Cover the Blog Genre Gamut

February 21, 2017/0 Comments/in blog marketing, idea sources for blogs, the Say It For You blog/by Rhoda Israelov

“Don’t be afraid to write in tried-and-true blog genres,” Gary DeAsi and Evan Stone advised their fellow financial planners as part of the FPA Practice Management Solutions Magazine almost three years ago, listing eight kinds of blogs they called “proven attention getters’”:

Advice
Collections and top lists
Reviews
Predictions
Motivation
Trouble-shooting
Interviews
Editorial/ Personal reflection
Now, five years later, I’m inviting each of you Say It For You blog readers to come up with titles you’ve written or found that fit into each of these categories. If you submit your favorite titles, I’ll publish them here, along with some tips on flesh out those ideas to suit your own business. More important, ask yourself whether you’re lending variety to your blog by including all these genres.
Meanwhile, over those same five years I’ve come up with at least four blog genres I believe ought to be added to the list to round out the “blogger’s dozen”…:

9. The tidbit blog uses a piece of trivia to spark interest and help readers understand a concept or product.
10. The comparison blog uses a metaphor to explain a complex idea in terms of a tangible object.
11. The “confession” blog tears away the “stage curtain” between the business owner and the reader, humanizing business or practitioner and hopefully generating feelings of empathy and admiration.
12. The “brag blog” shares accomplishments of which the business owner or practitioner had every right to be proud – a product breakthrough, an award, a milestone reached, an unexpected success.

DeAsi and Stone were telling financial planners not to be afraid to write in tried-and-true genres. As a business blogging trainer, I’d go a few steps further, advising content writers to keep it fresh, saying “Don’t be afraid to keep creating new blog genres!”

Finding Before Solving in Blogging for Business

February 16, 2017/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips, idea sources for blogs, the Say It For You blog/by Rhoda Israelov

Find the Answer - Magnifying Glass
“Unfortunately,” reflects my friend and admired sales training expert Tim Roberts, “traditional salespeople are tethered to ‘what we know’”. Roberts is well aware that it takes many years of trials and tribulations for a salesperson to develop good problem-solving skills, yet he’s here, he says, to challenge and encourage finding before solving. In fact, finding a problem that your customer hasn’t considered, is what makes a salesperson valuable, he stresses.

There are two required skills needed for an effective inquiry conversation with a prospect, Roberts explains:

vulnerability
transparency

Are there lessons here for business owners and professional practitioners “conversing” via their blog with readers? As a Say It For You blog writer and blogging coach, I think so. Last summer I made mention of what Stav Ziv of the Moth storytelling organization had to say about the two elements of successful storytelling:

there’s no “wall of artistry” or stage curtain between storyteller and audience (transparency)
storytellers share their own human failures and frailty (vulnerability).

The lesson I drew from Ziv’s description is that true stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business or practice.

What I think is important for blog writers about Tim Roberts’ “finding-before-solving” concept is that it opens up a whole new content direction both for us as writers and as a conversation starter with readers.

Wait a minute – isn’t answering readers’ questions what blog posts are designed to do? Searchers turn to the Internet because they’re looking for something – a product, a service, or information. When the query relates to what you sell, what you do, and what you know about, those readers find your blog. But, what if your blog post was raising questions and inviting input from readers, rather than offering answers?

Blogs, as I so often stress to business blog writers, are not advertisements or sales pieces (even if increasing sales is the ultimate goal of the business owner). Whatever “selling” goes on in effective blogs is indirect and comes out of business owners sharing their passion, their special expertise and their insights in their field. When blog posts “work”, readers are moved to think, “I want to do business with him!” or “She’s the kind of person I’ve been looking for!”

Finding may well belong before solving, not only in selling, but in blogging for business!

Use Allusions, But Don’t Blog Squirrels in a Tire

February 14, 2017/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips/by Rhoda Israelov

tires “Why can’t we innovate as quickly as our competition?’ asks the pointy-haired boss in the comic strip “Dilbert®”. “Maybe it’s because our management is like a family of squirrels that lives inside an old tire,” suggests Dilbert. Asked to be more specific, Dilbert says “It’s a Goodyear tire with five grey squirrels.”

Talk about a failed allusion! What do I mean? An allusion is a figure of speech that blog content writers can use with several results in mind:

getting readers to think about your subject in a new way
cementing a bond between the writer and the readers based on shared experience and knowledge
getting a point across without going into a lengthy explanation

Dilbert obviously failed on all three of those counts, because the connection of the metaphor (squirrels in a tire) and the issue of innovation to stay ahead of the competition was not made clear and then not explained.

