Topping Needs to Be in the Same Category in Your Business Blog

“I only slept three hours last night,” bemoans Alice in a recent Dilbert cartoon.
“I used Kung Fu to divert an asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth,” replies the co-worker.
”Topping needs to be in the same category!” says Alice indignantly.

As a reader (and yes, I still read the paper “paper”), I enjoy the wacky cynicism of Dilbert, but this particular conversational exchange reminded me of the way categories are supposed to function in business blog posts, and of the way they so often don’t.

Blog categories help readers find their way to content that matches their specific intentions. In the early stages of your blog, I teach business owners, organizing the material isn’t so important – readers can simply scroll down and read earlier posts. Once you’ve been creating blog content for months and even years, the categories become invaluable.

That “rule of thumb”, though, assumes that, from the get-go, you’ve focused each post on one central idea and one idea only, perhaps supporting that concept with a couple of examples. In corporate blogging training sessions, I refer to that blog writing concept as “the Power of One”. Simply put, if your copy tells too many irrelevant stories, you lose the reader’s attention. (No call for a boast about Kung Fu when Alice is complaining about sleeplessness!)

The same rule applies to the Calls to Action we incorporate in our blog posts. Our job is to focus readers’ attention on what we have to offer and on what steps they can take to get some!

That is not to say that we bloggers need to become One-Note Nellies. Not adding variety to our blog posts would surely serve as a “reader repellant”. So how can we harness that Power of One and still offer the degree of variety that keeps readers engaged? Effective blog posts are centered around key themes, just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony.  The variety comes from the details you fill in around those central themes, from the stories you tell and the instructions you offer, and even the metaphors you use.

Wanna brag about how you used Kung Fu to divert an asteroid? Save that for another day, another blog post.  The “topping” needs to be in the same category!