Business Blogging – Royal Pronouns in the Post?

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Mignon Fogarty is “Grammar Girl”, a San Francisco journalist who covers grammar and writing. Fogarty has some interesting things to say about the “wee” word “we”. The pronouns a writer chooses, she explains, set the point of view and the tone of a passage.  That’s especially true when a speaker means “I” but says “we” to make some grandiose statement. Editors do it, because they’re speaking for the leadership of the publication. Royals and politicians use “we” as well, to speak for their entire administration, or perhaps to make their utterances seem more important that they are.

When it comes to freelance blog content writing, I believe, there’s a very special purpose to be served by using the pronoun “we” – greater honesty. What do I mean? Using first and second person pronouns helps keep a the blog conversational rather than either academic-sounding or sales-ey.

Yet “I” is not always in order if you want to be honest about the blog creation. In fact, we (there it is again!) discourage our Say It For You clients from having the “ghost” blogger “pretend” to be the business owner or professional. On the other hand, in writing “we think”, “we believe”, “we see this all the time”, the blog writer makes herself part of the team that has a particular slant or opinion to share.  Used that way, the “we” isn’t pompous or “royal” or even editorial – it just works!

Compare these two versions:

“At XYZ Company, questions and problems are handled promptly and efficiently. Our staff is trained to go all-out in serving our clients.”

“At XYZ, we believe taking care of questions and problems promptly is every bit as important as making a sale. Whether it’s on the phone or in person, we go all-out to serve you.”

In conversing with readers through blog content writing, setting a “just between you and me” tone, you simply can’t beat the “wee” word WE!

 

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Blog Your Hero Up a Tree and Throw Rocks

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As speakers, says Bill Stainton in Speaker Magazine, it’s drilled into us.  “You must have great, unforgettable stories or you’ll fail miserably.”  I know where I’ve heard that before – the same thing is drilled into us business blog content writers!

But Stainton (whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting through the National Speakers Association) says most speakers ask the wrong questions when searching for stories. His remarks on the subject can definitely be of use to blog writers.

“Wrong” questions:

  • When did something interesting happen?
  • When did something funny happen?

The right question, the one can unlock dozens of great personal stories, Stainton says, is:
“When did something go wrong?”  “Getting your hero up a tree with people throwing rocks” presents readers with a situation where everything is going wrong and there’s no turning back. That’s what propels the story forward, he explains.

I teach freelance blog writers in Indianapolis to include stories of their clients’ past mistakes and failures. Such stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame not only adversity, but the effects of their own mistakes!

I agree with Stainton when he says the trick to great presentations is telling stories. The trick to finding story ideas for writing business blog posts month after month, year after year may be, as Malcolm Gladwell says in What the Dog Saw, “to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell.”

Who’s the hero in blogging for business?  It might be a product or service that saved the day for a customer or client facing a severe problem or dilemma. It might be the business owner herself who overcame a big obstacle in bringing the product or service to market.

When did something go wrong? What was done to get that hero down off the tree?
 

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Blogging About Who Your Heroes Really Are

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“The man who ‘saved’ his dog from the jaws of an alligator should be cited for animal neglect instead of being called a hero.”  At least that’s the opinion C. B. from Leesburg, Florida shares in a letter to the editor of Readers Digest.

Now, there’s kind of a different take on the matter, I thought, engaged enough to read on. “Anyone who lives in that area of Florida knows there are alligators in the waters where he let his dog run around without a leash.  He put his dog at risk, and an innocent alligator died because of it,” C.B. finishes with a flourish.

Always trying to relate interesting things I learn to blog content writing, I realized that I found that letter engaging because it’s an example of what fellow blogger Hector Cuevas calls the “shock and awe approach” – starting posts by disagreeing with what is commonly accepted as the norm.  Cuevas recommends this approach because it builds an instant sense of curiosity in readers.  Then, he cautions writers, it’s up to you to explain your point of view.

