Say It For You Magazine Challenge Revived

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Mental FlossThe magazine challenge concept was born in the Minneapolis airport back in 2008.  To pass the time during an unexpected two-hour layover between flights, I challenged myself to find at least a week’s worth of ideas for the Say It For You blog in a single magazine issue.

Out of that experience came a challenge to all SIFY readers to come up with blog post ideas out of a single magazine of their choice, selecting articles that trigger ideas about their business or practice – what they sell, what they know, what they believe, and what they know how to do.

Now, eight years later, I’m issuing the challenge again. If you do corporate blogging for business, send me a link to at least one blog post you wrote triggered by a magazine article.  Or, if you’re not blogging, go ahead and email me a paragraph or two about your business as relates to a magazine article and I’ll publish it here.

The magazine I’m going to use this week is Mental Floss.  (If you’ve never been exposed to this bi-monthly publication, you ought to try it – one of the most fun, interesting reads around!). The May 2015 issue has a great two page spread on “The Secret Origin of 7 Extremely Important Actions”.

One of those actions is the “selfie”, which of course we think of as being part of our own era of cell phones. Julie Winterbottom explains that the practice of taking one’s own picture actually goes back more than 150 years. Just months after Louis Daguerre, one of the fathers of photography, had announced his invention, he pointed the lens of the newfangled camera at himself. Of course, as Winterbottom points out, he needed to hold really, really still – exposures for early cameras took up to 15 minutes!

As a business blogging trainer, I think this insight into the history of the selfie could be used for just about any type of business or practice. That’s because, in every industry and every profession, things are not the same as they used to be.  Write about those changes. Help readers understand how to get the maximum benefit out of today’s version of the products and services you offer. Share thoughts you have about your work, thoughts triggered by looking at the past, but about things that are relevant today.

What is there about your business, like the selfie, is much, much better today than it used to be?

 

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Glass-Breaking and Myth-Busting in Business Blogs

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Vidrio rotoSo you’ve found some interesting material in a funky magazine called Mental Floss.  Question is, as a freelance blog content writer, what do you with it? After all, how could a brief history of people who worried that they were made of glass help in blog marketing for your – or your client’s – business or practice?  Gather round….

By way of background, awhile back I came up with a remedy for blog content writers when they get stuck thinking up new ideas to keep their business blog posts engaging. I advised leafing through popular magazines to spark ideas that can help business owners and practitioners explain what they do and how and why they do it.  OK, so how about those people who thought they were made of glass?

  •  In the 1400s, King Charles VI of France, convinced he was made of glass, wore special clothes to avoid breaking into pieces.
  • In the 1600s. a play (Thomas Tomkis’ Lingua) and a novel ( Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Doctor Glass-Case) featured characters who were afraid to move or to be near people for fear they would break into pieces.
  •  The History of Psychiatry chronicles a 1600’s man who wore a cushion on his derriere to prevent breakage.

One very important function of blog writing for business is to debunk common myths. Business owners can use their blog not only as a way to dispense information, but to address misinformation. All those now funny misapprehensions about glass were understandable when the technology was new.  After glass had become cheap enough for ordinary people to use it for windowpanes, the delusions, Mental Floss editors explain, began to “slide into obscurity”.

In the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or a serve may surface, especially if the technology behind the product or service is new.

Dentistry:
Do amalgams used for fillings cause mercury poisoning?

Beauty:
Does makeup cause acne?

Internet security:
If you don’t open an infected file, can you get infected?

Jewelry:
Have diamonds have always been the symbol for marriage?

Life expectancy:
In the past, didn’t 9 out of 10 people die before age 40?

Home décor:
Should small rooms be painted in pale neutral colors?

I explain to newbie content writers in Indianapolis that citing statistics to disprove popular myths gives business owners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise. Myth-busting comes with a caveat, however.  The trick is to engage interest, but not in “Gotcha!” style. Business owners and professional practitioners blogging for business can showcase their own expertise without putting readers “in the wrong”.

What myths need busting in your business or practice?
 

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Spoon-feeding the Why’s to Business Blog Readers

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five“Because the baby slept all night….”  “Because he emptied the litter box…”  “You don’t need a big excuse to give a great gift,” read the sign at the end of the cafeteria checkout line.

Even though I’m constantly stressing to business blog content writers that blog posts are NOT ads, there’s a lot we can learn from advertisers.  After all, we have stuff to sell – whether it’s products, services, or ideas, and whether it’s for our own or our clients’ businesses or practices. And, that MCL sign notwithstanding, we have to make sure our prospects, the ones reading the blog content, see that they have good “excuses” to buy.

