Business Blog Marketing – Explaining When the Cows Come Home

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old sayings in blog content

When exactly do “the cows come home”? And who was the first person to “steal someone’s thunder?” Who would ever put a cat in a bag? Writing in Reader’s Digest, Jacopo Della Quercia shares the history of several colorful expressions that are part of the English language, but which have “lost the connection to their delightful origins”.

For us business blog content writers, “delightful origins: can be a tool for livening up blog posts designed to market a business or a professional practice. In fact, I teach at Say It For You, history has an important place in blogs. “History-of-our-company” background stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy for business owners or practitioners who overcame adversity or at least extricated themselves from a “pickle”.

What’s more, I have a pet theory about the kind of trivia Della Quercia is presenting in the Reader’s Digest piece: I think our curiosity is most intense when we’re testing our own knowledge. We’ve all heard the colorful English expressions he’s talking about, we all use them, but now that he’s brought them up, we realize we have no idea where they came from.

It’s fascinating to realize that cows were often milked in their barns at night, making that task one of the last ones on a farmer’s list. People used to sell piglets tied in bags, but a shady dealer might swap the piglet for a less expensive animal, such as a cat. 18th century dramatist invented a device to simulate the sound of thunder for his plays – and a rival dramatist copied the method for a production of Macbeth.

From a blog marketing standpoint, the expression “the cold shoulder”, which might have originally meant serving a guest a cold shoulder of mutton (an inexpensive, undesirable dish) to get rid of him, could be incorporated into a blog on etiquette – or on fashion (“cold shoulders” are all the rage). The expression “Till the cows come home” could be used in a message about a provider’s prompt service. Several of the other sayings Della Quercia mentions can also be useful – I can see “Blood is thicker than water” being used in a blog post about estate planning or business succession planning.

Della Quercia writes about “the surprising sources of great sayings’> As writers, we need to be on constant alert for surprising sources of great blog content!

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Business Blog Title Tongue-Twisting on Purpose

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alliteration

 

Remember the two old tongue-twisters “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” and “She sells seashells by the seashore”? Those two sentences are actually extreme examples of a creative writing technique called alliteration, in which you repeat the same letter or sound at the start of nearby words.

A couple of years ago at Say It For You, I began calling attention to the idea of using alliteration in business blog titles with an eye to making them more “catchy”. You see, it’s one thing to write great content, and quite another to get it read and ranked, as Corey Wainright of Hubspot reminds us.

Apparently, alliteration is a good idea not only for blog posts, but for magazine content as well. The other day, reading through this month’s issue of Fortune, I noticed many examples of alliteration in article titles:

Turning Travel Time into Quality Time is about private aviation company Wheels Up.
Critical Condition is a piece about a “botched acquisition by Pfizer”.
How to Connect with Tomorrow’s Customer is a piece about a “botched acquisition by Pfizer”.
Facebook’s Fix-It Team is about the company’s efforts to purge hate speech and criminal activity from its site.
Make Your Business “Sense” Smarter and More Self-Aware is about microelectronic sensors.
An article about Mattel is titled Barbie’s Diversity Dance.
A congressman from California is pushing an Internet Bill of Rights; the write-up is titled Man in the Middle.
An ad for Botox® is headed The Details Make the Difference.
The toy company Bird is featured in a piece called America’s Scooter Showdown.

“It is important to note that alliteration is about the sounds of words, not the letters; therefore, the letters “k” and “c” can be used alliteratively (as in  kitchen and cookie), as well as the letters “s” and “c” (as in sparkle and  cycle),” ereadingworksheets.com explains.  The words don’t need to be directly next to each other in the sentence or stanza to be considered alliterative, the website explains, but a good guideline to follow is whether you can detect the repetition of sound when you read the line aloud.

“Have some fun with alliteration,” Hubspot advises in “Foolproof Formula.” Why? “It’s a device that makes something a little lovelier to read, and that can have a subtle but strong impact on your reader.” Making a subtle but strong impact on readers? That’s precisely what our work at Say It For You is all about!

 

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Take Blog Readers to Where You Want Them to Be

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guiding blog readers

More data in business blog posts may not be the best way to persuade readers and to overcome skepticism, Jeremy Porter Communications teaches, because “those who make the most emotionally persuasive arguments win.”

Both this week’s Say It For You posts are focused on Jeremy Porter’s “Nine ways to create an emotional connection”. On Tuesday we covered the first three; here are the remaining six:

Tell a story
“Stories are memorable, easily shared, and inspire action.” Successful content writing for blogs is all about the power of story, I’ve found over the years. In fact, one big, big part of providing business blogging assistance is helping business owners formulate stories.

Use metaphor
Metaphors can make a speech interesting and memorable, Porter teachers, using as an example the one used by Martin Luther King said that “America has given the Negro people a bad check…But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” In a business blog, even though the overall topic is the same, there is endless variety that can be used to make each blog post special. One technique is usuing metaphor to make an unusual comparison between two things.

