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Your Blog Comes With Bragging Rights

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Yeah, it’s more than OK to brag on yourself in your blog. Remember, online visitors searching for a product or a service typically have no idea what it takes to do what you do and how much effort you put into acquiring the expertise you’re going to use to their benefit.

Hold on a moment – What I am not telling content writers to do is to “wave their credentials” around. What I do think needs to come across loud and clear in business blog writing is what preparation and effort it takes – on your part and on the part of your employees – to be able to deliver the expert advice, service, and products  customers can expect from you.

As a business owner in today’s click-it-yourself, do-it-yourself or hire-a-robot world, your content needs to demonstrate to online searchers that, in your field, you are smarter than Google Maps, or eHow, or Wikipedia. (A recent Digital Trends article criticized ChatGPT, saying that the chatbot has “limited knowledge of world events after 2021, and is prone to filling in replies with incorrect data if there is not enough information available on a subject.”)

Understanding your target market is different from just making assumptions about it. Instead, it’s about really trying to figure out its needs and motivations, squareup.com observes. “You should also consider who your customers are as people. What do they value? What is their lifestyle?”

Where “bragging rights” enter into the equation, we’ve learned at Say It For You, is that, in order for you to connect with those customers, the marketing content must make clear that you are part of their community and that therefore you share their concerns and needs.

Adboomadvertising.com agrees. “Don’t be modest, BRAG!! Bragging is vital for sales survival, so “brag about the results, and the value you were able to give clients who trusted you to handle their business.” Suggested tactics include:

  • case studies
  • testimonials
  • press clippings
  • awards and honors

In addition to all those “third-party” tactics, though, your blog content should provide readers with real insight into “what it took” and what keeps you and the people at your company or professional practice stay motivated to continue learning and serving. “It’s not bragging if it’s true,” says the rdwgroup. “Be confident but not conceited. Flaunt your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses.”

So, yeah, it’s more than OK to brag on yourself in your blog!

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It’s Your Rant, But It’s All About Them

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A “rant”, (venting a complaint in an angry, loud voice), is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a “a high-flown, extravagant, or bombastic speech or utterance, a piece of turgid declamation, a tirade.” While oral tirades are still with us, Daniel Seidel writes in Slate, the last decade or so has seen more and more written rants, “a form that has blossomed on the Web.” A good rant, Seidel thinks, expresses a real passion, often one enflamed by a feeling of powerlessness. Still, many rants are humorous, with a tongue-in-cheek tone. Whatever the tone of aa particular rant, he adds, there is neither the expectation nor the desire for a response. “It would be simplistic to think of blogging as a kind of sublimated ranting,” Seidel remarks, “but blogs do form a part of our cacophonous culture.”

Not all blog posts are rants, of course. There are, however, three “rant”- like content piece types that our writers at Say It For You have found useful:

  1. An “if only” best business practice that you wish everyone with whom you do business would adopt. The content makes the point that doing things in a certain way would make the lives of both the provider and of the customer so-o-o much easier and business dealings so much more efficient!
  2. A device, program, or source of information that the owner wants t make sure everyone knows about, something that would make doing business s much smoother and more efficient
  3. A mistake that you see others making over and over that you believe is a big barrier to their success.

(To be most effective, even if a rant post is focused on a single idea, the content should be broken down or “chunked” into bullet points or numbered steps to make the concept easy to remember, as demonstrated above.)

Needless to say, rant blog posts can elicit strong reactions on the part of readers (either because you’ve touched a nerve (what you’re complaining about may be their pet peeve, as well), or because they totally disagree and want to prove you wrong. Worse, your rant risks rubbing readers the wrong way, making them feel as if they are incompetent or uninformed.  People generally don’t like to have their assertions and assumptions challenged, even when they come to your blog seeking information on what you sell, what you do, and what you know about!

If you’re moved to include a rant or two in your content marketing, the cardinal rule to remember is that it’s all about the readers, not about you. How will they experience your rant?

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Reasons to Write a 300-Word Business Blog Post

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Fascinated by the Writer’s Yearbook 2023 article “10 Reasons to Write a 100-Word Story”, I began thinking of all the discussions around the questions of the optimal length for blog posts. Ran Walker, explaining while he’s stopped writing novels, said “I could no longer bring myself to write stories where I had to expand them beyond what I felt their natural lengths were.” Writing shorter stories forces you to refocus and choose only what’s important, Walker says. Word count matters, but it’s about condensing, not expanding, changing for the better the way you pace your story and what you choose to show the reader. Using just 100 words allows you to “create a resonance in a single moment.” Following is my (under-300-word) opinion post:

How long should your blog posts be? asks Wall Street Journal’s Joe Bunting. When it comes to our writing, we want more, he admits, not less: more readers, more comments, more backlinks, and more traffic. He’s experimented with different lengths, Bunting says, finding that each has advantages. Shorter posts tend to garner more comments, while longer posts get shared more widely. Medium-form posts are good for generating discussion. Very long, in-depth, heavily researched posts (2,400+ words long generate more Google traffic, he notes.

