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Easy Martha Stewart-Inspired Updates for Blog Content

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“To invigorate the look of old china on your table,” Martha Stewart advises on the “Easy Updates” page of her latest Living magazine issue, “identify common shapes and details to weave through the new elements.” Stewart suggests three specific updating techniques:

  1. Add new patterns.
  2. Play up one color.
  3. Mix mod materials.

Along with antique tableware, blog content can benefit from updating, as we teach at Say It For You, and each of Martha’s tips can serve as a guide for giving a bygone blog post a freshening-up. After all, as Richard Harding Davis so aptly remarked, “The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way, or an old thing in an old way.”

Add New Patterns
“Stick to the colors of your old china to keep the table cohesive, but mix in a serving piece with another motif that compliments it.” In composing blog content, it’s a good idea to repeat themes already covered in former posts, but the trick is to change the pattern by a) adding new information and b) using a different format – listicle, Q&A, comparison, etc.

 

Play Up One Color
“Choose a shade from your pattern that you want to highlight, and let it fly in accent pieces like linens or glasses.” In a blog post or series, link new information to themes you’ve emphasized in former posts, “coloring” new concepts or information by referring to concepts you’ve introduced months or even years ago. As Martha Stewart suggests, the old and new are unified through “color”.

 

Mix Mod Materials
“Elevate older porcelain with glass, wood, metal, or ceramic items that add texture and dimension to your table,” Finding word combinations that resonate with blog readers is a big part of the challenge involved in blog content writing. Since there is a definite generational factor involved in language, knowing your target audience is key. In different posts, therefore, you can alternate a friendly, even humorous tone with a professional, authoritative one.

 

In table settings or in blog content writing, invigorate the look of the old “china” with new patterns and colors.

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Blog to Put Objects into the Conversation

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“Florist Larry Becker and architect Roger Crowley are educators as much as antiquarians,” Martha Stewart writes about the two men who, last year, opened an antique shop in Hopewell, New Jersey called Welbourne Robinson. Crowley describes his partner’s artistic instincts in putting together collages by saying “Larry puts objects into conversation with one another.” In turn, Crowley strives for a “balance of lightness and heaviness” in his own floral arrangements.

When it comes to blogging for business, different “objects”, or types of posts, can present a pleasing and informative overall impression. James Parsons of contentpowered.com. for example, has determined that there are as many as12 primary types of blog content that can be juxtaposed or “collaged”, including press releases, personal content, news content, local content, roundups, and evergreen posts.

Shaun Pinney of Hubspot likens blog posts to cooking, describing:

  • Raisin Bran posts (basic, everyday posts that are educational)
  • Spinach posts (healthy and thoughtful establishing you as a thought leader)
  • Roasts – big projects with extra research r analysis
  • Chocolate Cake posts – humor t diversify your blog
  • Tobasco – controversial statements and opinion pieces

    At Say It For You, I’m always on the lookout for different “templates”, not in the sense of platform graphics, but in terms of formats for presenting information about any business or professional practice. Here are just a few possible “templates”:

    How-to Post
    This type of post aims to teach the reader something, taking them through a step-by-step process. Variations include “How I _____and How You Can, Too.” And “Why ____ Matters and How To Do it”.

  • List Post
    The list post offers readers a selection of ideas, tips, suggestions, or resources.
  • Review Post
    Review posts offer an informed opinion about a particular product or service.
  • OpEd Opinion Post
    This post states a point of view about a particular topic (the blog author can then add his or her own commentary.)
  • Interview Post
    The author interviews a client, an employee, or an outside source.

One way to put these different “objects into conversation with one another” is to refer back and forth among different posts through internal linking. In fact, Neil Patel advises, “Your old posts are the key to growing your blog.”

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In-Your-Neck-of-the-Woods Blogging for Business

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Listening to the morning weather report on TV, I often hear Al Roker say, “That’s what’s going on around the country. Here’s what’s happening in your neck of the woods”.

In blogging for business, that Roker model is a good one to follow, we teach at Say It For You. Your blog is a way to educate leads and customers by helping them stay generally informed on industry trends and developments, Hubspot explains. Once you are perceived as an expert or “thought leader” in that industry or profession, you can then go on to explain your own products and services, and your very own “neck of the woods” approach.

Hubspot offers examples of blogs that describe the general industry climate before bringing matters down to a local level:

Manufacturing
Manufacturing blogs are used to inform readers about best practices news, and trends in manufacturing, supply chain distribution, and logistics. The Marlin Steel blog, for example, talks about what robotics and automation mean for US manufacturing jobs (national picture), but also provides information on how to use specific steel tools.

