What’s Tops in HVAC Blogs is What’s Tops in Blog Content Writing – A

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What makes for a good heating and air conditioning blog?  Well, some of the qualities marketing company Broadly.com looked for in choosing “the Top HVAC Blogs of 2018” can serve as a guide for blog content writers in any field:

A focus on industry changes
What I’ve learned over the years of helping Say It For You clients in different industries create content, is that customers expect their service and product providers to keep them up-to-date by condensing all that website/newspaper/magazine/trade journal wisdom into bite-sized pieces..

Checklists and troubleshooting guides
Blog readers often download a checklist and often share it with someone else., and, often, a checklist serves as a Call to Action.

Energy-saving advice
The whole concept of offering practical, usable, advice, especially if it’s a bit out of the ordinary is a perfect fit for business blog content writers in any industry or profession.


Energy myths
Myth-debunks are a great use of blogs, I’ve found, because many of the misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves in the form of questions and comments from readers and customers. Shining the light of day on that misinformation shines light on your own expertise.

Descriptions of new technologies
Repurposing involves turning existing blog posts into new ones. The content in the new posts reinforces the content from the former posts. But the new version progresses to new information about developments in your field.

Easy-to-understand articles
Readability is a critical aspect of online writing, with the idea being to match your writing to your intended audience. There are tests you can put your blog through, including the Flesch-Kinkaid, which shows what grade in school a person would need to have completed to  be able to understand your content.

These six important qualities which Broadly.com pinpointed in “Top HVAC Blogs of 2018” are just the beginning. In our next Say It For You post, we’ll note even more ways in which those good tips from the HVAC industry can “heat up” blog content writing.
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The Memo Meme for Blogging

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Memos are usually written for one of the following reasons, explains Tony Rossiter, author of Effective Business Writing in Easy Steps:

  • to provide a written record
  • to give the reader background information for a specific visit or event
  • to make a suggestion or proposal
  • to give advice or make recommendations about a particular issue or problem

Interesting – I couldn’t help reflecting: the key characteristics of a good memo which Rossiter lists are remarkably similar to the key characteristics of good blog posts:

  • they’re short
  • they’re clear and concise
  • they’re reliable, with information that is 100% accurate
  • they’re reader-friendly
  • they’re easy to read

To be effective, both blog posts and memos must clarify the issue (explain the need for action), provide “arguments” in favor of taking that action, based on essential facts surrounding the issue or topic.

You might like to do several things in your memo, Rossiter suggests (every one of these, our Say It For You content writers know, can apply to effective blog posts):

  1. draw attention to a track record of successful involvement in similar actions or projects
  2. acknowledge the expertise of the people who will be heading up the project
  3. suggest next steps (perhaps a planning meeting or further information-gathering)

In the case of a marketing blog post, that next step might be signing up for a newsletter, subscribing to the blog, downloading a paper, or clicking on a link to a landing page showing various product or service options.

A printed or emailed memo typically begins with a “to” (“to: managing director”, “to: all technical staff”, “to: all regional managers”… While a blog post relies on incoming online traffic, it’s crucial for the content writers to direct their message to a specific target audience.

When composing a blog post, it helps to remember the memo “meme”!

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Blog “As-Measured-By” Calls to Action

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“Just Do It” worked for Nike. Let’s face it, though – readers of our marketing blogs aren’t going to convert to customers that easily.

True, as I stress in corporate blogging training sessions, blog content writing has an enormous advantage over traditional “push marketing” tactics, because, what blogging does best is deliver to corporate blog sites customers who are already interested in the product or service they’re providing!

In corporate blogging for business, the “ask” comes in the form of calls to action. Offering a reason for the requested action needless to say, greatly improves the chances of having your request fulfilled. At the City University of New York, I learned, experiment subjects were instructed to ask someone using a copy machine if they could go first.  When persons making that request offered a reason, they were given permission 94% of the time (versus only 60% of the time when they gave no explanation for why they deserved to go first).

There’s more, though, to improving the chances readers with fulfill your requests. Jason Buetler, who trains software design apprentices at Edusource, uses the “as-measured-by” principle. In doing what Buetler calls “predictive” planning, it’s crucial to establish sets of benchmarks by which progress towards the goal can be measured.

