In Blogging for Business, Clarity is Better Than Originality

We never want to alienate readers “just for the sake of it”, cautions Moriah Richard, editor of Writer’s Digest. Readers want to be surprised, but they don’t want to be tricked, she explains.

Camilla Allegrucci agrees. She has good news and bad news for writers all wrapped into one: “New ideas are not a thing”. Rather than original ideas, she says, you need an original voice. Sure, you might need some work to refine your “voice”, but you can express yourself in the best way your voice allows. When it comes to content writing, it’s all about answering your audience’s queries, so why reinvent the wheel when people are already telling us what they want to read about? Write from your own perspective and

An audio course for book authors, Brainstorming a Better Book Title, emphasizes the same concept. “The number one requirement for your book title is, does it clearly indicate what the book is about? If you can come up with a title that’s both clear and clever, all the better, Marci Yudkin says. But if you must choose between clarity and cleverness, clarity is more important for success.

“Cutesy is for dolls, not blog post titles,” is my own Say It For You motto. Yes, titles are important, very important. In fact, titles represent crucial elements in capturing the interest of both search engines and online searchers. But, aside from Search Engine Optimization considerations, the title of a blog post constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors: The main promise is simply this: lf you choose to click on this title, it will lead you to a blog post with information on the topic named in the title.

It helps to bring in less well-known facts about familiar things and processes, and even more when you suggest new ways of thinking about things readers already know. New ideas may not be “a thing”, but new insights and opinions can be. At Say It For You, our advice to business owners and their content writers is that you must offer an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up to readers. No, it’s not “new information”, and you’re not re-inventing the proverbial wheel. What’s “new is the clarity of your views on the subject.

In blogging for business, clarity is better than originality – every time.