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Reach Into the Tidbit Treasure Chest

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TFor freelance blog content writers, the tidbit “bin” turns into a treasure chest. If you’re working on a business blog and you can include interesting information most readers don’t know, that’s gold. Even if such information appears useless on the surface, if we get creative, we can put it to very good use in adding interest to our blog. One of my favorite sources for tidbit “ore” is Mental Floss magazine.

Take these three tales recounted in Mental Floss:

1.  Frank Humely, imprisoned in the Los Angeles County jail for forgery and miscellaneous other misdeeds, hatched a plan to escape.  An accomplice would mail him sugar-fronted cakes with a gun and ammo hidden inside.  Frank planned to shoot the guards, take the keys, and hightail it. The plan failed – the cakes attracted attention because they were so heavy…

(I can see a bakery using this story to illustrate the lightness of their own wonderful cake creations.)

2.  In the 10th century, the Vikings in Denmark had a special way of singing. They made a rumbling sound from their throats, described as “similar to a dog but even more bestial”.

(I can see this story being used in a blog for a cough lozenge company, a physician’s practice that treats severe sinusitis, or a voice studio!)

3.  During the Vietnam War peace talks, the North Vietnamese insisted on having a square table for the meeting room, so that all four parties would appear equal, while, for that very reason, the U.S. and South Vietnam wanted a rectangular table.

(A furniture store could do a lot with this story. I can also see this in a blog for meeting planners, or even one offered by a school architectural firm.)

Continually coming up with fresh content to inform, educate, and entertain readers is a pretty tall order for busy business owners and employees. Trivia can solve the problem.  Tidbits of information  can be used in business blogs for defining basic terminology, sparking curiosity about the subject, putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective, and for explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way.

Reach into your own tidbit treasure chest!

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Blogging Your Failures

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As a blog writer and coach, I liked what Stav Ziv had to say in Newsweek about The Moth, a nonprofit dedicated to the art andDepressed businessman sitting under trouble thought boxes craft of storytelling, now in its eighteenth year of bringing to the world “true stories told live”. Moth founder George Dawes Green believes the success of the organization comes from two elements:

  • There’s no “wall of artistry” or stage curtain between the storyteller and audience.
  • The storytellers share their own human failures and frailty.

Who are the storytellers? Over the years they’ve included big-name figures (Molly Ringwald, Malcolm Gladwell, Ethan Hawke, and Al Sharpton, to name a few).  What makes for great storytelling? Green learned early on that the most important ingredient is vulnerabililty. “There can be success in the stories, but they have to be grounded in failure.”

Millionaire entrepreneur Alexis Neely agrees, explaining why she shares her own failures, and how it helps others when she does. “If the person you are learning from doesn’t share their failures,” Neely cautions, “run the other way. Now. I want you to learn the truth from me,” she adds, “and then operate your business with your eyes wide open.”

Beccy Freebody of realisingeverydream.com agrees. It’s easier to connect to someone who is or has been where you are, she explains. Seeing YOU overcome the worst parts of your life will be just the thing someone else needs to make a change in their life.

So how does all this apply to blog marketing for a business or professional practice?  It brings out a point every business owner, professional, and freelance business blogger ought to keep in mind: Writing about past failures is important.

True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business. What tends to happen is the stories of failure create feelings of empathy and admiration for the entrepreneurs or professional practitioners who overcame the effects of their own errors.

Knock down that “wall of artistry” between you and your readers by blogging your failures!

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Catalogs and Blogs – Not To Sell Product, But to Inspire

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Catalog iconIn our digital age, you’d think hard-copy product catalogs would have become obsolete.  But, as Molly Soat explains in Marketing News, catalogs are still very much alive and well.  That’s because, Soat explains, companies are “leveraging the content marketing power of catalogs to offer customers ideas and inspiration extending well beyond a brand’s product portfolio”.

The catalogs of today are really magazines, often personalized to the recipients’ purchasing habits.  The pages of today’s catalogs “are filled with artistically styled photography and expertly penned information”. Modern catalogs (and this is the part so relevant for us business blog content writers) contain ”ideas and inspiration extending well beyond a brand’s product portfolio”.

