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Blogging About No-Nos

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“The rise of the Internet and social media has given rise to a lot of fretting about the loss of manners and common courtesy in society,” Kate Kershner writes in “How Stuff Works”. But often, the author points out, we just don’t know if something is considered rude or perfectly acceptable. As an example, Kershner explores the question of whether it is rude to knit in public. The rule of thumb she suggests is that, if you’re in any public place – the opera or a play, for example – knitting might imply a lack of attention, so it’s best to avoid doing that.

When traveling to a new country, it’s important to learn about the taboos there, Stump & Associates tells readers. There may be food taboos, conversation taboos, tipping taboos, and even taboos concerning eye contact and how close it is considered OK to stand near another person. The point is – travelers need to be made aware of these differences in perception.

Knowing the no-nos can be important in the workplace as well, hiring.monster.com explains. People have varying tolerance for offensive language and humor, for example, and what may seem like an awkward incident to some might feel extremely hurtful to others. Common but avoidable gaffes include sending an email or text to the wrong person and discussion hot-button issues such as religion, politics, and money.

Content writers can offer positive value to readers by describing things and activities best avoided. For example, the Warby Parker Eyewear A to Z blog lists not-to-dos after eye dilation, including driving, being in the sun, and looking at digital screens. “Great copywriting compels action, so it’s no surprise fear is used in marketing,” writes Amy Harrison of Copyblogger.  Marketing messages, she Harrison explains, may be based on readers’ fear of missing out, of losing something, or of future threat.

At Say It For You, we don’t like to use fear as the motivating factor to market our services. Instead, we think of “blogging the no-nos as a way for our clients to demonstrate to their readers ways to dodge dangers.

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Blogging to Offer a New Look

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The 2023 Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac offers “A New Look at Warren G Harding”, who, for decades, had been labeled by many historians as our worst president. During his 882 days in office, Harding had indeed made some bad choices. Several of his cabinet appointees took bribes; his extra-marital affairs were well-known. Reporters called him lazy and doubted his intelligence. However, now that presidential records from the early 1900s have been digitalized and available, author Veda Boyd Jones explains, “a more balanced view of President Warren G. Harding has emerged.”

Some of Harding’s notable accomplishments as president include:

  • creating the Veterans Bureau
  • creating the Bureau of the Budget
  • reducing the national deficit
  • appointing four Supreme Court justices, including William Howard Taft
  • putting in an 84-hour work week, including working lunches
  • being the first to visit Alaska , correctly predicting it would become a state

“No matter what size of business you have, you may be presented with a situation where you have to answer some undesired questions or clear up some misconceptions,” the Digital Echidna blog explains. ” While the Web can be your greatest enemy, it can also be your greatest ally. It affords you the opportunity to get your message out, immediately, without the need for a third-party distribution….  explain, apologize, and then lay out exactly what is being done to rectify the situation and ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Blogs are an ideal vehicle for damage control, we teach at Say It For You. By putting your own “spin” on reports about your company or practice, we teach at Say It For You, you can exercise control over the way the public perceives any negative developments concerning your business or practice. Of course, if you don’t blog frequently, you won’t attract negative comments, but neither will you attract the attention of search engines who deliver readers to your blog site.

Just as the authors of the 2023 Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac used updated information to counteract negative perceptions of former president warren G. Harding, your blog can offer a new look at a situation within your company or practice. Blog to offer readers a new look!

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Achieving Eudaimonia in Business Blog Writing

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The Stoics realized that there are things we control, and things we don’t. To get to the good life, we should focus on things we control, accepting the rest as it happens. When it comes to the things we can control, Stoics believe it’s not an external situation that makes us happy or miserable, but our interpretation of that situation. The idea is to achieve a supremely happy life, which Stoics call eudaimonia.

That ancient philosophy can help business entrepreneurs today, theconversation.com comments. As I read this article, it occurred to me that three business concepts based on Stoicism can serve as great guidelines for those of us involved in blog marketing:

  1.  “Before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves.”

Twelve years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them felt they could take the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task. Meanwhile, our business owner clients can’t throw in the towel before success has been given the chance to develop. We can’t control the market or our customers – first we have to control our own activities.

2. “Stoicism means leveraging your uniqueness.” (Don’t let emulation turn into imitation.)

To have any hope of moving higher in search rankings and engage readers’ interest, blogs must provide fresh, relevant content. But, with the sheer volume of information on the Web on every topic under the sun, how do we keep providing new material in our blog posts week after week, month after month, even year after year? Two strategies include bringing in less well-known facts about familiar things and processes, and suggesting new ways of thinking about things readers already know.
But, besides offering unique tidbits of information, we must incorporate one important ingredient – opinion. Taking a stance, using blog content writing to express a firm opinion on issues, is how companies and practices can leverage their uniqueness.

