Hitting the Right Thing With Your Blog Hammer

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“The village blacksmith hired an enthusiastic new apprentice willing to work long, hard hours.  He instructed the boy, ‘When I Forging hot irontake the horseshoe out of the fire, I’ll lay it on the anvil.  When I nod my head, you hit it with the hammer.’ The apprentice did exactly as he was told, and now he’s the new village blacksmith.”

Huh?

According to the Writing Center at The University of North Carolina, “In order to communicate effectively, we need to order our words and ideas on the page in ways that make sense to a reader. The problem, well-defined by WebAIM.org, is that “Writing clearly and simply has never been either clear or simple.”

The blacksmith story is simple enough.  The problem lies in the “it”. Since the word “head” is closer to the “it” than the word “horseshoe”, the apprentice can hardly be blamed for hitting the wrong thing.

To avoid having your business blog posts convey the wrong message, try following a few of WebAim’s common-sense suggestions:

  • Stick to the point
  • Assume your readers are intelligent, but do not assume that they know the subject matter as well as you
  • Write cohesive paragraphs constructed around a single major idea
  • Use familiar words and word combinations
  • Make sure the sentence construction is consistent within itself
  • Avoid multiple negatives
  • Write short sentences

In the blacksmith story, “it” is what is called a referent pronoun, because it refers back to a noun.  The blacksmith intended, of course, to refer back to the noun “horseshoe”. However, because the noun “head” was closer to the referent pronoun, the blacksmith never got the chance for a rewrite.

All well and good for us to laugh at the apprentice in the tale, but the moral of the story is a serious one for blog content writers.  We want online searchers to get the message, not be left scratching their heads (or getting them hit with a hammer)!

 

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Blogging Resolutions for the New Year

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HBlog writing professionals, listen up! Before you finalize your list of New Year’s resolutions, I’d highly recommend looking over Michele Crouch’s “List of Things Motivational Speakers Won’t Tell You”. Four of those things really stand out for me.

1.  “Never before have we had more power to educate ourselves,” Crouch reminds us. “If you give a smartphone to a Masai warrior in Africa who’s never seen technology, he will have access to more information than the president of the United States did in the year 2000. That’s a stunning statistic: take advantage of it.”

In 2015, I will continually educate myself by “reading around” and “learning around”.

 

 
2. “Delivery matters. When I have an important speech, I record it and listen to it repeatedly so there will be no mistakes whatsoever.”

In 2015, I will continue to strive for zero-error grammar and spelling in blog posts.

 

 
3. “Don’t make it about you.  Think about what you can do for others, not what they can do for you.  When you meet new people, don’t make the mistake of marketing yourself.  Instead, think about someone you know who could be helpful to them.”

In 2015, I will keep focusing on understanding each blogging client’s target customers, offering cues that I understand the situations and challenges they face.

 

 
4. “Stuck in a creative rut? Try this: Look to your left and focus on whatever random object is there; then think about how your life or your problem is like that object.”

In 2015, I will sustain the discipline and “the faith” needed for long term business blogging success, drawing inspiration from everywhere.

 

 

 

What are YOUR blogging resolutions for the new year?

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Three Pieces of Animal Wisdom for Business Bloggers

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Take good advice wherever you can find it, is my thought when it comes to good blog content writing. After all, as Charlie garfieldBrown’s Snoopy warns us, “There’s no sense in doing a lot of barking if you don’t really have anything to say.”

But, really, how can we, over months and years, continue to “have something to say” related to our field, keeping our blog posts relevant over long periods of time without losing reader excitement and engagement?  The answer is extraordinarily simple, yet extraordinarily difficult: We have to keep learning, constantly adding to our own body of knowledge – about our industry or professional field (in my case, about those of our Say It For You clients), and about what’s going on around us in our culture.

There’s a second compelling reason to keep freshening up content, and a second cartoon creature, Dogbert, hits that nail on the head: “This is called a yawn,” he remarks. “When you see one, stop talking about yourself.”

In creating content for marketing blogs, we should remember that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions to dilemmas they’re facing. It’s all about them as potential customers and clients, never about us (or about our business owner or professional clients).  Even before we begin to write, we need to think, “But, enough about us! It’s all about them!”

Garfield reminds us blog writers to inject a lighter note into our content. “I seek truth,” he says, “but a cookie will do”.

