Are You Suffering Your Blog Action or Performing It?

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“What is passive voice and why are we often told to avoid it?” novelist and Writer’s Workshop Senior Editor Emma Darwin asks her students. Here’s Darwin’s simple explanation:

  • When the action of the sentence is being performed by the subject of the sentence, it’s in active voice.
  • When the action is being done to the subject of the sentence by someone or something else, the sentence is in passive voice.

In general, explains Brandon Royal in The Little Red Writing Book, the active voice is preferred, because it is:

  1. more action oriented
  2. more direct
  3. less verbose, cutting down on the number of needed words.

Since one of the very purposes of business blog writing is to showcase the accomplishments of the business owners, as a general rule we bloggers need to focus on “staying active” in our content using sentences that have energy and directness.

Is there ever a time when the passive voice would be the most effective way to write? Yes, when the performer of the action is unknown or unimportant, Royal explains. “The world’s largest pearl was discovered in the Philipines in 1934.” (The discovery is important, but the discoverer is unknown.).

Let’s practice…

Choose two pieces of information about your business or practice. First, select on where you or one of your employees performed a special service. Write an active voice sentence about that.

Then, choose a fact that is important or interesting for your readers to learn about but which does not highlight any particular person. Write a passive voice sentence about that.

Here are my two examples from the blogging world: (Can you tell which is which?)

“6.7 million people blog on blogging sites and 12 million people blog via social networks.”

“Today blogging is used widely by businesses as part of their marketing strategy.”

Are you suffering your blog action, or performing it?

 

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Raise Your Hand If You’ve Had Doubts About Blogging

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Hand raising for vote isolated on white background with clipping pathAsked to “Raise your hand if you’ve asked yourself this question: ’Do we still need a company blog?’”, marketing strategist Alex Honeysett  says “My hand is up there, too.” With Facebook and Twitter and all the other social media platforms, we actively use,” Honeysett says, it feels like we’re connecting with our audience, creating great content, and building communities the same way we used to with blogs.”

So, do we still need to keep cramming blog posts into our jam-packed editorial calendars? In Honeysett’s opinion, we do. Why?

  • Unlike Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, your blog sits directly on your website.  So if you do a great job of keeping the blog compelling and updated, that increases the amount of time people are staying on the website, Honeysett observes.
  • Furthermore, (and this is the part of Honeysett’s post which, as a long time blog content writer, I particularly appreciate), “the introduction of social media has forced us to say things too quickly and efficiently…but some topics and musings need more than a few sentences to be fully explored.” On a blog, Honeysett explains, “you’ll have more room to expand on those thoughts.”
  • With Google having changed its algorithm a gazillion times, SEO experts told her, “the most effective way to increase your search ranking is to give your community relevant content that they will engage with and share. It is both that simple and that hard.”

Jason Lippman of jelmarketingstrategies.com addresses the same question: Will blogging still work in 2016? Absolutely, Lippman says, but you need to be aware of the changing landscape, with a new emphasis on personal branding as opposed to corporate branding.

For most businesses, a social media presence – even the most robust kind – cannot substitute for a blog presence, asserts Steve Baldwin, Editor-in-Chief at Didit. Baldwin offers several reasons why social media can’t replace blogging:

  • Link juice: domains and pages accumulate page rank and social media URLs do not.
  • Branding: social media platforms force you into their format; on your own website you have more freedom to tell your brand story.
  • Your blog is on your own “land”; on social media, you’re a “sharecropper”.

You can put your hand down now!

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Blogging to Bolster Your Point of View

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perspektive

“Indiana is growing – but we can’t neglect transit as a quality of life and economic development priority,” Michael Huber CEO of the Indy Chamber and Steve Sullivan, CEO of MIBOR Realtor Association agree. Both are in favor of raising taxes in Marion County to improve transit  services.  Huber and Sullivan use several tactics to strengthen their argument in favor of our investing in a transit system:

Offering details and explanations of the proposed plan:

  • New rapid-transit lines
  • All-day, high-frequency bus service
  • Weekend and crosstown service
  • Tax would be an additional 25 cents for every $100 of income, less than $10 a month for the average household
  • Who will benefit? Low-income households, senior citizens, people with disabilities, healthcare and hospitality workers who have evening and weekend hours, employers who want to attract employees

Statistics:

  • Marion Country gained 4000 residents in 2015
  • Indianapolis is the nation’s 14th largest city, but our bus fleet ranks 84th
  • Brookings Institute ranks Indy as 64th out of the 100 largest metros in transit services

Motivational statements:

  • “It’s a vote to bring new investment to struggling neighborhoods…”
  • “Better service connects people and jobs, and creates self-sufficiency.”
  • “Transit creates upward mobility and independence for those who rely on it most.”

