Say It For You Reads Around – Part Three

This week’s Say It For You blog posts are devoted to sharing ideas from my “reading around”; The Little Red Writing Book, by Brandon Royal is a great example of how sharing content, or “curating” material from other people’s blogs and articles, magazine content – and books is one sure-fire strategy for idea generation.

Part of learning how to write a blog, I explain in business blogging training sessions, is learning how to sustain your blog content writing over long periods of time without losing reader excitement and engagemen. Erin McHugh’s answer in The 5 W’s: Why?  is offering lesser-known information to add interest and to demonstrate the business owner’s or professional practitioner’s special expertise.

Royal offers another idea for anyone providing blog writing services – using similes and metaphors to enliven the writing itself.

In presenting SEO-friendly information to establish common ground, confirming to readers they’ve come to the right place to find the products, services, and information they need, you can add metaphors. That way, you’re helping readers “appreciate the information picturesquely”, as Joseph Pulitzer used to describe it. And, even though literary techniques such as similes and metaphors touch on creative writing, Royal suggests, there are still uses for them in everyday writing.

As a professional ghost blogger and corporate blogging trainer, I couldn’t agree more. Most business owners and professionals can think of quite a number of things they want to convey about their products, their professional services, their industry, and their customer service standards. Still, I’ve found over the years, the problem is those ideas need to be developed into fresh, interesting, and engaging content marketing material.

Metaphors and freelance blog writers go together like a horse and carriage (Oops! That was a simile!)  Joseph Pulitzer had three suggestions for his journalists on how to present information to the public. All three are relevant for Indianapolis blog content writers:

“Put it before them briefly so they will read it,
“clearly so they will appreciate it,
“picturesquely so they will remember it (Here’s where the metaphors are so effective),
“accurately, so they will be guided by its light.”