Visuals
“Support your speech with photos or video.” While the story line is paramount in blogging for business, where visuals come in, whether they’re in the form of “clip art”, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos, is to add interest and evoke emotion.

Get the delivery right
“It’s important that your tone, volume, and speed of delivery matches the moment.” It’s true that Porter is coaching speakers, but the same lessons apply to us business bloggers. The “facts” about the business or practice, I teach Indiana blog writers, must be translated into relational, emotional terms that compel reaction in readers.

Words matter
“Have a thesaurus handy and be ready to swap words that don’t pack enough punch, or pack too much punch. Do you want to say pain or agony? Sad or devastated?” One of the many delights of my work as professional ghost blogger derives from the discovery of “word tidbits” in other people’s writing. A really good word tidbit hits you smack between the eyes; in just a couple of words, it conveys an entire situation.

Use rhetorical devices
The Rule of Three makes a message easier to remember: The iPad2 was “thinner, lighter, and faster”; Abraham Lincoln spoke of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
In business blogging, I recommend a razor-sharp focus on just ONE story, one idea, or one aspect of a business, a practice, or an organization (other aspects can be addressed in later posts). But the “rule of three” still applies, in that you use three examples or three details that support the main idea of that blog post.

The lesson we business blog content writers can take from the Porter Nine: in writing business blog posts, more data may not be the best way to persuade – logical arguments are important, but appealing to readers’ emotion will win the day!

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Business Blog Posts – the When and the Why Then

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timing for posting blogs

 

“While planning your blogging strategy and schedule, you want to avoid busy times, when a lot of brands are posting to their blogs and there is increased competition for readers’ attention,” advises trackmaven.com. So, what is the best time to publish a business blog?

The question of timing is an important one – according to a recent report by MarketingProfs.com, 75-80% of marketers use blogging as part of their company’s content marketing strategy. In general, the most competitive day of the week to publish a post is Wednesday, with Sunday posts getting the most shares.

Writtent.com offers the following Rule of Thumb: Find the perfect balance of what you want and what your audience wants. Easier said than done, of course, but key questions to ask yourself, Writtent. adds, are whether you can keep that schedule consistently and publlish high-quality content at that frequency.

Of course, the best time to publish blog posts, Writtent.com concludes, varies by audience. If they are mostly business people, blogging on Saturday wouldn’t work well. As blog content writers for businesses and professional practices of many varieties, at Say it For You, we have come to realize the truth of that finding. (Our Say It For You blog is published every Tuesday and Thursday, first thing in the morning, and many of the subscribers “open” it very early in their business day.

Research continues apace on the when-and-why- then question about blog post publishing. Dan Zarrella of Hubspot aggregated millions of lines of data over three years, pinpointing three stats about when to publish blog posts:

  • For page views – Monday between 8 and 11 AM
  • For increased engagement – Saturday between 8 and 11 AM
  • For more Facebook shares – Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

The most important of the insights Zarella offers, in my humble opinion as a content writing trainer, is this one: “Increasing publishing frequency leads to more traffic and incoming links.”

 

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“Flesh Out” Business Blog Posts with Details

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Business blog content writing can balance feature stories with news. News stories are time-sensitive, while feature articles might have the same impact whether they are read today or months from now.

When it comes to blog marketing, “news” can mean two entirely different things.  The first type centers around you and your company or your practice, including new products and services you’re offering, new employees you want to introduce, or your recent or upcoming activities in the community. (Of course, it’s important to present this news in a way that makes it clear why your readers would want to know about it.)

Then, there’s news related to your city, your country, even worldwide events, keeping your readers updated on “what’s-going-on-and-how-do-we-fit-in. In a blog post, you might cite material from the news story, relating it to new developments in your own industry or field. The idea is not to simply repeat what’s already been said, but to showcase your own expertise and experience, offering a new perspective on that very news item.

I had reason to reflect on the concept of using community news in blogs as I attended the
500 Festival Memorial Service here in Indianapolis. From a business blog writer’s point of view, the web page about the service is a very good example of content that is detailed, informative, and which contains an implied Call To Action (spurring readers to attend the event).

There is a hyperlink from the article to the webpage of In.gov that shows a picture and offers detailed information about the War Memorial itself. In the same way, business blog posts can link to landing pages on the business’ or the practice’s website.

The article includes plenty of detail, explaining the terms Cortege (military funeral procession) and Caparisoned (riderless) Horse, and demystifying the symbolic meanings of the reverse Cavalry boots in the horse’s stirrups and of the Army Saber attached to the saddle. “Examples and details are the very things people remember long after reading a piece,” states Brandon Royal in The Little Red Writing Book, and I emphasize to Indianapolis blog writers the importance of.”fleshing out” their content with visual detail.

Business blog writing can balance feature stories with news, but for maximum impact, put “flesh” on the facts with details!

 

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