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Does Your Blog Have Skeletons in its Verbal Closet?

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unfortunate-english-book

You’ll find skeletons in verbal closets, Bill Brohough says, and he devotes an entire book to helping us do just that in Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use. Brohough alerts readers to the “improprieties, disgusting notions, licentiousness, and other foul thoughts” we speak daily without realizing it.

  • I love “reading around and learning around”, as I call it, and advise all blog content writers to do the same. Ideas are all over the place, all of the time, but we’ve got to see and hear those ideas, learning everywhere and from everyone, making connections between our own experience and knowledge and Other People’s Wisdom.  There are several ways in which I think Brohough’s collection of verbal “skeletons” and his caution to writers about using words can be used to improve blog marketing content for different types of businesses:1.  to define basic terminology or give basic information to readers: The expression “caught red-handed”, Brohough explains, originated in the 1400’s and meant caught with blood on one’s hands. Another speculation, he says, is that the term traces back to 800 B.C., when guilt or innocence was tested by putting the accused’s hand on a red-hot axehead.

A nutrition company or health practitioner might use this piece of trivia to discuss the importance of including various colors of food in the diet, so as to include different phytonutrients advising blog readers to include strawberries as a source of folic acid and cherries which are high in fiber..

2. to explain why this practitioner or business owner chooses to operate in a certain way: A printer or web designer might discuss the way red brings text and images to the foreground, and stimulates buying decisions.  A fashion clothing business or professional makeup salon might offer advice on using red accessories as an accent color for basic black or brown business suits..

As bloggers, we face the challenge of churning out creative writing over extended periods of time, and word “histories”offer fresh ways to approach our subject.

It’s worth searching your blog “closet” for skeletons!

 

 

 

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Why Brains and Blogs Love Lists

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Ten Blank business diagram bullet liet illustration“There’s little that our brains crave more than effortlessly acquired data,” Maria Konnikova remarks ruefully in the New Yorker magazine, by way of explaining the reasons people love lists. Lists spatially organize information, helping create an easy reading experience, Konnikova explains, “in which the mental heavy lifting of conceptualization, categorization, and analysis is completed well in advance of actual consumption.” The point of using numbered lists, I explain to blog content writers, is to demonstrate ways in which your product or service is different, and to provide valuable information that engages readers, helping them see you as a go-to guy or gal to solve their problem or fill their need. There’s apparently psychological science behind the fact that the numbered list technique has been a staple for s magazine covers for as long as I can remember. I always sensed lists and bullet points in general would make a good fit for blogs, and by most accounts, search engines “like” them as well. Jay Sondemers of Forbes defines high quality content as being:

  • easy to read
  • suitable for scanning and skimming

As far back as 1968, neuroscientist Walter Kintsch pointed out that lists facilitate both immediate understanding and later recall. Then in 2011, psychologists Messner and Wanke concluded that we feel better when the amount of conscious work we have to do in order to process information is reduced. “Within the context of a Web page or Facebook stream,” Konnikova says, a list is the easy pick, in part because it promises a definite ending. Back in 2013, I devoted a Say It For You blog post to the topic of numbered lists, noting seven different men’s magazine covers sporting list-based titles, including “50 Great Escapes” and “6 Longest New Drivers”. Just the other day, a single news stand at my local CVS pharmacy carried four magazines with numbers-based headline teasers: (Indianapolis Diner)       13 Gourmet meals (Mountain Escapes)       62 Glorious Getaway Ideas (Entertainment )             50 Song Movies, & TV Shows Guaranteed to Bring You Joy (Time)                           240 Reasons to Celebrate America “In the current media environment, a list is perfectly designed for our brains,” concludes Konnikova.  “We are drawn to it intuitively, we process it more efficiently, and we retain it with little effort.” And that’s just fine, she concludes, with the caveat that such a fast-food information diet is necessarily limited in content and nuance. Limitations notwithstanding – brains and blogs love lists!

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No Need for Those Serious, Sometimes Fatal Effects

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Successful business illustration concept

“In recent months, the FDA has been talking with drugmakers, medical groups and consumer groups about ways to make (pharmaceutical) ads clearer and drive home the most important safety risks,” reported the Chicago Tribune on August 11th. As an example, reporter John Russell talks about Humira, the best-selling drug in the world, made by AbbVie of North Chicago.  While the video portion of the ad portrays an attractive, self-confident woman leading a very healthy and active lifestyle and modeling “that dress”, 35 seconds of audio informs viewers of all the “serious, sometimes fatal events” that can result from taking the drug.

