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Business Blogging to Help Maintain Control Yourself

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take control
In this time of Coronavirus anxiety, I suggested in my latest Say It For You blog post, our focus as blog content writers should be firmly on showing readers how our business owner and professional practitioner clients can help their readers maintain control. As the TIME piece by Hallie Levine emphasizes, anxiety in short bursts and in the right amounts can actually help people fulfill tasks and achieve results. The secret for hitting the anxiety “sweet spot” (not too much nor too little), Levine says, is maintaining control over as many aspects of the situation as possible.
Now, let’s examine how we can use that same advice for our own benefit.
Get real.
In The Art of Social Media book by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick, there’s a little section called Be a Mensch, with “mensch” being defined as a “kind and honorable person who does the right thing in the right way”.  One thing for sure is that a mensch is real. You can’t give a reader a sense of control without showing that you’re dealing with the very same issues facing them. Emotional intelligence, closely related to mensch quality, is the capacity to express and then manage emotions. So first of all, allow your content to “get real’.

Be organized.
Even while letting readers see your own “humanity”, keep your blog content well-organized and well-written to convey a feeling of being in control. Maintaining a consistent schedule of posting sends a reassuring message to readers.

Share, don’t “give” advice.
As content marketers, we want to present the business or practice in a very personal, rather than a transactional way. Still, since the business owner or practitioner is, after all, the SME (subject matter expert), practical advice on how to best use the product or service is very much in order.  The tone, however, should be one of “sharing” a useful insight or tip, rather than “handing down” advice.

It’s interesting that Kristin van Ogtrop in that same TIME issue on anxiety, realized that “there is a fine line between setting boundaries and controlling, between guiding choices and telling your kids what to do.”  The message for marketing content writers, I believe, is to acknowledge that the reader is the one in control.  We’re the ones sharing some valuable mechanisms to arrive at a state of “anxiety contol”. 
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What Genre is Your Business Blog?

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Is a blog a literary genre? Kevin Eagan poses that question in his own blog, critical margins, admitting he doesn’t have a definitive answer. Blog content writers, he muses, are a “relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world.” (Wow! Love that description of the work we do here at Say It For You.)

Bloggers do on the screen what 18th Century essayists did in newspapers and magazines, Eagan reflects: They meander, they search, they seek out something. The historic form closest to blogs is the diary, Eagan goes on, but a diary is almost always a private matter, while a blog is instantly public. In an Atlantic Magazine article, blogger Andrew Sullivan described blogging this way:  You end up writing about yourself, but transforming a retrospective and personal piece into a public and immediate one. 
As a marketing blog content writing trainer, I realize that our art is related to the “genre” of advertising, but with a very big difference. Blogs are not the same as advertisements, billboards, or even brochures.  What freelance blog content writers do is help business owners communicate to readers a vision of themselves feeling safer, healthier, more comfortable, better looking, happier, or wealthier. Blogging helps establish a business owner or professional practitioner as an authority on a subject.

Some years ago, Damon Richards shared an interesting insight about an added benefit of blogging through a guest post on this Say It For You blog: “A useful added benefit is the ability to send messages to your existing customers that you’d rather not have to tell them directly. In a business blog post, the statement seems more generic, so my customers don’t feel singled out. They view things as universal problems, which makes them more willing to implement fixes.”
As a businessperson or practitioner, I teach, you have many different kinds of  stories to tell through your blog:
  • the benefits of your products and services
  • the history of your business and your own journey
  • successful case studies and testimonials
  • news of importance to your customers
  • your perspective on trends in your industry

As Kevin Eagen admits, “The blog article encompasses many things.  A blog post is about searching, about open-ended questions and lose ends.  It’s not a” tidy” genre like the 21st Century novel.”  So, no, blogs don’t fit neatly into one literary genre
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Good Grammar Affects the Effect of a Business Blog – Part B

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good grammar in blogging

 

Holly Sutton lists spelling and grammar errors as #4 among the eleven common mistakes bloggers make in their first year, but as a blog content writing trainer, I find, grammar errors are all too common even among experienced bloggers. With social distancing having left many of us content writers with extra time on our hands, I’m devoting this week’s Say it For You posts to spelling and grammar cleanup hints. In the latest post, I reviewed homonyms, or sound-alikes.

Today, let’s focus on common twosomes that are often used interchangeably – but which shouldn’t be:
  • Who always refers to a person; that refers to a thing. I am a person who cares about grammar, because grammar is a thing that helps clarify meaning.

  • Whose jacket is this (to which person does the jacket belong)?  Who’s on cafeteria duty today (who’s means who is)?

