A Recommended List of Reading Genres for Better Business Blogging

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“Reading fiction, it seems, could be a way to break old habits and unlock more effective, empathetic marketing,” Carina Rampell of the Content Marketing Institute observes, quoting William Faulkner. (Good news for me; since the pandemic stay-at-home thing began, I’ve worked my way through some 18 different novels!)

Like all writers, marketers have a lot to gain from exposure to literature, Rampell continues. “Marketing is all about empathy and storytelling, and great stories are proven to make us more empathetic.”’ But not all reading – and not all stories, she cautions, are the same, and “some genres are more effective than others in helping you “improve your marketing chops”.

 

Rampell lists advantages we content writers can gain from reading:
  • Reading poetry teaches us clarity and precision.
  • Reading the classics teaches us compelling storytelling structure, building tension to pull an audience along to a satisfying resolution.
  • Reading helps us get away from our subject or product expertise and unlock our creativity.

One of the principles I stress at Say It For You is that, in order to create a valuable ongoing blog for your business, it’s going to take equal parts reading and writing.  I’m often asked when I train business owners and employees or newbie blog content writers for hire is this: Where do you get ideas for blog posts? My answer is – everywhere!  But that doesn’t mean the ideas are going to jump right onto your page. At least half the time that goes into creating a blog post is reading/research/thinking time! The lesson I try hardest to impart in corporate blogging training sessions is: “The more you know, the more you can blog about”.  Business content writing in blogs is the result of a lot of reading and listening on the part of the blogger.

 

The Rampell article discusses the value we blog content marketers can gain by reading and classical novels. A genre I can add to her list is one that, on the surface, seems the very antithesis of the “fresh” content we aim for in blog writing – historical fiction.

The insight I gained? Material doesn’t need to be “new” in order to be “fresh”. Readers may already know some or all of the information you’re presenting in your business blog, but they need your help putting that information in perspective.  In fact, that’s where blogging for business tends to be at its finest, helping searchers with more than just finding information, but helping them understand its meaning and significance.
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The Remarkable Growth of Blogging for Business

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“If you were to read 10 different blogs per day, it would take you over 41,600 years to work your way through the blogs that are currently online,” observes 99firms.com.
The statistics backing up that remarkable 99firms statement are, well…remarkable:
  • A new blog post is published every half second.
  • One quarter of all websites on the internet are blogs.
  • WordPress posts are viewed more than 20 billion times each month.
  • 55% of marketers say blogging is their top inbound marketing tactic.
  • 70% of consumers would rather learn about a company from a blog post rather than from an ad.
Understanding the reason blogs beat traditional website pages hands-down when it comes to winning search engine rankings is a matter of simple addition, I explain to new clients of Say It For You. The typical website has only a finite amount of space for text, making it nearly impossible to have a large volume of content including all the key words that relate to that business. Blogging doesn’t have those constraints, because blog content stays around forever.  As new content is added, all the formerly posted content moves “down” a spot to make room, but remains on the site, adding to the cumulative number of repetitions of key words and phrases.

Meanwhile, the traditional selling sequence of appointment, probing, presenting, overcoming objections, and “closing: is totally dead, as Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible, asserts. What’s new, Gitomer says, is a step-by-step risk elimination, a process for which blogs are well-suited. Business blogs, I’m fond of saying in corporate blogging training classes, are nothing more than extended interviews, and blog posts are an ideal vehicle for demonstrating support and concern while being persuasive in a low-key manner

“We’ve sprinted, not walked, into a do-it-now-or-be-lost-forever internet-driven business world,” observes social media maven Ryan Cox in a guest post on this Say it For You blog.
Consumerism can be described in one word: NOW!  If I think about something, I turn to Google and search for it. If you do not show up to give me information, I’ll have already given third party authority and my interest to someone else.”

“The marketing budget for a business owner has been turned upside down by the emergence of social media, blogging and real-time communications,” Cox continues.. “No one has perfected the dissemination of messaging from business to consumer, but the answer is you need to have a blog.”

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What Genre is Your Business Blog?

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Is a blog a literary genre? Kevin Eagan poses that question in his own blog, critical margins, admitting he doesn’t have a definitive answer. Blog content writers, he muses, are a “relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world.” (Wow! Love that description of the work we do here at Say It For You.)

Bloggers do on the screen what 18th Century essayists did in newspapers and magazines, Eagan reflects: They meander, they search, they seek out something. The historic form closest to blogs is the diary, Eagan goes on, but a diary is almost always a private matter, while a blog is instantly public. In an Atlantic Magazine article, blogger Andrew Sullivan described blogging this way:  You end up writing about yourself, but transforming a retrospective and personal piece into a public and immediate one. 
As a marketing blog content writing trainer, I realize that our art is related to the “genre” of advertising, but with a very big difference. Blogs are not the same as advertisements, billboards, or even brochures.  What freelance blog content writers do is help business owners communicate to readers a vision of themselves feeling safer, healthier, more comfortable, better looking, happier, or wealthier. Blogging helps establish a business owner or professional practitioner as an authority on a subject.

