, “It’s Enough to Make You Blue in the Face” was an advertisement for the Stauer Urban Blue® wristwatch.) That ad was overloaded with features, benefits, a testimonial, even a giveaway offer. And, while the title made a “cutesy” use of the color blue of the watch and the expression “blue in the face”, it had no keyword phrases in it that would work for SEO.

The second ad,

“But When Driving, These Sunglasses May Save Your Life”
(advertisement for Eagle Eyes® Navigator sunglasses)

used a very different approach, called “fear marketing”, centering on the dangers of not using the product:

  • “Driving in fall and winter can expose you to the most dangerous glare…do you know how to protect yourself?”
  • “Some ordinary sunglasses can obscure your vision by exposing your eyes to harmful UV rays, blue light, and reflective glare.”

Like the Stauer® Urban Blue wristwatch ad, this ad lists product benefits:

  • “The TriLenium® Lens Technology offers triple-filter polarization to block 99.9% UVA and UVB
  • A 60-day money-back guarantee

And, like the wristwatch ad, this one offers a giveaway – an extra pair of glasses, with two micro-fiber drawstring cleaning pouches.

In place of a customer testimonial, this ad cites the official recognition given its product by the Space Certification Program of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

What are some takeaways for corporate blog writers?

First, while fear is one of the seven emotions that marketing writer Courtney Mills calls key drivers for successful ad copywriting, my view is that scare tactic marketing is not the best approach in blogs. To appeal to a better kind of customer – the kind that buys for the right reasons and then remains loyal, Calls to Action  should appeal to readers’ logic and positive emotional appeal.

The blog title does contain the keyword “sunglasses”, but might be more effective placed at the beginning, “These sunglasses may save your life”.

The connection with research done at NASA makes for interesting “backstory”content that could have been made the focus of the blog post. Alternately, the focus might have been on helpful hints for protecting your eyes.

As I like to remind business owners and professional practitioners, it’s interested people who are showing up at your blog in the first place. Now the task is to help those searchers get to know you and your company. Keep it informative and go easy on the hard sell.

 

 

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