  • Given a choice between an orange and an apple, I would always choose the apple. On the other hand, if I had to choose among all possible fruits, I would choose plums. (Use between when there are two objects or people; use among when there are three or more.

  • Lay is a verb that commonly means “to put or set (something) down.” Lie is a verb that commonly means to be in or to assume a horizontal position. Peter liked to lie in bed. Before going to bed each evening, he would lay his robe at the foot of the bed.

  • Advise (the s is pronunced like a z) is a verb (I advise you to clean up the grammar in your blogs). Advice (a noun) is what I am offering to y0u in this blog post.

  • You bring things here and take them there, Jeff Haden explains in Inc.com.

  • You are being discreet when you are careful and show good judgment, Haden adds. Discrete means separate or distinct (just what you want to be in your blog, but in a good way).
For sure – in blogging for business, grammar affects the effect!
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In Business Blogs, Dessert May Come First

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“When you sit down for a meal, most people don’t expect to eat dessert first.  And when you sit down with a book, you don’t expect to know the ending before you start reading.” So begins the intro to Sherry Deutschmann’s business book Lunch With Lucy.  Nevertheless, Deutschmann, founder and CEO of Letter Logic, Inc. lets us know upfront – and very precisely – what the central theme of her book is going to be.
As blog content writers, our first instinct might, in fact, be to leave “dessert’ for last, offering information using a logical, linear structure. For a variety of reasons, though, that might not be the most effective way to present ideas in every situation.

A blog itself is made up of short, frequently updated posts arranged in reverse chronological order.  Within any one post, topics may be presented sequentially or climactically (building
towards an important conclusion). The traditional structure of a newspaper story follows the model of an upside-down pyramid, with the most important information first and the details filled in later. That inverted pyramid concept may not be right for many blog posts, because readers must be kept hungry for more information in order to keep reading. Ginney Soskey of Hubspot suggests presenting valuable information again and again through the entire article.
Whether readers access the content in the first place, of course, depends on whether they click on the title. There are two basic categories of blog titles, we’ve found at Say It For You. The first simply conveys what content readers should expect to find in the post or article. That type of title is not “cutesy” or particularly engaging, but can be highly effective in business blogging because it’s short and to the point and uses keyword phrases that match up with what a reader may have typed into the search bar. The second category of title arouses readers’ curiosity, but gives only the barest hint of the content to follow. 
With an important purpose of marketing blogs is attracting online readers, blog post titles are a crucial element in the process. Readers need assurance that they will be coming to “the right place” for the information they need.
In blog content writing, at least a little taste of the “dessert” might need to be served straightaway!
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Blog Hunter-Gatherers Tell Stories to Ignite

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Anybody can become a better communicator, a better storyteller, says Carmine Gallo, author of “the Storyteller’s Secret.”.  Tell more personal stories, he advises.  Unfortunately, he laments, most of what we read and hear is 99% facts and 1% story. “I say, turn it around”, Gallo urges.

 

In the 1960’s, a Canadian anthropologist studying hunter-gatherer Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, a society that had existed in southern Africa for more than 150,000 years, found that  the Bushmen were hunter-gatherers by day and storytellers by night. In a place of frequent droughts, floods, and famine, the Bushmen used storytelling to boost their social relationships and create bonds.

 

“No matter who you are, you are a storyteller, says Karen Friedman of the Public Relations Society of America. Research shows that people are more likely to remember a story than a statistic. In a program at Stanford University, students were asked to give one-minute speeches that contained three statistics and one story. Only 5 percent of the listeners remembered a single statistic, while 63 percent remembered the stories.

 

Friedman’s message has direct applicability to blog content writers, and it comes in the form of a warning: …”Using digital content will not increase brand loyalty or enhance your marketing efforts. It takes an old-fashioned story that keeps listeners on the edge of their seats to help you shape your outcome.”

 

But, like every worthwhile endeavor, storytelling takes some skill and demands practice. True, as Elizabeth Bernstein said last year in the Life & Arts section of the Wall Street Journal, “when we share our personal narratives, we disclose something about our values, our history, and our outlook on life. But the bonding benefits of storytelling only work if you’re good at it, and many of us aren’t.”

 

As a professional blog content creator and trainer in corporate writing, I think storytelling is a perfect vehicle for blogging. While blog marketing can be designed to “win search”, once the searchers have arrived, what needs winning is their hearts, and that is precisely what content writers can achieve best through storytelling. Done well, the stories will show why you are passionate about delivering your service or products to customers and clients.
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