When you want to liven up your blog content using allusions, be reasonably certain that the reference is obvious and that your target readers are likely to be familiar with the concept you’re trying to convey. Among other things, that means we, as content writers, need to gauge our readers’ level of education. If we mis-calculate their ability to recognize the allusion, the danger is that readers will find our content frustrating rather than illuminating.

Widely known allusions include:

Achilles’ heel _ weakness a person or a company may have (the Greek god Achilles was invulnerable except for his heel). A blog on nutrition might refer to chocolate being one’s Achilles’ heel.
Stonewalling – hindering or obstructing with delaying tactics (the reference is to Civil War military leader Stonewall Jackson, noted for being strong and stubborn in the face of the enemy). A blog on teamwork might refer to how non-productive it is when a team member “stonewalls”, rather than confronting the problem and communicating.
Scrooge – a stingy character who hates to spend money (refers to a character from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol). A blog on financial planning might suggest that rather than acting like a Scrooge, you can plan your charitable giving as part of your monthly budget.

As a blogger, you’re not right there with the ability to make eye contact and judge your audience’s reactions, and you can’t know for sure whether your allusion has puzzled them or hit the mark. It might be best to do just enough explaining to make the point clear. Dilbert left the pointy-haired boss wondering why on God’s earth innovation is like squirrels in a Goodyear tire.

Don’t leave your readers wondering just what it was you were trying to convey!

The Logic and Logistics of Blogging for Business

February 9, 2017/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips, idea sources for blogs/by Rhoda Israelov

Logic on Multicolor Puzzle.
“Writing is very much about the order of ideas presented and the emphasis given to them,” Brandon Royal explains in The Little Red Writing Book. There are two general things readers expect:

to see ideas unfold logically
to have writers give the most important ideas the most coverage

There are different “floor plans” for pieces of writing, including a chronological structure, where you discuss the earliest events first, then move forward in time, and an evaluative structure, in which you discuss the pros and cons of a concept. Different blog posts might use different “floor plans.” But no matter which approach, readers will expect to see those two things – logical presentation, and emphasis on the most important ideas.

“If your presentation is clear and structured, it will be useful and entertaining; if it is disorganized, your work will be confusing and of little value,” is the caution Lanterna Education offers its International Baccalaureate students. Laterna recommends the following sequence for students giving oral presentations:

Introduce the overall theme
Explain how each key idea will relate back to that overall theme
Explain what your audience should know by the end of the class
Review each idea, explaining how it taught something new to the class

In answer to the question “How long do users stay on Web pages?” Jakob Nielson of the Nielsen Norman Group says the following: Users often leave Web pages in 10-20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer.

“As users rush through Web pages, they have time to read only a quarter of the text on the pages they actually visit (let alone all those they don’t). So, unless your writing is extraordinarily clear and focused, little of what you say on your website will get through to customers,” Nielson warns, offering sobering stats that bear out the importance of the two items on Brandon Royal’s reader expectation list.

Is it all about logic and logistics! What about emotional appeal? Isn’t that what makes readers take action? Certainly, but first fulfill reader expectations of order and emphasis, then give heart to the writing with anecdotes, metaphors, stories, and humor!

Blogging From End to Beginning

February 7, 2017/0 Comments/in blog marketing, Business writing tips, idea sources for blogs/by Rhoda Israelov

“Strategically, the summary or conclusion should come at the beginning of an expository piece, not at the end,” explains Brandon Royal in The Little Red Writing Book. Royal is referring to a top-down approach, where readers understand from the beginning what the main idea of the piece is, then are given the supporting facts or details.

The author compares two kinds of writing:

Expository writing (the primary purpose is to explain and inform)
Creative writing (the primary purpose is to persuade or entertain)

Blog content writing, I suppose, is a blend of both expository and creative. Certainly one motive for business owners or professional practitioners in maintaining their blog is to persuade readers to use their products or engage their services. Yet informing readers and answering questions is a primary goal as well.

A well-conceived blog post will proactively interpret information in ways that are not only understandable, but usable by readers, “unwrapping” and drilling down to the core of the message. But, how are searchers to know they’ve come to the right place? Once readers have actually landed on your blog, it takes a “grabber” to hold interest and keep them moving through the information (That’s where the concept of putting the summary at the beginning instead of at the end comes in.)

Unlike novelists, we blog content writer simply cannot afford to focus on arousing curiosity by being enigmatic in our titles and in our opening lines. If we fail to assure readers that they’ve come to the right place to find the information that satisfies the needs that brought them online to find answers, they’ll bounce away from our site before we get to share our thoughts!

The way Brandon Royal sees it, “We should think about giving the reader a destination first before giving him or her the directions on how to get there!” Blog post opening lines set the tone and arouse curiosity, but in business blogs, it’s best not to sustain a sense of mystery for very long!

Posts