Your Blog Has Three Jobs: Solve. Excite. Speak

March 22, 2016/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips /by Rhoda Israelov

“Things aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince!” Those rather unoriginal observations are attributed to Poppy King, founder of Lipstick Queen, the company that gets heads turning with Frog Prince, “a remarkable lilypad green lipstick that transforms lips into a pretty rosebud pink”.

I’m not exactly into the green lipstick thing, but I do absolutely love the statement I heard Poppy make during an Evine TV promotion:

“Every company,“ Poppy said, “has three jobs to do:

Solve the problem.
Excite the imagination.
Speak the truth.”

As profound a statement as I believe I’ve ever heard in a sales pitch, Poppy’s words certainly apply to the work we do as business blog content writers.

Solve the problem.
People are online searching for answers to their problems and solutions for dilemmas they’re facing. If your business consistently posts content offering valuable information and advice, those people are going to find you and at least some will want to become your customers..

Excite the imagination.
Readers came online searching for information, products, or services, and they are not going to take the time to read the full text of your blog post without assurance that they’ve come to the right place and that this will be a short, fast, exciting read. Use the title to establish a “hook” to excite visitors’ imagination.

Speak the truth.
Myth debunking is a great use for corporate blog content. That’s because in the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or service often surface in the form of customer questions and comments.

Your blog has three jobs: Solve. Excite. Speak.

It’s All in the Game for Your Business Blog

March 15, 2016/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips /by Rhoda Israelov

“There’s a unique recipe that goes into coming out ahead in just about anything,” Jessanne Collins writes in Mental Floss, “an enigmatic equation of skill, technique, calculation, probability, chance, and all kinds of other immeasurable factors.” Collins examines competitions ranging from carnival games to spelling bees and Texas Hold “Em poker, concluding that the perfect formula for winning is uncrackable.

Despite the myriad of words devoted to blogging advice, the secret code for blogging success is probably uncrackable as well. Still, I can’t help thinking, the equation for business blog content writing contains all same basic elements Collins found in poker playing and carnival games:

Skill
“The vast majority of content online is poorly written,” laments Kevin Muldoon of elegantthemes.com. While anyone who can use the Internet can technically write a blog post, all content is not created equal, he observes.

“The best writers are also keen readers,” advises wordstream.com., adding that content writers must expand their horizons to more challenging material than they typically read, paying special attention to sentence structure, word choice, and flow.

Technique
Great blog posts begin with planning, and that means creating outlines, doing research using authoritative resources, fact-checking, creating good headlines, editing, using images, and inserting humor judiciously, wordstream.com continues.

Calculation
“In our site reviews we often see that a site’s category / tag structure is completely unmanaged,” reports Joost de Valk in Yoast. When used correctly a good “taxonomy” system can boost your blog’s SEO; when used incorrectly, he says, “it’ll break things”. Using analytical tools is the blogger’s way of calculating which tactics are most likely to succeed.

Chance
“Until you’ve had a chance to build up a target audience, you’re dealing with assumptions and educated guesses based on your first-hand experience and anecdotal evidence,” says Peep Laja of conversionxl.com. After you learn more about the market, you can pivot, changing direction to fit the facts.

Just as with carnivals, spelling bees, and Texas Hold “Em poker, with corporate blog writing, it’s all in the game!

Framing Your Business Blog

March 10, 2016/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips /by Rhoda Israelov

The Art of Thinking Clearly

“It’s not what you say, but how you say it,” says Rolf Dobelli in “The Art of Thinking Clearly.” If a message is communicated in different ways, it will also be received in different ways, Dobelli asserts. When researchers presented a group of people with a choice between two kinds of meats:

99 percent fat free
1 percent fat

respondents ranked the first as healthier, even though they are the same!

Wordsmithing is an important element in blog content authoring, because we have the power to use word choices to put the emphasis on specific elements of a product or a service.

