In Order to Engage Blog Readers, Avoid Spoon-Feeding

“Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.”

I was hearing this phrase for the first time, spoken by a police chief in a news broadcast, but later learned that the saying has been around for decades.

As a writer, I’m always fascinated by what makes certain word combinations pack such tremendous power.  In this case, I concluded, it was because I. as the listener, needed to go through a certain thinking process in order to get the meaning. Couldn’t that same concept apply to readers of our business blog posts, I wondered?

Reminds me of something that humorist Dick Wolfsie teaches. In order for a joke to be funny, he explains, the person listening to the joke or reading the joke has to figure things out!  The laughter is the reward that the listener or reader gives himself for having figured out what the punch line is really saying.

It may be that the same concept applies to the material presented in our business blog content writing, and that, for the blog to cause real communication, it takes two.

People go online and use search engines to find information.  They need to know more about something, and that something has to do with what you have, what you know about, or what you know how to do.  If you’ve provided relevant, up to date content in your blog post, the reader’s browser found you, and you’ve got yourself a potential client or customer. That individual, just like the person who gets a joke, feels rewarded for the search.

Needless to say, the content needs to be understandable.  But what the “Better to be tried by 12…” lesson might add here is that we don’t want to spoon-feed the readers. They need to be able to do part of the “work”.  Otherwise, like bored students at a lecture, they might doze off (or, in the case of online readers, click off!).

Educational theory supports my understanding.“A lecture is still a lecture, and having students simply listen is still a passive action,” observes Ben Johnson of Edutopia. “The solution is simple,” he offers: “If a teacher wants to increase student engagement, then the teacher needs to increase student activity — ask the students to do something with the knowledge and skills they have learned.”

Engage blog readers, but avoid spoon feeding!