   3.  “Stoicism turns problems into opportunities.”

I teach freelance blog writers in Indianapolis to include stories of their clients’ past mistakes and failures. Such stories have a humanizing effect, engaging readers and creating feelings of empathy and admiration for the business owners or professional practitioners who overcame not only adversity, but the effects of their own mistakes! When customers’ complaints and concerns are recognized and dealt with “in front of other people” (in blog posts), it gives the “apology” or the “remediation measure” more weight. In fact, in corporate blogging training sessions, I remind Indianapolis blog writers to “hunt” for stories of struggle and mistakes made in the early years of a business or practice!

Studying the Stoics gives us a chance at achieving blogging eudaimonia!

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Business Bloggers Can be Authors of Defining Moments

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bloggers as authors of defining moments

In The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, authors Chimp and Dan Heath posit that there are certain brief experiences which jolt us, change us, and elevate us. What if a teacher could design a lesson he knew students would remember twenty years later, they ask.  What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers?

And what if (reading this book made me ponder), we knew how to create content that would delight readers and emblazon our clients’ brands in  prospects’ and customers’ minds and hearts? Isn’t that, I asked myself, really what this business blog marketing thing is all about?

When people assess an experience, the Heath brothers explain, they tend to forget or ignore its length and rate it, in retrospect, based on the best or worst moment (“the peak”) and the ending. Translated into the construction of a marketing blog post, while it’s the keyword phrase that starts the job of getting the blog found, a big part of blog content writing, I’ve found, involves getting what I call the “pow opening line” right.

The opener might consist of an anomaly (a statement that, at first glance, doesn’t appear to fit). Or, the opener might be a bold assertion or “in-your-face” statement. The “pow” opener puts words in readers’ mouths – when talking to others about this topic, readers will tend to use the very words you will have, figuratively, “put in their mouths”. Seth Godin’s “There are actually two recessions” is a perfect example of impactful, thought-changing discussion-piece openers.

The Power of Moments authors talk about ”flipping pits into peaks”, turning customer complaints into positive, memorable experiences.  You want to get things wrong, then have customers bring those mistakes to your attention, so that you can create a memorable “fix”. For us blog content writers, the lesson is this: writing about past business failures is important! True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business or professional practice.

Readers, I explain to business owners and practitioner clients, even the ones who have subscribed to your blog, are not going to peruse, much less study, every word in every one of your blog posts, however relevant the information, however artfully worded.  What we’re shooting for as blog writers is to be authors of defining moments for readers rather than merely waiting for those moments to happen!

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Motivating Others Through Our Blogs

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book-cover-100-ways
“Motivating others requires a connection to people’s deep desires. It’s not just about loading them up with a lot of how-to information,” write Steve Chandler and Scott Richardson in 100 Ways to Motivate Others.

Since as blog content writers, we’re trying to motivate readers to take action, what lessons can we learn from this book of 100 ways? I’ll choose just a few pointers offered by the authors that I found most relevant:

1.  “You can’t motivate someone who can’t hear you….In order for someone to hear you, she must first be heard…Tune in before you turn on.”
I remember, years ago, listening to a speech by radio host Michael Medved in which he told us that we need to listen to our clients with “three ears”.  That’s because we need to hear what they say, hear what they’re not saying, and even discern what they don’t even know how to say!

If we as blog writers can go right to the heart of any possible customer fears or concerns (which we’ve learned through deep research into our target market!) we have the potential to breed understanding and trust.

 

2   Stop criticizing upper management. “Maybe you do this to win favor and create bonding at the victim level, but it won’t work…The word ‘they’ solidifies the impression that we are isolated, misunderstood, victims.”
The authors are talking about managing employees, but the same lesson can be applied to the attitudes we convey about our competitors. Other providers are viable alternatives for our customers, and readers don’t like to be “made wrong” for checking out what our competition has to offer.

Although one approach in a business blog is comparing your products and services to others’ it’s important to emphasize the positive rather than “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 products and services.

 

3.  “ Do the one thing… The truth is, there is only one thing to do, and that is the one thing I have chosen to do right now. If I do that one think as if it’s all I have to think about, it will be extremely well done.”
In blogging, doing the one thing takes the form of what I call “the Power of One“ –  addressing, in each blog post, one message, to one audience, targeting one outcome.

It’s here that 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.  The more focused out efforts are on connecting with a narrowly defined target audience, the more successful the blog will be in converting prospects to clients and customers.

There are, no doubt, at least 97 other ways to motivate readers through our blogs, but these three make for a good start!

 

 

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