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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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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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Business Blog Tidbits Far From Useless

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love and togetherness
So, why do I find seeming “useless” tidbits of information so very useful when it comes to blog content writing? Let me count the ways:

1. Tidbits can be used to describe your way of doing business, to clarify the way one of your products works, or explain why one of the services you provide is particularly effective in solving a problem. It’s interesting when business owners or practitioners present little-known facts about their own business or profession.  In “Keep It Cool,” for example, Mental Floss magazine reviews the history of air conditioning, telling the story of how, when President Garfield was shot and lay dying in the White House, inventors rushed forward with devices they hoped would help, using a contraption to blow air over a box of ice into a series of tin pipes, eventually using a half-million pounds of ice. History tidbits in general engage readers’ curiosity, evoking an “I didn’t know that!” response.

2. One thing I suggest stressing in blog posts is best business practices.  While one goal of any SEO marketing blog is to help your business “get found”, once that’s happened, the goal changes to helping the online readers get comfortable with the way you do business. Mental Floss Magazine highlighted the making of the 1991 movie “The Silence of the Lambs”, in which the serial murderer is obsessed with collecting rare moths.  Animal rights groups might have protested the exploitation of harmless insects just to make a film, but, thanks to animal wrangler Raymond Mendez, the 300 tomato hornworm moths traveled first class, were kept in a room with special heat and humidity settings, outfitted with tiny harnesses during high speed stunts. Blog content writing is the perfect vehicle for conveying a corporate message like this one, starting with a piece of trivia, presented to make a point.

3. Common myths surround every business and profession.  If you notice a “factoid” circulating about your industry, a common misunderstanding by the public about the way things really work in your field, you can use a little-known tidbit of information that reveals the truth behind the myth. In Mental Floss Magazine, I found a cute myth-debunking article about the “Eskimo kiss”. Popular wisdom claims that Eskimos rub noses (because kissing on the lips would cause their mouths to freeze together). The myth started in Hollywood when the director of the 1922 movie “Nanook of the North” saw Eskimo women giving their babies “kuniks”, pressing their noses against their babies’ cheeks and breathing in their scent. Truth be told, Eskimos kiss on the lips just like everyone else. That Eskimo kiss debunk would be perfect for the blog of a lip balm company, a lipstick manufacturer, or a candy company around Valentine’s Day.

For clarifying and debunking, and to add variety and fun, tidbits of information are far from useless!

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Just a Spoonful of Keyword Phrases Makes SEO Go Up

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White sugar

“To maximize the traffic that comes to your blog via search engines, focus on optimizating each of your blog posts for just one or two keyword phrases.  Too many keyword phrases dilutes the content of your post for readers and can look like spam to both readers and search engines,” Susan Gunelius cautions in abouttech.com.

What, exactly, are keyword phrases? “These are words that you enter into your meta tags that describe your page so that when someone goes to a search engine and types in one or more of those words your page will be added to the list of pages they are given,” Linda Roeder explains. How long are keyword phrases? Statistics show that nearly 60% of keyword searches include phrases consisting of 2-3 words, according to Gunelius..

Gunelius’ tips for effective keyword use include:

  • Choose just one or two keyword phrases for each blog post
  • Use them in the title (however, don’t sacrifice the title’s ability to motivate people to click through)
  • Use keywords multiple times in the post, first within the first 200 characters, several times throughout, and near the end.
  • Use keywords in and around links
  • Use keywords in image alt-tags

While using keywords in links is a great way to boost search engine optimization, Gunelius warns, too many links can be viewed as a spam technique. The accepted link-to-text ratio is one link per 125 words. (For this very Say It For You post, for example, the two to three links I’ve used are just about right.

So how do you know which keywords deserve your focus? One of the easiest ways to get a basic idea of what people are looking for online, Gunelius says, is to check the popularity of keyword searches on websites that deal with keyword popularity, such as:

  • Wordtracker   (http://www.wordtracker.com/)
  • GoogleAdWords (http://www.google.com/adwords/)
  • Google Trends  (http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends)
  • Yahoo! Buzz Index  (https://www.yahoo.com/)

Like Mary Poppins’ recipe for making the medicine go down, incorporating keywords into blog posts – but only by the single spoonful – can be the secret for getting found on search engines.

 

 

 

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Know Your Reader When Using Allusions in Business Blogs

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White dove isolated on black.
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes reference to a place, person, or event. The point of using allusions in writing? An allusion can:

  • get readers thinking about your subject in a new way
  • get a point across without going into a lengthy explanation
  • cement a bond between the writer and readers based on shared experiences and knowledge

Blog content writers can use allusions with all three of those results in mind.

  • In a financial planner’s blog: There’s no need to act like a Scrooge (allusion from Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”). Simply plan your charitable giving as part of your overall monthly budget.
  • In an internet security provider’s blog: You may think a new piece of software can be useful to your business, but it can turn out to be a Trojan Horse (allusion from Homer’s “Iliad “about how the Greeks won the war through trickery).
  • In a nutrition counselor’s blog: If chocolate is your Achilles’ heel (allusion from Greek mythology), allow yourself one chocolate indulgence each week, cutting back on other sweets.

Because allusions make reference to something other than what is directly being discussed, explains yourdictionary.com, you may miss an allusion or fail to understand it if you do not know the underlying story, literary tale or other reference point.

In the Indianapolis Star the other day, I solved the Cryptoquip as follows:  “Did you see that bird meditating while using a mantra? It was probably an om-ing pigeon.” This rather clever puzzle uses a combination of a pun (homing pigeon) and an allusion. It also reminded me that, as a blog content writer, I need to gauge my readers’ level of education and familiarity with the reference.

Remember, an allusion does not describe in detail the person or thing to which it refers. The writer expects the reader to possess enough knowledge to spot the allusion and grasp its importance in a text. Problem is, if readers don’t get the connection, they’re going to find your content frustrating more than illuminating.

Know your reader when using allusions in business blogs!

 

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