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Blogging for Business in Leitmotifs and Thaumatropes

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Whenever company owners (or sometimes even the blog content writers they employ) express doubt about their ability to keep generating new content for their blog posts, I remind them about leitmotifs.

True, blog posts tend to be most effective when they focus on just one idea. For example, in different posts, 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 that 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

Focusing on one aspect of a topic at a time is precisely what helps blog posts stay much more flexible and impactful than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website. But it’s the leitmotif (a German term meaning “leading theme” often used in discussing music) that helps the separate posts fit together into an ongoing blog marketing strategy.

Just the other day, while waiting in line at CVS, I picked up a magazine named “The Complete Guide to Your Brain”,” intrigued by the title. Once I had the chance to browse the article, I realized that I was looking at a perfect example of the way business blogging can be sustained over weeks, month, and years. Using a “leitmotif”, content writers can continue providing content at once fresh and evergreen, content that is varied to appeal to different readers, yet readers who share a common interest.

Amazing, I found. In just one publication, Brain included more than twenty different approaches to one subject. For example:

  • “Your Brilliant Baby” explained the way in which newborns experience a 64% increase in brainpower during their first three months of life!
  • “Sexes and the Brain” debunks the popular myth that male brains differ greatly from female brains. In fact, “humans with only feminine or only masculine characteristics are extremely rare”.
  • “The Plastic Brain” describes ways in which making and listening to music involves information from all five senses. Listing other activities that can make one’s brain more plastic.
  • “Fuel for the Mind” discusses elements of a brain-healthy diet.
    “”Why We Need Friends” discusses the way social connections make us smarter and strengthen our brains.

A second term that applies to the way individual blog posts work together over time to convey content marketing “leitmotifs” is “thaumatrope”. Thaumatropes were Victorian-age paper toys consisting of a card with a picture on each side. The card would be attached to two pieces of string; twirling the strings made the two pictures appear to combine into a single image. That’s precisely the effect of different blog posts.

As blog content writing continues over long periods of time, there’s a cumulative leitmotif/thaumatrope effect, conveying one central message to readers in all its many permutations and details.

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Put Some First-Person Impact in Your Business Blog

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“You thought I was just brewed leaves and nothing more, but I’m the most consumed drink in the world next to water. I have launched ships and started wars, and I helped birth your country.” So begins a three page article by Kate Lowenstein and Daniel Gritzer about the history of tea.

We know what it feels like to be human and write from the perspective of a human. But, what does it feel like to be a shoe or a pencil or a dictionary? The point of view in a story, is “the narrator’s position in the description of events,” explains Pamela Hodges in thewrwitepractice.com. 

Looking for unconventional, potentially striking ways to explore what it means to be human in your writing?  It may seem counterintuitive, but personification—ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects—can open new avenues to plumb the depths of human experience, writes Katherin Quevedo of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Whether you’re representing an inanimate object or a very human business owner or professional practitioner, first person writing has a certain power. Admittedly, nobody likes people who speak of nothing but themselves, but 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 —— Dry Cleaners, we believe….”
  • “At ——— Heating & Air, we always…..”
  • “Despite the widely held belief that….., I’m convinced that……”

In blogging, of course, different posts serve different purposes. First person (“I”, “I’m”,” we”, “we’re” packs emotional punch. Second person pronouns (“you”, “your”, and “you’re”) can be a good fit for how-to blog posts, while third person (“he”, “she”, “they”) pronouns may be the choice for news items.

Whether you as owner or practitioner are doing the writing or using the services of a blog content writer, your perspective can be provided only by you, in first person, straight to the readers:  In the blogosphere, the more personal, the better.

On the other hand, all content writing for marketing blogs needs to be based on the “you”s who are the targeted readers, and about their wants and needs. Bottom line? Keeping your target audience (the “you”) in mind, put some first person impact in your business blog!

 

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To Be Interesting, Think Broad

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“Many people and most organizations narrowly define what’s relevant and interesting to their followers. They mistakenly assume that their followers want to read about only a narrow band of subjects,” Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzgerald point out in The Art of Social Media.

As examples of how posts can be “broadened”, Kawasaki suggests that a restaurant chain might include news about atomic particles that help solve wine fraud, while an airline might offer news about drive-in theaters or mindful travel photography. It’s not that you don’t want to promote yourself and your own business to followers, the author explains; it’s that sharing interesting stuff and broadening by “catalyzing more interaction,” you earn the right to promote yourself!

