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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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Listicles Make Life Simple for Blog Content Writers and Blog Readers

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The AAA Crossroads Magazine knows a good listicle when they see one. In “How to Make Travel Count”, TV host Samantha Brown lists five tips plus one “bonus tip” for getting the most out of even the shortest travel experience.

  • Tip #1: Take a walk.
  • Tip #2: Explore the side streets.
  • Tip #3: Create a ritual.
  • Tip #4 Talk to people.
  • Tip #5: Identify the emotional value.
  • Bonus tip: Put the map away, put down the phone, and just go down street because you think they look good.

Each one of these titles heads up a paragraph explaining how to use that tip. Not only does that visually organize the page in an attractive way, it makes the information easy to digest.

Still, in the online world, Caroline Forsey writes in hubspot.com, the list post (otherwise known as a listicle) commonly gets a bad name. In fact, she admits, “you can easily drown in a sea of particularly low-quality low-value listicles”. Nevertheless, Forsey explains, readers love listicles – for a number of reasons:

  • They are easy to scan.
  • They outline specifically what the reader will learn in the post.
  • Complex content is broker into bite-sized pieces.
  • Readers can skip to sections most applicable t them.

Listicles feed into our brain’s drive to categorize information and give us a sense of satisfaction when we correctly predict patterns, Neil Patel points out, citing a study out of Ohio State University showing how humans try to detect patterns in their environment.

To avoid adding to the “bad name” side of listicles, Toman of checkflow.io advises, don’t add more points just to fill up your list. Add interesting details to each item (Samantha Brown’s article is the perfect example). In order to make your angle unique, read what the competition is saying on the subject, then write from a personal perspective. “Going for a walk is the very first thing that I do at any destination,” Samantha writes.

I noticed that, even though it’s a listicle, Samantha Brown writes in first and second person, using the pronouns “I” and “we” and “you” throughout her piece. “I know what you’re thinking – Enjoy the mundane?” “I feel that talking to people is something that has been slowly going missing from our daily lives.” In blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

At Say It For You, our content writers are always seeking to vary the ways we present information on a single topic in many different ways. Not only are we on the lookout for different “templates” in terms of platform graphics, but different formats for presenting information about any business or professional practice.

Listicles, when done well, make life simpler for both blog content writers and their readers.

 

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In Blog Post Titles, Beware of Anchor Bias

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Anchoring bias causes us to rely heavily – often too heavily – upon the first piece of information we receive. Whether we’re setting plans, making estimates about something – or reading a blog post – we interpret newer information from the reference point of our “anchor”, thedecisionlab.com explains. What’s the problem? The “anchor” idea gets stuck in our heads, making us reluctant to accept information that follows, information which might cause us to change our minds.

For business blog content writers, the first piece of information readers are going to receive is obviously the title of the post. We want the searcher to “drop anchor” by clicking on the link, and of course want search engines to offer our content as a match for readers seeking information and guidance on our topic.

When it comes to blog marketing, titles that seem clever are often not effective. The name of the blog post must make clear – to both searchers and search engines – what the post is about. Search engine optimization aside, a blog post title in itself constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors. In essence, you’re saying, “If you click here…

  • you’ll be led to a post that in fact discussing the topic mentioned in the title
  • you’ll be led to a post that explains how to reduce an undesirable effect
  • you’ll be led to a post that explains how to achieve a desirable effect
  • you’ll obtain information on how to do something

The tone of the blog post title also implies a promise:

  • this content is going to be humorous or satirical
  • this content is going to provide a list
  • this content is going to be thought-provoking and/or controversial
  • this content is going to be cautionary or even frightening

As blog content writers, we also need to beware anchoring. As Decision Lab explains, “Anchoring is so ubiquitous that it is thought to cause a number of other thinking fallacies, including the planning fallacy. The planning fallacy describes how we tend to underestimate the time we’ll need to finish a task. Since researching and composing an excellent blog post for a business is labor-intensive, including “reading around”, researching, composing, illustrating, and sharing, both commitment and time management need to be part of the expectations from the get-go.

On a basic level, maintaining consistency – beginning with blog post titles, then to blog post content, and ultimately to delivering quality products and services to customers – is the only way for any business to become, and remain, valued in its marketplace.

