Finding the Flossiest Blog Topics

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Downtown St. Paul, MN

Mental Floss Magazine, always masters at making unlikely connections among seemingly unrelated topics, did it again in “25 Flossiest Cities in the World”.  The term “flossy”, the editors explain (lest we envision dental care), means “exhibiting qualities of charm, quirk, and brain-boosting power in equal measure”.

The article is all about places that don’t come to top of mind, steering readers’ minds away from the tried and true and introducing them to new ways of looking for travel destinations.

I explain to newbie content writers in Indianapolis that steering away from the tried and true gives business owners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise. Even more important, the technique of myth busting helps engage interest. A different approach can serve to answer readers’ concerns, as in the following examples:

  • Dentist’s blog:
    Do amalgams used for fillings cause mercury poisoning?
  • Beautician’s blog:
    Does makeup cause acne?
  • Internet security firm blog:
    If you don’t open an infected file, can you get infected?
  • Home décor firm blog:
    Should small rooms be painted in pale neutral colors?

Visitors arrive at your blog to find information on specific topics.  But, once your opening lines have reassured them they’ve come to the right place, it’s a great idea to use some unlikely connections to give them the sense of being ahead of the crowd, having some unusual “inside information”…

  • Giethoorn, Netherlands, Mental Floss advises, is flossier than Venice, with four miles of canals dug in the 13th century.
  • Lavenham, England is flossier than Pisa. Many of its buildings were constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries, are crooked because they used green timber which warped as it aged.
  • Huizhou, China is flossier than Austria.  China’s duplicature craze resulted in Austrian,  English, Swiss, Italian, and Spanish copycat cities.

What flossy topics can you use to unexpectedly engage blog readers’ interest?

 

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In Business Blogging, Avoid the Cynic’s Sidebar

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Zorniger Wissenschaftler hlt seinen Daumen nach unten

Sure, you could say, “If I can’t avoid mentioning the competition altogether, I’m certainly not going to say anything nice about them,” author Jeff Thull tells his audience of salespeople. But that’s what Thull dubs “the cynic’s sidebar.”  After all, he points out, they may be your competitors, but they are viable alternatives for your customers.

Those competitors, Thull reminds salespeople, aren’t the customers’ competition, perhaps even an entirely viable option they’re already considering, and, if you unfairly misrepresent that option, you risk losing the customers’ trust.

I agree. In offering business blogging assistance, I reassure owners that addressing problems and misinformation in their blog posts shines light on their special expertise and on their particular slant on the work they do. At the same time, readers don’t like to be “made wrong” by having their assertions challenged directly, including their having checked out what your competition has to offer.

Yes, as content writers for business owners or practitioners, at least one of the goals we’re working towards is converting online searchers into to customers and clients. And, although one approach in a business blog is comparing your products and services to others’ it’s important to emphasize the positive rather an “knocking” a competitor.  That means that, rather than starting with what the competition is doing “wrong”, use the power of “We” to demonstrate what YOU value and the way YOU like to deliver your services.

Before you can do a good job positioning yourself (or the client for whom you’re creating the blog content), you need to go through a systematic thinking process, a 3-step self-examination of sorts:

  1. Who is my competition?
  2. How am I different (3 reasons per competitor)?
  3. How am I similar (3 reasons per competitor)?

That very thought process leads to what I’ve nicknamed “the training benefit” business owners can derive from corporate blog marketing. That benefit holds true, I’ve found, whether owners do their own blogging or collaborate with a professional ghost blogger, because the exercise helps train you to articulate those things to clients and customers.

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In a Blog, is Someone One or Two?

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One Plus One

“Beware of common grammatical mistakes, like subject-verb agreement,” cautions Helen Coster in Forbes. Rule to remember:  The number of the subject determines the number of the verb.

Use a singular verb form after:

  • Nobody
  • Someone
  • Everybody
  • Neither
  • Everyone
  • Each
  • Either

“We can agree that a verb agrees with its subject in person and number,” The Lousy Writer reminds us.  Examples include:

  • “No one except the ticket holders is admitted.”
  • “Every one of us is anxious to build a business.”
  • “The famous museum with its thousands of artifacts was destroyed.” (There is only one museum.)

What’s more, The Lousy Writer explains, the meaning rather than the form of the subject controls the number of the verb.

