In Blogging for Business, Trivia is Hardly Trivial

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When it comes to blogging for business, trivia is hardly a trivial matter. There are four basic ways in which trivia can be used as blog content writing tools:

  • defining basic terminology
  • sparking curiosity about the subject
  • putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective
  • explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way

Albert Jack’s book, Red Herrings & White Elephants, traces the origins of phrases we use every day. (In this post, I’m going to suggest ways in which different types of businesses or practices might use pieces of trivia, but I challenge content writers to come up with their own ideas as well.) Needless to say, finding ideas for blog posts isn’t all about trivia – the trivia are just jumping-off points for the message.

If something “goes by the board”, it means it is cast aside and lost. On the old wooden ships, author Jack explains, the “board” was the side of the boat, and anything falling off the ship and lost forever had “gone by the board”.
This idiom is perfect for the blog content of any practice or business that wants to emphasize its attention to detail, showing how they make sure to clean up after the job and tie up all the “loose ends”.

To “have someone over a barrel” means that person is at the mercy of third parties and cannot change the circumstances surrounding them. The saying originated in medieval Britain, where it was standard practice to drape a drowning person face down over a barrel to try to clear their lungs of water. Since the victim was totally reliant on other people to determine their fate, when you are “over a barrel” you feel helpless to improve your situation.
This saying would be perfect for a personal injury attorney fighting for people who have been wronged by others, or perhaps for a financial advisor who helps people gain control over their debts.

A “dark horse” is something of unknown quantity or somebody whose abilities are not yet fully known but soon will be. The expression comes from the novel The Young Duke, published in 1831, in which the two favorites in a horse race are beaten by a a relatively unknown third horse.
One obvious application for this expression would be an investment company blog, but the concept could apply to the employee training and hiring field as well.

To “keep something at bay”, such as danger or illness, means to fend it off. In ancient times, Jack explains, the bay tree was thought to posses protective powers.
As a content writer, I can see this expression being used for a blog on healthy lifestyles (Vitamins? Cooking? Exercise?).

Fact is, when I’m offering business blogging assistance, I talk about the need to create as much fresh material as possible. In blogs, content needs to inform, educate, and entertain. While trivia may be just one of many tools content writers can use to introduce interest and variety, I’ve found that trivia are hardly “trivial” when it comes to blog marketing!.

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Best Blog Content Writers Read Around and Toggle

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“Dreams, I’m convinced, are just one more dimension of our minds,” writes Sylvia Browne in her best-seller, Book of Dreams...

At Say It For You, I teach the principle of “reading around” in order to attain “go-to industry authority”.  In fact, I stress, business bloggers are going to need to spend at least as much time reading as writing. Even after almost a decade and a half creating blog content for business owners and practitioners, I continue to need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my client sells and what it does for its clients. At least half the time that goes into creating a post is reading/research/thinking time, I’ve found. The writing part can flow only after prep time is complete.

Just last month, I quoted Carina Rampell of the Content Marketing Institute, who explains that our reading needn’t be limited to the subject of our blog content.  Poetry, she explains, can teach us clarity and precision, while the classics can teach us compelling storytelling structure. Browsing through the Sylvia Browne book on dream interpretation (hardly my usual choice of reading topic!) made me realize the truth of Rampell’s statement that “reading helps us get away from our subject or product expertise and unlock our creativity”.  

Every dream experience, Browne posits, is one of five kinds:
  • the prophetic dream
  • the release dream
  • the wish dream
  • the information or problem-solving dream
  • astral visits
“Knowing what type of dream I’m trying to interpret, Browne explains, “is always my first step in unlocking its mysteries.”

Business blog posts also come in different varieties.  From the content writers’ point of view, I’s generally a good idea to toggle back and forth among those varieties over time, keeping returning visitors engaged, but also in order to appeal to different types of reader. There are “how-to” tutorial posts, resources and link lists, reviews, opinion pieces, interviews, case studies, breaking news, and personal story posts. But, precisely as Sylvia Browne observes, knowing what type of post you are presenting helps unlock its “success”.

The best blog content writers have learned to read around and then – toggle among the types!
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Horseback Riding Lessons for Blog Content Writers

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“Like any sport or dedicated hobby, there are bigger life lessons to take away than simply the information or skills necessary to participate,” writes horseback riding fan Sarah Faulkner in bizjournals.com. Faulkner lists four lessons leaders can take from equestrians, each of which I believe can be valuable to us blog content writing professionals:
Look where you want to go.
As a leader you must have a well-defined vision and be able to clearly communicate it.
One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that focusing on main themes helps blog posts stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the typical corporate website. The posts fit together into an overall business blog marketing strategy through “leitmotifs”, or recurring themes. These themes tie together different product or service descriptions, different statistics, and different opinion pieces., but there should be little doubt of the main direction in which you “want to go”.
Communicate clearly, consistently, and confidently.
Reinforce verbal with physical commands, but do not give mixed messages.
Even while letting readers see your own “humanity”, keep your blog content well-organized and well-written to convey a feeling of being in control. Maintaining a consistent schedule of posting sends a reassuring message to readers.

Sense and respond to cues.
As a leader, you need to sense and respond to market forces such as trends and competition.
As I teach at Say It For You, blog content writers must develop “peripheral vision”, being aware of what competitors are doing and working to stay just one step ahead of them.
Tack up your own mount. 
Be willing to get into the details, keeping informed on the numbers and fundamentals of your business.
Successful blogging for business is all about detail.  Corporate websites provide basic information about a company’s products or a professional’s services, but the business blog content is there to attach a “face” and lend a “voice” to that information by filling in the finer details.  In horse shows, I learned, there are two aspects to winning medals – equitation and pleasure. Equitation refers to the skill and posture of the rider; pleasure refers to the horse’s looks and control.  To succeed in blog marketing, content writers must be willing to get into the details – navigation, search engine optimization, visuals, vocabulary.

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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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