Blog Posts are Ideas-in-Brief

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“To help busy readers quickly absorb and apply the concepts, the feature-length articles in these collections also include short ‘Idea in Brief’ summaries,” the editors of Harvard Business Review’s Special Issue explain, referring to the “text box” found in each long article..

What are text boxes?
As the Style Manual teaches. in technical or long-form content, text boxes, which sit on the page close to the text they support, are short articles that support the main body of the text. The content in the text box might contain a summary of the topic, examples, or an expansion of ideas in the main text. People tend to scan text boxes before they read the body of the text.

Blog posts as text boxes:

A blog post can summarize the topic:
Lawyerist.com teaches lawyers how to create powerful introductions when arguing a case in court, advising that an opening line must put the motion in the larger context, besides giving the judge a reason to keep reading.

A blog post can give examples illustrating the main message of a business or practice:
The “mapping method” of taking notes on paper can be adapted for blog series, where the content writer explores different aspects of the same topic in a group of three to four individual posts.

A blog post can expand on the ideas within the topic:
Blog content lets you go deeper than your website permits, creating a big, expanding brochure of practical, persona-optimized web content targeted to your market niche. Milie Oscar explains.

Text boxes and “callouts” are not just gimmicks – the main message in an article and the information in the text box must be directly related to one another. In the same way, whichever content an online searcher might encounter first, whether it happens to be the business website itself or an individual blog post, the core two purposes is the same – imparting understanding and forging connections.. “Before you include a text box or callout in your content, consider how it will help people understand or use the information,” Style Manual cautions.

Blog posts are nothing more than “Ideas-in-Brief”.

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How Not to be Passive in Your Posts

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In “The Tyranny of the Verb To Be”, Tobias Buckell describes how, as a new writer, he “almost destroyed himself” trying to eliminate passive verbs from his material. What’s so terrible about the passive voice? Buckell asks. Isn’t it time to stop worrying about “staying active”? Some of our overuse of passive voice, he believes, comes from academic writing, which removes the narrator from English papers.

“While tense is all about time references, voice describes whether the grammatical subject of a clause performs or receives the action of the verb,” grammarly.com explains. It’s the difference between “Chester kicked the ball” (active) and “The ball was kicked by Chester” (passive). “If you’re writing anything with a definitive subject who’s performing an action, you’ll be better off using the active voice,” rhw grammarly author advises. “Using active voice for the majority of your sentences makes your meaning clear for readers, and keeps the sentences from becoming too complicated or wordy,” the Purdue Online Writing Lab agrees. .Sometimes, though, the active voice is simply awkward, Alice Underwood of grammarly explains, as in “People rumor Elvis to be alive”, as opposed to “Elvis is rumored to be alive”.

As writers, we teach at Say It For You, we need to decide (in each sentence and phrase) what – or who – matters most in each particular sentence – do we want to emphasize the action itself or the doer of the action? When it comes to actual “voice” in terms not of grammar, but of messaging, in a business blog, it’s important to have “voice variety”. That can come from writing some of the content in I-you format, with other posts written in third person. If a company person or a customer is being interviewed, the content can be written in the “voice” of the interviewee or that of the interviewer. “Third person narratives so often mimic the ‘beige voice’ of an objective reporter,” William Cane says in Write Like the Masters. With first person, he advises, “it’s usually easier to be intimate, unique, and quirky.”

In the grammatical arena, the most important thing, Bucknell concludes, is to test each sentence to see whether its SVA (subject, verb, object) arrangement could be written in a more interesting way. Achieving interesting writing is not as simple a matter as changing all the verbs to active, he realizes. “But looking carefully at all those ‘to be’ sentences might not be a bad way of diagnosing places where we have the opportunity to push ourselves a little more artistically,” he says.

Of course, as blog writers, we want to come across as passionate, never passive, towards our topics and towards our readers.

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Blogging Your Pull Quote

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In graphic design, a key phrase or sentence is sometimes “pulled” from an article and placed in a larger print in a box on the page. The “pull quote” is used to draw interest, but also gives readers a a “preview” of the thesis to be proven or at least discussed in the article.

In a recent issue of Health Magazine, the article “The Digital-Era Brain” (a discussion of whether the Internet is eroding our memory) features the following pull-quote, printed in bold: “In one study, a group of students said they spent 20 percent of class time texting, playing games, and checking social media”. A second article discussing the USA Memory Championship, titled “Battle of the Big Brains”, features the following pull quote: “Though the brain accounts for only 2 percent of the body’s mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breathe and burns a quarter of our glucose.”

In blog posts, both titles and images can serve as “pull quotes”.

“Pull quote” titles

When it comes to blogging for business, titles matter, and for two basic reasons: a) Keywords and phrases help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or professional practice has to offer. b) Exactly like the pull quote on the magazine page, the idea is to “pull” in readers by engaging their interest.