Some years ago, Damon Richards shared an interesting insight about an added benefit of blogging through a guest post on this Say It For You blog: “A useful added benefit is the ability to send messages to your existing customers that you’d rather not have to tell them directly. In a business blog post, the statement seems more generic, so my customers don’t feel singled out. They view things as universal problems, which makes them more willing to implement fixes.”
As a businessperson or practitioner, I teach, you have many different kinds of  stories to tell through your blog:
  • the benefits of your products and services
  • the history of your business and your own journey
  • successful case studies and testimonials
  • news of importance to your customers
  • your perspective on trends in your industry

As Kevin Eagen admits, “The blog article encompasses many things.  A blog post is about searching, about open-ended questions and lose ends.  It’s not a” tidy” genre like the 21st Century novel.”  So, no, blogs don’t fit neatly into one literary genre
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Good Grammar Affects the Effect of a Business Blog – Part A

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Of the 11 common mistakes bloggers make in their first year, blogger Holly Sutton observes, one of those is making too many spelling and grammar errors.
As a blog content writing trainer, I find, grammar errors are all too common even among experienced bloggers. So, reasoning that social distancing requirements have left many content writers with extra time on their hands, I decided to devote this week’s Say it For You posts to spelling and grammar cleanup hints. (Sure, as Sutton points out, there are editing tools out there, but they don’t catch all the details and don’t really explain the principle behind each change.)

Homonyms are words that sound alike, but mean different things.  It’s important to choose the word that says what you meant to say. Otherwise, a goofy mistake can just make you look silly, as Brian Clark of copyblogger.com points out. Confusing homonyms  Clark specifically mentions include:
  • Your (refers to something you own); you’re is a contraction of “you are”.

  • It’s means “it is” – It’s cold outside. Its means belonging to it. Each toy should be put in its proper place.

  • Affect is a verb meaning influence.  The weather affects my mood.  Effect is usually used as a noun meaning “result” – Cloudy weather has a depressive effect on me.

  • Lose and loose are not true homonyms, and they are certainly not synonyms, yet too often I see one being used when the other would be correct.  Your clothes might be too loose, but you certainly wouldn’t want to lose them accidentally.

  • When someone praises us, we appreciate the compliment; a complement is something that matches well with something else, such as an armchair in a color that looks good next to your sofa.

  • The principal in an organization or company is the most important person; a principle is fundamental truth or standard.

Amy Mascott, writing in Parents Magazine, names other common homonyms that can be confused, including two threesomes:
  1. There will be a lot to eat at their house tonight; they’re (they are) buying up all the hot dogs in town.

  2. We went to the park two nights in a row. Did you go, too?

    No doubt about it – in blogging for business, grammar affects the effect!

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In Business Blogs, Dessert May Come First

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“When you sit down for a meal, most people don’t expect to eat dessert first.  And when you sit down with a book, you don’t expect to know the ending before you start reading.” So begins the intro to Sherry Deutschmann’s business book Lunch With Lucy.  Nevertheless, Deutschmann, founder and CEO of Letter Logic, Inc. lets us know upfront – and very precisely – what the central theme of her book is going to be.
As blog content writers, our first instinct might, in fact, be to leave “dessert’ for last, offering information using a logical, linear structure. For a variety of reasons, though, that might not be the most effective way to present ideas in every situation.

A blog itself is made up of short, frequently updated posts arranged in reverse chronological order.  Within any one post, topics may be presented sequentially or climactically (building
towards an important conclusion). The traditional structure of a newspaper story follows the model of an upside-down pyramid, with the most important information first and the details filled in later. That inverted pyramid concept may not be right for many blog posts, because readers must be kept hungry for more information in order to keep reading. Ginney Soskey of Hubspot suggests presenting valuable information again and again through the entire article.
Whether readers access the content in the first place, of course, depends on whether they click on the title. There are two basic categories of blog titles, we’ve found at Say It For You. The first simply conveys what content readers should expect to find in the post or article. That type of title is not “cutesy” or particularly engaging, but can be highly effective in business blogging because it’s short and to the point and uses keyword phrases that match up with what a reader may have typed into the search bar. The second category of title arouses readers’ curiosity, but gives only the barest hint of the content to follow. 
With an important purpose of marketing blogs is attracting online readers, blog post titles are a crucial element in the process. Readers need assurance that they will be coming to “the right place” for the information they need.
In blog content writing, at least a little taste of the “dessert” might need to be served straightaway!
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