Fellow blogger Michel Fortin names five types of “why” you can tell buyers. (Fortin’s alluding to ad copy, but  his list is a good outline for using proof in your business blog posts to build belief in your – or your client’s – services and products.)

Why YOU:
Why did you target this particular market (the one represented by this potential buyer)?

Why ME:
The “me” is the business or the professional practitioner (or the ghost blogger as his or her voice). What is our expertise and experience?  Why do we care?

Why THIS:
What are the specific solutions you provide? Why is your product or service designed in the particular and unique way you describe?

Why NOW:
What reasons can you offer the reader to act now – (missing out on something important, preventing further damage, expected scarcity of the product, etc.)?

Why THIS PRICE:
Your blog can make clear where you fall price-wise in your market and why your business has chosen that pricing niche.

You may not need a big excuse to give someone an MCL gift card, but only blog believers become buyers!

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How to De-Clutter Your Big Business Blog Closet

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There’s certainly no lack of advice about blogging for a business or professional Cpractice. Wisdom is offered in the terabytes on the topics of starting a blog, writing a blog, illustrating a blog, and promoting a blog. (In short, my Say it for You team is definitely not alone in our mission of helping business owners and professionals tell their story to potential clients and customers.)

But who’s advising blogging veterans, you know, establishments that have been producing content by the hundreds or even thousands of posts over, say the last two, three, or five years?

Couldn’t help asking precisely this question about blog clutter after I came across closet de-cluttering devotee Mari Kondo’s “Top 10 Organizing Tips” as reported in the Japan Times.

Kondo vows her stuff-purging method can transform lives. If nothing else, I believe her tactics, applied to accumulated content in business blogs, will infuse new energy into the process of creating new blog content.

Kondo: Approach your sorting and discarding strategically, and do it by category, not location. (Start with clothes and books, rather than with the attic or the spare bedroom.)

Searching by categories is a good thing for blog readers, who can learn more about exactly that aspect of your material that is most important to them. And categories enable you, I teach blog content writers, to update and add information to what you’ve already presented to readers. If things have changed in your industry or profession, reviewing what your position was four years ago is a great way to frame your take on what’s going on today.
Kondo: Pick up each item your own and ask yourself, “Does this bring me joy?” If the answer is no, out it goes.

In a sense, “clutter” in blogs, in the sense of quantity, is a positive. There’s only so much room in even the most spacious closet, but once I’ve put content on this Say It For You blog, it can remain on the Internet forever.  (This post is actually #1053 for me, yet all my 1,052 past blog posts haven’t disappeared. All, that content remains, available to readers in reverse chronological order, a very good thing when it comes to “winning search” online!)

 

So what’s the point of asking whether a two-year old piece of content brings you joy, or, put another way, how can de-cluttering help in blogging for business?

In corporate blogging training sessions, I often explain that it’s perfectly OK to repeat a theme you’ve already covered in former posts, adding a layer of new information or a new insight. You can’t do that, of course, without going back into your blog content “closet” to discover your own business “past”!

 

 

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How About a Riddle for Your Business Blog?

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One curious thing I’ve found is that blog readers tend to be curious creatures.  In Hands holding a white piece of paperfact, their curiosity factor is highest when they’re learning about themselves.  As a longtime Indianapolis blog content writer, I’ve found that “self-tests” and surveys tend to engage readers and help them relate in a more personal way to information presented in a marketing blog.

Taking that concept one step further, we can use riddles as jumping-off points to the content in a blog post.  I found some great examples of the way riddles can get readers’ brain cells whirring from the get-go.

A riddle can help define basic terminology:
What is the one thing shared by all four of these: a needle, a potato, a hurricane, and a person?
Answer: An eye.
(This riddle might be used to introduce a post about hurricanes for a vendor of weather apps for mobile phones.)

A riddle can explain why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way:
If you have me, you want to share me.  If you share me, you haven’t got me.  What am I?
Answer: A secret.
(This riddle might be used to assure potential clients that their information will be kept confidential.)

A riddle can be used as a call to action:
What is always coming but never arrives?
Answer: Tomorrow.
(This riddle can be used to urge readers of a diet and exercise blog to get started on a program to better their health and not procrastinate.)

A riddle can be used as a “mantra” or as “motto” for a business:
A mile from end to end, yet as close as a friend., a precious commodity freely given.  What is it?
Answer: A smile.
(This riddle could adorn the website of a dentist or orthodontist.)

How might YOU use a riddle to enrich your business blog content?

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