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Your Blog Isn’t a Container or Bin

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Child holding father's hand, closeup shot on grey background

“A talk isn’t a container or a bin that you put content in, it’s a process, a trajectory,” says Chris Anderson, head of TED Talks. “The goal is to take the listener from where he is to someplace new. That means trying to make the sequence so stepwise that no one gets lost along the way.”

A blog isn’t a container or bin that you put content in, either, and, particularly in the case of business blogging, the goal definitely is to take readers from where they are to someplace new.

“It’s especially important,” Anderson reminds speakers, “to do a jargon check.  Any technical terms or acronyms that may be unfamiliar to your listeners should be eliminated or explained.” But what he is NOT advocating,” he hastens to say, “is that everything be explained on a level appropriate for sixth-graders.” At TED, he reminds readers, they use the guideline based on Einstein’s dictum: “Make everything as simple as it can be, but no simpler.”

When it comes to blogging, there are tests you can put your blog through to see how you’re doing in terms of readability – are you reaching the right people and doing it by using words and sentences to which they can relate?  Well, a readability index calculator can give you the answer. Both Lexile and Flesch-Kincaid measure how easy your text is to read, based on what grade in school a person would need to have reached to be able to understand your content. (The reason Anderson specifically mentions sixth-graders is that a score of 6 would be considered optimal in journalism.)

What, exactly, do readability index calculators measure to take your readability “temperature”?  Essentially, two things:

  • The average number of syllables per word
  • The average number of words per sentence.

On the other hand, you don’t want to insult your audience’s attention, Anderson cautions speakers. “Indeed, the best explainers say just enough to let people feel like they’re coming up with the idea themselves.”  To create excitement in your audience, he says, start by making the talk relevant to them. After all, it’s not a given that anyone in the audience actually cares that much about your topic.”

In a sense, with blog readers, it IS a given that the audience cares about the topic. Online searchers arrive at your blog precisely because they have a need for the very kinds of information, products, and services you provide!  Now that they’ve arrived, though, it’s up to you to take those readers to “someplace new” in their knowledge and thinking!

 

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Establishing Order on the Planet of Your Blog

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icy snowflake“Establish order on the planet of your blog by using proven structures for your blog posts,” advises Tracy Gold of the Content Marketing Institute. Gold suggests a few possible blog post frameworks:

  • Q and A
  • Case study
  • Comparison/metaphor
  • Yes/No debate

Q and A
I tell new Indianapolis blog content writers that, in creating content for SEO marketing blogs, we need to keep in mind that people are online searching for answers to questions they have and for solutions for dilemmas they’re facing. But even if those searchers haven’t specifically formulated their question, I suggest we do that for them by presenting a question in the blog post itself and then answering it.

Case study
Back in Journalism 101 class, we were taught to “put a face on the issue” by beginning the article with a human example. Stories of all kinds, including case studies and customer testimonials help personalize your blog post.

Comparison/metaphor
Of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000 snowflakes that have fallen on earth, no two are identical. Snowflakes form around particles of dust and sea salt, but the conditions of temperature and moisture are different each time. The “nucleus” around which business blog posts are formed is their topic, but there is endless variety in how that topic is presented. Metaphors “wake up” blog content by making unusual comparisons.

Yes/No debate
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 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.

Establish order on the planet of your blog!

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Why Brains and Blogs Love Lists

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Ten Blank business diagram bullet liet illustration“There’s little that our brains crave more than effortlessly acquired data,” Maria Konnikova remarks ruefully in the New Yorker magazine, by way of explaining the reasons people love lists. Lists spatially organize information, helping create an easy reading experience, Konnikova explains, “in which the mental heavy lifting of conceptualization, categorization, and analysis is completed well in advance of actual consumption.” The point of using numbered lists, I explain to blog content writers, is to demonstrate ways in which your product or service is different, and to provide valuable information that engages readers, helping them see you as a go-to guy or gal to solve their problem or fill their need. There’s apparently psychological science behind the fact that the numbered list technique has been a staple for s magazine covers for as long as I can remember. I always sensed lists and bullet points in general would make a good fit for blogs, and by most accounts, search engines “like” them as well. Jay Sondemers of Forbes defines high quality content as being:

