Blogs Playing Defense

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“Despite a negative perception, Mayor Hogsett insists that downtown is the safest neighborhood in the city, accounting for less than 5 percent of all crime,” Susan Salaz writes in this month’s issue of Indanapolis Monthly, mounting a strong defensive play that serves as a great model for blog content writers.

“Today it is harder than ever to protect your brand,” Clara Doyle admits in publicrelay.com, discussing crisis communications. Knowing how to shield your company from mis/disinformation can be challenging. Your audience may lack the ability to critically evaluate media content, and this can negatively impact your brand,” she explains. If you are not prepared to manage fake news, your audience may be likely to believe stories containing misleading information. Your response must be proactive and consistent, Doyle stresses. And, if the information is the result of a mistake you’ve made, be forthright and transparent in dealing with the matter. .

At a time when your brand is under intense scrutiny, you must defend it with facts, advises Latana. Make sure your response:

  1. respects confidentiality
  2. does not contain offensive content
  3. is thoughtful

“In a time rife with polarization and confusion, the world needs true authority more than ever,” observes Lisa Seidenberg in greentarget.com. “As a communications director, you have the opportunity to position your firm’s experts to respond,” she urges. Since, at Say It For You, our writing team often function as “communications director” for the clients who hire us to bring their message to online readers, we know the important for mounting a strong defensive “play” in the form of blog content. Precisely because of the consistency with which useful, informative content has been offered over many months and even years, regular blog visitors are inclined to trust the information when it becomes necessary to “play defense”.

Marketing blogs are actually perfect vehicles for defusing not only false news, but ongoing misunderstandings related. Each time you post content (or use a freelance blog content writer to post content), you’re adding to the overall power of the story. The online searchers who found your blog may have concerns and may be incompletely informed, but the very fact they were directed to your blog means they had an interest in your subject and are looking for the very sort of products, services, and information you’re eager to provide!

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Reasons to Write a 300-Word Business Blog Post

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Fascinated by the Writer’s Yearbook 2023 article “10 Reasons to Write a 100-Word Story”, I began thinking of all the discussions around the questions of the optimal length for blog posts. Ran Walker, explaining while he’s stopped writing novels, said “I could no longer bring myself to write stories where I had to expand them beyond what I felt their natural lengths were.” Writing shorter stories forces you to refocus and choose only what’s important, Walker says. Word count matters, but it’s about condensing, not expanding, changing for the better the way you pace your story and what you choose to show the reader. Using just 100 words allows you to “create a resonance in a single moment.” Following is my (under-300-word) opinion post:

How long should your blog posts be? asks Wall Street Journal’s Joe Bunting. When it comes to our writing, we want more, he admits, not less: more readers, more comments, more backlinks, and more traffic. He’s experimented with different lengths, Bunting says, finding that each has advantages. Shorter posts tend to garner more comments, while longer posts get shared more widely. Medium-form posts are good for generating discussion. Very long, in-depth, heavily researched posts (2,400+ words long generate more Google traffic, he notes.

“Though content must be relevant, it might differ in types, mediums, formats, and style in order to arouse interest or evoke debate…but to be read at all, blog posts must always deliver upon their promise,” firstsiteguide.com cautions. “Before blogs became political in the early 2000s, they were merely means to make private thoughts and opinions public. The personal touch, however, remains their vital characteristic to date.”

Opinions have always differed on the optimal size for a blog post. Having composed blog posts (as both a Say It For You ghost writer and under my own name) numbering well into the tens of thousands, I’m still finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!” I agree with Ran Walker that purposely keeping content short forces us to choose only those elements that drive home the single point that is the focus of that one post. Research on “duration neglect” reveals that when people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length, rating an experience based on the peak (the best or worst moment) and the ending. Writing shorter posts allows me to “create a resonance” around a single concept.

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Variety is the Spice of Blogging

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“Variety is the spice of life, and of reading,” Diana Pho writes in Writer’s Yearbook 2023. “Watch how you balance dialogue, narration, and exposition on the page….Break up your sentence structure to keep your reader’s attention,” the fiction editor advises. “Break up your sentence structure to keep your readers’ attention.” While you’re at it, a second Writers Digest advisor, Steve Almond, suggests, “Why don’t you consider a new POV (point of view)?”

In business blogging, it’s generally a good rule to keep sentences short. Short sentences have power, we teach at Say It For You, and, particularly in titles, can more easily be shared on social media sites. However, not every sentence should be kept, and long sentences can be woven in with shorter ones. Then, once in a while, it’s a good idea to add an extremely short statement to add “punch” to the post. What’s the definition of a long sentence? According to thejohnfox.com, any sentence of more than 100 words is “almost guaranteed to be complex, complicated, and enormous”.

“The purpose of paragraphs is to break up an article into its logical divisions so that readers can easily grasp the thought,” explains freelancewriting.com. Each paragraph contains a single phase of the subject. Paragraphs in journalistic writing are usually shorter than in other kinds of writing. While varying the paragraph size in each post is a good idea, long paragraphs can be perceived as off-putting “wall of text”. “Start with a sentence that makes the reader ask a question, Wayne Schmidt suggests. (People hate unanswered questions.) It doesn’t have to be a literal question, just something that piques the reader’s curiosity.”

