Blog Three Times the Potassium of a Banana

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バナナ　カットフルーツDave Cook, fellow member in one of my early morning business networking groups, was telling us about a nutrition product he represents that’s made out of moringa leaves. Listening to him, I was sure he’s been reading my blog posts about putting statistics into perspective for readers.

Moringa leaves, I learned, have 4x the calcium of milk, 3x the potassium of bananas, 2x the protein of yogurt, 4x the Vitamin A of carrots, and 7x the Vitamin C of oranges. There were other statistics (the product contains 46 antioxidants, 36 anti-inflammatories, Omegas 3, 6, and 9.)

It wasn’t so much the numbers that were packing the punch in these claims, I realized, but the comparisons with things already familiar to readers. My networking friend is not a blogger, but because he made those comparisons in his presentation to our group, everybody was able to relate to what he was saying.

We business bloggers are, in a very real way, interpreters. Effective blog posts, I teach, must go from information-dispensing to offering perspective.  Before a reader even has time to ask “So what?” we need to be ready with an answer that makes sense in terms with which readers are familiar. I call it blogging new knowledge on things readers already know.

Later that day, I heard the Dean of Butler College of Business use numbers in his talk to parents of prospective Butler scholarship students who were visiting to check out our campus. He began with zero (number of graduate teaching assistants that lecture in College of Bus. classrooms), and worked up through average class size (29) to the number 94 (% placement rate after graduation).

There are several strategic ways to use numbers to educate your blog readers and demonstrate your own expertise, I teach. 

  • Numbers help debunk myths. If there’s some false impression people seem to have relating to your field or your product – bring on the numbers to prove how things really are.
  • Statistics can provide factual proof, by showing the extent of the problem your product or service helps solve.

Does your blog post have three times the potassium of a banana?

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Serving Up Different Varieties of Posts in Your Business Blog

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I don’t know about keeping up with the Heinz 57 standard, but business blog posts do come in different varieties. It’s generally a Close-up of old armaments in male handsgood idea to toggle back and forth among those varieties over time, just to keep repeat visitors engaged (and yourself from getting bored).

Rich Brooks of socialmediaexaminer.com certainly concurs.  In fact, Brooks suggests blog content writers add some of the following “arrows” to their blogging “quiver”:

  • How-to’s and tutorials
  • Resources and link lists
  • Cheat sheets
  • To-do’s
  • Reviews
  • Controversial posts
  • Interviews
  • Series
  • Case studies
  • Stats
  • Daily roundups
  • Breaking news
  • Personal stories

Rather than asking yourself, each time you’re ready to blog, “Now, which variety should I use today?”, I teach newbie content providers, the blog posts for any company, professional practice, or organization can be planned around key themes.  Those themes are fixed ideas that form the basis for blog posts.  Then, what you’re doing in any one post is filling in new details, examples, and illustrations. Having this “quiver” of formats from which to select a style that fits then becomes quite a help for any business blogger.

The other thing about having a variety is that (as I know from having been a teacher for many years), readers have different learning styles and different preferences.  That’s why it’s such a good idea for marketing blogs to use a variety of styles and materials.

Have YOU other “arrows” to contribute to our collective blog writers’ quiver?

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Why Business Owners’ Blogger-Won’t-Sound-Like-Me Excuse Won’t Fly

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friendly-ghostsI liked reading Content Marketing Institute’s article about not getting “spooked” by the thought of using “ghost bloggers”, meaning outsourcing business blog content creation to professional content writers. (Sure, I have skin in that game, but I thought the author fairly represented both the question that might arise and the answer to it.)

The concern: “It won’t sound like us” (like myself or like my company or practice).  Companies are making great efforts to express their personal brand, explains Content Marketing Institute’s Linda Dessau, and they want to make sure the copy is an authentic express of not just their ideas, but their tone of voice, vocabulary, and personality.

Dessau’s answer: “Ideally, the ghost blogging process includes a conversation between the author and the ghost blogger. By transcribing and/or recording this interview, the writer can retain not only all of the nuggets of wisdom, but the language and personality of the subject matter expert.”

Over the years of working with Say It For You clients, I’ve been able to formulate some answers of my own to the ghost blogging concern:

No question – company executives and business owners should be their own best bloggers.  After all, they understand their companies or their practices and are passionate about them, two important requisites for great blogging for business. But, while that’s the theory, in practice that almost never happens.  Why?

1. No time: They’re too busy. Just about everyone in the company already has a lot to do. Keeping up with writing blog posts is just too overwhelming.

2. No discipline (not for writing, anyway): Not everyone enjoys writing and not everyone, therefore, keeps blogging at the top of the priority list.