Healthcare
In Six Month Smiles’ Chair Time blog, industry experts, doctors, and hygienists write about developments in their field. Potential customers can learn about specific services they may be interested in paying for on a local level.

Ecommerce
The M.M. LaFleur blog discusses general issues of women in the workplace, but then narrows down to specific advice about what to wear to different business occasions.

In fact, the function of “news” in blogs is to inform readers of “what’s-going-on-and-how-do-we-fit-in”. In a blog post, you might cite material from the news story, relating it to new developments in your own industry or field. The idea is not to regurgitate what’s already been said, but to showcase your own expertise and experience, offering a new perspective on that topic.

According to strategist Neen James in Speaker Magazine, a Subject Matter Expert or SME (pronounced “smee”) knows something. A thought leader, by contrast, is known for something. In their blog content, business owners and professional practitioners can first bring their audiences up to speed on general industry issues and developments. Through “in-your-neck-of-the-woods blogging for business,” they then become known for translating that knowledge into usable, actionable steps their readers can follow.

 

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Be-a-Mentor Blogging for Business

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“To gain business with your blog, you should stop thinking like a salesman and start acting like your reader’s mentor. A salesman wonders how to get his next sale. A mentor cares about his students. He wants to help them get ahead and live a more fulfilled life,” Neil Patel advises.

The first way that blogging gets you customers is it shows you’re open for business, Sarah Carnes writes in HubSpot.com. The second way? It educates your prospects. Take your frequently asked questions (FAQs) and turn them into blog posts. Once a potential customer sees you as a resource, they are much more likely to consider you when they are considering buying the product or service you provide. After researching and building your target audience, you know what they care about most – and what keeps them up at night. Using your content to answer those fears means that you can begin to “own” the conversation.

In the book Good People, author Anthony Tjan names five types of mentors. At Say it For You, we realize that in different blog posts, a business owner or professional practitioner can take on one of these mentoring “roles’:

Master of Craft:
Communicate armed with facts from reliable, trusted sources. As a content writer, link to outside sources to add breadth, depth, and credibility to the ideas you’re expressing and the advice you’re offering.

Champion their cause
Comfort and connect with compassion and encouragement. Soft skills such as relationship-building and interpersonal communication are going to be as important in coming years as technical skills.

Co-pilot
“Collaborate” with readers, showing you understand the obstacles and challenges they face. Encourage them to “vent” by answering the tough questions in your content. But searchers haven’t always formulated their questions, and so what I suggest is that we do that for them.

Anchor
An anchor needn’t work in the mentee’s industry, but is someone who offers insights that readers can use to better cope with issues they are facing.

Reverse mentor
A reverse mentor can be of a younger generation with insights to share that can help older readers make sense of technology or see situations from a different vantage point.

What you can do with the blog is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts, curating content from many different points of view. In blogging for business, be a mentor!

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What This Blog Isn’t

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This week’s Say It for You posts were inspired by James Marshall Reilly’s book One Great Speech, in which he describes his challenges in locating and identifying “experts” in varying fields, based on the requests of buyers and event sponsors.

In the introduction to his book, James Marshall Reilly makes sure readers know exactly what to expect.  In fact, the author provides three checklists:

  1. Who is this book for?
  2. What this book will teach you
  3. What this book isn’t

While it may not be practical for blog content writers to actually provide readers such a checklist for each post, it’s a great self-check mechanism for content creators.

Who is this blog post for?
Not only must a marketing blog be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and towards those who will want to do business with you, each post should have a specific type of reader in mind. That way, the content will clearly demonstrate that the business owner or practitioner and the staff understand the readers’ concerns and needs, but know how to meet those needs and solve those very problems.

What this post will teach you
The title of a blog post indicates what readers can expect to learn. There are two basic categories of blog titles, we’ve found at Say It For You. The first is very direct, using keyword phrases that match up with what a reader may have typed into the search bar. The second category gives only the barest hint of the content to follow and is meant to arouse curiosity A compromise I teach is to use a combination of a “Huh?” title to get attention and then an “Oh!” subtitle to make clear what the post is actually going to be about.

What this post isn’t
Of Reilly’s three lists, this one may be the most important for blog content writers to consider and at least indirectly, make clear in the content:

  • This is not an advertisement or a list of claims about a product or service.
  • This is not a news report (although it may be based on a news report, offering a fresh perspective on that news).
  • This is not a ”put-down” of our competitors’ products and services.
  • This is not a thinly veiled attempt to capture contact information from you.
  •  This is not a mere re-hash of widely accessible information.

Very much like a sculptor who “reveals” the shape by cutting away “excess” marble, blog content writers can craft effective posts by cutting away what the content is not!

 

 

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