“I just do not get it,” says Mitch Roob, Executive VP of Keramida Environmental, taking a stand on the other side of the debate. “How would a train-like bus benefit more than a very small portion of the community?  Is it equitable to charge someone for a service they likely never will use or for that matter even see?”
To bolster his argument against taxing Indy residents to fund a rapid transit system, Roob employs three tactics:

Statistics: 
Dallas invested more than $8.2 billion in a system that today carries only 4% of the area’s daily work commuters
Atlanta’s transit system ridership is down 15% from 2001

Turning opponents’ arguments against their case:
“Advocates suggest that “transit-oriented development” will spur development in the proximity of the transit corridor”. If so, says Roob, transit will add value to real estate, and the incremental property tax can pay for the service.

Emotional appeal – painting a picture:
“Trains and buses are not happy places.  Somber, hurried passengers cast their wary glance away from the strangers next to them whose personal space they have inadvertently but necessarily invaded.”

Which side makes a more powerful statement.  Truth is, both articles are impactful because both sides take a stand on the issue and then use various tactics to bolster their stance in the eyes of readers. Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Blogging Using the Rule of Three

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“Follow the ‘rule of three’,” advises Jessica Lawler in How to Get People to Read Your Blog. “When you create a piece of content, promote your new piece of content in at least three different places, at minimum, to make the writing worth your while and to ensure your content is actually being read.” Lawler mentions Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Shapchat as examples of places to post.

A different take on the “rule of three” comes from the laminated student guide “Writing Tips and Tricks”. “Ask yourself what you want the reader to know about your topic…Think of three details or three examples for each idea,” the guide advises.

In business blogging, I recommend a razor-sharp focus on just ONE story, one idea, or one aspect of a business, a practice, or an organization (other aspects can be addressed in later posts). But the “rule of three” still applies, in that you use three examples or three details that support the main idea of that blog post.

Yet a third interpretation of the “rule of three” comes from the speaking profession.  Public speaking maven Jim Endicott says that every oral presentation needs three elements to be effective:  the visual presentation, the content, and the delivery.  Translated into business blogging, that threesome would consist of:

  1. pictures and charts (the visual presentation of the blog
  2. the content itself (the facts and figures)
  3. the “voice”, the way the message comes across – first person vs. third-person reporting, humorous or serious, casual or formal

Each of those elements has the power to contribute to the effectiveness of the blog post or to take away from it.

You want your readers to remember what you’ve presented, and, as Presentation Magazine  reminds us, people tend to remember series of three things. Popular examples include:

  • blood, sweat and tears
  • faith, hope and charity
  • stop, look and listen
  • life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
  • government of the people, by the people, for the people

The Rule of Three, then, can be used by blog content writers in more than one way:

  • Promoting the blog
  • Composing the content
  • Using phrases with sets of three items
  • Designing the look of the posts

Blog to the Power of 3!

 

 

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Are the Words in Your Blog as Valuable as the Products and Services They Describe?

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excited young woman and boyfriend giving her ring
“The industry realized the words they used to describe diamonds were as valuable as the stones they pulled from the ground,” Alina Simone writes in “Do You Know What This Is?” in Mental Floss Magazine. Simone was discussing the DeBeers Company’s 1938 advertising blitz aimed at pulling the diamond market out of its Depression-era slump.

“On the market, a diamond is much more than a meta-stable allotrope of carbon – it’s everlasting love,” Simone explains. The reality of the situation, she adds is the fact that DeBeers stockpiled huge surpluses of diamonds, artificially maintaining high prices. Meanwhile, De Beers chairman Nicky Oppenheimer admitted in 1999 that “diamonds are intrinsically worthless.”

The Mental Floss story is focused on Diamond Foundry, a California company using an atomic oven to blast “seed diamonds’ with hot plasma, causing the crystal latticework of the diamond to extend.  Essentially, the Silicon Valley company is hot-forging, in a process that takes a mere two weeks, jewelry-grade diamonds that would take eons to form naturally.

While blog marketing is (or at least should be) more advertorial than outright advertisement, we content writers can take a tip from the DeBeers people, who put the three elements of rhetoric to work enhancing the value of diamonds in the eyes of buyers:

  1. Ethos (a form of argument based on character or authority, showing the product or service is endorsed by a celebrity or by someone in uniform)
  2. Pathos (a form of argument based on fear, desire, sympathy, or anger)
  3. Logos (a form of argument based on facts and figures)

Over the 40 years following 1938, De Beers increased its advertising budget from $200,000 to $10 million, using words to create value, selling the concept of diamonds as:

  • Forever
  • A girl’s best friend
  • A must for engagements
  •  A gift for anniversaries A perfect Valentine’s Day gift

It’s hard to imagine, writes Lindsay Kolowich of hubspot, that it’s only been three-quarters of a century since diamonds became the symbol of wealth, power, and romance they are in America today. How did N.W. Ayer, the company De Beers hired as publicists, help make that happen?  By creating entertaining and educational content, Kolowich says – ideas, stories, fashion, and trends that supported the product but wasn’t explicitly about it.

In 1999, AdAge named the De Beers slogan “a diamond is forever” “The #1 slogan of the century.

Are the words in your business blog at least as valuable – if not more so – than the products and services they describe?

 

 

 

 

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