Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

Restaurant reviewer Lou Harry generally avoids using exclamation points in his writing: "I figure if the sentence is dramatic enough, the exclamation point isn’t necessary," he says.

To test this theory in restaurants, Harry’s devoting this month to visiting restaurants with exclamation points in their name, pronouncing Zionsville eatery Oobatz! more than worthy of punctuation braggadocio.

In blog posts, I’ve found, it is important to exclaim.  There are at least two reasons for this.  First, as I often stress, online searchers tend to be scanners, not readers. Punctuation, italics, and bold type are some of the ways to draw attention to the central point(s) in each post.

Friend and language expert Bill Alerding reminds students that any language develops initially in spoken form, only later evolving into written form.  The function of punctuation, then, is to indicate the pauses, the intonation, and the emphasis that a speaker would communicate with his or her voice.
 
The second reason to use emphasis clues in blogs is to satisfy the "spiders".  Search engine software indexing programs need clues to match up the content on websites and blogs with searchers’ needs.  Google’s "goal in life",(as I heard it expressed once by local SEO maven Ken Zweigel) is to "crawl" the Web and say "Gotcha!" when it finds information most relevant to the search phrase entered by the user.

Of course, using exclamation points to "cry ‘Wolf!’" too often will nullify the effect.  Lou Harry’s approach to restaurant reviews is actually very apropos for blogging – an idea has got to earn its punctuation!

Blogger Gad Saad ("Homo Consumerus") gets annoyed when celebrities offer unfounded opinions on matters of science and medicine, I read in Psychology Today. Saad, himself a psychologist at Concordia University in Montreal, claims to be a perfectionist when he does research, and has little patience for uninformed pontification.
 
From Gwyneth Paltrow’s warning that shampoo causes cancer in children, to Madonna using "Kabbalah fluid" to neutralize radiation in a Ukranian lake, Saad ridicules what he sees as egotistical interventions in matters best left to experts.  Confucius had the right idea, Saad exclaims ("When you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it is knowledge").

I found a sharply different approach in Ted Demopoulos’ preface to his book "What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging And Podcasting".  What amazes Demopoulos, he says, is finding expertise in unexpected places. 

With billions of words being released into the blogsphere as you read this post, there’s an almost unimaginable quantity of information on every imaginable topic, all circulating online.  Inevitably, some of that information goes from blog to blog, with one blogger contradicting, praising, or restating other bloggers’ notions.  (No wonder they’re referred to as "viral" blogs!) Saad’s perception of legions of incompletely researched – or completely un-researched – opinions in print is hardly without basis.

So, how can you showcase your expertise, your passion, and your products and services without making outrageous claims?  Blog what you know, your own experience with real customers and clients and ways your products and services helped solve problems.  Phrases such as "I think", "seems to me", "I saw", "I learned" can take some of the "claim" out of the content while letting you introduce yourself to your visitors.

OK, so you’re not a scientist or a doctor.  Still, there are searchers out there who need you and what you have to offer. If your blog posts are educational and informative but don’t hit searchers over the head with a sales pitch, your business blog can be just what the doctor ordered!