Business Blogging With Adjectives

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Pay attention to proper spelling and grammar, Joanne Adams says in Grammar, and “people who read your writing will know, without a sliver of doubt, that you are somebody who really knows their $h*t”. One thing Adams thinks we ought to know about adjectives, for example, is that they come in three flavors: absolute, comparative, and superlative. In describing a team of runners, for example, you’d probably describe them all as “quick” (absolute). Two might be “quicker” (comparative) than the others, while one outstanding runner is “quickest” (superlative).

Making comparisons, in fact, is an important function in blogging for business. An effective blog clarifies what sales trainers like to call your “unique value proposition” in terms readers can understand. One excellent way to do that is by making comparisons with things with which readers are already comfortable and familiar. Effective blog posts, we’ve learned at Say It For You, must go from information-dispensing to offering perspective.  Before a reader even has time to ask “So what?” we need to be ready with an answer that makes sense, blogging new knowledge by presenting it in a framework of things readers already know. (Telling me that Moringa leaves are healthy isn’t as powerful as telling me they have four times the calcium of milk.)

“Everything isn’t awesome,” Cristine Struble observes in Fansided. Using one adjective to describe all types of events, experiences and things degrades both the adjective and the object described. Some words can better define an experience, emotion or action better than others. Why use one word over and over when a dictionary is filled with descriptive words? The lesson – when it comes to using adjectives in your blog to describe your products and services, don’t overuse the superlative.

Blogging maven Neil Patel teaches “How to Avoid the Destructive Power of Adjectives in Your Marketing Copy”. In fact, Patel observes, “adjectives are a copywriter’s nightmare. With the right adjectives, you’re persuasive and memorable. With the wrong ones – you lose your readers’ attention, he warns. If you’re trying to paint a picture with words, you need adjectives, Patel admits, but flowery or bombastic words make you sound insincere. Is what you’re offering really second-to-none, state-of-the-art, and unparalleled?

Patel’s practical suggestions:

  1. If the meaning of your sentence doesn’t change when leaving out the adjective, leave it our altogether.
  2. Use stronger nouns if that means you can leave out an adjective.
  3. Avoid adjective modifiers such as “very” and “really” – use specific adjectives.
  4. Offer specific technical details telling the real benefits of the product or service (what pain does using it avoid? )

Business blogging with adjectives can be a good idea, but stick with the absolute and the comparative, never overusing the superlative.

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Food For Thought and For Blog Posts

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As part of positioning your business or practice as a go-to source of information, you want your blog content to arouse curiosity and interest, all the while amplifying awareness of what you have to offer that is unique in the marketplace. Not only do you want your own brand to be perceived as innovative, you want to actually become more innovative in serving your customers and clients. And, while you may not be involved in a food-related industry, this article in Mental Floss Magazine, in which Michele Debczak traces the history of inventions that changed food history, might well trigger some content ideas for your blog….

1874 –
American doctor Samuel W. Francis received a patent for his spoon-fork-knife hybrid. The new utensil didn’t take off until the 1950s, when Hyde Ballard trademarked the name spork and the plastic revolution made it easy to manufacture.  What devices – or what processes – help make your product or service more convenient for users?

1905 –
Robert J. Barkley of Kansas had created an egg carton, obviating the necessity of counting and of the danger of breaking the eggs by frequent handling. The Bartender’s Guide to Batching describes an efficient way to make sure that in busier times, every customer receives a quality and consistent drink. Streamlining your delivery service can increase your website’s sales, SellerExpress advises. What steps does your business or practice take to make things convenient for users?

1928 –
In 1928, Iowa inventor Otto Rohwedder filed a patent for a machine that sliced entire loaves of bread at once. Kleen Maid Sliced Bread debuted on July 7, 1928. The day before, the Constitution-Tribune published a glowing endorsement calling the product “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped”. (That copy is believed to be the origin of the phrase “the greatest thing since sliced bread”.) Consumers prioritize saving time, effort and money. A “tutorial” in your blog can suggest ways for readers to accomplish a task in less time and at a lower cost.

1933 –
As Dow Chemical lab worker Ralph Wiley was cleaning equipment, he noticed a thin plastic film had formed inside a vial. The material naturally adhered to surfaces and blocked water and oxygen molecules. Originally used to protect military fighter planes and car upholstery, the product was renamed Saran Wrap after Wiley’s boss’ wife Sarah and daughter Ann. An “innovative blog” describes trends in your industry, handy statistics, and useful advice to readers, as well as highlighting innovations your own business or practice is introducing.

1945 –
Raytheon Company engineer Percy LeBaron Spencer was visiting a lab testing microwave-producing magnetrons when he noticed that the candy bar in his pocket had melted. His dry-cleaning bill ended up being a small price to pay for the flash of inspiration he had that day. As the story goes, Spencer sent out for some uncooked popcorn, and when it popped in front of the active magnetron, Spencer realized that microwave radiation could be used as a quick and convenient heat source for cooking. Later that year, he filed a patent for the microwave oven. By introducing readers to the people behind your brand, you “humanize” your blog content, helping readers feel a connection to your company or practice.

Your business or practice may not be directly related to food, but these tidbits about inventions that changed the food industry might well trigger some blogging “food for thought”!

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How Not to be Passive in Your Posts

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In “The Tyranny of the Verb To Be”, Tobias Buckell describes how, as a new writer, he “almost destroyed himself” trying to eliminate passive verbs from his material. What’s so terrible about the passive voice? Buckell asks. Isn’t it time to stop worrying about “staying active”? Some of our overuse of passive voice, he believes, comes from academic writing, which removes the narrator from English papers.