While I’ll leave it to the FDA and the drug industry trade association to carry on their discussions about the optimal length of side effect warnings, I look at the issue from the point of view of a marketing content writer.

Just why do these ads, with 50% of their verbal content so negative, even frightening, work so well (at least well enough to entice pharma companies to keep shelling out millions of dollars to get them in front of consumers’ eyeballs)?

Science teaches us that visual content reaches our brains in faster and in more understandable ways than textual (or auditory) information. 40% of nerve fibers to the brain are connected to the retina (and not to the ears), Felicia Golden of eyeQ.com reminds us. In the Humira commercial, the images of that attractive woman doing yoga or dressing for a date cancel out, in large part, the awful list of drug side effects. (In fact, the fact that the effect of the warnings does get “cancelled out” is precisely the cause of concern on the part of the FDA.)

The main message of a blog is delivered in words.  Where the visuals come in, whether in the form of “clip art”, photos, graphs, charts, or even videos, is to add interest and evoke emotion.  People absorb information better when it is served up in more than one form.

There’s a second phenomenon to explore for blog content writers, which appears to contradict what we noted in the power of the visual portion of the Humira ad. The “negativity bias” refers to our tendency to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.

My experience with reading and creating hundreds, even thousands of different blog posts over the years tells me that if we blog writers can go right to the heart of any possible customer fears or concerns by addressing negative assumption questions even before they’ve been asked, we have the potential to breed understanding and trust.

If there are misunderstandings or negative myths surrounding our products and services, let’s get those questions – including the ones the readers don’t even know how to ask – out on the table. In the final analysis, I’m convinced, positive messages pack more power than negative ones. Add a visual, and you’ve got a winning formula!

 

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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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Blogging to Bolster Your Point of View

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perspektive

“Indiana is growing – but we can’t neglect transit as a quality of life and economic development priority,” Michael Huber CEO of the Indy Chamber and Steve Sullivan, CEO of MIBOR Realtor Association agree. Both are in favor of raising taxes in Marion County to improve transit  services.  Huber and Sullivan use several tactics to strengthen their argument in favor of our investing in a transit system:

Offering details and explanations of the proposed plan:

  • New rapid-transit lines
  • All-day, high-frequency bus service
  • Weekend and crosstown service
  • Tax would be an additional 25 cents for every $100 of income, less than $10 a month for the average household
  • Who will benefit? Low-income households, senior citizens, people with disabilities, healthcare and hospitality workers who have evening and weekend hours, employers who want to attract employees

Statistics:

  • Marion Country gained 4000 residents in 2015
  • Indianapolis is the nation’s 14th largest city, but our bus fleet ranks 84th
  • Brookings Institute ranks Indy as 64th out of the 100 largest metros in transit services

Motivational statements:

  • “It’s a vote to bring new investment to struggling neighborhoods…”
  • “Better service connects people and jobs, and creates self-sufficiency.”
  • “Transit creates upward mobility and independence for those who rely on it most.”

“I just do not get it,” says Mitch Roob, Executive VP of Keramida Environmental, taking a stand on the other side of the debate. “How would a train-like bus benefit more than a very small portion of the community?  Is it equitable to charge someone for a service they likely never will use or for that matter even see?”
To bolster his argument against taxing Indy residents to fund a rapid transit system, Roob employs three tactics:

Statistics: 
Dallas invested more than $8.2 billion in a system that today carries only 4% of the area’s daily work commuters
Atlanta’s transit system ridership is down 15% from 2001

Turning opponents’ arguments against their case:
“Advocates suggest that “transit-oriented development” will spur development in the proximity of the transit corridor”. If so, says Roob, transit will add value to real estate, and the incremental property tax can pay for the service.

Emotional appeal – painting a picture:
“Trains and buses are not happy places.  Somber, hurried passengers cast their wary glance away from the strangers next to them whose personal space they have inadvertently but necessarily invaded.”

Which side makes a more powerful statement.  Truth is, both articles are impactful because both sides take a stand on the issue and then use various tactics to bolster their stance in the eyes of readers. Whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer blog writing, the blog content itself needs to use opinion to clarify what differentiates that business, that professional practice, or that organization from its peers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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