  • easy to read
  • suitable for scanning and skimming

As far back as 1968, neuroscientist Walter Kintsch pointed out that lists facilitate both immediate understanding and later recall. Then in 2011, psychologists Messner and Wanke concluded that we feel better when the amount of conscious work we have to do in order to process information is reduced. “Within the context of a Web page or Facebook stream,” Konnikova says, a list is the easy pick, in part because it promises a definite ending. Back in 2013, I devoted a Say It For You blog post to the topic of numbered lists, noting seven different men’s magazine covers sporting list-based titles, including “50 Great Escapes” and “6 Longest New Drivers”. Just the other day, a single news stand at my local CVS pharmacy carried four magazines with numbers-based headline teasers: (Indianapolis Diner)       13 Gourmet meals (Mountain Escapes)       62 Glorious Getaway Ideas (Entertainment )             50 Song Movies, & TV Shows Guaranteed to Bring You Joy (Time)                           240 Reasons to Celebrate America “In the current media environment, a list is perfectly designed for our brains,” concludes Konnikova.  “We are drawn to it intuitively, we process it more efficiently, and we retain it with little effort.” And that’s just fine, she concludes, with the caveat that such a fast-food information diet is necessarily limited in content and nuance. Limitations notwithstanding – brains and blogs love lists!

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What Do Blog Readers Need Out of Our Blog Content

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Carla Hill

What do we need at work?

That’s the question Carla Hill, responsible for leading Business Furniture’s New Business Development teams, knows marketers must be able to answer.  Hill’s years as a learning and development consultant have helped her put together the following list of what each employee needs in the workplace:

  • people who help me
  • tools
  • information
  • exchange of ideas

The list of what blog readers need is nothing if not parallel to the Business Furniture list:

People who help me –
Never forget this one truth: People want to do business with people, and readers relate to stories about people, not to facts and statistics.  Let tales of people helping people tell the story of your company, your products, and of the services you provide.

Tools –
Readers want to know that you and your organization can teach them something.  “Briefly,” says Jim Connolly of  Jim’s Marketing Blog, “here’s how content marketing works: You build and market a website and stock it with free information that has real value to your prospective clients.”

Information –
Use business blogs to offer readers free information that has value to your targeted
readers. You can do that “whilst offering them the opportunity to purchase goods and services which are closely linked to the information you give away,” advises Jim
Connally in Jim’s Marketing Blog.

Exchange of ideas –
Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer blog writing, , you must first take a stand on the issue yourself, using various tactics to bolster that stance in the eyes of readers. Then, through including guest posts, citing material expressing the opposing viewpoint, and inviting readers comments, blog marketers have a chance to facilitate productive exchanges of ideas.

You might be composing blog content for your own business or professional practice or doing blog marketing for clients.  In either case, before posting your latest creation, ask yourself:

Am I giving the readers what they need out of this blog?

 

 

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Bacteria Help Put Blog Content in Perspective

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bacteria Biomass is what scientists use when there’s no way to do an exact count, Bill Chapell explained in an NPR radio broadcast five years ago, referring to the “fact” that The Day We Hit 7 Billion (October 31, 2011), was actually impossible to prove; it is impossible to count all the world’s people alive at any particular moment.  So, he says, the experts estimate by calculating biomass. Biomass is determined, Chapel patiently explains, by multiplying an estimated population by its members’ average weight.

Fascinating stuff, but what does biomass have to do with blog content writing? Wait…wait…wait for it – it’s all a matter of perspective. Get a load of these comparative biomass numbers:

  • Whales – 20 million tons
  • Chickens – 40 million tons
  • Sheep – 65 million tons
  • PEOPLE – 350 million tons
  • Termites – 445 million tons
  • Cattle – 520 million tons
  • Fish – 800 million tons
  • Ants – 3,000 million tons
  • BACTERIA – 1,000,000 million tons (yes, you read it here!)

When Chapell was interviewing researchers at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C. about biomass, one researcher had this to say: “Of course, within each human there are animals.  So, our own parasites outnumber us!”

We business bloggers are, in a very real way, interpreters. Effective blog posts, I teach, must go from information-dispensing to offering perspective.  Before a reader even has time to ask “So what?” we need to be ready with an answer that makes sense in terms with which readers are familiar. I call it blogging new knowledge on things readers already know.

The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate. The better websites give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to give readers a deeper perspective with which to process the information. The facts, those raw ingredients of corporate blogging for business, need to be “translated” into relational, emotional terms that compel reaction – and action – in readers.
Remember the bacteria, and put your blog content in perspective for readers!

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