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More About Using Skeletons to Bring Life to Your Blog

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In the delightful little book Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use, you can find a treasure chest of fun ideas for livening up business blog posts. Author Bill Brohough alerts readers to the fact that many of the words we use daily used to have very war-related, sexually oriented, or even disgusting meanings.

Last week in this Say It For You blog, I suggested several ways in which that collection of verbal “skeletons” which Brohough put together can be used to enliven blog marketing content for different types of businesses and professional practices,. skeletonThose word “skeletons” can be use, I explained:

  • to define basic terminology or give basic information to readers
  • to explain why this practitioner or business owner chooses to operate in a certain way:

After all, every business blogger faces the challenge of creating material about the same subject over long periods of time, and anything we can use to deepen and broaden and generally “freshen up” the topic tends to be a good thing.

Two words we’re used to seeing in marketing content, terms used to describe everything from clothing to home décor to autos, for example, are “sophisticated” and “luxury”.  Today, Brohough points out, if you call something or someone “sophisticated”, you mean cultured and refined.  The original meaning of the word was quite different.  To “sophisticate” something was to adulterate it by mixing it with something inferior, and being sophisticated meant the opposite of genuine. The word “luxury”, Brohough adds, has a similarly shady past. The Old French word meant “indulging in abundance”, lacking in taste, or even lecherous.

In corporate blog writing, the target audience dictates the nature of the content, including the writing tone and style, the length of the posts, which keyword phrases to include, and what the Calls to Action will be.  But, even with all those preparations made and research done,  writers need to maintain a full content “quiver” (with the arrows pointing in the right direction!).

Trivia such as those in Unfortunate English can add a dash of humor and a whole lot of new interest to business blog marketing content!

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People Who Don’t Even Like You Are Reading

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Microphone on standLearning that someone had posted a negative remark about him on social media, WIBC radio talk show host Tony Katz quipped, “People who don’t even like me are listening!”

Now, there’s an observation we blog content writers would do well to keep in mind.  Granted, Katz is “out there” in terms of his content, and you may think your content, by comparison, is tasteful and non-offensive.  Truth is, anybody who’s posting content on social media is putting themselves and their business “out there” – (isn’t that the point?).

Online entrepreneur Mike Filsaime coined the moniker “cowboys”, referring to people in online forums who don’t like something you’ve posted and make it a personal mission of theirs to attack you in public forms, negative comments, or blogs.

“As your blog becomes more popular,” writes Yaro Starak in Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, you’ll receive more comments. Some people are going to be negative, argumentative, or not agree with what you’ve written in your blog, Starak warns. There are four possible ways to respond, he says. You could:

  • delete the comment
  • censor it by deleting parts
  • respond in anger

The best course of action, Starak advises, is to use negative comments to demonstrate your own credibility, using a calm, “your-side-of-the-story”, response.

Editor Esther Schindler, writing in Forbes, agrees. Treat the commenter with respect, she advises. Acknowledge the point he makes, then point to the data that led to your differing conclusion. “Always keep the discussion about the subject of the article, not the people.”

In fact, I remind newbie business bloggers, one of the special things about blogs is that they’re available not only for reading, but for acting and interacting.  Good blogs invite readers to post comments and encourage them to subscribe to your blog.

Marketing online begins with attracting eyeballs to our content. It’s a good sign, as Tony Katz reminded us through his on-air quip, when people who don’t even like us are reading our blogs!

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Shrinking Blog Paragraphs Like a Strip of Bacon

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Fried bacon strips“When I see a paragraph shrinking under my eyes like a strip of bacon, I know I’m on the right track,” says Peter DeVries, American author and novelist known for his satiric wit. Paragraphs, says Richard Anderson in Powerful Writing Skills, are like rest stops, giving our eyes and minds a break before going on to the next matter.

Minimalism in blogging, I think, includes making posts readable and easier to look at, and short paragraphs are part of that. In fact, short paragraphs are part of the formula I teach newbie Indianapolis blog writers:

  • Choose one main idea as the focus for each blog post.  I call that the Power of One. (More to add? Save it for future posts.)
  • Compose an opening sentence that’s a “grabber”, so that readers just have to find out what you meant.
  • Explain, clarify, illustrate, discuss your one main point, using a few short paragraphs.
  • Issue your parting “shot”, a snappy exit line that sums up the thought you want your readers to remember. This one tip, I’ve found, can be of enormous business blogging help.

