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Are You Suffering Your Blog Action or Performing It?

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“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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Blogging Using the Rule of Three

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“Follow the ‘rule of three’,” advises Jessica Lawler in How to Get People to Read Your Blog. “When you create a piece of content, promote your new piece of content in at least three different places, at minimum, to make the writing worth your while and to ensure your content is actually being read.” Lawler mentions Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Shapchat as examples of places to post.

A different take on the “rule of three” comes from the laminated student guide “Writing Tips and Tricks”. “Ask yourself what you want the reader to know about your topic…Think of three details or three examples for each idea,” the guide advises.

In business blogging, I recommend a razor-sharp focus on just ONE story, one idea, or one aspect of a business, a practice, or an organization (other aspects can be addressed in later posts). But the “rule of three” still applies, in that you use three examples or three details that support the main idea of that blog post.

Yet a third interpretation of the “rule of three” comes from the speaking profession.  Public speaking maven Jim Endicott says that every oral presentation needs three elements to be effective:  the visual presentation, the content, and the delivery.  Translated into business blogging, that threesome would consist of:

  1. pictures and charts (the visual presentation of the blog
  2. the content itself (the facts and figures)
  3. the “voice”, the way the message comes across – first person vs. third-person reporting, humorous or serious, casual or formal

Each of those elements has the power to contribute to the effectiveness of the blog post or to take away from it.

You want your readers to remember what you’ve presented, and, as Presentation Magazine  reminds us, people tend to remember series of three things. Popular examples include:

  • blood, sweat and tears
  • faith, hope and charity
  • stop, look and listen
  • life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
  • government of the people, by the people, for the people

The Rule of Three, then, can be used by blog content writers in more than one way:

  • Promoting the blog
  • Composing the content
  • Using phrases with sets of three items
  • Designing the look of the posts

Blog to the Power of 3!

 

 

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Are the Words in Your Blog as Valuable as the Products and Services They Describe?

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“The industry realized the words they used to describe diamonds were as valuable as the stones they pulled from the ground,” Alina Simone writes in “Do You Know What This Is?” in Mental Floss Magazine. Simone was discussing the DeBeers Company’s 1938 advertising blitz aimed at pulling the diamond market out of its Depression-era slump.

“On the market, a diamond is much more than a meta-stable allotrope of carbon – it’s everlasting love,” Simone explains. The reality of the situation, she adds is the fact that DeBeers stockpiled huge surpluses of diamonds, artificially maintaining high prices. Meanwhile, De Beers chairman Nicky Oppenheimer admitted in 1999 that “diamonds are intrinsically worthless.”

The Mental Floss story is focused on Diamond Foundry, a California company using an atomic oven to blast “seed diamonds’ with hot plasma, causing the crystal latticework of the diamond to extend.  Essentially, the Silicon Valley company is hot-forging, in a process that takes a mere two weeks, jewelry-grade diamonds that would take eons to form naturally.

While blog marketing is (or at least should be) more advertorial than outright advertisement, we content writers can take a tip from the DeBeers people, who put the three elements of rhetoric to work enhancing the value of diamonds in the eyes of buyers:

  1. Ethos (a form of argument based on character or authority, showing the product or service is endorsed by a celebrity or by someone in uniform)
  2. Pathos (a form of argument based on fear, desire, sympathy, or anger)
  3. Logos (a form of argument based on facts and figures)

Over the 40 years following 1938, De Beers increased its advertising budget from $200,000 to $10 million, using words to create value, selling the concept of diamonds as:

  • Forever
  • A girl’s best friend
  • A must for engagements
  •  A gift for anniversaries A perfect Valentine’s Day gift

It’s hard to imagine, writes Lindsay Kolowich of hubspot, that it’s only been three-quarters of a century since diamonds became the symbol of wealth, power, and romance they are in America today. How did N.W. Ayer, the company De Beers hired as publicists, help make that happen?  By creating entertaining and educational content, Kolowich says – ideas, stories, fashion, and trends that supported the product but wasn’t explicitly about it.

In 1999, AdAge named the De Beers slogan “a diamond is forever” “The #1 slogan of the century.

Are the words in your business blog at least as valuable – if not more so – than the products and services they describe?

 

 

 

 

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Blogs or White Papers – Which Have the Longest Shelf Life?

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“White papers may have the longest shelf life of all content,” asserts John Fox in the Huffington Post.  it was interesting to read about Fox’s interview with Gordon Graham, author of White Papers for Dummies.

Some business owners are afraid white papers are too academic and “heavy”. Anything that’s poorly done is going to fatigue people, Graham points out, and most business white papers make the same mistake over and over – too much selling.  What a white paper is supposed to do, he says, is:

  • help people understand some kind of issue
  • solve a problem
  • make a decision

It’s not that John Fox recommends abandoning blog marketing in favor of white papers. In fact, he recommends, a problem-solution white paper can generate three or four blog posts.  “You take every section, boil it down a bit and post it.  Then, at the bottom, say ‘For more discussion, see the full white paper here’.”

“The definition of a whitepaper varies heavily from industry to industry,” observes Lindsay Kolowich of hubspot.com. Basically, though, Kolowich explains, “A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution.” “Whitepapers,” he adds, “are the academic papers of marketing content.  Readers expect a high degree of expertise backed by solid research that is fully documented by references.” In other words, they’re much more serious in tone, less flashy, and more research-based than blog posts or even ebooks.

Technically speaking, of course, both white papers and old blog posts can “live” indefinitely on your website “shelf”. The trick is to “selectively pick and choose your moments to remind visitors and social media contacts of the valuable information that is available to them, says GuavaBox.

Remember, even if a product remains viable and is still “fresh”, no product can be useful to customers while it is still on the shelf!

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In Business Blogging, Avoid the Cynic’s Sidebar

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Zorniger Wissenschaftler hlt seinen Daumen nach unten

Sure, you could say, “If I can’t avoid mentioning the competition altogether, I’m certainly not going to say anything nice about them,” author Jeff Thull tells his audience of salespeople. But that’s what Thull dubs “the cynic’s sidebar.”  After all, he points out, they may be your competitors, but they are viable alternatives for your customers.

Those competitors, Thull reminds salespeople, aren’t the customers’ competition, perhaps even an entirely viable option they’re already considering, and, if you unfairly misrepresent that option, you risk losing the customers’ trust.

I agree. In offering business blogging assistance, I reassure owners that addressing problems and misinformation in their blog posts shines light on their special expertise and on their particular slant on the work they do. At the same time, readers don’t like to be “made wrong” by having their assertions challenged directly, including their having checked out what your competition has to offer.

Yes, as content writers for business owners or practitioners, at least one of the goals we’re working towards is converting online searchers into to customers and clients. And, although one approach in a business blog is comparing your products and services to others’ it’s important to emphasize the positive rather an “knocking” a competitor.  That means that, rather than starting with what the competition is doing “wrong”, use the power of “We” to demonstrate what YOU value and the way YOU like to deliver your services.

Before you can do a good job positioning yourself (or the client for whom you’re creating the blog content), you need to go through a systematic thinking process, a 3-step self-examination of sorts:

  1. Who is my competition?
  2. How am I different (3 reasons per competitor)?
  3. How am I similar (3 reasons per competitor)?

That very thought process leads to what I’ve nicknamed “the training benefit” business owners can derive from corporate blog marketing. That benefit holds true, I’ve found, whether owners do their own blogging or collaborate with a professional ghost blogger, because the exercise helps train you to articulate those things to clients and customers.

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