Today’s consumer is used to having marketers use the technique of glossing, which is a deceptive sort of framing. The typical online searcher, therefore, is leery of hype and unrealistic claims.

That’s precisely why, Velocity Partners claims, honesty in content marketing has such “insane power”, and why they advise “Take your weakest points and put them in the spotlight”. The principle behind the tactic: managing expectations so you can slightly exceed them.

Velocity Partners offers eight reasons you should consider using insane honesty in your blog:

It’s surprising because it’s so rare.
It’s charming.
We like people who make fun of themselves more than we like braggarts.
It alienates the people who were never going to do business with you anyway.
It attracts your ideal prospects.
It builds trust.
It signals confidence.
It focuses you on battles you can win.

For us business blog content writers, it’s important to remember that every choice of words we make involves framing. Question is – will we use glossing to put an artificial shine on the weak aspects of the business or practice we’re writing about – or will we choose the insane honesty route?

Know Your Reader When Using Allusions in Business Blogs

February 25, 2016/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips /by Rhoda Israelov

White dove isolated on black.
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes reference to a place, person, or event. The point of using allusions in writing? An allusion can:

get readers thinking about your subject in a new way
get a point across without going into a lengthy explanation
cement a bond between the writer and readers based on shared experiences and knowledge

Blog content writers can use allusions with all three of those results in mind.

In a financial planner’s blog: There’s no need to act like a Scrooge (allusion from Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”). Simply plan your charitable giving as part of your overall monthly budget.
In an internet security provider’s blog: You may think a new piece of software can be useful to your business, but it can turn out to be a Trojan Horse (allusion from Homer’s “Iliad “about how the Greeks won the war through trickery).
In a nutrition counselor’s blog: If chocolate is your Achilles’ heel (allusion from Greek mythology), allow yourself one chocolate indulgence each week, cutting back on other sweets.

Because allusions make reference to something other than what is directly being discussed, explains yourdictionary.com, you may miss an allusion or fail to understand it if you do not know the underlying story, literary tale or other reference point.

In the Indianapolis Star the other day, I solved the Cryptoquip as follows: “Did you see that bird meditating while using a mantra? It was probably an om-ing pigeon.” This rather clever puzzle uses a combination of a pun (homing pigeon) and an allusion. It also reminded me that, as a blog content writer, I need to gauge my readers’ level of education and familiarity with the reference.

Remember, an allusion does not describe in detail the person or thing to which it refers. The writer expects the reader to possess enough knowledge to spot the allusion and grasp its importance in a text. Problem is, if readers don’t get the connection, they’re going to find your content frustrating more than illuminating.

Know your reader when using allusions in business blogs!

Myths Have Pulling Power in Blogs

February 18, 2016/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips /by Rhoda Israelov

Mythbusting is used in many fields to counteract what researchers suspect might be counterproductive thinking, and I’m a firm believer that myth debunking is a great use for corporate blogs.

I was reminded of this the other day by a USA Today article, listing – and then busting – some common myths about airline food:

Myth: All airplane meals are frozen and reheated hours later.
Facts: Salads and sandwiches are often included in airplane meals. even when food is cooked and then chilled, the “sous vide” method is used, with each ingredient sealed in airtight plastic bags and cooked slowly.

In the normal course of doing business, you’ve undoubtedly found, misunderstandings about your product or surface might surface in the form of customer questions and comments. (It’s even worse when those myths and misunderstandings don’t surface, but still have the power to interrupt the selling process!)

That’s why the de-bunking function of business blog writing is so important. It’s owners’ way of taking up arms against a sea of customers’ unfounded fears and biases. Blog content writing can “clear the air”, replacing factoids with facts, so that buyers can see their way to making decisions.

Myth-busting is also a tactic content writers can use to grab online visitors’ attention. The technique is not without risk, because customers don’t like to be proven wrong or feel stupid. The trick is to engage interest, but not in “Gotcha!” fashion.

In other words, business owners and professional practitioners can use their blogs to showcase their own expertise without “showing up” their readers’ lack of it.

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