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Taking a Tip from the Texas Anti-Littering Campaign

Mental Floss March April 2016

“Slogans are powerful marketing tools that can motivate customers to support your brand,” says Dustin Betonio of Tripwire Magazine, citing examples of highly successful word combinations:

  • Harley-Davidson – “American by birth. Rebel by choice.
  • Walmart – “Save Money, Live Better”
  • McDonalds – “I’m lovin it.”
  • Hallmark – “When you care enough to send the very best.”
  • Nike – “Just Do It”
  • Kentucky Fried Chickin – “Finger lickin good”

Like slogans, blog titles can serve as powerful marketing tools. In fact, as blog content writers, one big challenge we face is selecting the best title for each of our blog posts. One very good example is the billboard the Texas Department of Transportation used as the centerpiece of their highly successful anti-littering campaign:

Don’t Mess With Texas – Up to $1000 fine for littering!

 

What are some of the elements in this billboard that blog content writers can use in titles?

Alliteration and assonance
Those are literary devices that help make sentences more memorable because of repeated sounds. “mess” and “Texas” are not a perfect sound match, but the “ess” and “tex” sounds are close enough.

Numbers
Having the billboard read “Up to one thousand dollar fine” wouldn’t have packed nearly the punch of the $1,000 in digits.

Strong language
Strong phrases (and quite frankly, negative ones) have more of an effect in titles.

Definitive
In composing business blogs, we need to keep several goals in mind.  We want to write engaging titles,  we want to include keyword phrases to help with search, we want to be short and to the point, and  we want to use power words.  The overriding goal, though, in composing a title has to be making promises  we are going to be able to keep in the body of the blog post itself.

Don’t mess with business blog post titles – make them strong and definitive!

 

 

 

 

 

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Blogging to One-Tank Destinations

kind rijdt  autoHave you visited the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Notre Dame, Indiana? How about the Five Points Fire Museum in Lafayette, IN? I haven’t been to either, but after learning through the Columbian magazine that those would be “one tank destinations” for me (I live in Indianapolis), I’m adding both locations to my vacation day fun possibilities list.

There’s a valuable nugget of wisdom in this for us blog content writers, I realize. Had that article in the Columbian been about two faraway, exotic destinations, I’d probably have simply turned the page. Instead, I cut the item out of the magazine, posting it on my kitchen bulletin board.

Thing is, in marketing, it’s all about accessibility and ease when it comes to triggering action on the part of readers, whether in print or online. Making a business’ or a practice’s products and services accessible and easy to acquire or use has to be at the top of our best practices list when it comes to writing content for business blogs.

What are some ways to make the information in blog posts “one-tank”, meaning easy to access and easy to put into action?

  • Offer answers in a few, short, well-thought-out words, with longer answers to follow if requested
  • Insert Calls to Action at various points throughout a business blog post
  • Remind readers of the annoyances and hassles they’re experiencing with their present providers and products.  Go on to describe the perfect, hassle-free solution to their problems.
  • Don’t just say “Contact us.” (What exactly do you want your reader to think, feel, or do?) Have people fill out a form where they tell you “where they want to go”.
  • Focus on one specific step readers can take. Choose a very specific problem or need, and offer a very clear and compelling solution.

    Are you taking your blog readers to one-tank destinations?
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Blogger Writing Basics

The ideas highlighted in this week’s Say It For You blog posts were sparked by Tony Rossiter’s Effective Business Writing in Easy Steps.  “Whether you’re drafting a lengthy company report or sending a short email to colleagues, it’s vital to get it right,” cautions Rossiter, defining “right” as meaning clear and concise prose, in a style that’s acceptable to your readers.

Different layouts fulfill different purposes, Tony Rossiter explains, such as:The word Write on a cork notice board

  • Attracting attention
  • Saving space
  • Selling something
  • Summarizing a topic
  • Raising questions

Good, clear layout is essential, the author cautions.  “Remember that every line on every page is the result of someone’s conscious layout decision.”

Layout applies to business blogs in different ways, with one of those being the Calls to Action.

  • There should be more than one CTA, so as to appeal to different readers who might be at different. Stages in the sales cycle. Those ready to buy can do that right away. Those who need more information before making a decision can choose to pick up the phone.  There should be something for those not quite ready for even a phone conversation – they might be guided to watch a video or read an article, for example.
  • The CTAs themselves can be in different formats, with some in the text, some in separate “boxes”, and with different CTA’s linking to different landing pages or sign-up pages.

