Filling Your Trivia Basket for Business Blogging – Part A

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Now that fall has officially set in, I’m reminded of Aesop’s Ant and the Grasshopper fable, cautioning us to beginThe Ant and the Grasshopper stocking up provisions for the winter ahead. I like the concept, especially when it comes to stocking up materials for business blogging. Continually coming up with fresh content to inform, educate, and entertain readers – well, that’s a pretty tall order for busy business owners and employees. (Face it, that’s a tall order even for us professional content writers.)  And without a system for stocking up ideas, content creation can quickly get to the overwhelming stage.

That’s exactly why I’m constantly on the prowl for blogging “foodstuff” that we content writers can “store up” in preparation for those “winter of our discontent” days when ideas just won’t seem to present themselves. One “provisioning” tactic involves trivia.  

Trivia can be used in business blogs for defining basic terminology, sparking curiosity about the subject, putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective, and for explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way.

This week, I’m devoting my Say It For You blog posts to trivia mentioned in Albert Jack’s book,  Red Herrings & White Elephants, which traces the origins of phrases we use every day.
In each case, I’m going to suggest types of businesses that might use that piece of trivia, but I challenge content writers to come up with their own ideas for turning trivia into writing “hooks”.

  • Piping hot – The old church pipe organs would hiss in the same way water does when it steamed, so, ever since the 1300’s, when something was boiling, it was  described as “pipe hot”.
    What kind of business  might make use of this tidbit of information?  How about a heating and air conditioning firm? A company that insulates pipes for residential or commercial buildings? A professional carpet cleaner? An aesthetitician who uses steam to clean out facial pores?
  • To thread your way through a crowd – Back in the 1500’s, mazes were a popular form of entertainment, and some people would take a clew (yarn or thread) and fix one end of it to the beginning of the maze, enabling them to find their way back out again. (The word “clue” derives from this as well!)
    To what kinds of business blog might this piece of trivia add special interest?  How about a tailoring establishment? A sewing or knitting supply shop? A surgeon??

Of course, stocking up on ideas for future blog posts isn’t all about trivia, as I explain to newbie blog content writers. Remember, the trivia tidbit is just the jumping off point for the message.

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“Right” Answers Make for Great Business Blog Content Writing

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question markOne of the givens for us content writers is that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions for dilemmas they’re facing. I really believe that blog writing for business will succeed only if two things are apparent to readers, and in the order presented here:

1. It’s clear you (the business owner or professional practitioner) understand online searchers’ concerns and needs
2. You and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs.

The problem, though, and it’s an extremely common one, is that buyers tend to ask the wrong questions.  I read a marvelous commentary on this very point by Allen Hammer of email service provider Delivra. Among the top worst questions, Hammer observes, are:

  • How much does it cost?  (You should be asking “What value does your solution bring?”
  • What features does your system have? (Better to ask “How will your technology help us reach our goals?”)
  • How many clients do you have? (Better: “How do most of your clients partner with your company?”)

So, how can we get readers asking the right questions so we can offer the right answers? One way is to let some of your other customers provide the answers before the questions are even asked, say the authors of Tips and Traps for Marketing Your Business. Testimonials showing how your technology (or your product or your service) helped other clients reach their goals offer the right answer even if the reader, absent your blog post, might have asked one of those wrong questions Hammer lists.

What’s more, while question-answer is actually a very good format for presenting information to online readers, there’s actually no need to wait until readers actually write in questions.  Every practitioner hears questions from clients; every business owner fields customer queries daily. Sharing some of those – both Hammer’s “right” ones and the ones he thinks are “wrong” –  can remind readers of challenges they face and issues they’ve had with their current providers of products and services.

“Right’ answers make for great business blog content writing!

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It’s All in the Title in Blogging for Business

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titlesFor novelists, a lot goes into their title.  It’s how they relate to their work-in-progress, their baby, for months to come, observes WritersDigest.com . We blog content writers, of course, aren’t given months to agonize over the title of any one blog post. Still, titles are crucial in capturing the interest of both search engines and online searchers.

There are two basic categories of blog titles, we’ve found at Say It For You. The first simply conveys what content readers should expect to find in the post or article. That type of title is not “cutesy” or particularly engaging, but can be highly effective in business blogging because it’s short and to the point and uses keyword phrases that match up with what a reader may have typed into the search bar. The second category of arouses readers’ curiosity, but gives only the barest hint of the content to follow.  A compromise I teach is to use a combination of a “Huh?” title to get attention and then an “Oh!” subtitle to make clear what the post is actually going to be about.

Thomas Umstattd advises authors to use the title to describe not the content of the article, but the value readers can expect to find in the content, making a case for why readers ought to even bother reading on.

