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Making Your Blog Bed Every Day

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In an interview with AARP Magazine, William McRaven (the Navy Seal admiral who oversaw the Osama Bin Laden raid) talks about the wisdom of doing small things right. “When I was training to become a SEAL, we got inspected every morning. The instructor would invariably pull out a quarter and flip it into the air to see if you’d pulled the blanket and sheet taut enough to make the coin bounce.” The chief petty officer had explained why. “If you can’t even make your bed to exacting standards, how are we ever going to trust you to lead a complex SEAL mission? Learn to do the little things right and you’ll learn to do the big things right.”

Nice to know I’m not the only one who thinks paying attention to detail is important , in my case, referring to the process of creating  marketing content for blogs.

Yes, blogs are supposed to be less formal and more personal in tone than traditional websites. But whenever content is posted in the name of your business (or in the case of Say It For You writers, in the name of a client’s business), the business brand is being “put out there” for all to see.

Formatting of blog content is very, very important, including the appropriate use of:

  • bolding and italics
  • short, concise sentences and paragraphs
  • bullet points and numbered lists
  • white space

Just as an unmade or poorly made bed is a sign of lack of standards and attention to detail, blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions” convey the kind of message you do not want going to readers. Be fastidious about grammar and spelling errors, avoiding run-on sentences and redundancy. Tighten up those paragraphs, giving them “hospital corner” impact.

True, most readers will merely scan your content and won’t pay very close attention to details like those. Some might, though. Can you afford to have potential customers noticing your lack of care in making your “blog bed”?

 

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Take Care of Your Shoes

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As many as four buyers will intentionally take note of the condition of your shoes during a sales call, Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman of the Sandler Sales Institute caution. If prospects see worn or broken shoelaces, or worn heels and soles, they’ll lose confidence that you’ll pay proper attention to the details of their order. For blog content writers, there’s a lesson here…..

Realistically, online searchers who land on your blog are already interested in and have a need for the type of products or services you offer. The opening lines of your blog content then can offer “signs” to those readers that they’ve come to the right place:

  • You and your employees have the training and expertise to be able to deliver the desired advice, service, and products.
  • You’ve kept up with what others are saying on your topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing in your industry.
  • As a business owner or practitioner, you’ve stood by your work.
  • Your blog has used images, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos to add interest and evoke emotion.
  • The layout is targeted towards your target audience (Are they deal seekers looking for bargains on products and services they already use? Are they enthusiasts looking for information to support their hobbies and beliefs?).

But what about your blog’s “shoes”??

As a corporate blogging trainer, my favorite recommendation to both business owners and the freelance blog content writers they hire to bring their message to customers is this: Prevent blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions”, including grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors. As Writer’s Digest Yearbook points out, unconventional or incorrect grammar may be seen as an indication of carelessness or ignorance. The result? Readers may take the content itself less seriously. At its worst, failure to use proper punctuation and sentence structure in blog posts can make content difficult to comprehend.

“It’s one thing to lose a sale because you can’t solve the buyer’s problem,” Deep and Sussman stress. “It’s quite another to fail because you didn’t fit the image of a professional salesperson.”

The message for content marketing professionals? Take care of your “shoes”, meaning the details of your blog posts!

 

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Blog Posts – Info in a Flash

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“There’s nothing like flash fiction to teach you how to write an engaging story ” Breathe Magazine tells readers looking for “activities for a happy and healthy mind”. Author Kit de Waal, judging a microfiction writing contest, says she looks for “a whole story that gives me depth and breadth, with a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order.” The best microfiction, she adds, gets people talking and starts ideas in their heads.

While marketing blog posts are nonfiction, some of the tips offered by de Waal and other microfiction contest judges certainly apply.

  • “Focusing on a single idea is a really good technique.”
    When it comes to blogging, we at Say It For You firmly believe in the Power of One (one outcome, one audience, one writer, one client, and – one message per post, with a a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business.
  • “Pieces without a beginning, middle, and end don’t work.”
    In business blog writing, for the opening, you may choose to present a question, a problem, a startling statistic, or a gutsy, challenging statement. Later, on the “back end” of your post, your “pow” closing statement ties back to the opener, bringing your reader full circle.
  • “Editing and revising is the hard part, but it is important. Work with language and imagery.”
    The second hardest part of blog writing is cutting your own work down to size, cutting out the non-essentials.

  • “Readers must be made to think and talk about what you’ve told them.”
    For blogs, the “first take” message is crucial, showing online readers they’ve come to exactly the right spot to find the information they need.

