Don’t Let Your Blog Readers Get the Wrong Idea

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Undo Red Button Correct Fix Go Back Revise Mistake Error“Sometimes, our very human fears and insecurities cause us to talk about ourselves in ways that don’t reflect the truth of who we are. We choose language that hides our strength…and this gives other people the wrong impression of us,” writes Annika Martins in postivelypositive.com.

Business blogging is one way we have of “talking about ourselves”.  And, whether it’s the business owner or professional practitioner herself doing the writing, or whether we professional blog content writers have been hired to do the job for them, we need to make sure we ”talk” in ways that give readers the right impression.

That’s because impressions matter, and, even more important, they last. I read an interesting anecdote about Abe Lincoln that illustrates the point. According to biographer Carl Sandburg, Lincoln bet a gambler that he could lift a barrel of whiskey off the floor and hold it up while he took a drink out of the bunghole. Lincoln actually did that, winning the bet.  But decades later, Stephen Douglas, while debating Lincoln, implied that Abe had a serious drinking problem!

Does this sort of thing happen today? Well, duh! “Anyone can post a bad review online and hurt your business,” observes the coauthor of the book Niche Dominance. “Business owners need to be proactive in developing their online reputation,” he advises.

There is little that you can do to get a negative online review removed, advises Ashley Bennett of instantshift. Accept it, she says, for what it is and then focus on the positive aspects of your business, putting a spotlight on your positive achievements online to displace the negative reviews. This can take a while, but start creating more listings that talk about new products, services, news, discounts, and partnerships. You can do this via social media posts, blog posts, or even press releases.

Every feedback, whether negative or positive, comes from somewhere, says Donald Latumahina of lifeoptimizer.org. Something you said or did made the person react this way. Is there any truth behind it, and would this be an alternate perspective you missed out originally? Is it something you should look into?

When I’m helping business owners and professional practitioners craft their messages, damage control can become a very real issue. As a corporate blogging trainer, I know how crucial it is for them to convey to their customers, as well as to the online searchers who are their prospects, the kind of message that will alleviate mistrust and create confidence. Blog posts, I believe, are especially valuable tools when it comes to “impression” challenges.  Blog content is current, talking about “now”, not “then”. Plus, customers’ customers’ concerns and fears are being dealt with out in the open, “in front of other people”. That gives the remediation more weight with readers.

Don’t let blog readers get the wrong idea about you or your company or practice.  Not for long, anyway!

 

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Tell How You Tripped at the Academy Awards

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Is your brand real enough for the next wave of consumers? asks Jamie Gutfreund in  Forbes. “Gen Zs  consider Child falling down the stairstaking risks an important part of life and mistakes as badges of honor.” Zs are savvy consumers, Gutfreund adds, preferring to see “real” people to celebrities in campaigns.  To them, failure builds character, and they have little interest in content that promises perfection.

Interesting. As a corporate blogging trainer, I’ve been preaching to Indianapolis content writers that engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for their business owner and professional practitioner clients may be a matter of writing about how those owners overcame the effects of their own mistakes.

No matter what generation of reader you’re targeting, I explain, real life conflicts are riches to be mined. Often, however, our business owner and practitioner clients are so close to the subject matter of their own past and present business battles, they can’t see how valuable those “failures” can prove to be. That’s where the “outside eye” of a professional blog writer becomes especially valuable.

“One thing you will notice about successful people, especially people with an entrepreneurial streak, is that they welcome detours and failures as a natural part of the journey they are on,” observes author Ekaterina Walter. Mistakes will not end your business. But will surface new opportunities, adds Meridith Valiando Rojas, CEO of Digitour Media.

“Who are You? Readers like to know about the author. It makes your writing more interesting because it adds context,” says K. Stone of lifehack.org. in advising writers to brand their blogs for success.

Good branding and good writing – they’re both about being real.  So, go ahead, tell how you (or your business owner or professional practitioner client) tripped at the Academy Awards!

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Blog a Time Traveler’s Guide to Your Business

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RIn ancient Greece, I learned by reading the “Time Travelers Guide to Table Manners” in Mental Floss Magazine, napkins hadn’t been invented yet, so you wiped your greasy hands with a piece of bread, then threw the bread on the floor for the dogs. In ancient Rome, by contrast, people ate with their hands, but always kept their pinkie and ring fingers clean.

Fascinating tidbits of information such as these can help content writers come up with ideas for business blogs. I can see the two specific examples above being used in a vet’s blog, a blog about pet food, a blog about keeping different kinds of floors clean, even a blog about pinkie rings. Trivia can be turned into idea triggers to help practitioners and business owners blog about the products they sell, about their skills and particular beliefs.

