Finding the Flossiest Blog Topics

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Downtown St. Paul, MN

Mental Floss Magazine, always masters at making unlikely connections among seemingly unrelated topics, did it again in “25 Flossiest Cities in the World”.  The term “flossy”, the editors explain (lest we envision dental care), means “exhibiting qualities of charm, quirk, and brain-boosting power in equal measure”.

The article is all about places that don’t come to top of mind, steering readers’ minds away from the tried and true and introducing them to new ways of looking for travel destinations.

I explain to newbie content writers in Indianapolis that steering away from the tried and true gives business owners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise. Even more important, the technique of myth busting helps engage interest. A different approach can serve to answer readers’ concerns, as in the following examples:

  • Dentist’s blog:
    Do amalgams used for fillings cause mercury poisoning?
  • Beautician’s blog:
    Does makeup cause acne?
  • Internet security firm blog:
    If you don’t open an infected file, can you get infected?
  • Home décor firm blog:
    Should small rooms be painted in pale neutral colors?

Visitors arrive at your blog to find information on specific topics.  But, once your opening lines have reassured them they’ve come to the right place, it’s a great idea to use some unlikely connections to give them the sense of being ahead of the crowd, having some unusual “inside information”…

  • Giethoorn, Netherlands, Mental Floss advises, is flossier than Venice, with four miles of canals dug in the 13th century.
  • Lavenham, England is flossier than Pisa. Many of its buildings were constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries, are crooked because they used green timber which warped as it aged.
  • Huizhou, China is flossier than Austria.  China’s duplicature craze resulted in Austrian,  English, Swiss, Italian, and Spanish copycat cities.

What flossy topics can you use to unexpectedly engage blog readers’ interest?

 

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Blogs or White Papers – Which Have the Longest Shelf Life?

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supermarket in blurry for background
“White papers may have the longest shelf life of all content,” asserts John Fox in the Huffington Post.  it was interesting to read about Fox’s interview with Gordon Graham, author of White Papers for Dummies.

Some business owners are afraid white papers are too academic and “heavy”. Anything that’s poorly done is going to fatigue people, Graham points out, and most business white papers make the same mistake over and over – too much selling.  What a white paper is supposed to do, he says, is:

  • help people understand some kind of issue
  • solve a problem
  • make a decision

It’s not that John Fox recommends abandoning blog marketing in favor of white papers. In fact, he recommends, a problem-solution white paper can generate three or four blog posts.  “You take every section, boil it down a bit and post it.  Then, at the bottom, say ‘For more discussion, see the full white paper here’.”

“The definition of a whitepaper varies heavily from industry to industry,” observes Lindsay Kolowich of hubspot.com. Basically, though, Kolowich explains, “A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution.” “Whitepapers,” he adds, “are the academic papers of marketing content.  Readers expect a high degree of expertise backed by solid research that is fully documented by references.” In other words, they’re much more serious in tone, less flashy, and more research-based than blog posts or even ebooks.

Technically speaking, of course, both white papers and old blog posts can “live” indefinitely on your website “shelf”. The trick is to “selectively pick and choose your moments to remind visitors and social media contacts of the valuable information that is available to them, says GuavaBox.

Remember, even if a product remains viable and is still “fresh”, no product can be useful to customers while it is still on the shelf!

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In Business Blogging, Avoid the Cynic’s Sidebar

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Zorniger Wissenschaftler hlt seinen Daumen nach unten

Sure, you could say, “If I can’t avoid mentioning the competition altogether, I’m certainly not going to say anything nice about them,” author Jeff Thull tells his audience of salespeople. But that’s what Thull dubs “the cynic’s sidebar.”  After all, he points out, they may be your competitors, but they are viable alternatives for your customers.

Those competitors, Thull reminds salespeople, aren’t the customers’ competition, perhaps even an entirely viable option they’re already considering, and, if you unfairly misrepresent that option, you risk losing the customers’ trust.

I agree. In offering business blogging assistance, I reassure owners that addressing problems and misinformation in their blog posts shines light on their special expertise and on their particular slant on the work they do. At the same time, readers don’t like to be “made wrong” by having their assertions challenged directly, including their having checked out what your competition has to offer.

