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Arming Readers With Words

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Farmer’s Almanac 2025 does something content marketers need to do more often – “putting words into readers’ mouths” Why? To make it easy for them to feel not only comfortable, but “smart” when talking about your business or practice area. 

The Almanac authors explain where several of our most common expressions come from:

I’ll take a raincheck:

In 1880s baseball, spectators were given an actual ticket stub for admission to a future game when a game was called off for rain. Later, retailers who were out of stock on an item offered rain checks for discounts at a later date.

I’m on Cloud Nine:

In the 1950s, the U.S. Weather Bureau would give numbers to clouds depending on how high they were, up to 30,000 feet (9 was next to highest).

It’s raining cats and dogs

The Greek word Catadoxa (try saying it out loud) means beyond belief. Another explanation is that in medieval times, homes had thatched roofs, and domestic animals would hide in the roof when the weather turned severe.

Under the weather

In old sailing vessels, “under the weather” meant under the weather rail (the hold of the ship).  If a sailor wanted to reduce the impact of the waves, he’d go below deck.

In blog marketing, once you’ve established common ground, reinforcing to readers that they’ve come to the right place, it’s important to add lesser-known bits of information on your subject, which might take the form of arming readers with new terminology, serving several purposes:

  • positioning the business owner or professional practitioner as an expert in the field
  • adding value to the “visit” for the reader
  • increasing readers’ sense of being part of an “in-the-know” group

As content writers, part of our challenge is to educate both prospects and clients on the issues relating to their decisions to choose between one business’ products and services and those of its competitors.  Introducing a curiosity-stimulating new term is one way to do just that.

At Say it For You, we believe in empowering readers by teaching them the meanings and the correct use of the terminology in that field. Most important, buyers feel empowered to make a decision when they feel “in on” the “lingo”.

Arm your readers with words – they’ll be more likely  to “lend you their ear”!

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Rolling a Picasso in Your Content

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“Roll a Picasso” is an art game developed by Emily Glass for use in an art or art history classroom, but it it makes for a fun exercise for groups of any age. Each roll of a die relates to a printed key, directing the “artist” to draw the head, the left ear, the nose, the mouth, by copying the shape on the chart. The different combinations of the 24 shapes make for a high degree of variety in the finished product. It’s interesting that, just days after posting “Telling Your Business Story Through a Brand New Lens”, I was introduced to this visual proof of how, by creatively combining – and recombining – a finite number of elements, we can continue producing engaging marketing content.….,

In corporate content marketing training sessions, I teach that effective blog posts are centered around key themes, just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony.  As you continue to write about your industry, your products, and your services, we tell business and practice owners, you’ll naturally find yourself repeating some key ideas – in fact, that’s exactly what you should be doing, we explain, to keep the content focused and targeted while still offering variety.

  1. It’s important to stress that blog and social media posts tend to be most effective when they focus on just one idea. A content writer might go about:

    – busting one myth common among consumers of their product or service they’re marketing

– offering one testimonial from a user of that product or service

– describing an unusual application for a product

– describing one common problem their service helps solve

– updating readers on one new development in that industry or profession

– offering a unique opinion or slant on best practices

Each post is similar to one “roll of the dice”, with the long-term effect being your “Picasso” work of art!

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Telling Your Business Story Through a Brand New Lens

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“There are no original stories, but there are always original ways to tell old stories,” Mariah Richards encourages authors in Writer’s Digest. A “new voice” has the power to change the “old voice” for the better, or at least in a way that might appeal to different readers, she explains. Kali Rose, in Oh Reader magazine, agrees. In fact, she loves to revisit her favorite books, with subsequent readings allowing her to see things she missed the first time around.

In the field of content marketing,  one concern I hear a lot from business owners or professional practitioners is that sooner or later, they (and we, their writers) will have depleted the supply of new and different ideas to write about. “What else is left to say?” is the common thread in the questions I’m so often asked.

At Say It For You, our content marketers have long ago learned that there are many subsets of every target market group. Not every message will work for every person, so coming at a topic again and again, each time from a different angle, is the secret to assuring readers we’re “on the same page” with their very specific issues and approaches.