If the title is phrased as a question, asking readers if they’re grappling with an issue or a need that you not only know about, but which you’re accustomed to helping solve – that’s perfect as a pull quote tactic.

“Pull quote” images

Adding images to blog posts has been shown to increase readership. In fact, consumers have been shown to be more likely to consider or contact a business when an image appears in search results. What we’ve found at Say It For You, interestingly, is that commercial images, or “clip art”, which don’t depict the actual products, customers, or colleagues of that business or practice, work particularly well as interest “pullers”, capturing the main concept that will be articulated in the post.

In a very basic sense, blog posts themselves function as “pull quotes”. In fact, one of the most important reasons blogs have a distinct advantage over the more static website copy is that each post draws visitors’ focus to just one story, one aspect of the business, practice, or product, precisely in the manner that a pull quote draws attention to just one main concept embodied in the full article.

Use blogging as a set of pull quotes for your website offerings!

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Blog Writing Begins with Answering the Question

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In order to grab and keep readers’ attention, writers must answer the questions every reader asks as a story begins – questions that need to be answered if the reader is to relax and enjoy the ride,” the authors of The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings explain. After all, if readers don’t care what happens next, they won’t read on.”

The “big idea” of any story is the “hook” that sells that story to agents and editor, (and, in the case of blog content writing, to online searchers), has to be compelling enough to get your story off to a great start. “The most important thing your opening needs to do is this: Keep the reader reading,” author Paula Munier teaches. “In truth,” she admits, “it doesn’t matter how good your opening scene is if the idea on which your story is based is flawed, either in storytelling terms or marketing terms.”

Making messages deliver impact is, of course, “our thing” as business blog content writers. As both Munier’s book and one by Chip and Dan Heath, Made to Stick, teach, we  can’t succeed if our messages don’t break through the clutter to get people’s attention. Opening your blog post with a startling statistic can be one way to grab visitors’ attention, I often point out to content writers for Say It For You clients.

Just as consumers would not be searching for the right auto shop/ jewelry store/ plumber/ healthcare provider, etc. unless they already felt the need for that service or product type, searchers who land on your blog are already interested in and have a need for what you offer. Now, as Paula Munier cautions, the essential questions on searchers’ minds need to be answered as they decide whether to read on or click away.

Blogs, as I so often stress to business blog writers, are not advertisements or sales pieces (even if increasing sales is the ultimate goal of the business owner).  Whatever “selling” goes on in effective blogs is indirect and comes out of business owners sharing their passion, special expertise and insights in their field.  When blog posts “work”, readers are moved to think, “I want to do business with him!” or “She’s the kind of person I’ve been looking for!”

Before that ultimate “Ah, yes!” effect can take place, readers newly arrived after clicking on a blog title link need reassurance that the title and the actual blog post content are congruent. In other words, readers have arrived at the right place for finding the answers they were seeking.

In a very real way, blog writing begins – and ends – with answering that very question.

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Blog Genres: Take Your Choice – Carefully

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Your choice of genres may be very different depending on who you’re writing for and point you want to make,” the authors of Everything You Need to Ace English Language Arts in One Big Fat Notebook explain. “Different genres alter the focus of the topic.” The journalism genre, for example, puts the most important facts first, leaving out all personal opinions or personal history of the author. The memoir genre, in contrast, focuses on the memories of an individual and does not refer to research.

Since blog content writing is, by definition, nonfiction, authors can follow several of the guidelines in the Notebook:

  • using research (old newspaper articles, interviews, eyewitness accounts)
  • including charts, graphs, and photos
  • skillfully using both explicit and implicit evidence

In a non-fiction text, Notebook authors explain, explicit evidence is actually stated. Implicit evidence, on the other hand, involves conclusions readers draw from the text. In order to “steer” readers to arrive at certain conclusions, “choosing the BEST evidence from all the evidence is crucial, in order to get the point across quickly and convincingly”. In fact, “choosing evidence” is a foundational aspect of blog content creation. At Say it For You, we teach that, in addition to having a focused topic for each blog post, writers must have a specific audience in mind, choosing the best evidence for that target audience.

“Every author writes with a purpose in mind,” the Notebook states. “In opinion pieces, it is an established fact that the authors have a purpose and are trying to convince the reader of something.” Still, a good writer knows that not everybody agrees, and therefore includes counterclaims or counterarguments.” When it comes to blog marketing, visitors will be subjecting your content to an “acid test”, judging whether this site is the “real deal”. That’s where presenting “evidence” in the form of facts and figures comes in.

Some “tried and true” blog genres include:     

  • advice
  • collections and top lists
  • reviews
  • predictions
  • motivation
  • trouble-shooting
  • interviews
  • how-to
  • editorial
  • personal reflection

Whichever the genre of choice, a central idea is the most importance element in any piece of writing, Notebook authors remind us. Around that central idea, the content of any piece can be constructed. As blog content writers, we can take our genres, but it’s important to do that carefully!

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