Yes, as content writers for business owners or practitioners, at least one of the goals we’re working towards is converting online searchers into to customers and clients. And, although one approach in a business blog is comparing your products and services to others’ it’s important to emphasize the positive rather an “knocking” a competitor.  That means that, rather than starting with what the competition is doing “wrong”, use the power of “We” to demonstrate what YOU value and the way YOU like to deliver your services.

Before you can do a good job positioning yourself (or the client for whom you’re creating the blog content), you need to go through a systematic thinking process, a 3-step self-examination of sorts:

  1. Who is my competition?
  2. How am I different (3 reasons per competitor)?
  3. How am I similar (3 reasons per competitor)?

That very thought process leads to what I’ve nicknamed “the training benefit” business owners can derive from corporate blog marketing. That benefit holds true, I’ve found, whether owners do their own blogging or collaborate with a professional ghost blogger, because the exercise helps train you to articulate those things to clients and customers.

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In a Blog, is Someone One or Two?

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One Plus One

“Beware of common grammatical mistakes, like subject-verb agreement,” cautions Helen Coster in Forbes. Rule to remember:  The number of the subject determines the number of the verb.

Use a singular verb form after:

  • Nobody
  • Someone
  • Everybody
  • Neither
  • Everyone
  • Each
  • Either

“We can agree that a verb agrees with its subject in person and number,” The Lousy Writer reminds us.  Examples include:

  • “No one except the ticket holders is admitted.”
  • “Every one of us is anxious to build a business.”
  • “The famous museum with its thousands of artifacts was destroyed.” (There is only one museum.)

What’s more, The Lousy Writer explains, the meaning rather than the form of the subject controls the number of the verb.

  • “The movie ’The Godfather’ was directed by Francis Ford Coppola.” (There is only one movie.)
  • “Fifty dollars is too much for those sneakers.”  (There is one sum of fifty dollars.)
  • “The committee is ready to boycott.” (The committee consists of several persons, but we refer to it here as one group.)

Using plurals and singulars can get quite tricky, Learner’s Dictionary authors admit, especially when a sentence has more than one subject per verb. Here are three examples:

  • (two singular) The dog and the cat bother me. (bother is a plural verb)
  • (two plural): The dogs and the cats bother me.
  • (one singular, one plural) The dog and cats bother me.

In blog content writing, of course, the idea is to avoid confusing the reader and get the point across. Avoiding common grammatical mistakes and making subjects agree with verbs is one healthy habit we content writers can cultivate.

Remember: the number of the subject determines the number of the verb!

 

 

 

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Paving the Cowpath in Blogging for Business

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Cow by the road

 

Using “enhanced electronic aids” for performance management is one of the latest trends in human resource management, but David Arella of Performance Xpress isn’t happy about that. “Does anyone else see the oxymoron here?” Arella asks, referring to “automatically personalized” written employee reviews. “We have paved the cow path and upped the speed limit, but we have not improved the journey or the destination,” he says.

Arella recalls those old meetings managers used to hold with employees to discuss their strengths and weaknesses and to develop targets for the coming year.” The performance review was seen as a way to either justify a salary increase or, in cases where there were problems, to begin a documentation trail to move an employee out of the company without legal ramifications,” he explains.

The new automated tools, in his opinion, have been directed primarily at speeding up the process, not improving it. As a blog content writing trainer, I loved reading  Arella’s reasoning about why speeding up the writing process actually reduces the effectiveness of the communication:

The process of writing requires applying a thinking process. Managers
who take the time to compose their own original paragraphs are likely to be
more specific and grounded in their feedback than those who click on
generalized “coaching tips.”

Blogging requires applying a thinking process. When business owners or professional practitioners blog, they are verbalizing the positive aspects of their enterprises in a way that people can understand, putting recent accomplishments down in words, and reviewing the benefits of their products and services. The very process provides self-training in how to talk effectively about their business or practice.

For those very reasons, company executives and business owners often make great bloggers.  After all, they understand their companies and are passionate about them, two important requisites for great blogging for business. There are three main reasons, though, that almost never happens: no time, no motivation, dislike of writing.

So, are all “training benefits” lost to business owners or professionals who hire freelance blog content writers to be their “voice”? Really, the answer is “no”, at least not if things are done right. “Outsourcing is not the same as abdication,” says John Janistch. “You need to maintain tight control on themes, voice, message, and specific topic needs”. That process of choosing themes, sharing strategies, and planning for content creation requires a thinking process.

Go ahead and pave the blogging “cowpath”, but keep the training benefits of blogging for business!

 

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