Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

Most business blog posts make claims.  The claims may be understated, exaggerated, or exactly on the money, but still – a claim is a claim. The problem is, often blog visitors don’t know how to "digest" the claims you’ve "served up".  They simply don’t have any basis for comparison, not being as expert as you are in your field.

What I’m getting at is that every claim needs to be put into context, so that it not only is true, but so that it feels true to your online visitors.

As an example, I found a paragraph in a news magazine talking about Subaru.  The piece starts out with a fact: "A report released this week by Subaru of America shows the company sold 23,667 vehicles last month." (As my grandmother used to ask, "So, do I eat this with a fork or a spoon?")  Since I’m not in the car sales business, I had no way of judging how good our how bad 23,667 sales was for Suburu – compared with what?

Fortunately, the report went on to put the number into context in two ways:

23,667 cars sold represents a 35% improvement over the same month last year.
23,667 cars sold is the best May sales total in Suburu company history.

Now I, as the reader, can begin to relate to the number 23,667, because it has a background context. 

As a professional ghost blogger and blogging trainer, though, I know there’s more to do with claims.  After the claim has been given background "color", readers must be shown how that claim has the potential to help them with their problem or need! (It’s the old sales maxim about how customers don’t care about the features and benefits of a product or service until and unless they know how much you care – about them!

There are something like ten million blog posts out there making claims of one sort or another as you’re reading this one. Based on my own experience as an online reader, I’d venture to say fewer than 10% of them put their claims in context, and only the very top few manage to convey to their blog visitors what the claims can mean for them!
http://blog.gravymasters.com/blog/ghost-blogger/0/0/station-wiifm-blogging

Add some winning background color to the claims in your blog posts!

 

These days, when company owners express doubt about their ability to keep generating new content for their corporate blog posts, I talk to them about leitmotifs and about Steve Jobs.

According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late CEO of Apple Computer, Jobs owned some one hundred Issey Miyaki black turtlenecks. Jobs, by all accounts, liked the idea of having a “uniform”, not only for convenience’s sake, but because of its ability to convey a signature style.

In corporate blogging training sessions, I teach that effective blog posts are centered around key themes, just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony.  As you continue to write about your industry, your products, and your services, you’ll naturally find yourself repeating some key ideas – in fact, that’s exactly what professionals offering business blogging assistance will say you should  be doing to keep your blogs focused and targeted.

In writing for business, as blog content writers soon learn, the variety comes from the e.g.’s and the i.e’s, meaning all the details you fill in around these central leitmotifs. 

Indianapolis blog writers might use different examples of ways the company’s products can be helpful, or examples of how the company helped solved various problems.  It’s these stories and examples that lend variety to the blog, even though all the anecdotes reinforce the same few core ideas.

Like the Jobs turtlenecks, freelance blog writers will find, leitmotifs in blogs help develop a company’s signature style, which is part of any company’s branding. Focus (just as in building an entire wardrobe around one type of garment) helps corporate blog posts stay smaller, lighter in scale, and more flexible than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website.

You might say leitmotifs are the turtlenecks of corporate blog writing!