The Pomelo Schema for Business Blogs

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To make a profound idea compact, you’ve got to pack a lot of meaning into a little bit of messaging. Chip and Dan Heath wrote the book Made to Stick to help readers who have ideas to convey and who want to make sure their messages are understood and remembered (that they “stick”). Since, for us business blog content writers, messaging is a core mission, what the Heaths call “the pomelo schema” is a concept well worth our attention.

A schema helps create a complex message from simple material, and the authors illustrate the point by presenting two ways of explaining what a pomelo is:

Explanation #1: A pomelo is the largest citrus fruit with a thick, soft, easy-to-peel rind. The fruit has light yellow to coral pink flesh and may be juicy to slightly dry, with a taste ranging from spicy-sweet to tangy and tart.

Explanation #2: A pomelo is a supersized grapefruit with a thick, soft rind.

(The second explanation “sticks a flag” on a concept the audience already knows, making it easier for them to learn new material.)

In business blog posts, I teach at Say It For You, don’t try to give searchers information about everything you have to offer. Instead, in each post, stress just one major aspect of your company or practice. And, since you want the blog to stand out and be unusually interesting, one tactic to try is putting two things together that don’t seem to match. But, in my view, making the right unusual comparison can actually accomplish even more than teaching a complex concept using the “pomelo schema” method.

One big challenge in business blogs, newbie content writers soon learn, is sustaining the writing over long periods of time without losing reader excitement. Similes and metaphors (“pomelos”, if you will), help readers “appreciate information picturesquely”, as 19th century newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer once put it. Unlikely comparisons evoke pictures in readers’ minds:

“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.”

“The challenge many blog writers face is that they want to write a blog that their clients will love and that also markets their company. The problem is that clients are worn out by constant advertising,” Martin Woods of semrush.com writes. If you advertise your product or service in your blog, odds are you’ll alienate your readers, he cautions. On the other hand, since the blog is part of the overall marketing plan, Woods says, it must remain relevant to the actual business. Pomelo schemas are just one tactic content writers can use to combine teaching with selling.

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Blogging for Business Outside Your Own

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“Can authors write characters whose experiences are outside of their own?” That’s the very question posed by Diana M. Pho in her article “Through the Looking Glass” in Writer’s Digest.  Writing across difference is important, she says, since “the best fiction has the ability to transport readers into another’s shoes and make readers consider a new perspective.”

Pho identifies three different approaches to writing about matters which extend beyond one’s own identity:

  1. “Invaders” act without responsibility, focusing on the “exotic” and on stereotypes.
  2. “Tourists” are deeply interested in the subject and try not to impose their own biases.
  3. “Guests” strive for authenticity and strive to gain expertise and attribute knowledge to the proper authorities.

As head of a team of professional content writers, I have been thinking a lot about the outsourcing of business blog content writing. Companies are making great efforts to express their personal brand. Can a writer who is not educated in the client’s particular field produce copy that is an authentic expression of the client’s ideas, personality, and expertise?

In fact, I’m sometimes asked how we “do it”.  It takes two things, I respond:  research and good hearing.  A ghost blogger uses a ‘third ear” to understand what the client wants to say and to pick up on the client’s unique slant on his/her business or profession. Far from functioning as invaders or even tourists, we strive for authenticity.  What keeps us going is the learning.  For us, in order for us to create a valuable ongoing blog for your business, it’s going to take as much reading and research as writing.

On the other hand, while it’s true that the dominant trend in business blogging is outsourcing (the obvious reason being that few business owners or professional practitioners have the time to create and post blogs with enough frequency to attract the attention of search engines), different clients prefer different levels of help vs. DIY.

At one end of the spectrum, the business owner might want certain employees to receive corporate blogging training so that they can then take over the function of business blog writing. At the opposite extreme a company might turn over to a business blogging service the entire effort of crafting the message and maintaining the consistent posting of corporate blog content.

Authors of novels can, indeed, write characters whose experiences are outside of their own identities. Professional blog content writers can come “through the looking glass” to do the same.

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Powerful Paragraphs and Sentences in Blogging for Business

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“Construct your paragraphs with a good eye as well as a good mind,” advises Richard Anderson in Powerful Writing Skills.  What does that mean? Consider how the paragraph looks on the page – would it be more appealing to the eye to divide it into two paragraphs?

Anderson’s reasoning includes the following considerations:

  • Enormous blocks of print implant an image of difficulty in readers’ minds.
  • Bunches of short paragraphs can be distracting.