In “Title Trauma”, Cindy Callaghan of Writer’s Digest offers a few “outside-the-box” avenues writers can explore for creating captivating titles.

1. The Free Dictionary website offers common figurative phrases.

2. Alliteration.  Say you’re writing about a hair salon in Carmel.  Look for descriptive words beginning with C.   “Captivating Curl in Carmel“ might become your title.

3. Use song titles that express the idea you’re writing about.

4. Use word switcheroos: “Come up with a well-known phrase or slogan, and swap in your keyword, Callaghan advises. She used “What happens in London stays in London.”

The best writing and titling assistance of all for novelists, suggests Callaghan, is the kind that comes from a critique group or writing partner. Of course, the ideal situation for freelance blog content writers is where there’s an approval process.  Assuming you’re in the much more common situation of being your own editor, reading over the post in “Preview” mode, all formatted and ready for publishing, increases your chances of finding your own mistakes before anyone else does.

Pay particular attention to those crucial  5-12 words in the title. After all, you want business blog readers to do just that!

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Becoming a Tidbit “Source Spot” for Indianapolis Blog Writers

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Doctor writing RX prescriptionDesk #95 at the back of the U.S. Senate Chamber is where you find the candy.

When George Murphy came to the U.S. Senate in 1965, he brought along his sweet tooth, and, even after he lost his seat five years later, the “Candy Desk” kept going, maintained today by Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois.

Since I fancy myself something of a “source spot” for business blog content ideas, collecting tidbits of information like the Candy Desk story has become my stock in trade.  If we open our minds to it, I’m convinced, we Indianapolis content writers can make very good use of such on-the-surface-useless information. In fact, I have a name for the process of pinpointing these gems – tidbit mining. Two of my favorite tidbit “gold mines” are Mental Floss magazine and The Book of Totally Useless Information.

The whole idea, as I explain in corporate blogging training sessions, is to provide information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know. Tidbits help engage online readers’ interest.

A couple of really good tidbit examples from the September issue of Mental Floss magazine have to do with handwriting:

  • How does the post office decipher bad penmanship? When a machine finds an illegibly addressed letter, it sends a digital image to a special plant in Salt Lake City, where 700 specially trained clerks crack the code, usually in under 3 seconds. If the process fails, the letters are christened nixies and ultimately end up in the shredder.
  • The Institute of Medicine reports that 1.5 million injuries occur each year because pharmacists or hospital workers misread the handwriting on the prescription.

Who might incorporate this information into their marketing blog posts?  Well, corporate mailing handling and mail forwarding service companies, for starters. (I found no fewer than 50 million Google results by searching “mail handling services for business). Then what about someone blogging about teaching cursive in public school? Tutoring services might use this information to talk about preparing students for the world of work. And what about pharmacy schools and physicians’ assistant degree programs attempting to attract students?

Business blog content writers – never underestimate the power of a good tidbit!

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The Problem With Hero Action Beginnings for Business Blog Posts

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Too organized for in medias res type business blog writing (that’s where you intrigue readers by going right to thehero conflict, then jump back to an earlier, quieter part of the story to deliver the information they need to understand the concepts)? Novelist Cheri Laser has at least three other suggestions for ways to begin a novel.  You might like to use what Laser calls a “hero action beginning” for your blog posts.

“In a hero action beginning, the hero is onstage, doing something active and interesting related to launching the core story,” explains Laser. For us Indianapolis freelance blog content writers, the equivalent would be a bold statement of what our business owner or professional client has to offer.

My friend and fellow blogger Thaddeus Rex lists “Four Ways STUFF has of Differentiating Itself”. A hero action beginning for a blog post might include one of those:

1. Features – your product or service can do something your competitors can’t (or yours does it better).
2. Location – your product/service is available someplace your competitors’ is not (or it’s more easily available)
3. Service – the buying experience you provide sets you apart
4. Cost – you’re the cheapest or the most expensive (exclusivity).

Of course, the secret, as Rex so rightly points out, is to really know your audience, so you know which of those things will be most likely to appeal.

When it comes to blogging (as compared to say, ads, billboards, or even brochures), the potential problem is that this sort of hero action beginning has a way of bordering on being a “boast session” of the things. Fine to let online readers know about what you have and about the things you do, but keep this in mind:  It has to be about them!

In one recent issue of Speaker Magazine, authors offer tips to professional speakers who want to launch books they’ve written. “Don’t tell your prospects how great you are; tell them how great they will feel when the ideas in your book relieve the pain they’re experiencing.”

Hero action beginnings can be great as “grabbers” in business blog posts, with one proviso – remember that the real hero of any blog post had better be – the reader!

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