  • “The movie ’The Godfather’ was directed by Francis Ford Coppola.” (There is only one movie.)
  • “Fifty dollars is too much for those sneakers.”  (There is one sum of fifty dollars.)
  • “The committee is ready to boycott.” (The committee consists of several persons, but we refer to it here as one group.)

Using plurals and singulars can get quite tricky, Learner’s Dictionary authors admit, especially when a sentence has more than one subject per verb. Here are three examples:

  • (two singular) The dog and the cat bother me. (bother is a plural verb)
  • (two plural): The dogs and the cats bother me.
  • (one singular, one plural) The dog and cats bother me.

In blog content writing, of course, the idea is to avoid confusing the reader and get the point across. Avoiding common grammatical mistakes and making subjects agree with verbs is one healthy habit we content writers can cultivate.

Remember: the number of the subject determines the number of the verb!

 

 

 

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Paving the Cowpath in Blogging for Business

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Cow by the road

 

Using “enhanced electronic aids” for performance management is one of the latest trends in human resource management, but David Arella of Performance Xpress isn’t happy about that. “Does anyone else see the oxymoron here?” Arella asks, referring to “automatically personalized” written employee reviews. “We have paved the cow path and upped the speed limit, but we have not improved the journey or the destination,” he says.

Arella recalls those old meetings managers used to hold with employees to discuss their strengths and weaknesses and to develop targets for the coming year.” The performance review was seen as a way to either justify a salary increase or, in cases where there were problems, to begin a documentation trail to move an employee out of the company without legal ramifications,” he explains.

The new automated tools, in his opinion, have been directed primarily at speeding up the process, not improving it. As a blog content writing trainer, I loved reading  Arella’s reasoning about why speeding up the writing process actually reduces the effectiveness of the communication:

The process of writing requires applying a thinking process. Managers
who take the time to compose their own original paragraphs are likely to be
more specific and grounded in their feedback than those who click on
generalized “coaching tips.”

Blogging requires applying a thinking process. When business owners or professional practitioners blog, they are verbalizing the positive aspects of their enterprises in a way that people can understand, putting recent accomplishments down in words, and reviewing the benefits of their products and services. The very process provides self-training in how to talk effectively about their business or practice.

For those very reasons, company executives and business owners often make great bloggers.  After all, they understand their companies and are passionate about them, two important requisites for great blogging for business. There are three main reasons, though, that almost never happens: no time, no motivation, dislike of writing.

So, are all “training benefits” lost to business owners or professionals who hire freelance blog content writers to be their “voice”? Really, the answer is “no”, at least not if things are done right. “Outsourcing is not the same as abdication,” says John Janistch. “You need to maintain tight control on themes, voice, message, and specific topic needs”. That process of choosing themes, sharing strategies, and planning for content creation requires a thinking process.

Go ahead and pave the blogging “cowpath”, but keep the training benefits of blogging for business!

 

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Made-‘Ya-Look Blog Post Topics

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Headline concept.

 

“If you can make people look twice at a blog topic or title, they will definitely want to check it out,” observes Ken Myers in blogherald.com. Myers suggests fighting “the borings” by basing blog posts on some of the following, tying each to your own subject:

  • Holidays (decorating ideas, recipes, tips)
  • Celebrities (little known facts, causes they promote)
  • Nightlife (gambling, drinking clubs, parties)
  • Gross – (disgusting animal and human tidbits)
  • Food (growing, cooking, recipes, restaurant review)
  • Brands (the very names will assure your posts will attract interest)
  • Love (relationships, anecdotes)
  • Technology (latest cool toys, how-to tips)
  • Nostalgia (comics, collectibles, memories from childhood)

I have a theory about human curiosity that I think taps into this “made-‘ya-look” concept:  Our curiosity is at its most intense when it concerns testing our own limits. So, yes, readers like juicy gossip tidbits about sports and movie stars.  And, of course, readers have interest in how stuff works in your field, (since they’ve been directed to your blog, the search terms they used indicated an interest in your field).
But (or so my theory goes, anyway), blog readers are most curious about themselves, about how they “work” and the limits of their own knowledge and their own physical capabilities. That’s why, for example, I think magazine “quizzes” are so hard to resist.

The one thing I’d add to Myers’ list for making searchers look again is Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things. Blogging about unusual ways your products or services have been applied in different situations is a good way to capture interest. It’s best if the new information relates, not only to your topic, but to something with which readers are already familiar.

Fight “The Borings” by making people look twice at your blog topic or title!

 

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