“While tense is all about time references, voice describes whether the grammatical subject of a clause performs or receives the action of the verb,” grammarly.com explains. It’s the difference between “Chester kicked the ball” (active) and “The ball was kicked by Chester” (passive). “If you’re writing anything with a definitive subject who’s performing an action, you’ll be better off using the active voice,” rhw grammarly author advises. “Using active voice for the majority of your sentences makes your meaning clear for readers, and keeps the sentences from becoming too complicated or wordy,” the Purdue Online Writing Lab agrees. .Sometimes, though, the active voice is simply awkward, Alice Underwood of grammarly explains, as in “People rumor Elvis to be alive”, as opposed to “Elvis is rumored to be alive”.

As writers, we teach at Say It For You, we need to decide (in each sentence and phrase) what – or who – matters most in each particular sentence – do we want to emphasize the action itself or the doer of the action? When it comes to actual “voice” in terms not of grammar, but of messaging, in a business blog, it’s important to have “voice variety”. That can come from writing some of the content in I-you format, with other posts written in third person. If a company person or a customer is being interviewed, the content can be written in the “voice” of the interviewee or that of the interviewer. “Third person narratives so often mimic the ‘beige voice’ of an objective reporter,” William Cane says in Write Like the Masters. With first person, he advises, “it’s usually easier to be intimate, unique, and quirky.”

In the grammatical arena, the most important thing, Bucknell concludes, is to test each sentence to see whether its SVA (subject, verb, object) arrangement could be written in a more interesting way. Achieving interesting writing is not as simple a matter as changing all the verbs to active, he realizes. “But looking carefully at all those ‘to be’ sentences might not be a bad way of diagnosing places where we have the opportunity to push ourselves a little more artistically,” he says.

Of course, as blog writers, we want to come across as passionate, never passive, towards our topics and towards our readers.

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Blog Posts – Info in a Flash

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“There’s nothing like flash fiction to teach you how to write an engaging story ” Breathe Magazine tells readers looking for “activities for a happy and healthy mind”. Author Kit de Waal, judging a microfiction writing contest, says she looks for “a whole story that gives me depth and breadth, with a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order.” The best microfiction, she adds, gets people talking and starts ideas in their heads.

While marketing blog posts are nonfiction, some of the tips offered by de Waal and other microfiction contest judges certainly apply.

  • “Focusing on a single idea is a really good technique.”
    When it comes to blogging, we at Say It For You firmly believe in the Power of One (one outcome, one audience, one writer, one client, and – one message per post, with a a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business.
  • “Pieces without a beginning, middle, and end don’t work.”
    In business blog writing, for the opening, you may choose to present a question, a problem, a startling statistic, or a gutsy, challenging statement. Later, on the “back end” of your post, your “pow” closing statement ties back to the opener, bringing your reader full circle.
  • “Editing and revising is the hard part, but it is important. Work with language and imagery.”
    The second hardest part of blog writing is cutting your own work down to size, cutting out the non-essentials.

  • “Readers must be made to think and talk about what you’ve told them.”
    For blogs, the “first take” message is crucial, showing online readers they’ve come to exactly the right spot to find the information they need.

  • “Choose three words at random and weave them into a story.”
    Blog readers tend to be scanners, and searchers will select the most important words, the ones relating most directly to what they came online to find in the first place. Choosing those keyword phrases should hardly be random, instead being the result of research about your target audience.

  • “Find your ideas in weird sources.”
    In order to create a valuable ongoing blog for your business, it’s going to take equal parts reading and writing.You need to keep up with what others are saying on your topic, plus keep up with your marketing and selling skills, as well as finding unusual or little-known facts that you can use to to explain your own (or your clients’) products, services, and culture.

“Flash fiction attempts to condense a story into the fewest words possible, telling big, rich, complex stories quickly and concisely, Catherin Sustana writes in ThoughtCo. Marketing.  blog posts, while not fiction, are a means of providing readers with valuable information, and doing it “in a flash”.

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In Each Post, Remember the Raison D’Etre

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“The first thing I do when I create a magic effect is forget about the method,” says Joshua Jay in How Magicians Think. “How it works comes later.” In fact, the last part of developing the trick will be the hardest, Jay says: its raison d’etre (reason for being). Why am I doing this in the first place? “I’ll cut this rope in half and put it back together…I’ll float this silver ball in front of a cloth.” Why? Who cares? The best magic, Jay says, has an emotional hook: “I’ll show you how to win when you play blackjack.” (Now they’re interested!)

Sure, the overall purpose of performance magic is to entertain. But what fascinated me as a Say It For You blog content writer was Joshua Jay’s central thesis: Each trick (each blog post) must have its own reason for being or raison d’etre.

What’s more, “great magicians don’t leave the audience’s thought patterns to chance,” Jay says. You might not suspect that he has a pigeon tucked into his right sock, but then again, why would you? In this sense, the author explains, magic is a collaboration between the magician and the audience. When it comes to blogging, Dan Roam’s book for speakers, Show and Tell . is helpful. As presenters, the author says, we need to ask ourselves: for this topic, for this audience, and for myself, which truth should I tell?. Roam suggests presenters ask themselves the following question: “If my presentation could change them in just one way, what would that change be?”

As blog content writers approaching our reader audience, what are we trying to accomplish in this one blog post? Is it:

1. changing their information, adding new data to what they already know?
2. changing their knowledge or ability?
3. changing their actions?
4. changing their beliefs, inspiring them to understand something new about themselves or about the world?

As you begin each blog post, forget about the method. What’s the raison d’etre?

 

 

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