Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

“A good title makes all the difference in the world,” says Nolan Wilson of benchmarkemail.com. Included in Wilson’s list of tips for writing engaging blog post titles, (along with including keywords, being short and to the point, and using power words), is the warning to “Deliver on your promise in the body of the post.”

Friend and fellow blogger Michael Reynolds found out that sometimes speakers need to ‘course correct” when the talk fails to match up with the promise in the title. Well, as every freelance blog writer needs to remember, it’s the blog title that sets the online reader’s expectations, and that title needs to be in sync with the content to follow.

The temptation, of course, in selecting a title, whether that’s for a book or a business blog post, is to go for the “catchiest”-sounding word combination rather than the most descriptive. I was thinking about that dilemma the other day while leafing through Knopf Doubleday’s 2014 First Year Common Reading Catalogue.

I divide blog post titles into two types, “Huh?s” and “Oh!s”. The “Huh?s” are the attention-getters, but they need the “Oh!s” as subtitles to make clear what the post is actually going to be talking about.

The Knopf Doubleday catalogue list was chock-full of “Huh?”/”Oh!” combination titles:

Half the Sky:
Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Lean In:
Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Zoobiquity:
The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health

Down the Up Escalator:
How the 99% Live

The title I chose for today’s Say It For You blog post is obviously a simple “Oh!”.  With this kind of title, I instruct freelance blog writers to be sure and insert the names of products or services (in my case business blog posts). An “Oh!” title is intended as a direct appeal to searchers already interested in what you have to sell or what you know how to do.

I might have gone the other direction, calling the post “Double Whammy” or “Double Down”. Both “Huh?s” and “Oh!’s” can have a place in business blog post titles, I believe. ((I invite readers’ comments on the choice I made this time.)

 

“What makes No. 2 pencils so darn special?” ask the editors of Mental Floss: the Book, noting that “The No.2 is definitely No. 1 in the pencil market.

Answering the question of what makes ANY one product or service, ANY one business or professional practice special – well, that’s the job description for any freelance content writer of business blogs. In the case of the No. 2 pencil, the Mental Floss editors patiently explain, the medium weight graphite makes No. 2’s ideal for general writing.  (Harder pencils are used for drafting, softer for bowling scores).

As writers and researchers, we business bloggers are using own strengths to play to – and play up – the unique strengths of the business owner and professional clients who’ve hired us to give voice to their story. Make no mistake – it’s a challenge to stress “specialness” without engages in two practices Indianapolis Business Journal’s Tim Altom calls PowerPoint “sins’: Too much, and Too Self Conscious.

As fizzle.co so aptly puts it, nothing is a bigger turn-off than a blatant sales pitch. Yet, if you have a business, Corbett Barr points out, you have to sell products or services to earn revenue. But the best sales pitch, he says, is no pitch at all.  In fact, Barr explains, that’s what permission marketing (and blog content writing is a big component of permission marketing, along with search marketing and social media) is all about.

When you’re blogging, you’re talking to a friendly and interested audience about things that might help them (as opposed to forcing your message in front of people who are trying to avoid it, Barr continues. Let the useful and interesting information you offer to readers of your blog bring out the specialness of the product or service.

Did you know, Nicolas-Jacques Conte created the number system for pencils back in the eighteenth century?