What-can-I-expect questions are implicit in every decision-making process:

  • “How will I know?”
  • “ How will I measure success?”
  • “ How can I tell it’s working?”

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”.

In “Say This, Not That”, Christine Georghiou advises salespeople to justify a request or statement with the word “because”.  That word immediately answers the question on every prospect’s (and every online reader’s) mind – “What’s in it for me?”

“As-measured-by” goes even further than that, setting up specific, time-based expectations. For reader/prospects to know what’s in it for them, they need the reassurance that certain signals will be there to tell them results are in the process of happening.

Use “as-measured-by” in your Calls to Action!

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Does Blog Post Length Matter to Readers? Think Duration Neglect

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Opinions have always differed on the optimal size for a blog post. Having composed blog posts (as both a Say It For You ghost writer and under my own name) numbering well into the tens of thousands, I’m still finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!”. I think maybe Albert Einstein said it best: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

A chapter in Chip and Dan Heath’s book The Power of Moments gave me a different perspective on that old long-short question. Research has found, the authors note, that “when people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length.” This phenomenon is called ‘duration neglect”. People tend to rate an experience based on two key factors:

  • the best or worst moment (“the peak”)
  • the ending

In business blog writing, Dave Taylor explains (and as we content writers in Indianapolis know), there are no editors, layout people, or government regulators to dictate the length of any marketing blog post. As a corporate blogging trainer, I felt my own approach to the subject was vindicated when Taylor cited a common piece of editorial advice about how long a book or article should be: “Write just enough to cover the material at the appropriate level of detail, then stop.” That dovetails nicely with the advice I offer when offering business blogging assistance.

The Heaths’ concept of the “peak”-and-ending, I realized, suggests a whole new way to come at the long-short question. A business blog post should be designed to elicit an “Aha!” response, that “peak” moment when readers find the advice or the offer of a product or service which seems to be the exact right thing for them. (Of course, in blogging, that realization had better happen sooner rather than later, or searchers will click away from the page!)

A big part of successful blog content writing involves getting the ”pow opening line” right. To sustain the “pow!” effect, present a question, a problem, a startling statistic, or a gutsy challenging statement. “Pow” endings, then, tie back to the openers, bringing the post full-circle.

Readers who’ve made their way to the end of a business blog post are going to remember only two things: the best moment and the ending. If they’ve had a positive experience, how long or short the post has been will have lost importance – all due to the duration neglect effect.

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Blogging About Potatoes, Eggs, and Coffee Beans

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The story “Adversity” in Steve & Jacks Home News reminded me how powerful stories can be in moving readers to action by appealing to their emotions. After his daughter had complained that, due to her dyslexia, she needed to work twice as hard as her classmates, a father brought three pots of water to a boil, placing a potato in one pot, an egg in the second, and some ground coffee in the third. Each of the ingredients, he explained, had faced the same adversity in terms of the boiling water. The potato, which had gone in strong, became soft, the father pointed out. The egg, originally fragile, had become hard. The coffee beans had created something entirely new.

“Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his latest book, All Marketers Tell Stories. Essential elements of effective stories, he explains, include:

  • authenticity
  • an implied promise (of fun, money, safety, a shortcut, emotional satisfaction)
  • appeal to the senses rather than to logic

The story Steve and Jack Rupp chose for their newsletter is a very good example, I think, of the type of story we blog content writers can use in blog posts. The father-daughter relationship is one to which readers can relate; the message is inspirational and emotionally appealing. It uses trivia, pulling together facts we had probably not considered (the different effect boiling water has on eggs, potatoes, or coffee beans).

A big part of providing business blogging assistance is helping business owners and professional practitioners formulate stories about themselves and their own business or practice. The history of the company and the values of its leaders are story elements that create ties with blog readers. Online visitors to your blog, I teach at Say It For You, want to feel you understand them and their needs, but they want to understand you as well. The stories content writers in Indianapolis tell in their marketing blogs have the power to forge an emotional connection between the provider and the potential customer.

The “boiling water” represents both the environment in which that business or practice operates and the complex of problems for which they offer solutions. Every business or practice has wonderful stories just waiting to be told, describing how the “boiling water” made them stronger, more empathetic, and better able to bring something entirely new to their marketplace.

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