By its very nature of periodic messaging, blog marketing is going to be centered around key themes. As you continue posting content about your industry, your products, and your services, you’ll naturally find yourself repeating some key ideas, adding detail, opinion, and story around each.

In writing for business, as blog content writers soon learn, the variety comes from the “e.g.”s and the “i.e.”s, meaning all the details you fill in around the central “leitmotifs”. Case studies and testimonials illustrating specific instances of the company’s products and services became solutions to various problems.  It’s these examples that lend variety to the blog, even though all the anecdotes reinforce the same few core ideas.

In fact, 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, including how-to posts, list posts, review posts, and op ed opinion posts.

There may be no original content, but you can always help them see your business content through a brand new lens.

 

 

 

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Content Creators Need to Think Like Wolves

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After re-visiting Michael Breus’ book The Power of When, I’ve concluded that, in order to create marketing content for a business or practice over the long-term, we need to think like wolves….

The book, based on circadian biology, explains that there is a best time for each of us to eat lunch, ask for a raise, write a novel, and take our meds, depending on our individual “chronotype”. 50% of people are Bears (who prefer a solar based schedule and have a high sleep drive). Dolphins are light sleepers, while Lions are morning-oriented. The author describes wolves as “night-oriented creative extroverts” with a medium sleep drive.

From a content-marketing point of view, a key clue may be found on Page 77 of Breus’ book, where the author notes that “wolves see every situation from multiple vantage points”.  The big thing about content marketing, I’ve often explained to business owners and professional practitioners, is learning how to keep on keeping on. No doubt about it, sustaining content writing over long periods of time without losing reader (or writer!) excitement is the real challenge, one that “wolves” are best equipped to handle using their ability to approach the topic from “multiple vantage points”.

  • In order to add variety, I teach content writers to experiment with different formats, including how-to posts, list posts, opinion pieces, and interviews.
  • Different articles can present the same business from different vantage points, “featuring” different employees and different departments within the company.
  • Individual posts – or series of posts – can be tailored to different segments of the customer base.
  • Different pieces of content can offer valuable information and advice relating to different aspects of the business’ or the practice’s product or service offerings.

While “wolves are creative and completely open to trying new things,” the author cautions, “they do run into some trouble sticking with it”. Breus’ advice? “Be spontaneous about the direction you choose, so long as you take walks and eat meals on your correct bio time.”

My own advice, meanwhile, is that sustaining an engaging business blog  over the course of years is very do-able – so long as you stay engaged.  Keep learning by “reading around” – books, blogs, articles, magazines, almanacs – you name it, all to stay aware of developments, cultural changes, even controversies.

Whatever your circadian biology, in content writing, it helps to think like a wolf!

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Allow Me to Introduce New Terminology

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Before browsing through a magazine handout at the grocery store called alive.com, I’d never heard the term “immunity debt”, and curiosity led me through an entire article by Dr. Gillian Flower. The thesis – our immune systems need exposure to viruses to protect us from infection, and lower exposure to others through the pandemic may have decreased our resistance, creating an “immunity debt”.

Apparently, not everyone agrees. “Immunity debt is a misguided and dangerous concept,” Anjana Ahuja writes in Financial Times. “There is no evidence that an individual is worse off for having avoided earlier infection.”

While I am certainly not qualified to weigh in on this medical discussion, as a content writer I was impressed by the fact that by simply introducing me to a new term, the author had the power to engage my curiosity about the subject.

In blog marketing, once you’ve established common ground, reinforcing to readers that they’ve come to the right place, it’s important to add lesser-known bits of information on your subject, which might take the form of arming readers with new terminology, serving several purposes:

  • positioning the business owner or professional practitioner as an expert in the field
  • adding value to the “visit” for the reader
  • increasing readers’ sense of being part of an “in-the-know” group

As content writers, part of our challenge is to educate both prospects and clients on the issues relating to their decisions to choose between one business’ products and services and those of its competitors.  Introducing a curiosity-stimulating new term is one possible way to do just that. At Say it For You, we believe in empowering readers by teaching them the correct use of the terms that apply in the blog sponsor’s field of interest and expertise. Any hint of controversy only adds to the mystique of the terminology.

Most important, buyers feel empowered to make a decision when they feel “in on” the “lingo”.

 

 

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