Paragraphs do not all need to be the same size, Anderson stresses.  In fact, they can be as short as one sentence or even one word. But each paragraph, with the exception of the opening one, needs to be tied in some way to the one that came before it, and each should begin and end with important pieces of information. “You don’t need to sum up what you’ve said before going on to the next paragraph; use a transition that makes the reader want to hurry on to that next paragraph,” he advises.

It’s interesting that Richard Anderson tells writers to use only indented paragraphs. “Our eyes have been trained to recognize each new indented paragraph as a chunk of new information to process”.  (In formatting business blog posts, I prefer to use block paragraphs, with the spacing between the paragraphs signaling that a new chunk of information is being presented.)

But whether you choose indented paragraphs or space-separated block format, Anderson’s next piece of advice is very valid, and perhaps particularly valid for online content: “Enormous blocks of print implant the image of a difficult subject in your readers’ minds….Generally speaking, the shorter the paragraphs and the fewer the number of ideas contained in them, the easier they are to read.”

 

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Your Blog Isn’t a Container or Bin

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Child holding father's hand, closeup shot on grey background

“A talk isn’t a container or a bin that you put content in, it’s a process, a trajectory,” says Chris Anderson, head of TED Talks. “The goal is to take the listener from where he is to someplace new. That means trying to make the sequence so stepwise that no one gets lost along the way.”

A blog isn’t a container or bin that you put content in, either, and, particularly in the case of business blogging, the goal definitely is to take readers from where they are to someplace new.

“It’s especially important,” Anderson reminds speakers, “to do a jargon check.  Any technical terms or acronyms that may be unfamiliar to your listeners should be eliminated or explained.” But what he is NOT advocating,” he hastens to say, “is that everything be explained on a level appropriate for sixth-graders.” At TED, he reminds readers, they use the guideline based on Einstein’s dictum: “Make everything as simple as it can be, but no simpler.”

When it comes to blogging, there are tests you can put your blog through to see how you’re doing in terms of readability – are you reaching the right people and doing it by using words and sentences to which they can relate?  Well, a readability index calculator can give you the answer. Both Lexile and Flesch-Kincaid measure how easy your text is to read, based on what grade in school a person would need to have reached to be able to understand your content. (The reason Anderson specifically mentions sixth-graders is that a score of 6 would be considered optimal in journalism.)

What, exactly, do readability index calculators measure to take your readability “temperature”?  Essentially, two things:

  • The average number of syllables per word
  • The average number of words per sentence.

On the other hand, you don’t want to insult your audience’s attention, Anderson cautions speakers. “Indeed, the best explainers say just enough to let people feel like they’re coming up with the idea themselves.”  To create excitement in your audience, he says, start by making the talk relevant to them. After all, it’s not a given that anyone in the audience actually cares that much about your topic.”

In a sense, with blog readers, it IS a given that the audience cares about the topic. Online searchers arrive at your blog precisely because they have a need for the very kinds of information, products, and services you provide!  Now that they’ve arrived, though, it’s up to you to take those readers to “someplace new” in their knowledge and thinking!

 

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Establishing Order on the Planet of Your Blog

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icy snowflake“Establish order on the planet of your blog by using proven structures for your blog posts,” advises Tracy Gold of the Content Marketing Institute. Gold suggests a few possible blog post frameworks:

  • Q and A
  • Case study
  • Comparison/metaphor
  • Yes/No debate

Q and A
I tell new Indianapolis blog content writers that, in creating content for SEO marketing blogs, we need to keep in mind that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions for dilemmas they’re facing. But even if those searchers haven’t specifically formulated their question, I suggest we do that for them by presenting a question in the blog post itself and then answering it.

Case study
Back in Journalism 101 class, we were taught to “put a face on the issue” by beginning the article with a human example. Stories of all kinds, including case studies and customer testimonials help personalize your blog post.

Comparison/metaphor
Of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000 snowflakes that have fallen on earth, no two are identical. Snowflakes form around particles of dust and sea salt, but the conditions of temperature and moisture are different each time. The “nucleus” around which business blog posts are formed is their topic, but there is endless variety in how that topic is presented. Metaphors “wake up” blog content by making unusual comparisons.

Yes/No debate
Helping readers sort truth from myth is one important use for business blogs.  In the natural order of business, many of misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves, and shining the light of day on misinformation shines light on your own expertise in your field. Even when there is no final answer, blog content writers can summarize the different schools of thought and recap the research that is being done in the field. That in itself can go a long way towards making your blog a “go-to” place for readers seeking information relating to your industry or profession.

Establish order on the planet of your blog!

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