Say It For You Magazine Challenge Revived – Part 2

May 7, 2015/0 Comments/in idea sources for blogs/by Rhoda Israelov

This week I’m offering a challenge to all SIFY readers to come up with blog post ideas out of a single magazine of their choice. Choose articles that trigger ideas for you to blog about your business or practice – what you sell, what you know, what you believe, and what you know how to do. I’m using one of my favorite sources of interesting information: Mental Floss. (If you’ve never been exposed to this bi-monthly publication, I highly recommend you try it – you’ll be hooked for sure!)

In this month’s issue of Mental Floss, for example, there’s a whole page of interesting historical tidbits about seating. Did you know, for example, that:

Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair back in 1775, by adding rollers from window sash pulleys to make a spinning seat. (The Declaration of Independence was signed by Jefferson while sitting in that chair!)
William McKinney designed a chair for the White House by having persons of varying sized sit in snowbanks, then transferring the curves left behind to the drawing board.
President Kennedy had such a bad back, his doctor prescribed a rocking chair. Kennedy gifted rocking chairs to other heads of state to his valet, and the chair became popular.
Before the 16th century, churches had no seats. By the early 1800s, some British parishes installed pews and then rented them out.

In this case, seating is the topic “thread” that unifies all the tidbits from different periods of history. This is very much like the “letimotifs” used in blog content writing. In corporate blogging training sessions, I teach that effective blog posts are centered around key themes, just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony.
What blog writers might use this particular set of facts about seating as a jumping-off point to discuss their business or practice? The obvious answers are furniture stores and home decorators. But how about a chiropractor (using the material about rocking chairs for Kennedy)? On the question of renting out the pews, I can see that tying in with a discussion about renting versus owning (life insurance agents? Realtors?).

I know just how challenging it can be to sustain the discipline and “the faith” needed for long term business blogging success. Ideas for blog posts, on the other hand? That’s the easy part. Just pick up a popular magazine– and learn!

Say It For You Magazine Challenge Revived

May 5, 2015/0 Comments/in idea sources for blogs/by Rhoda Israelov

The 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?

Inductive and Deductive Blogging for Business

April 30, 2015/0 Comments/in Business writing tips/by Rhoda Israelov

“The most common forms of mathematical reasoning are inductive and deductive reasoning,” explain the authors of Studying for Mathematics. “You use inductive reasoning any time you come up with a general rule from a pattern. Deductive reasoning is when you apply a general rule to a specific case.”

As business blog content writers, we’re engaged in helping readers reason their way to doing business with the business owners and professional practitioners who’ve hired us to tell their story. It’s not that there’s a lack of information sources; if anything, there’s an absolute glut of data available to online searcher! What readers need from us, then, is not more information, but help in reasoning through all that information so that problem-solving choices can be made.

OK, so let’s go back to the mathematics tutorial book and the two sorts of reasoning.

Deductive:
You are reasoning deductively when you show that a rule isn’t true for all cases, which is called “proof by counter example”. As a blog writer, start with a commonly held assumption relating to your industry or profession, and come up with a counter example.

Inductive:
With inductive reasoning, you arrive at a formula that demonstrates a general pattern between different tactics and different aspects of an idea.

Paul Lawrence in earlytorise.com suggests using Triggering Deductive Reasoning to persuade clients to buy your products, get employees to take on unpleasant projects, or get your children to do their chores. You do that, explains Lawrence, by making statements that lead the other person to reach, on his own, the conclusion you want him to come to, then reinforcing that conclusion..
All advertisements aim at persuasion, points out Stan Mack of Demand Media. If an ad uses inductive reason, the implied conclusion isn’t necessarily true (think of an ad featuring a sweaty athlete chugging a thirst-quenching beverage). As blog writers, we would make as strong an argument as possibly through visual demonstrations, word descriptions, and customer testimonials to create the illusion that the product or service you’re promoting is the best option. We can inject urgency through one-time sales, or use fear (of getting old, having one’s credit stolen, etc.).

Alternately, we can use statistics to prove logically that we can satisfy the reader’s needs. With deductive reasoning, if our assumptions are true, the conclusions we draw must be true as well.

Help your blog readers reason their way to saying “Yes!”

Wish-List-With-Walls Blogging for Business

April 28, 2015/0 Comments/in blog marketing/by Rhoda Israelov

“Basically, we’re a wish list with walls” is Silver in the City jewelry boutique’s self-description in its Nuvo ad.

Great line! For the few seconds it takes for the reader to figure out the meaning of that statement, it forces engagement. As a business blogging trainer, one of the points I often stress is one I learned from my speaker friend Dick Wolfsie.

In order for a joke to be funny, explains Wolfsie, the person listening to the joke or reading the joke has to figure things out! The laughter is the reward that the listener or reader gives himself for having figured out what the punch line is really saying.

Blogs are like that, too. As a content writer, you post new, relevant material online, offering valuable information about your field of expertise. But for the blog to generate engagement, it takes two. In fact, that’s precisely how business blogging works. People go online and use search engines to find information. That individual, just like the person who gets a joke, rewards himself with the information you’ve provided. The reader “gets it” and moves on to your website for more, or posts a comment. Either way, two are now in the game.

That “wish-list-with-walls” line would be perfect as a “pow” closing line for a business blog post. Work on crafting a closing line that forces readers to “put it all together”.

Glass-Breaking and Myth-Busting in Business Blogs

April 23, 2015/0 Comments/in blog marketing, idea sources for blogs/by Rhoda Israelov

So 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?

Posts