Posts

Blogging the “Real Truth” About Your Business

/0 Comments/in , /by

Is coffee good or bad for you? Turns out the answer is quite complicated, as Jenn Wood explains in Mental Floss coffee potMagazine.

“Excessive coffee consumption can lead to anxiety, depression, and frequency of psychophysiological disorders,” stated the journal article “Advances on Alcohol & Substance in 1984. Yet, by 2015. a study reported in “Heart” showed that “moderate coffee consumption was associated with a lower prevalence of subclinical coronary athereosclerosis.”

“Individuals with a genetic variation associated with slower caffeine metabolism appear to have an increased risk of non-fatal heart attacks with higher amounts of coffee intake,” warned the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006. Yet, by 2011, the Archives of Internal Medicine was reporting that “the risk of depression was 20 percent lower among women who drank four or more cups of coffee.”

“In the last decade alone, scientists have published hundreds of papers attributing both harms and health benefits to coffee,” observes Christie Aschwanden in slate.com. There’s one problem with all the studies, she says – they are observation, finding associations without establishing causality.

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 (as is the case with the ongoing good/bad coffee debate, 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.

Is blogging good or bad for you and your readers?  No complications there – the answer is a resounding yes.  Even where there really is no one “real truth”, it’s helpful to discuss what we know so far and how your business or practice is using the information that is available as of today.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blogging About What It Stands For

/0 Comments/in , /by

Harry Truman’s middle initial is S, but that S “doesn’t stand for anything”, I learned recently from my National Speakers Association friend Todd Hunt. Or does it?

The S honors Truman’s grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young, but Harry Truman himself had no middle name. Try explaining that to the Chicago Style Manual, people, however.  After Truman became president, the Manual pedants informed him that he was setting a bad example for America’s youth by omitting a period after his middle initial. Never mind that the S in Harry S stood for two very important “somebodies”, namely the two grandfathers Harry’s parents had wanted to honor by including the S in their son’s name.

logo

 

 

 

 

Since I’m always on the alert for interesting tidbits relating to history, to business, or to language use, I particularly appreciated this Truman anecdote. Since I offer business blogging help to business owners and to freelance blog content writers, the tale reminded me of two important – and in no way mutually exclusive – concepts that business blog content writers need to keep in mind.

1.    Everyone who knows me at all well is familiar with my near-maniacal preoccupation with proper language usage. Informal and conversational as business blog writing might be, I constantly stress, it’s of paramount importance to catch any potentially distracting bloopers in blog content before it “goes live”.

2.    As a corporate blogging trainer, it’s long been my belief that, when online searchers arrive at your website, they need to find a lot more than product and service descriptions, price lists, and testimonials. They need to meet the people behind the page. Business owners’ top beliefs should be on their prospective customers’ need-to-know list.

The Chicago Style Manual people were making a valid point. The president of the United States needs to serve as a good example of proper use of the English language. When it comes to the ongoing debate among Indianapolis blog writers about whether correct spelling and proper grammar matter in conversational, informal blogging, I’m in the camp of making quality impressions when presenting one’s business to the world.

On the other hand, the S in Harry S Truman is not an initial and therefore does not require the period.  But how was anyone to know, if Truman didn’t , at least not very publicly, explain that salient fact?

In your business blog, make clear what your business ”stands for”!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Winning Traits of Innovative Blog Posts

/0 Comments/in , /by

Ray Anthony and Barbara Boyd wrote Innovative Presentations for Dummies to help speakers get their audiences committed and acting upon their orator in publicrequests. “Competition, technology, and the ever-tightening economy have made out-presenting your competitors more important than ever,” the authors caution professional speakers.

That particular warning is one all of us blog content writers must heed, and all the practical tips offered by Anthony and Boyd for specific types of presentations are perfect reminders for us as well:

  • Motivational: Your presentation will contain personal anecdotes and memorable stories that your audience can relate to – how you faced a difficult situation and overcame it, and what you learned.
  • Progress update: Give more than a simple state-of-affairs presentation.  If you’re reporting on something negative, explain the reasons and provide a solution.  If it’s good news, explain why.
  • Solutions: When you sell a product or service, what you really sell is a solution to a problem your audience is facing.
  • Technical: Convey enthusiasm about the process or product, showing how the latest technology can help solve their problems.