  • “Choose three words at random and weave them into a story.”
    Blog readers tend to be scanners, and searchers will select the most important words, the ones relating most directly to what they came online to find in the first place. Choosing those keyword phrases should hardly be random, instead being the result of research about your target audience.

  • “Find your ideas in weird sources.”
    In order to create a valuable ongoing blog for your business, it’s going to take equal parts reading and writing.You need to keep up with what others are saying on your topic, plus keep up with your marketing and selling skills, as well as finding unusual or little-known facts that you can use to to explain your own (or your clients’) products, services, and culture.

“Flash fiction attempts to condense a story into the fewest words possible, telling big, rich, complex stories quickly and concisely, Catherin Sustana writes in ThoughtCo. Marketing.  blog posts, while not fiction, are a means of providing readers with valuable information, and doing it “in a flash”.

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Grammar in Blogging – Getting a Grip

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“Jobs are lost for typos on resumes…. Friends lose respect for each other… Semi-colons cry themselves to sleep at night,” quips Kris Spisak in Get a Grip on Your Grammar.

Well,, While I wouldn’t go so far as to myself to sleep at night over grammar, one of our mantras at Say It For You is that “good grammar affects the effect of a business blog”.

While I reassure content writers that, if their marketing blog posts are filled with valuable, relevant, and engaging material, the fact they wrote ‘a lot’ when they should have said ‘many’ or substituted ‘your’ for ‘you’re isn’t going to be a content marketing deal breaker.

On the other hand, in corporate blogging training sessions, in which the business owner and professional practitioner attendees largely serve as their own editors, I urge no-error erring on the side of caution.

Spisak emphasizes 3 common aspects of content writing:

“Don’t show off your smarts”.
Be inclusive – your readers will appreciate it if your avoid industry jargon. I agree. Jargon, Jargon is a handle-with-care writing technique, all the more so in blogging, where readers are impatient to find the information they need without any navigational or terminology hassle. On the other hand, once you’ve established that common ground, reinforcing to readers that they’ve come to the right place, you can add lesser known bits of information, including terminology.

Don’t use filler words.
Expressions such as “Actually,” “basically”, “literally”, “just about”, and “honestly” add nothing to your readers’ understanding of your message. I agree. “Tighten up” your blog content writing to increase its impact.

Go ahead and use the singular “they”.
To demonstrate how much simpler life can be if writers allow themselves to use “the singular ‘they’”, Spisak uses the following uber-awkward sentence: “A child will fall and hurt him or herself if he or she doesn’t tie his or her shoes.” It’s OK to use “they” and “their” when you want to be smooth, not gender specific, he reassures purists.

As a blogging trainer, my own favorite recommendation to business owners as well as the freelance blog content writers they hire to help bring their message to their customers) is simply this: Dress your blog in its best. Prevent blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions” such as grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors.

After all, getting a grip on grammar is an important part of getting your message across!

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In Blogging for Business, Grammar is a Big Deal

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“You might believe the past tense of the verb lead is lead, but that’s not how things are,” says Marko Ticak in the grammarly blog. (Led is the past tense of lead.) Big deal, you’re thinking… Yes, it is. As a blog content writing trainer, I know the truth of author Joanne Adams’ words: Pay attention to proper spelling and grammar, Adams says, and “people who read your writing will know, without a sliver of doubt, that you are somebody who really knows their $h*t”.

At Say It For You, my favorite recommendation to business owners and the freelance blog content writers they hire to help bring their message to their customers is simply this: Dress your blog in its best. Prevent blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions” such as grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors. Perhaps it’s true that most readers won’t notice errors, but business owners or practitioner ought to ask themselves a simple question: “Can I afford to have even one potential customer noticing my lack of care?”

Just to be sure you know your $h*t, Adams offers a list of infinitives and their proper past tense forms (along the lines of “lead/led”):

  • build/built
  • choose/chose
  • lie/lay (another very common mistake)
  • lose/lost
  • spend/spent

Other bothersome twosomes often confused include:

  • advice (the noun – what you give or receive) and advise (the verb)
  • imply (the speaker or writer does this)/ infer (the listener or reader does this)
  • lose (can’t seem to find) and loose (not tight enough)

One expression to erase from your mind and your writing, Adams advises, is “a lot”. It’s OK to use “a lot”, but don’t smoosh the words together.

I’ll admit that, over the years, I’ve been accused of being a “grammar Nazi”, so you can imagine why I identify with the material in Joanne Adams’ book. But, really, all content writers should. Grammar mistakes are very much like the much-publicized TV star wardrobe mishaps – they call attention away from the kind of impression we intend to make on behalf of our businesses or professional practices.

In blogging for business, grammar affects the effect!

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