“Though content must be relevant, it might differ in types, mediums, formats, and style in order to arouse interest or evoke debate…but to be read at all, blog posts must always deliver upon their promise,” firstsiteguide.com cautions. “Before blogs became political in the early 2000s, they were merely means to make private thoughts and opinions public. The personal touch, however, remains their vital characteristic to date.”

Opinions have always differed on the optimal size for a blog post. Having composed blog posts (as both a Say It For You ghost writer and under my own name) numbering well into the tens of thousands, I’m still finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!” I agree with Ran Walker that purposely keeping content short forces us to choose only those elements that drive home the single point that is the focus of that one post. Research on “duration neglect” reveals that when people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length, rating an experience based on the peak (the best or worst moment) and the ending. Writing shorter posts allows me to “create a resonance” around a single concept.

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Starting the Year with Same-New, Same-New Blog Posts

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One concern I hear a lot from business owners or professional practitioners is that sooner or later, they’ll have depleted their supply of ideas for blog posts. “What else is left to say?” is the common thread in the questions I’m so often asked. Well, won’t we? (Run out of new ideas, that is.) But, wait! Isn’t that precisely what business blogging is, continually approaching the same core topics from different angles?

Smart blog marketers know there are many subsets of every target market group; not every message will work for every person, and online searchers need to know we’re thinking of them as individuals.

“If you’ve told the story before, explain why you’re repeating it now,” Elizabeth Bernstein advises in the Life & Arts section of the Wall Street Journal. There may not be the need to repeat stories, but there is a need to be alert for anecdotes about customers, employees, or friends who are doing interesting things or overcoming obstacles. Real-people stories of you, your people, and the people you serve are always a good idea.

Just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony, business blog posts are centered around key themes. As you continue to write about your industry, your products, and your services, you’ll naturally find yourself repeating some key ideas, adding more detail, opinion, and story around each.

In writing for business, as blog content writers soon learn, the variety comes from the e.g.s and the i.e.s, meaning all the details you fill in around these central “leitmotifs” . Different examples of ways the company’s products can be helpful, along with examples of how the company helped solved various problems.  It’s these stories and examples that lend variety to the blog, even though all the anecdotes reinforce the same few core ideas.

Start your year with “same-new” blog posts!

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The More We Blog, The More We Learn

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The secret of good writing, according to Richard Harding Davis, is to say an old thing in a new way or a new thing in an old way. For us blog content writers, “saying old things in a new way” means that each time we’re preparing to compose content for a blog, rather than asking ourselves whether we’ve already covered that material and how long ago, we ought to plan content around key themes. That way, we can be using the same theme while filling in new details and illustrations. This precise thing is a concern, I’ve found over the year, of many business owners and professional practitioners. Even if they understand the marketing value of the blog, their concern is that, sooner or later, they (or their writer) will run out of things to say. I need to explain that it’s more than OK to repeat themes already covered in former posts. The trick is adding a layer of new information or a new insight each time.

When saying new things in an old way, conversely, introducing new information or suggesting a new attitude towards an issue, behavioral science tells us to create a perspective of “frame”, presenting new data in a way that relates to the familiar. Perhaps some information you’d put in a blog post months or even years ago isn’t true any longer (or at least isn’t the best information now available in your industry or profession). Maybe the rules have changed, or perhaps there’s now a solution that didn’t even exist at the time the original content was written.

“Links – you need ‘em,” writes Amy Lupold Bair in Blogging for Dummies. On a blog, the author explains, links are part of the resource you are providing for readers.  Collecting links around a topic or theme helps to inform or entertain your blog’s readers. If you’re not only providing good content yourself, but also expanding on that content by using links, she adds, “you’re doing your readers a service they won’t forget.”

Thing is, as long as I keep learning, I stay excited and readers can sense that in my blog. Being – and staying – a lifelomg learner means “reading around” – reading other people’s blogs and articles, plus “listening around” paying attention to everything from broadcasts to casual conversations,

The more we keep learning, the better we blog, and the more we blog, the more we learn.

 

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