Today, though, I want to focus on using the time traveler template in business blog content. What’s the purpose of talking about the way things used to be done in a particular industry or profession?

  • Business owners and practitioners come across as knowledgeable and committed.
  • Readers (read potential buyers) are moved to take advantage of all the new technology and expertise now available to them.
  • The “I never knew that!” response is how readers become engaged by the information.

Blogging about the history of your own (or your client’s) company can have a humanizing effect. Learning how any business owner or professional practitioner overcame adversity tens to  engender feelings of empathy and admiration.

But even reaching back to the history of  the entire industry or profession is a valuable technique when writing about any type of business or practice. That’s because, in every industry and every profession, things are not the same as they used to be.  Helping readers understand how to get the maximum benefit out of today’s version of products and services is the point.

What can you include in a time traveler’s guide to YOUR industry or profession?

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Inductive and Deductive Blogging for Business

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“The most common forms of mathematical reasoning are inductive and deductive reasoning,” explain the authors of Studying for LMathematics. “You use inductive reasoning any time you come up with a general rule from a pattern.  Deductive reasoning is when you apply a general rule to a specific case.”

As business blog content writers, we’re engaged in helping readers reason their way to doing business with the business owners and professional practitioners who’ve hired us to tell their story. It’s not that there’s a lack of information sources; if anything, there’s an absolute glut of data available to online searcher! What readers need from us, then, is not more information, but help in reasoning through all that information so that problem-solving choices can be made.

OK, so let’s go back to the mathematics tutorial book and the two sorts of reasoning.

Deductive:
You are reasoning deductively when you show that a rule isn’t true for all cases, which is called “proof by counter example”. As a blog writer, start with a commonly held assumption relating to your industry or profession, and come up with a counter example.

Inductive:
With inductive reasoning, you arrive at a formula that demonstrates a general pattern between different tactics and different aspects of an idea.

Paul Lawrence in earlytorise.com suggests using Triggering Deductive Reasoning to persuade clients to buy your products, get employees to take on unpleasant projects, or get your children to do their chores. You do that, explains Lawrence, by making statements that lead the other person to reach, on his own, the conclusion you want him to come to, then reinforcing that conclusion..
All advertisements aim at persuasion, points out Stan Mack of Demand Media. If an ad uses inductive reason, the implied conclusion isn’t necessarily true (think of an ad featuring a sweaty athlete chugging a thirst-quenching beverage). As blog writers, we would make as strong an argument as possibly through visual demonstrations, word descriptions, and customer testimonials to create the illusion that the product or service you’re promoting is the best option. We can inject urgency through one-time sales, or use fear (of getting old, having one’s credit stolen, etc.).

Alternately, we can use statistics to prove logically that we can satisfy the reader’s needs.  With deductive reasoning, if our assumptions are true, the conclusions we draw must be true as well.

Help your blog readers reason their way to saying “Yes!”

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For Business Blog Content Writers, the Practice is in the Doing!

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“How much time does it really take to get great?” A lot, according to Mental Floss’ Magazine’s “Genius Guide to Rope-walkerSuccess”, if you judge by the routines of various prodigies.

  • Mathematician Paul Erdos put in 19-hour days, publishing 1.525 academic papers.
  • Jonas Salk spent 16 hours a day for seven years researching the polio vaccine.
  • Tightrope walking Nik Wallenda practice 3-4 hours every day before walking between Chicago skyscrapers.
  • Stash of Guns ‘N Roses practiced 12 hours a day.
  • Jerry Seinfeld practiced 200 times before his first comedy set on The Tonight Show.

In contrast to that reality, admit the Mental Floss authors, a 2014 study showed that practice accounts for only 12 percent of mastery.

After almost ten years of blog content writing and training others to write corporate blog content, I’d have to say the old saw about practice makes perfect definitely applies. There’s a difference, though. For content writers, practicing consists of actually writing and posting, not in getting ready to do that at some later time!

Years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them felt they could take the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

Going back to the example of Jerry Seinfeld’s practicing 200 times before his Tonight Show appearance, Seinfeld understood drill sergeant discipline as well.  He’d figured out that the way to be a better comic was to write better jokes, and that the way to do that was to write jokes every single day.  For every day he writes, Jerry puts a big red X on his wall calendar, and all that matters is not breaking that chain of X’s.

That’s a good model for blog content writers, I’d have to say. Far too many business owners start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. On the other hand, we bloggers get more of a “shot” with readers than we think. In any one post, we have hardly as much “on the line” (pun intended) as a Nik Wallenda.  Sure, we strive for high quality in every single post, but there’s always tomorrow or next week to complete the thought, clarify, and bring in more information.

We’re lucky. As content writers, we get to practice AND perform at the same time!

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