3. No skills: Although business owners and execs may be highly effective communicators in meetings, often they lack the writing and  computer skills to create an ongoing, effective blog.

We ghost bloggers do something more, I believe, than just “filling in” these “no time, no discipline, no skill” gaps. In one of the earliest books I ever read about blogging, “What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting”, Mikal Belicove stresses that content writers help their clients “jump-start the process by articulating their thoughts and ideas.”

In other words, Belicove emphasizes, a professional ghost blogger adds a lot more to the mix than just labor.  “He or she provides insight and clarity in taking ideas from a rough format and working them into a post that makes sense and has value.”

As one Say It For You client put it, “Say It For You helped me, a numbers guy, put into words what I knew in my heart but couldn’t verbalize.

Could it be that, when the process is working well, we ghost bloggers can sound more like the business owner than the business owner him or herself!

 

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Topping Needs to Be in the Same Category in Your Business Blog

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“I only slept three hours last night,” bemoans Alice in a recent Dilbert cartoon.kung fu
“I used Kung Fu to divert an asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth,” replies the co-worker.
”Topping needs to be in the same category!” says Alice indignantly.

 

As a reader (and yes, I still read the paper “paper”), I enjoy the wacky cynicism of Dilbert, but this particular conversational exchange reminded me of the way categories are supposed to function in business blog posts, and of the way they so often don’t.

Blog categories help readers find their way to content that matches their specific intentions. In the early stages of your blog, I teach business owners, organizing the material isn’t so important – readers can simply scroll down and read earlier posts. Once you’ve been creating blog content for months and even years, the categories become invaluable.

That “rule of thumb”, though, assumes that, from the get-go, you’ve focused each post on one central idea and one idea only, perhaps supporting that concept with a couple of examples. In corporate blogging training sessions, I refer to that blog writing concept as “the Power of One”. Simply put, if your copy tells too many irrelevant stories, you lose the reader’s attention. (No call for a boast about Kung Fu when Alice is complaining about sleeplessness!)

The same rule applies to the Calls to Action we incorporate in our blog posts. Our job is to focus readers’ attention on what we have to offer and on what steps they can take to get some!

That is not to say that we bloggers need to become One-Note Nellies. Not adding variety to our blog posts would surely serve as a “reader repellant”. So how can we harness that Power of One and still offer the degree of variety that keeps readers engaged? Effective blog posts are centered around key themes, just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony.  The variety comes from the details you fill in around those central themes, from the stories you tell and the instructions you offer, and even the metaphors you use.

Wanna brag about how you used Kung Fu to divert an asteroid? Save that for another day, another blog post.  The “topping” needs to be in the same category!

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In Business Blog Posts, Go Ahead and Mess With Mister In-Between

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Duckling lying between two rabbits against white backgroundPeople are drawn to articles with negative titles, points out friend and fellow blogger Lorraine Ball. Why? Because, Lorraine answers, they are afraid of doing something wrong. All too often, she observes, writers take the safe, boring route, choosing a headline that sounds like every other headline.  Instead, she advises trying to be bold, which might mean being negative.

Singer Johnny Mercer (no business blog content writer he!), would have begged to differ.  Remember Mercer’s lyrics?  According to him, we’ve got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and avoid messing with Mister In-Between.

Corey Eridon of Hubspot suggests a compromise position:  “There’s an undeniable correlation between page views and negativity,” he points out. “We all know the news has gone the negative route for years, and they do it because it works,” he says. But, he then cautions, “If you’re going to get negative with your titles, you have to back it up with some solid content, perhaps using a shared negative experience to create a bond with your readers.

In many marketing blogs, in fact, the content writers focus on appealing to consumers’ fear.  Fear is one of seven emotions that marketing writer Courtney Mills calls “key drivers” for successful ad copy writing. (Others include greed, guilt, anger, salvation, and flattery.)

Having spent nine years and much effort on blog content writing, one of the questions I continue to ask myself is whether “scare tactic”, or at least negative, marketing is ever appropriate for use in business blog writing.

On the one hand, there’s no arguing with the fact, which Lorraine points out in “Why Your Blog Titles Suck”, that you have mere seconds to capture the attention of a potential reader and get them to decide to spend time reading what you’ve written.

On the other side of things, since the blog represents just one aspect of any company’s  (or any professional practitioner’s) overall marketing strategy, the tone of the blog needs to be consistent with the client’s overall brand. It’s important to appeal to a better kind of customer (you know, the ones who buy for the right reasons and then remain loyal, not those who are “scared” into action.)

Thank you, Lorraine, for forcing me (and my readers) to think about this.  As for me, when it comes to positive versus negative content, I believe I’m going to take a chance on Mister In-Between!
 

 

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