Humorist Jeff Fleming  explains the secret behind the Garfield humor. Humorists use serious “set-up” statements, then come in with a third statement which is not what listeners are expecting.  That “misdirection” causes surprise, which is what strikes listeners’ funny bones.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I actually advise writers against using misdirection, given the very short attention span of the average online reader. But the element of surprise can be used to wake up blog readers and keep them engaged. Putting things together that don’t seem to match is one “misdirection” technique, lending an “aha” effect when readers get your point.

Snoopy, Dogbert, and Garfield may have wisdom to share with business bloggers!

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OPA for Blog Content Writing – B

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Even if we lack the financial resources to take advantage of business opportunities, exclamation pointexplains Michael Lechter of PowerHomeBiz.com – OPM (using Other People’s Money) makes moving forward possible.

This week’s Say It For You Blog posts follow a similar theme, except the resources involve other people’s advice, or OPA. I’m sharing pieces of pieces of advice that can help companies and professional practices move forward in creating high quality blog content.

Lou Hoffman of Ishmael’s Corner reminds us that effective writing “shows” the reader as opposed to “telling” the reader. But showing takes more words than telling, warns Scribophile, because you’re adding detailed images, sensory information, and dramatized action. In fact Scribophile says, every writer has a choice between composing words in a way that is unique and vivid or in a way that is basic and fact-focused.

Demonstrating that any one product or service, any one business or professional practice is special – well, you might say that’s nothing less than the job description for any freelance content writer of business blogs! The supreme challenge for us writers, of course, is to stress the “specialness” without turning the posts into blatant sales pitches.

In the world of online marketing, let’s face it, it’s tough to be unique, given the absolute ocean of information out there for readers on any given topic. My conclusion is that the uniqueness we should strive for in blog marketing has more to do with perspective than presentation.

What I mean is that bloggers for business now need to go beyond providing information and become “thought drivers”. Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business-to-consumer blog writing, the content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers. In other words, blog posts will go from information-dispensing to offering the business owner’s (or the professional’s, or the organizational executive’s) unique perspective on issues related to the search topic.

I’m taking the OPA (in this case Scribphile’s) advice about composing words in unique ways one step further – business bloggers need to compose thoughts in unique ways!

 

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Blog Writers’ Opening Lines have a Big Job to Do

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Curiosity concept“The first words of a novel can be enough to set the tone for the whole book,” explain the editors of The Book of Random Oddities.

Some of the most famous first lines quoted in the book include:

  • All children, except one, grow up”.  (“Peter and Wendy”)
  • Marley was dead, to begin with.”  (“A Christmas Carol”)
  • “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (“A Tale of Two Cities”)
  • “Call me Ishmael.” (“Moby Dick”)

Each one of those four openers arouses our curiosity. (Who is the child who never grows up? Why is the fact Marley is dead only a fact to begin with? How can the times be both the best and the worst?  Why should we call him Ishmael – is that really his name?)

But, unlike novelists, can we blog content writers afford to be that enigmatic in order to arouse curiosity?  We know how essential for us to assure readers that they’ve come to the right place to find the information that satisfies the needs that brought them online to find answers – otherwise they’ll bounce away from our site before we get to share our thoughts!  What I call “pow opening lines” are great, but if we fail at showing how that “pow” answers readers’ needs, we won’t be given the chance to tell them the “how” (how what we have to offer will better their lives in some way).

One solution comes in the form of “Huh?” blog titles or opening lines.  “Huh”s need subtitles to make clear what our post is going to be about. The “Huh” startles and arouses curiosity; the subtitles or second sentences clarify what the focus will be.

The “Call me Ishmael” line introduces the narrator of the piece. Although the central figure of “Moby Dick” is Captain Ahab, readers are going to be told the story by Ishmael. The same literary device might be useful for a business blog post, so that readers understand who’s talking. “Call me Jeffrey. Before I started my Slimbo exercise program, I weighed 345 pounds and could hardly walk around the block.”

“Marley was dead, to begin with.”  The same format might be used in a blog post for home remodeling company. “My kitchen was cramped, to begin with.”

The point for business bloggers: As with a novel, in blogging, the title and opening line will set the tone for your entire post. Arousing interest and curiosity is much to be desired, but be quick to clarify where you’re going with the content of the post.

Blog posts’ opening lines set the tone and arouse curiosity, but it’s best not to sustain the mystery for very long.

 

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