The compromise: vary the length of your paragraphs without making the breaks seem forced. Generally speaking, Anderson points out, “the shorter the paragraphs and the fewer the number of ideas contained in them, the easier they are to read.

In writing good sentences, be yourself, using clear, honest, natural words on paper, Anderson tells writers. He recommends writers choose:

  • nouns over adjectives
  • verbs over adverbs
  • plain verbs over fancy ones
  • specific words over general ones
  • short sentences over long ones
  • personal over non-personal

But, if all your sentences are approximately the same length, Anderson warns, you’re putting    your reader to sleep; vary the length as a subtle way to keep readers awake.

Another way to bore readers is using clichés (overused phrases). They numb readers’ senses, he warns, and they are often too general and vague. “Allow the meaning of your message to choose your words rather than the other way around,” Anderson suggests.

Strunk and White sum up the concept in their own book, The Elements of Style: For the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts, a sentence should contain no unnecessary words.

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Odds-of Comparison Blogging for Business

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“Odds of opioid death higher than car crash,” a recent Indianapolis Star headline read. Since, at Say It For You, I’m always alert for ways to approach creating original content for business owners’ and professional practitioners’ blogs, that headline caught my attention.

One way to make business blog content impactful, I teach at Say It For You, is to put information in perspective by using statistical comparisons. “Even when news stories, ads, or public service announcements do a good job of providing risk statistics, you still need more information to make the numbers meaningful,” explain the authors of Know Your Chances.

Whether a business owner is composing his/her own blog posts or collaborating with a professional ghost blogger, it’s simply not enough to provide even very valuable information to online searchers who’ve landed on a company’s page The facts need to be “translated” into relational, emotional terms to put things into perspective for readers and therefore compel reaction – and action. Statistical comparisons help do just that.

Online searchers may know what they want or even what they need.  They may not know what to call that need. They almost certainly lack expert knowledge in your field. Think about it. It’s difficult for potential customers to know if:

  • your prices are fair
  • how experienced you are relative to your peers
  • how large or small your business is compared to others
  • whether “small” better for this particular service or product
  • whether and how your approach to your field different from most others

Online searchers may have heard about a particular product or service that you offer, but not know what the odds are that they will have need of that product or service!  “Odds-of” comparison blogging for business provides that very sort of guidance.

Opening your post with a startling statistic can be a way to grab visitors’ attention. Statistics can actually serve as myth-busters in themselves.  If there’s some false impression people seem to have relating to your industry, or to a product or service you provide, you can bring in statistics to show how things really are. Statistics can also serve to demonstrate the extent of a problem.  Once readers realize the problem, the door is open for you to show how you help solve that very type of problem for your customers!

“Odds-of” blogging for business can increase the odds of online readers deciding to DO business – with you!

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Business Blogging – Don’t Forget What It Means

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“To me, when people talk about the fact that employees are not engaged, that means they’re missing what’s in it for them…how their lives are better because they are employed by the company,” observes Dana Polyak in a recent issue of Employee Benefit News. 

Back to Radio Station WIIFM, that old sales training rule that all employers – and all of us writers of marketing blogs had better remember: employees want to know What’s In It for Me; buyers care about benefits, not features.

A number of years ago, in a brochure marketing professional Al Trestrail shared with me, he taught that after each feature  of the products and services your business or practice offers, you need to add the words “which means that…” What I took out of that discussion with Trestrail was that there are millions of blog posts out there making claims of one sort or another.  But what do those claims mean to the customers and clients reading the blog???

When people switch jobs, Polyak comments, they are ultimately seeking something more. “More” might mean better compensation, better benefits, better hours, shorter commutes, or more praise and recognition. At Say it For You content writing training sessions, I remind attendees that there has to be a “reason why” readers would follow the Calls to Action in a blog: Does your company or practice do things faster? Operate at a lower cost? Make fewer errors? Offer greater comfort? Provide a more engaging experience? In other words, What’s In It For Them?

In the current job market, Dana Polyak concedes, “there are a lot more jobs available than there are people available to fill those jobs.” In marketing, with both our existing customers and clients and the new ones we’re seeking to win over, it’s the same way.  “If you want to start beating your competitors, you will need to have a very good strategy in place, Smarta.com advises. But being cheaper may not be enough. What might well be enough is demonstrating that your product is:

  • of better quality
  • rarer
  • easier to use
  • safer
  • more efficient
  • more compact
  • more retro
  • more water-resistant
  • more beautiful
  • greener
  • fresher

As blog content writers, we need to understand the features of the products and services we promote, but we must never forget to explain What’s In It For Them!

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