The typical website, I believe, is more like the catalogs of an earlier era, explaining what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate. Of course, the better websites give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.

Where the continuously renewed business blog writing comes in is parallel to the modern-day catalog, offering ideas and inspiration. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”

Another way in which blog writers can use posts to serve a “New Catalog” function is by condensing website/newpaper/magazine/trade journal wisdom into bite-sized pieces, keeping readers up on industry trends and discoveries.

Yet a third function of the “new catalogs” and “new blog posts” is to debunk common myths. Business owners can use their blog not only as a way to dispense information, but to address misinformation.

For business blogs, just as Molly Soat points out about catalogs – the purpose may not be to sell product, but to inspire!

 

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Helpful Hint Blog Writing

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hints and tipsHitting precisely the right “advertorial” note is the big challenge in corporate blog writing.  In fact, one point I’ve consistently stressed in these Say It For You blog content writing tutorials is how important it is to provide valuable information to readers, while avoiding any hint of “hard sell”.  Well, providing tips and help hints may very well be the perfect tactic for accomplishing that very goal.  

In a recent issue of AARP magazine, I found an article that uses a “kill-two-birds-with-one-stone” approach to offering helpful hints.  I think that approach could work really well in blogging to promote a business or professional practice.

The AARP article is titled “Great ways to save: tips from 20 experts that can save you thousands of dollars.”  Wow! That gets readers’ attention – useful information coming to them not from any sponsor or vendor, but from twenty experts.  What’s more, the authors have done all the work, collecting all this wisdom and serving it up for readers’ convenience.

I noticed that the “Great ways to save” article was about money management; the tips were collected from a money coach, a chief information officers, the fashion director for Men’s Health magazine, and a positive living expert.

OK, so as a business blog writing trainer, how would I advise adapting that helpful-hint/curation strategy to you business or practice?

Find complementary businesses or practices.  Ask the owners (or cite their blogs) for tips they can offer your readers.  Pet care professionals can share tips from carpet cleaning pros – or the reverse! If you’re a carpet cleaning pro, you can share tips from allergists as well.  If you’re an insurance advisor, offer tips from car dealers about accident prevention.

Of course, you’re going to want to add some tips of your own.  A realtor’s blog might offer tips for buying a house.  A restaurant’s blog might offer hints on tipping etiquette or the temperature of “rare”, “medium” and “well-done” steaks. Whatever the product or service, readers will be hungry for information that helps them gain maximum advantage for buying and using it.

Helpful hint blog writing can be very useful to your business or practice!

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So What’s the Deal with Business Blog Posts?

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“So what’s the deal with Japanese whisky?” is the intriguing title of a feature article in Mental Floss Magazine. Reporter Kyle Chayka holding a glass of whiskyorganizes the article around four questions; I think that precise format could be adapted to any business blog post introducing a product or service.

Background material:
“Wait…How Did Whisky Ever Land in Japan?” The author explains that a young man studying chemistry in Glasgow returned home to start Japan’s first distillery. In this part of the blog post, the content writer would talk about the origins of the company, and about the particular consumer or business need that company is able to satisfy.

So What Makes It Different from Scotch?
Technically, not much, explains Chayka, but Japan’s distillers “take time to make it correctly rather than making it quickly and cheaply.” In this portion of the post, the content writer would explain the differentiating features of the product or service, comparing it to competitors’ offerings.

What Does it Taste Like?
“Japanese distilleries also use rare Mizunara oak for their barrels, which imparts a hinty of coconut,” the author explains. When you’re composing business blog content, I tell writers, imagine readers asking themselves – “How will I use the product (or service?” “How will I feel?”

How Should I Drink It?
“Highball” in Japan is synonymous with a whisky soda. So mix away! But if you like drinking it neat, a great starter blend is Nikka’s Taketsuru Pure Malt 12 Year,” is the author’s advice.  This section of the blog post would offer helpful hints relating to the product or service. In every business or profession, there’s no end to the technical information available to consumers on the Internet. But it falls to us business blog content writers to break all that information down into chewable tablet form, telling readers “how to drink it”.

So What’s the deal with business blog posts?  Give ‘em the background, differentiate, give ‘em a taste and then give them advice!

 

 

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