Remember the Five Cs, the authors say.

  1. Clear: Use words the audience understands, and make points in logical order.
  2. Concise: Say what you have to say in as few words as possible.
  3. Compelling: Use words, visuals, and powerful information to demand total interest.
  4. Captivating: Tell impacting stories and keep the presentation moving forward.
  5. Convincing:  The ultimate test is: have you swayed your audience to your point of view or persuaded them to buy what you’re selling?

Not only are these elements winning traits of innovative presentations, they are winning traits of innovative blog posts!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blogging for Business, Not Search

/0 Comments/in , /by

sharpening pencils with a swordWinning search has long been our main motivation for blog content writing, but, as Social Media Examiner’s Marcus Sheridan so aptly reminds us, it needn’t be. “Blogging unleashes the power of team,” Sheridan says, referring to companies where each and every person is contributing to building the company’s content base, with magic and momentum truly happening as a result.

But what if the magic isn’t happening, because no one has the time or the inclination to keep up the discipline of constantly creating content? And what if the company is just one or two people, both scrambling just to keep the day-to-day stuff going? Is there any “team magic” to be had when you’re using a freelance blog content writer? You bet. Effective blogging for business takes a blend of ideas and talents, and a professional ghost blogger becomes part of your team, working alongside you to articulate and give form to your thoughts and ideas.  

“Blogging sharpens your sword,” Sheridan says. Because you’re generating new content (either on your own or through a freelancer), that forces you to stay up to date with the newest developments in your industry, to remain conscious of the competition, and explaining things in a consumer-friendly way. (The fact  is that your content writer is not working in your industry can be an advantage, forcing you to see things from ‘the other side”.)

“Blogs are qualifiers,” Sheridan notes. There are generally two types of consumers, he points out: price shoppers and value shoppers. Spending sales time with unqualified leads is counter-productive sales effort for any business.  Letting customers self-sort after they read your current,  information-heavy content saves time and aggravation all around, he points out.

As a corporate blogging trainer, I couldn’t agree more.  Blogs, I believe, can help potential client and customers make better decisions without the business owner or practitioner – or salesperson – needing to step into the conversation in the initial stages.  How?

a) by suggesting questions readers can ask themselves while choosing among options.

b) by showing how different choices relate to differing results. Since people don’t like to be sold, you can use the blog to offer them help in making a buying decision.

Marcus Sheridan sums the matter up nicely:  “There is much more to having a company blog than just getting more visitors to your website because Google decided to send them there.”

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Blog Simply and Carry a Big Stick

/0 Comments/in /by

simple or complex“The canonical rule of thumb for scientists speaking to nonscientists is to talk as if you were speaking to eighth graders, because a lay audience often has a basic, and certainly not specialized, understanding of science,“ advises climate scientist Ilissa Ocko. “If you want the information to resonate with the non-scientist audience, you have to strip down to the essentials, craft a story, provide big-picture context, and consider using analogies,” she adds.

Matching our writing to our intended audience is part of the challenge we business blog content writers face. After all, we’re not in this to entertain ourselves – we’re out to retain the clients and customers we serve and bring in new ones, so we try to use words and sentences to which our target readers can relate. We may even use a readability calculator such as the Flesch-Kinkaid.

But what Ocko argues is that even when we are speaking to (or, in our case, writing to) industry partners or more sophisticated and knowledgeable readers, we will be more effective if we simplify.

She names three reasons why knowledge transfer will be more successful even when there is a “high-level”, knowledgeable audience:

  • Even in a room full of scientists, not everyone has the same background and expertise.
  • The audience (our readers) has only a small chunk of time to digest the information (this is particularly true with blogs).
  • People are distracted by life. The more complex the talk (read “blog post”), the easier it is to mentally check out. Speaker acknowledgement of this audience inadequacy through simpler messaging and slides will be a win-win for all.

Less is more, Ocko teaches scientific speakers.  Use less jargon, less math, less text. Use more graphics, more analogies, more stories. As a corporate blog writing trainer, I couldn’t agree more with every one of those points. Our writing style should be clear and simple, direct, and easily understandable.

Writing simply will add big-stick impact to your business blog content!

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail