The First Blog Post Shows the Palette

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There’s an exercise artists can do to break through their equivalent of “writer’s block,” my friend Phil read in an urban sketching book about using watercolor. Deciding what to put on the first page of your sketchbook is the hardest, the author understood. A new artist might experience inhibitions about opening the paint wrappers. But if the first page is used to give the artist a better idea of what the colors will look like on paper, the rest will follow naturally.

Beginnings are hard in any field. The first day of class, for example, gets a lot of attention from pedagogues, because what happens on that day shows students what to expect from your instruction, Alicia Alexander and Elizabeth Natalle explain in a text on interpersonal communication.

A second friend, book writing coach Myra Levine, says that each author’s first question should be “whose eyes do we see through?” Point of View, Levine says, determines every word you write. In Levine’s webinar offers writing “prompts” to help writers envision the “palette”.

Business owners and professional practitioners launching their blog often experience the same feel of “opening the paint wrappers” or putting the first words to web page. At Say It For You, we explain that the opening post will set the tone for the ongoing blog series, letting readers know:

  • They’ve come to the right place – this blog promises to be a good source for the type of information I want and need?
  • They can tell the author/company/practice is likeable, resonating with their own belief system.
  • They understand there’s a reason you’ve decided to use a blog as an ongoing communication tool.

Fear of flying is an anxiety disorder, and some of the elements of that fear have nothing to do with the actually risks associated with flight. In Fear of Blogging, David Meerman Scott says many business owners fear:

  • looking silly
  • not having important things to say
  • lack of computer savvy
  • blogging “won’t work” for their industry

Of course, from a business standpoint, fear of blogging can be a fearsome business mistake, since, in the time it’s taken you to read this far into my blog post, thousands and thousands of new blog posts have been introduced, some by your competitors!

So, go ahead – open up that new sketchbook. Peel the plastic off the paint tubes. Try writing the answer to this question:

If you had only 10 words to describe just how you ended up in – and why you’re
still in- your present industry or profession, what would those words be?

There’s your business blog “palette”!

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The Magic of 3 in Blogging for Business

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Humanity has had a love-hate relationship with numbers from the earliest times, Ian Stewart writes in Britannica. Ancient Babylonians used numbers to predict eclipses; priests in ancient Egypt used them to predict the flooding of the Nile. Millions of otherwise rational people are terrified of the number 13. In Jewish culture, 18 represents good luck.

Over my years at Say It For You, I’ve come to consider the number 3 important when it comes to writing blog content.

3 elements of a blog post

  1. pictures and charts (the visual presentation of the blog
  2. the content itself (the facts and figures)
  3. the “voice”, the way the message comes across – first person vs. third-person reporting, humorous or serious, casual or formal

3-minute Shark Tank principle
From the time an entrepreneur is introduced to the time one of the sharks says “I’m out”, it is almost always three minutes, writes Brant Pinvidic in The 3-Minute Rule. If you can’t distill a sales presentation down to three minutes or less, the listeners will begin to make their decision without all the pertinent information. Given the very brief attention span of online readers, the essence of the message needs to come across in 3 seconds!

3-legged stool
In business blog posts I recommend a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of a business, a practice, or an organization.  Other aspects can be addressed in later posts. Offer three examples or details supporting the main idea of each post.

3 levels of involvement
While having a clear Call to Action is important in blog marketing, truth is, not every searcher is going to be ready to make a commitment. In your business blog, therefore, It makes sense to offer 3 different levels of involvement (subscribing to the blog, submitting a question, taking a survey, for example), and an ”ultimate decision does not need to be made now

3-pronged strategy
Working Mother magazine is an example of a 3-part plan of attack: Compliment-criticism-course correction. In discussing various “Mon” personality types, writer Katherine Bowers would compliment the “Drama Mama” or “Snowplow Mom”, suggesting ways in which that parenting strategy is great, followed be a critique – where that mothering style is off-track, then offering “course correction” options. Those same 3 prongs could be used in a blog focused on financial management, healthy living, pet care, or fashion.
https://www.workingmother.com/content/you-know-type-mom-parenting-styles

The rule of 3 in writing
The rule of three is a writing principle that suggests that a trio of events or characters is more humorous, satisfying, or effective than other numbers. The audience of this form of text is also thereby more likely to remember the information conveyed because having three entities combines both brevity and rhythm with having the smallest amount of information to create a pattern.

How The Power of Three Can Make Your Communication Effective

When it comes to blogging for business, make sure to remember the Rule of 3!

 

 

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Reify Your Blog Posts

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There are concepts that exist in a purely abstract way, and, in blog content marketing, we have to, as hackernoon.com puts it, “find ways to explain those concepts so that they make sense to as many people as possible”. In fact, as we’ve come to realize at sayitforyou.net, blogging itself is a way of reifying complex information.

To reify is to make something abstract more concrete or real. Sociology textbooks define ‘reification” (which literally means to “turn into things”) as “the process of coming to believe that humanly created social forms are natural, universal, and absolute things”. In the two sayings “You can’t fool Mother Nature” and “fighting for justice”, Nature and Justice, both abstract concepts, are treated as real people, even though we know they’re not, There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, authors Chevette Alston and Lesley Chapel explain in study.com, because reification can turn language abstractions into tangible understanding.