As part of blogging training at Say It For You, I do often recommend including interesting information on topics only indirectly related to your specific business or profession (or, if you’re a freelance blog content writer, related to the client’s business or profession). If you’ve unearthed tidbits of information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, so much the better. I agree with Kawasaki that even if some tidbits of information are not “actionable”, if they are intrinsically interesting, it’s worth including them simply to add fun and variety to your content.

But broadening the scope of information you offer in a business blog needn’t be only for the sake of adding fun to your content. Little known and trending news stories can be offered to readers with some very specific “ulterior motives” on the part of the business owner or practitioner, such as:

  • clarifying the way your business or practice works
  • demonstrating the many uses of your products
  • reinforcing the importance of a widespread problem
  • explaining why your business practices are designed to prevent that particular problem
  • busting a common myth

Online searchers who’ve arrived at your blog post definitely need assurance they’ve come to the right place. But now they’re here, you’ll have a better chance of engaging their interest by “going broad”!

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Blogging Wisdom in a Puzzle Book

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I’ve always been a puzzle book junkie, and one of my favorite puzzle types is the Quotefall. The other day, after solving one of the puzzles, I realized the puzzle creator must know something about business blogging…

The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way
or a new thing in an old way.

(The adage, I later learned, has been attributed to Richard Harding Davis.)

Saying “old things, is, in fact, a concern of many business owners and professional practitioners when it comes to their blog. Even if they understand the overall marketing value of having a blog, their concern is that, sooner or later, they (or their blog content writer) will run out of things to say. In blogging training sessions, I need to explain that it’s more than OK – in fact it’s a good idea – to repeat themes already covered in former posts. The trick is to adding a layer of new information or a new insight each time.

To us blog content writers, “saying old things in a new way” means that each time we’re preparing to compose content for a bog, rather than asking ourselves whether we’ve already covered that material and how long ago, we ought to plan content around key themes. That way, we can be using the same theme while filling in new details and illustrations.

What about writing new things in an old way? In the process of introducing new information or suggesting a new attitude towards certain features and benefits of a product or service, behavioral science tells us that we must create a perspective or “frame”. The “new” concept needs to be presented in a way that relates to the ”old” and familiar, so that readers can envision an improved result for themselves.

So, what happens when you realize that information you’d put in a blog post months or even years ago isn’t true any longer (or at least isn’t the best information now available in your industry or profession?) Maybe the rules have changed, or perhaps there’s now a solution that didn’t even exist at the time the original content was written.

This is the perfect example of saying old things in a new way. Armed with your new understanding or with a better solution to a problem of which you’ve now become aware, explain what you used to think, (linking back to the old blog posts), then share the new, better information you have today.

That Quotefall puzzle was a good reminder that the secret of good blog content writing is saying old things in new ways and new things in old ways!

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Effective Blog Post Titles Force Readers to Figure it Out

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As a blog content writer, I’m always fascinated by what makes certain word combinations used in advertising pack such tremendous marketing power, while others come across as mere “slogans”. Years ago, a presentation by humorist Dick Wolfsie provided a clue. In order for a joke to be funny, he said, the person listening to or reading the joke has to be forced to figure things out. The laughter, he explained, is the reward that listeners or readers give themselves for having understood the meaning of the punch line.

I was thinking about that concept the other day, realizing why some TV ads just seem to “fall flat”, while others stick in my mind for days. Xfinity’s “Simple. Easy. Awesome.”, for example, doesn’t tell me a thing about the company’s products or services, or even relate to their funny video. The title fails to make me think, giving me nothing to figure out. In contrast, USAA’s title “What you’re made of, we’re made for” compelled me to try and figure out the meaning of the message.

“Whenever you think of the brands you know or perhaps love, there are chances that you not only recall the brand name, but campaign slogans, too.” Anne Carton writes in designhill.com, “Slogans are the taglines or phrases that are used by a company to express the importance or the core idea of their products or services,” Carton continues. Effective slogans have the positive “X” factor that makes us look twice or even thrice, she adds.

As I often stress at Say It For You, blogs are not advertisements, and therefore blog titles are not slogans. Still, there are two basic reasons titles matter – a lot – in blogs:

  1. For search – key words and phrases, especially when used in blog post titles, help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or professional practice has to offer.
  2. For reader engagement – after you’ve been “found”, you’ve still gotta “get read”.

The Dick Wolfsie insight comes into play here: Effective blog post titles not only relate to a reader’s search, but force the reader to figure out if and how!

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