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To Blog, Slash Back the Range of Topics

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TEDTalks“To provide an effective talk, you must slash back the range of topics you will cover to a single, connected thread,” cautions Chris Anderson, head of TED Talks. Done right, he says, carefully crafted short talks can be the key to unlocking empathy and sharing knowledge.

Much of the wisdom Anderson shares can serve as a guide for effective blog content writing, I found. Here are a few of the gems I found in this wonderful book:
“The goal is for you to give the talk that only you can give.”
Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to be unique to you, showing clearly what differentiates your business, your professional practice, or your organization from its peers. The goal to “birth” the content that expresses your personal brand.

“You will cover only as much ground as you can dive into in sufficient depth to be compelling.”
Blog posts have a distinct advantage over the more static website copy.  Each post can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business or practice. Other important things to discuss? Save those for later posts!

“Different talks can have very different structures. One might introduce the problem the speaker is tackling. Another might be simply sharing pieces of work that have a connected theme.”
While our first instinct in writing a blog post might be to follow a linear structure, that’s not the most effective way to present ideas in every situation. Different blog posts can compare and contrast, show cause and effect, compare advantages and disadvantages of a product or a particular approach,  use testimonials, and develop story lines.

“People aren’t computers.  They’re social creatures who have developed weapons to keep their worldview protected from dangerous knowledge…To make an impact, there has to be a human connection.”
One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional bloggers is that we translate clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms.  People tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

To blog impactfully, slash back the range of topics!

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Blog Ladder-Jumping

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aha light bulbHow can you jump off a 35-foot ladder onto solid concrete and not hurt yourself?

Where can you find rivers with no fish, roads with no cars, seas with no ships, and towns with no people?

These riddles are two of 150 brain training challenges in Parragon Books’ Professor Murphy’s Brain-Busting Puzzles & Riddles. (Psst: You jump off the bottom rung; on a map.)

As psychologists Sternberg and Davidson explained in Psychology Today, the thinking involved in solving puzzles is a blend of imaginative association and memory. Finding out the answer to the riddle produces an Aha! effect. What’s more, the researchers commented, once the answer to a riddle is understood, the memory of it remains much more permanent because it is unexpected.

As a blog content writer, I’m always fascinated by what makes certain word combinations pack more power than others. Could it be because the reader needed to go through more of a thinking process to figure out the meaning?

Reminds me of something that humorist Dick Wolfsie teaches. In order for a joke to be funny, he explains, 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.

It may be that the same concept applies to the material presented in our business blog content writing, and that, for the blog to cause real communication, it must produce that Aha! effect. People go online and use search engines to find information.  They need to know more about something, and that something has to do with what you have, what you know about, or what you know how to do.
Needless to say, your blog content needs to be on topic and understandable. But, just as is true of Professor Murphy’s riddles, when people do part of the “work”, they’re more engaged and the information is more likely to “stick”!

 

 

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Peter Piper Picks a creative Blog Writing Technique

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Close up of old English dictionary page with word nursery rhyme

“Used occasionally, alliteration can:

  • Be memorable.
  • Make an impact.
  • Make you look confident.
  • Be used for emphasis,”say the authors of “How to Get Your Own Way (Using Critical Thinking)”.
    Alliteration is just one of several creative writing techniques that can make your business correspondence more interesting, they add. With alliteration, you repeat the same letter or sound at the start of nearby words (Peter Piper picked some pickled peppers). Assonance takes place when two or more words close to one another repeat the same vowel sound but start with different consonant sounds. (In the sentence “Honesty is the best policy”, for example, the sound of the “o” repeats in the two words “honesty” and “policy”.)

    Many product names are alliterative, Buzzle points out. Think: Coca-Cola, Dunkin’ Donuts, Paypal, and Chuckee Cheese. “Not easy to forget these names, is it?” Buzzle asks.

    In blog titles, we’ve found at Say It For You, both alliteration and assonance can help catch readers’ attention. Writing marketing content for a hair salon in Carmel, you might select “Captivating Curl in Carmel“ for the title of the post, while “Beguiling Styling” would be an example of assonance.

    “It’s one thing to write great content, but it’s another thing to get it read and ranked — which is where nailing the title comes in,” writes Corey Wainright of Hubspot. Titles represent your content in search engines, in email, and on social media, Wainright points out. “Alliteration is a device that makes something a little lovelier to read.”

Keep Peter Piper in mind when creating blog content that’s a little lovelier to read!

 

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Blog to Foster the Human Connection in the Digital Age

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??????????????????????????????????????????????Have you ever wondered why handmade items are looked upon as superior, while machine made pieces are often deemed inferior? And is that still true?

“Perhaps it used to matter if a dress was handmade or machine made, at least in haute couture, but now things are complete different,” said Karl Lagerfield at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Spring 2016 exhibition.

Not everyone agrees. Julie Heller, owner of an appointment-only designer vintage store EraLuxe gallery, admits that the scope of what makes a garment valuable is changing. As technology advances, handmade pieces will be associated with added value – mostly because, she says, of “society’s nostalgia for the craftsmanship of the past”.

Hazel Clark, research chair of fashion at Parsons, agrees. “We are seeking connection in many walks of life – including in our clothes, says.  That sense of the individual in the process is important, a sense of a relationship with the person who has made the item.

Does this discussion about creating connection relate to blog marketing? In every way. “How would most people describe their relationship with your company?” asks Corey Wainwright of hubspot.com. Is the relationship purely transactional, make you just a place they go to get something they need, or do you elicit more personal feelings? “When your audience is reminded there are real life humans behind the scenes,” it becomes easier for them to trust your product or service, Wainright concludes..

On your website and in your blog, you can get your point across really well with clear, concise, straightforward copy.  But, Wainright explains, if you can get your point across and humanize your brand, you have the potential to delight readers. Two ways, among others, to achieve that effect, he says:

  • Infuse a sense of humor into your content once in a while.
  • Publish photos of your team being themselves.

One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional bloggers is that we translate clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms.  People tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

Blog readers may be connecting with you digitally, but it’s up to you to foster the human connection!

 

 

 

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Are You Suffering Your Blog Action or Performing It?

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For Or Against Signpost Showing Pros And Cons

“What is passive voice and why are we often told to avoid it?” novelist and Writer’s Workshop Senior Editor Emma Darwin asks her students. Here’s Darwin’s simple explanation:

  • When the action of the sentence is being performed by the subject of the sentence, it’s in active voice.
  • When the action is being done to the subject of the sentence by someone or something else, the sentence is in passive voice.

In general, explains Brandon Royal in The Little Red Writing Book, the active voice is preferred, because it is:

  1. more action oriented
  2. more direct
  3. less verbose, cutting down on the number of needed words.

Since one of the very purposes of business blog writing is to showcase the accomplishments of the business owners, as a general rule we bloggers need to focus on “staying active” in our content using sentences that have energy and directness.

Is there ever a time when the passive voice would be the most effective way to write? Yes, when the performer of the action is unknown or unimportant, Royal explains. “The world’s largest pearl was discovered in the Philipines in 1934.” (The discovery is important, but the discoverer is unknown.).

Let’s practice…

Choose two pieces of information about your business or practice. First, select on where you or one of your employees performed a special service. Write an active voice sentence about that.

Then, choose a fact that is important or interesting for your readers to learn about but which does not highlight any particular person. Write a passive voice sentence about that.

Here are my two examples from the blogging world: (Can you tell which is which?)

“6.7 million people blog on blogging sites and 12 million people blog via social networks.”

“Today blogging is used widely by businesses as part of their marketing strategy.”

Are you suffering your blog action, or performing it?

 

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