“Concepts like happiness and intelligence and personality are called constructs. We cannot see them directly. They are labels, concepts, literally constructions in our heads. By giving such complex processes a label, we can discuss them, psywww.com explains.

Not everyone agrees that reification is beneficial. “When we assume that a concrete, tangible thing has the quality of abstract concepts, when the thing-in-itself is forgotten and the thing-as-thought-of is mistaken for the thing itself, that can be dangerous, Biznewske.com explains. For example, assuming that someone is an expert simply because they have a degree is a reification fallacy. Assuming that a boxed product such as cereal is a symbol of health and nutrition is a fallacy. Reifying an idea such as “male privilege” means taking it as true when it might or might not be true.

Hacker.com, though, “gets it”. The essential challenge we blog content writers face, they understand, is explaining abstract concepts in the right way, because doing that makes the difference between business success and business failure. Readability is a critical aspect of online writing, in which we business bloggers are out to retain the clients and customers we serve and to bring in new ones.

The products and services we’re writing about can’t be amazing in the abstract, which is why reifying blog content can be just what’s needed to make it engaging and real..

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Using the Cs for Virtual Meetings and Business Blogs

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“Meetings should matter, especially when those meetings are taking place exclusively online,” author Paul Axtell posts in the book Make Virtual Meetings Matter. No one wants to be called in for a meeting that could have been an email.

You can transform those opinions by holding a meeting that is efficient and productive, useful and important, Axell explains. Leadership development consultant Jill Hinrichs tells how to use the Cs, each of which can be applied to business blog content writing:

Clarity
Make clear what the purpose of the conversation or meeting is and the outcome you are committed to producing. Keep tasks short, clear, and actionable.
The job of a blog post headline is to get people to read your article, but you must respect the reader experience. The expectations set up in the title must be fulfilled in the content, which itself must remain focused.

Connection
What is our relationship to each other and what is our shared experience? Who are you and with whom have you been dealing. What is our shared experience?
At Say It For You, I tell newbie blog content writers: “Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry – all of it.” Since we, as ghostwriters, have been hired by clients to tell their story online to their target audiences, we need to do intensive research, taking guidance from the client’s experience and expertise.

Candor
What is the relevant information we need to have in order to make good decisions? Create trust and share values, Hinrichs advises.
Blog readers want to feel trust in your know-how and professionalism and you won’t be able to help them until that trust happens. Readers who visit your blog are trying to learn about the business owner or practitioner behind the blog. One way to address that need is to use opinion to clarify what differentiates this business or practice from its peers. The blog has to add value, not just a promise of value should the reader convert to a buyer, but real value in terms of information, skill enhancement, or a new way of looking at the topic. Searchers will sense that they’ve come to a provider they can trust.

Commitment
What action will we commit to as a result of the conversation? There should be a clear next step.
In corporate blogging for business, the “ask” comes in the form of calls to action. Offering a reason for the requested action greatly improves the chances of having your request fulfilled. In both meetings and blogs, participants need to know how they can measure success.

If our blogging Calls to Action are going to be effective, I realized, it’s up to us blog content writers to offer workable benchmarks, explaining the “as measured by”.

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Laws of Likability for Bloggers

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In her rare downtime, Michelle Tillis Lederman confesses in her book The 11 laws of Likability, her guilty pleasure is watching TV reality shows. The characters she’s most drawn to, she realized, are being real. Contestants who accept themselves and have a sense of humor about their faults are the most likable, she concluded.

How does that insight apply to networking? Lederman asks. Being authentic is not a permission slip to be rude, obnoxious or inappropriate, but what it does mean is letting your true self show through so that others can connect with you, she concludes.

Can this insight be applied to online content marketing? In-person communication, Lederman explains, is based on three components – verbal (the words you choose), vocal (the tone and animation of your voice), and visual (facial expression and body language). In web-based marketing, we realize at Say It For You, words become our primary tools for transmitting the “true you” of our business owner or professional practitioner clients.

Lederman offers four pieces of practical advice about word-based communication:

  1. Start with the positive.
  2. Choose strong, actionable verbs.
  3. Focus on what can be done.
  4. Translate your own ideas into knowledge and opportunity (for them)

Nothing is more real – and more “likable”, our blog content writers have learned, than citing the real-life obstacles the business owner needed to overcome and the wisdom she’s gained in the process.

A connection is something that requires two, Lederman reminds readers. In the world of blog marketing, it is the visitors who’ve initiated the “conversation” by virtue of searching online for answers to a question they have or a product or service they are seeking. The blog content is there to do what Lederman calls “meeting them where they are – almost”. As bloggers, we’re validating the readers’ “energy state”, showing them we “heard” what they are saying and that they’ve come to the right place.

In relationships, Lederman realizes, when you give freely to others, you increase your likability. Still, you don’t always get something in return. A favor, she reminds readers, is only a favor when someone wants it!

In pull marketing (of which blogging is an important part, you have advice and valuable information to offer freely to all visitors to your site. Yet “what one person finds valuable may be another person’s spam,” the author remarks ruefully. Just be yourself and be there, she concludes. The rest is up to them.

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