Grammar in Blogging – Getting a Grip

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“Jobs are lost for typos on resumes…. Friends lose respect for each other… Semi-colons cry themselves to sleep at night,” quips Kris Spisak in Get a Grip on Your Grammar.

Well,, While I wouldn’t go so far as to myself to sleep at night over grammar, one of our mantras at Say It For You is that “good grammar affects the effect of a business blog”.

While I reassure content writers that, if their marketing blog posts are filled with valuable, relevant, and engaging material, the fact they wrote ‘a lot’ when they should have said ‘many’ or substituted ‘your’ for ‘you’re isn’t going to be a content marketing deal breaker.

On the other hand, in corporate blogging training sessions, in which the business owner and professional practitioner attendees largely serve as their own editors, I urge no-error erring on the side of caution.

Spisak emphasizes 3 common aspects of content writing:

“Don’t show off your smarts”.
Be inclusive – your readers will appreciate it if your avoid industry jargon. I agree. Jargon, Jargon is a handle-with-care writing technique, all the more so in blogging, where readers are impatient to find the information they need without any navigational or terminology hassle. On the other hand, once you’ve established that common ground, reinforcing to readers that they’ve come to the right place, you can add lesser known bits of information, including terminology.

Don’t use filler words.
Expressions such as “Actually,” “basically”, “literally”, “just about”, and “honestly” add nothing to your readers’ understanding of your message. I agree. “Tighten up” your blog content writing to increase its impact.

Go ahead and use the singular “they”.
To demonstrate how much simpler life can be if writers allow themselves to use “the singular ‘they’”, Spisak uses the following uber-awkward sentence: “A child will fall and hurt him or herself if he or she doesn’t tie his or her shoes.” It’s OK to use “they” and “their” when you want to be smooth, not gender specific, he reassures purists.

As a blogging trainer, my own favorite recommendation to business owners as well as the freelance blog content writers they hire to help bring their message to their customers) is simply this: Dress your blog in its best. Prevent blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions” such as grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors.

After all, getting a grip on grammar is an important part of getting your message across!

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Break Full Articles Apart in Blogging for Business

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When it comes to blogging, we at Say It For You firmly believe in the Power of One:

  • One message
  • One outcome
  • One audience
  • One writer
  • One client

    A very well-written article that appeared recently in the Indianapolis Business Journal reinforced for me an important difference between nonfiction articles and blog posts, with each post having a razor-sharp focus on just one idea or concept, one aspect of a business or practice. With apologies to George Lesmeister, CEO and founder of LGC Hospitality, I’m going to use his article to illustrate how a single topic article can provide the fodder for several very focused, very effective blog posts.

The overall premise of the Lesmeister piece is that a large pool of job candidates till now be actively seeking employment, those job seekers are going to be choosy. The author offers several pieces of advice to employers about ways to provide a good hiring experience for candidates.

Statistics:
“While Indiana’s unemployment rate spiked to 17% during the pandemic, it’s now 3.9%). Our sector (Lessmeister’s staffing firm specializes in the hospitality industry) lost the largest number of jobs.” What’s more, the author adds, “A May estimate shows some 116,000 job openings in Indiana.”

In teaching business owners and professional practitioners how to create content for blog posts, I stress the power of using statistics in blogs:

  • Statistics can serve as myth-busters, dispelling false impressions people may have regarding your industry.
  • Statistics grab visitors’ attention.
  • Statistics can be used demonstrate the extent of a problem opening the door for your to show how you help solve that very type of problem.

My point: This one portion of Lesmeister’s article (the unemployment statistics) can constitute an entire blog post.

Best practices:
The author’s admonition that “Respect is a two-way street” would make for an engaging blog post title. Workers see help-wanted signs, go inside to apply, fill out an application, and never hear back, Lessmeister laments. Certainly an entire blog post might focus on best practices within your industry or profession.

One thing I suggest stressing in blog posts is best business practices.  While a goal of any marketing blog is to help your business or practice “get found”, once that’s happened, the goal changes to helping online readers appreciate the specific ways you choose to run your enterprise.

  • Specific solutions and advice
    “Even if a job candidate does not have experience in one particular area, evaluate the soft skills during the interview process. …Can the applicant quickly be trained to make an impact?”

    Solve a problem, own the customer, sales trainers like to say. That’s because people are online searching for answers to their problems or solutions for dilemmas they’re facing.  If your business has been consistently posting content, those people are going to find you, because your posts provide the solutions they need. Providing a powerful online “voice” to solutions to searchers’ problems is the essence of content writers’ work!

    Out of just this one article might come many different, powerful blog posts:

  • busting one myth common among consumers of their product or service they’re marketing
  • offering one testimonial from a user of that product or service
  • describing an unusual application for that product
  • describing one common problem their service helps solve
  • updating readers on one new development in that industry or profession
  • offering a unique opinion or slant on best practices

Break full articles (your own or others’) apart for blogging for business!

 

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In Blogging for Business, Great Questions are Those the Audience Used to Know

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“Creating the perfect quiz is an art form,” Breathe Magazine authors explain. In a virtual quiz, they point out, “Great questions are those that the audience used to know and will strain to remember.” That way, rather than being frustrated, giving up and clicking away, audience members will stay engaged and be able to venture an educated guess. A good question should:

  1. Inform
  2. Educate
  3. Entertain

Even if they don’t know enough to even guess the answer, participants will be glad they learned the information after they’ve learned the answer, Breathe advises.