In blog marketing, variety is important not only in terms of sentence and paragraph length, but also in terms of the layout of the post itself. Different Layouts, writing coach Tony Rossiter explains, fulfill different purposes, including saving space, attraction attention, and raising questions. When it comes to business blogging, the placement of Calls to Action needs to be varied. Variations in the way the content itself is presented include beginning with the conclusion, then using the remainder of the blog post to prove the validity of that assertion. Bolding and bullet points add variety to the visual; impression.

Variety is the spice of blogging!

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Examining, Not Eating, Our Words

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“Every day, we eat our words,” Richard Lederer writes in the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Both our food and our language are peppered with salt,” he adds as an example. Before artificial refrigeration was invented, salt was the only way to preserve meat. Therefore: A portion of the wages paid to Roman soldiers was “salt money” with which to buy salt. The term was “salarium” (today we say “salary”). Other words derived from salt include salad, salsa, sausage, and salami. Good, plain people are called “salt of the earth”; a good worker is “worth his salt”.

Many of our words have to do with bread, Lederer explains. The term “companion” is derived from the Latin “com” (together) and “panis” (bread). We “break bread” with company. Wage earners are breadwinners. Cake is also an important root word, with the cakewalk being a 19th century dance meant to make fun of the rigidly stiff formal dancing of White plantation owners. Winners of dance contests were awarded a cake, possibly the origin of the expression to “take the cake”.

When it comes to language choices in blogging for business, I often recall the 1998 memorandum from President Bill Clinton: “The Federal Government’s writing must be in plain language. By using plan language, we send a clear message about what the government is doing, what it requires, and what services it offers. Plain language saves the Government and the private sector time, effort, and money.” Four specific characteristics of logically organized, easy-to-read documents,, Clinton said, include common, everyday words, “you” and other personal pronouns, the active voice, and short sentences. With “easy-to-read” a quality much to be desired in blog marketing, all four of these recommendations apply to blog posts.

“Examining” the terminology relating to your business or profession is a very good idea for business blogs. But, while helping readers “examine” the background of terms is a great way to stimulate interest, what we would not like to have to do is “eat our words”. Just how can content writers communicate an owner’s strong opinions without offending? “When you communicate a strong opinion, you automatically divide the audience into three parts: those who agree, those who disagree, and those who haven’t yet decided, crystalclearcomms.com admits. In a KRC Research survey asking whether CEOs have the responsibility to speak up about issues that are important to society, only 38% said yes..

At Say It For You, what I’ve learned over the years of creating blog content for dozens and dozens of clients in different industries and professions is that, in order to turn clients and customers “on”, we must incorporate one important ingredient – opinion. Taking a stance, I’ve found, clarified what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.

The trick is to examine words, express our own opinions in words, but avoid using words to mock others. After all, we want to enjoy reading words, hearing words, and using words, not “eating” them!

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Blog Topics Have Ninety-Nine Lives

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“How often do we celebrate the life of a cat?” asks Kostya Kennedy in the special LIFE issue of Cats – Companions in Life. Drawn by the pictures of adorable kittens to purchase the magazine, I found quite a number of valuable blog content writing pointers. The entire issue, with all the articles focused on cats, is proof of the fact that the same general topic can be approached in a myriad of ways. In fact, in order to add variety to a blog, I teach content writers to experiment with different formats, presenting the same business or practice from different vantage points, purposely tailoring the content to different segments of the customer base. We need to remember that, even within smaller segments of a target market, individual readers’ need for information, products or services was born in a slightly different space and has traveled a different path.
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The History of the House Cat
Once upon a time, we learn, the ancestor of today’s domestic feline was a wild creature prowling the deserts of the ancient Middle East. As hunter-gatherers turned into farmers, the found cats useful in getting rid of mice. The calmness of cats made them good house pets. In a blog, introducing the readers to the history of the brand, using stories about founders, current employees and alumni to “humanize” the content. Sharing history makes the focus less on what the company does and more about what it is. What’s more, sharing memories of the “good old times” that weren’t really so good in terms of efficiency and convenience, you have the ability to share with blog readers a sense of look-how-far-we’ve-come togetherness.

Secrets of Cat Behavior
What is a cat trying to say when it purrs? Why do cats like catnip? The blog content should share with readers the owners’ unique point of view within their own profession or industry and within the community. Myth-debunks are a great use of blogs, I’ve found, because many of the misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves in the natural order of business, in the form of questions and comments from readers and customers. The very word “secrets” is a draw in a blog post title, and shining the light of day on that misinformation shines light on your own expertise.

Shelter-Cat Success Stories
LIFE highlights stories of seven cats who, despite illness and injury, somehow beat the odds. Thanks to a network of compassionate humans… In your blog, customer success stories and client testimonials boost your credibility with new prospects, helping them decide to do business with you. Perhaps even more important, website testimonials foster commitment from those providing the testimonials and sharing success stories around using your products and services.

Just as the LIFE issue on cats takes a single topic, dealing with it many different ways, in blog content writing, today’s post can slant in one direction; tomorrow’s can take the same theme and highlight different aspect, perhaps appealing to different segments of the business’ (or the practice’s) audience. Blog topics can have, not just nine lives, but as many as ninety-nine!

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