Inductive and Deductive Blogging for Business

“The most common forms of mathematical reasoning are inductive and deductive reasoning,” explain the authors of Studying for Mathematics. “You use inductive reasoning any time you come up with a general rule from a pattern.  Deductive reasoning is when you apply a general rule to a specific case.”

As business blog content writers, we’re engaged in helping readers reason their way to doing business with the business owners and professional practitioners who’ve hired us to tell their story. It’s not that there’s a lack of information sources; if anything, there’s an absolute glut of data available to online searcher! What readers need from us, then, is not more information, but help in reasoning through all that information so that problem-solving choices can be made.

OK, so let’s go back to the mathematics tutorial book and the two sorts of reasoning.

Deductive:
You are reasoning deductively when you show that a rule isn’t true for all cases, which is called “proof by counter example”. As a blog writer, start with a commonly held assumption relating to your industry or profession, and come up with a counter example.

Inductive:
With inductive reasoning, you arrive at a formula that demonstrates a general pattern between different tactics and different aspects of an idea.

Paul Lawrence in earlytorise.com suggests using Triggering Deductive Reasoning to persuade clients to buy your products, get employees to take on unpleasant projects, or get your children to do their chores. You do that, explains Lawrence, by making statements that lead the other person to reach, on his own, the conclusion you want him to come to, then reinforcing that conclusion..
All advertisements aim at persuasion, points out Stan Mack of Demand Media. If an ad uses inductive reason, the implied conclusion isn’t necessarily true (think of an ad featuring a sweaty athlete chugging a thirst-quenching beverage). As blog writers, we would make as strong an argument as possibly through visual demonstrations, word descriptions, and customer testimonials to create the illusion that the product or service you’re promoting is the best option. We can inject urgency through one-time sales, or use fear (of getting old, having one’s credit stolen, etc.).

Alternately, we can use statistics to prove logically that we can satisfy the reader’s needs.  With deductive reasoning, if our assumptions are true, the conclusions we draw must be true as well.

Help your blog readers reason their way to saying “Yes!”