If the purpose of the blog post is to attract attention at first glance, you may wish to use special formatting:

  • Put the opening sentence in bold or in italics
  • Use the first sentence as the entire first paragraph
  • Center the first sentence (rather than justifying it to the left with the rest of the text)

The content of the opening sentence, in addition to the formatting, can be designed to grab readers’ attention:

  • Begin with the conclusion, using the remainder of the blog post to “prove” the validity of that bold assertion
  • Raise a challenging question in the opening sentence, then use the post to propose an answer.

Every line on every page should in fact be the result of YOUR conscious content and layout decisions!

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A Blog Content Writer’s Basic Tools

Word Toolbox Teaching Tools Resources Spelling Reading Lesson Ai

 

“Whether you’re drafting a lengthy company report or sending a short email to colleagues, it’s vital to get it right,” cautions Tony Rossiter in Effective Business Writing in Easy Steps. What is Rossiter’s definition of “getting it right”?

  • Being clear and concise
  • Writing in a style that’s acceptable to your readers.

A business writer’s basic tools include, Rossiter says:

  • Plain English
  • Vocabulary
  • Spelling
  • Punctuation
  • Grammar
  • Preparing and checking the presentation

In this week’s Say It For You blog posts, I’ll share some important tips from Rossiter’s book that blog content writers might find especially useful.

  • Reading aloud: “If you’re not quite sure whether or not a sentence of a longer piece of writing works – whether it’s clear, concise, and readily understandable – read it aloud.” Some of your phrases and sentences might not be as clear as you thought they were when you first wrote them, Rossiter explains.
  • “Look for the overall purpose – have you done what you set out to do?” Conveying that overall purpose can be especially challenging when a business owner or practitioner is using a business blogging service provider.  On the other hand, the very exercise of thinking through the themes and the ideas for the blog helps train the business owner or practitioner to articulate those same things when they’re talking to their customers!
  • Put it away for a day or two, then look at it again.” My years as a developmental editor, plus my work tutoring in the Ivy Tech Community College language lab have taught me how hard it is for us to catch our own errors.  After all, I teach blog writers, we’re focused on the ideas we’re trying to convey.Using writers’ basic tools to convey a unique marketing message – that’s the supreme challenge for us business blog content writers!

 

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Help Blog Readers Know the Difference Between Related and Causal

Man Hand writing Cause and Effect concept with markerIn statistics, variables are considered related if, when the value of one increases or decreases, so does the value of the other (even if it’s in the opposite direction). But does that mean one caused the other?  Not necessarily.  Only after investigating whether one action causes the other, explains the Australian Bureau of Statistics, can we “put in place policies and programs that aim to bring about a desired outcome.”

The article gives three examples of questions about whether the difference between two things is simply incidental versus one causing the other:

  • Is there a relationship between a person’s education level and their health?
  • Is pet ownership associated with living longer?
  • Did a company’s marketing campaign increase their product sales?

In writing blog content, citing causal statistics certainly is one method used to capture readers’ attention.   “Insomnia costs U.S. $63 billion annually in lost productivity“ is a great opener for a furniture store blog about mattresses, for example.  And if the content also contains a human interest story about how Jimmy’s lack of sleep caused him to flub an all-important job interview, that combination packs a real punch with blog readers.

Statistics can actually serve as mythbusters.  If there’s some false impression people seem to have about your industry or about a product or service you provide, you can bring in statistics to show readers that the numbers they’ve been hearing about may be related, but that one factor is not the cause of the other. From there, you can offer more relevant solutions to their issues.

In everyday life, people routinely make causal claims that would require a counterfactual analysis to confirm, says explorable.com. “Thanks to a new diet, your neighbor lost thirty pounds. But did your neighbor not also take up jogging? To assess the claim that A caused B we need to consider a counterfactual: What would have happened if A had been different? To evaluate whether your neighbor’s dieting caused his weight loss, we need to consider what would have happened had he not dieted, and so on.”

In the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or service often surface in the form of customer questions and comments. Addressing misinformation in a company’s blog shines light on the owner’s special expertise, besides offering information that is valuable to readers. De-mystifying matters can make your blog into a “go-to” source for readers seeking information in your field.

How can you use myths and “counterfacts” to enhance your credibility as a business owner?

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