In corporate blogging training sessions, I’m sometimes asked whether quizzes are a good strategy for business blogging. The answer is yes, and for several different reasons. Blog readers tend to be curious creatures and, as a longtime Indianapolis blog content writer, I’ve found that “self-tests” tend to engage readers and help them relate in a more personal way to information presented in a blog.

Breathe’s advice about entertaining an audience is especially important in business blogs. One concern I hear a lot from business owners or professional practitioners is that sooner or later, they’ll run out of things to say in their marketing blog posts.  “I’ve already covered my products and services on my website – what else is left to say?” is the question. Paradoxically, effective business blogging is centered around the repeated use of keyword phrases and key themes! One of the biggest challenges in blogging for business over long periods of time is keeping the content fresh. Quizzes constitute a way to vary the menu.

It’s not only the effort needed to remember information learned long ago that engages readers – they love “straining” to understand information about themselves. Over the years at Say It For You, I’ve found that “self-tests” tend to engage readers and help them relate in a more personal way to the information presented in a marketing blog.

There’s yet another advantage to quizzes, I’ve learned. People are looking to their advisors for more than just information; they need perspective. In blog content writing, we provide information to searchers, but they also need guidance as to what they can do about those facts, and ways in which the information can make a difference to them.

The quiz, test, or survey engages online readers’ curiosity.  The next step is “nudging” them towards a point of view – or a course of action!

 

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In Blogging, a Thesaurus is Handy, Yet Must Be Handled With Care

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When she got to college, now-seasoned author Jennifer Blanchard relates, she learned that her obsession with her thesaurus was, in fact, a problem. Jennifer had tried to impress the editor of the college newspaper by using a variety of big words in her article,  but was soon taught that not all synonyms are created equal.

Still, when it comes to blog marketing, there’s no denying that word choice can, as the Palm Beach Content Company points out, “make the difference between a compelling post that converts and a boring one that drives readers away”.

With Webster’s Thesaurus of the English Language occupying a place of honor on my own Say It For You bookshelf, I can attest to both the usefulness of this little reference book in varying the vocabulary I use in blogging for business – and the pitfalls…

Here are just a few examples of everyday word pairs which my thesaurus offers as synonyms, but which could not be interchangeable in blog content:

Decide/ solve
Online searchers are searching for products or services to help solve problems they are experiencing. Each prospect must decide which of several solutions to implement.

Workmen/ artisans/ craftsmen
A workman or worker does labor. Artisans are skilled laborers who use tools and machinery to create projects designed for aesthetic appeal, while craftsmen are skilled creators of functional items..

Load/ cargo
A load is a burden or weight to be carried, while cargo is freight carried by a ship or plane.

Resource/ substitute
While a substitute is something a consumer sees as the same or similar to another product or service, a resource is material that (or people who) help us satisfy needs.

Alone/ lonely
Being alone is a physical state of being by yourself, while being lonely is an emotional state.

Award/ reward
An award is typically give in public as a recognition of achievement. A reward may be a cash prize or simply a positive result of an action.

Handle/ manipulate
Both these words imply touching or moving something with one’s hands. However, the wrd manipulation has negative connotations, such as people taking advantage of others.

Renowned novelist Stephen King didn’t think content writers should use the thesaurus, famously saying that “any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word”.

The opposite view is expressed by the Myovient English Learning Center: The most common use of a thesaurus is to avoid word repetition, and to identify replacements for words that seem too common or dull, creating texts that are more interesting because of the richer language that is used.”

Two things are true in blogging: A thesaurus is a handy tool. A thesaurus must be used with caution.

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In Business and in Blogging, Differentiation is the Key to Success

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“There are many ways to differentiate yourself,” writes Michael Hill in Measuring Ourselves. “Become the idea guy, the best manager, the highest-producing sales-person. Find your passion and use it,” he advises.

“Blog differentiation is one of the best ways to get more attention for your brand, Dave Taylor agrees. Starting a blog these days is easy, he admits. However, with millions of blogs that are already popular, it’s difficult to stand out from the crowd. Taylor lists several aspects of blog differentiation, including topic, demographic target and content style.

Collectivedge.com offers a number of differentiation suggestions that, at Say It For You, I’ve found to be very effective in blogging for business:

“Connect with your readers by always writing in the first person” 
In blog marketing, I stress first person writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the person or the team standing ready to serve customers.

Don’t be afraid to be controversial.
In any field, there will always be controversy – about best business practices, about the best approach to providing professional services, about acceptable levels of risk, even about business-related ethical choices. Rather than ignoring the controversy, bloggers need to comment on the different views and “weigh in”.

Borrowing from successful writers allows you to pick up handy techniques and tricks.
Business bloggers, I teach, need to spend at least as much time reading as writing, in order to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing. Plus, when you link to someone else’s remarks on a subject you’re covering, that can not only reinforce your point, but add value to readers by aggregating different sources of information in one business blog.

Make it pretty – blog posts with images get twice as many shares.
No doubt about it, the story line is paramount in blogging for business.. Where visuals come in, whether they’re in the form of “clip art”, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos, is to add interest and evoke emotion.

As content writers, we help business owners and practitioners differentiate themselves. In fact, blog content is the ideal vehicle for adding explanations, offering more details and updates, telling stories, and expressing owners’ beliefs about what’s most important to them in serving clients and customers.

 

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