But is offering offbeat opinion really such a good idea in blogging for business? After all, I’m training blog content writers to gain converts (read “buyers”), not to antagonize readers! Well, then I remembered a post by friend Doug Karr titled “We Should Stop Saying Influential When We Mean Popular”. If you want people to see your stuff, Doug was saying, go for popularity. But if you want a lot of people to buy your stuff, go for influence, meaning building trust and creating relationships.

Interesting. That whole process of considering the Readers Digest letter and then recalling the Doug Karr blog post helped me conclude that it is important, even necessary, to include business owners’ opinions in marketing blogs. Why?
Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer blog writing, it’s opinion that clarifies the difference between that business, that professional practice, or that organization and its competitors.

Ever hear the saying, “There’s a big difference between having to say something and having something to say.” In the final analysis, people are going to want to do business with people who have something to say about their field and about the way they choose to operate within their world. At least that’s my conclusion.
 

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Vicious Velociraptors Breaking Into Business Blogs

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“Don’t just say ‘Clients have problems with dinosaur attacks,’ advises Allison Carter of Roundpeg.  Why not? That’s too general a description to engage interest.  Now, if you talk about “vicious velociraptors breaking through bedroom windows”, well, readers can feel the pain of that very specific situation, she adds. “The more details you can give, the easier it is for clients and prospects to feel that pain acutely – and understand how you can help them get rid of it.”

As a corporate blogging trainer, I explain this by saying that your blog content has to “put the hurt front and center”. That means focusing readers’ attention on the risks they’re facing and the problems they have that drove them to seek information about what you know and what you know how to.
 

Once readers are hooked by your understanding of their “hurt”, you can offer the “rescue”, the solutions your expertise and experience can bring to the table. The other side of this, by the way, is that in too many marketing blogs, the content is meant to scare consumers, with the idea of getting readers to do something about their fear right now! In blogging for business, I prefer to take a more moderate route, including enough information in the blog post so that it’s the solutions you’re provide that become compelling, rather than the fear.

One question that’s been posed to me, especially by newbie content writers, has to do with Carter’s “vicious velociraptors” idea of being very specific and personalized when presenting the “pain” situation. Isn't there a problem with getting too specific, they ask. Doesn’t that narrow the number of people   who will associate with the pain of that very situation?

 That goes back to the structure of the blog, accorder to Allison Carter.  In a problem – solution –lesson architecture, she explains, once the readers can “feel the pain”, in the lesson portion at the end of the post, you can “broaden things back out to make the lesson more widely applicable.”

And, if you end up “losing” some lookers because they couldn’t identify with the specific slant of the opening anecdote, that’s OK, too.  I like to say blog writing is made of very “stretchable fabric” Today’s blog post can slant in one direction; tomorrow’s can take the same theme or “leitmotif” and deal with it in a different way.
Bottom line is, Allison Carter is onto something: velociraptors are better attention-grabbers than dinosaurs!
 

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What Are Those Keyword phrases Doing in Your Blog Post?

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It’s essential to differentiate keyword stuffing from general keyword usage, explains fellow blog writer Megan Marrs. It’s still important to use keywords, she hastens to add, but it needs to be done with finesse.

I thought of Megan the other day while reading the following Reader’s Digest anecdote: A call center had trained its customer service employees to use a customer’s name five times on each call.  One employee did it this way:

Customer:  Do you provide such-and-such a service?
Rep: Can I get your name?
Customer:  It’s John.
Rep: John, John, John, John, John.  No we don’t.  Thanks for asking.

Search engines penalize sites that stuff pages full of keywords simply to increase their rankings through keyword searches and some sites are even banned from inclusion in search engine results because of keyword stuffing, explains Susan Gunelius in “Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Tips”.

Still, as I emphasize in corporate blogging training, keywords can be very important to the success of a business blog. The thing is, the writing has to flow naturally. In the title, of course, the keyword phrases help signal – to both “spiders” and readers – that this post is promising to deliver information on the topic typed into the search bar.

But even if you do that, and then fail to include that keyword phrase in your main content, says Jeremy of Modest Money, “that relevance looks faked”.

So just what ARE those keyword phrases doing in our blog posts?  As content writers, we need to be able to answer that question.
 

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