Use blog post titles as anchors, but beware of causing anchor bias!

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Use Titles to Accentuate the Point, Not Make It

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This week’s Say It For You blog posts feature more helpful advice based on Brant Pinvidic’s powerful little book The 3-Minute Rule….

You need bullet points to accentuate the point, not make it for you, observes TV producer and sales coach Brant Pinvidic. You don’t need full sentences, either, he says – the slides function as “Post-it” notes. Even Robert Gaskins, co-creator of Power Point itself, says the technology was never intended for show an entire proposal, just a quick summary.

From a blog marketing point of view, there are several similarities between blog titles and individual bullet points in a Power Point presentation. Titles matter a lot in blogs for search: key words and phrases help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or practice has to offer. Equally important, once your post has been “served up” by the search engine, the reader needs to be encouraged to click on the link in order to read the content. True to Pindivic’s advice, if the title gives away too much of the content, readers wouldn’t need to progress to the content itself!

In terms of using bullet points in blog posts themselves, it seems content writers either love or absolutely abhor those little dots. From what I’ve been told, search engines like bullet points – a lot. Myself, I like bulleting for breaking down complicated information into digestible form. I try to follow the Reuters Handbook of Journalism guidelines for using bullet points, using no fewer than two and no more than five at a time, and keeping them in active voice and present tense.

Going back to blog titles, in a very real sense, a blog post title represents a promise. Of course, since business blogs should resemble advertorials more than ads, the title is “promising” the reader a benefit in exchange for progressing to the next step. If you click on this title ( the implication is), it will lead to you obtaining some desirable result – more savings, more actionable knowledge more confidence, more beauty, more health, more job security, more safety more peer approval, more wealth…..Alternately, the implied promise might relate to reducing an undesirable effect – pain illness, hassle, dirt, risk, fear, harassment, debt….

The skill, of course, lies in Brant Pinvidic’s caution to do all that in a title that somehow manages to accentuate the point without serving it up – prematurely – with all the trimmings.

To me, one aspect of blog marketing is that blogs – beginning with their titles – have to convey a feeling of getting closer to the actual human beings running the business or practice, closer than the feeling readers might get from brochures, billboards, or even websites. If the blog post title can somehow accentuate that concept – it will be a winner.

 

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Good, Better, and Great Titles to Use in Blogging for Business

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Any writer or blogger will tell you that publishing your post is one thing.  Making sure it’s clicked and read – well that’s another, observes Emily Johnson in a post on locationrebel.com. Once you have an idea for a topic, there are good, great, and perfect ways to create a title for the post, she explains. Focusing on just two categories of blog post title – listicles and how-tos –  Johnson offers two powerful examples:

 Idea A: Writing a blog post
1.  Good Title:    Mistakes to Avoid While Writing a Blog Post
2.  Great Title:   15 Mistakes to Avoid While Writing a Blog Post (Listicles get read more often than other articles because they organize information and inform you up-front how many new things you will learn.)
3. Perfect Title:   15 Common Mistakes to Avoid While Writing Your First Blog Post
(The word “first” narrows down the scope of the article.)

Idea B: Changing tires
1.  Good Title:    How to Change a Tire
2.  Great Title:   How to Easily and Quickly Change a Tire
Perfect Title:  How to Easily and Quickly Change Your Tire Alone: 12 Steps
(This one implies an understanding of the reader’s fear of doing the task alone, and also
incorporates a listicle.)    

There’s a reason “how-to” blog post titles work, marketing gurus Guy Kawaski and Peg Fitzpatrick show in the Art of Social Media. The best “How-to”s, they explain, are neither too broad nor too limited. They have a “news-you-can-use” feel. The response you’re after from readers, I teach at Say It For You is, “Aha! “I have found the right place to get the information I need.”
In general, blog post titles have a multifaceted job to do: arousing readers’ curiosity while still assuring them they’ve come to the right place. Of course, no clever title can substitute for well-written, relevant content in the blog post itself, content that provides valuable information to your readers. But, in order for blog marketing to lead searchers to become buyers of your products and services, your stuff has first got to get read!

 

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