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For Every Myth, Be a Mythbuster

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Your business or practice may have nothing to do with joint pain, but in every field, certain “facts” are pretty twisted, as Kate Rockwood points out in “5 Myths About Arthritis”  Rockwood’s format of describing each myth, then offering “mythbuster” facts can be highly useful in content marketing on any subject.

Myth: If your joints hurt, it’s arthritis.
Mythbuster: Joint pain can be caused by infection, injury, or bursitis (swelling of the fluid filled cushioning in joints).

Myth: Exercise wears down joints.
Mythbuster: Low impact aerobic exercise doesn’t damage joints; staying active lessens pain.

Myth: Arthritis is an old person’s thing.
Mythbuster: Arthritis can be present at any age.

Discovered a mild case – or an epidemic – of counterproductive thinking when it comes to your industry or profession? Content marketing is the perfect medium for “mythbusting” to dispel that counterproductive thinking. The content offered in your posts gives you the power to clear the air, replacing factoids with facts, allowing readers to see their way to clear to making decisions.

Myth-busting is a tactic content writers can use to grab online visitors’ attention, we teach at Say It For You. Citing statistics to disprove popular myths gives business owners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise.

On the flip side, since one of the purposes of online marketing is to attract potential customers, it would be a tactical mistake to appear as if we’re out to prove visitors wrong. The position you want to take is that sometimes reality is counterintuitive, and that you’re here to help, not do a “gotcha!”. 

You’d think “flushable wipes are flushable”, right?  Simply Green busts that one: Most wipes, including those labeled “flushable,” are made from a blend of materials including polyesters, plastics, and other synthetics. These materials create a fabric-like texture that does not dissolve when flushed.”

You might think washing your hair every day causes hair loss. Natura busts that one – Washing simply gets rid of hair that’s already fallen out.

You might think that employees leave for more money. Alignmark says that’s rarely the cause.Employees would rather stay with their company and grow than go to a new organization and establish their credibility from scratch.

You might think that content marketing involves campaigns. Not true, Ann Gynn of the Content Marketing Institute points out.  Good content marketing is an initiative, not a quick-fix campaign; it should evolve, but never stop.

For every myth, be a mythbuster.

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More Farm-Grown Content Marketing Insights

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This week, my Say It For You blog posts were inspired by the 2024 Farmer’s Almanac…

“Harvesting” tidbits of information will always prove useful to content writers, and this issue of Farmer’s Almanac contains some wonderful examples of information that readers either never knew or which they’ve likely forgotten. In content marketing, these very tidbits can lend variety to blog posts while reinforcing information we want to convey to prospects.

The Farmer’s Almanac piece “Why the LEAP in Leap Year” is a perfect example: (Everyone knows that in a leap year, an extra day is tacked onto February. But what is it that “leaps”?) The calendar organizes each year into 365 days, but it actually takes our Earth 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds to orbit the sun. To correct this calendar “inaccuracy”, Julius Caesar added a day to the calendar every four years. (Back then, February was considered the last month of the year, so that’s where they added the day.) The adjustment meant that what was Monday on the first non-leap year would be Tuesday on the next year, and Wednesday on the year after that. It’s the day of the week that does the “leaping”!

While the “tidbit” about leap year would certainly add interest to a blog offered by any business or practice, what is needed to make it work is a tie-in or “trigger” relating that information to the business or practice being marketed to online readers. For example, air conditioning companies or appliance venders might use the Mental Floss Magazine story about how, when President Garfield was shot and lay dying in the White House, inventors rushed forward with devices they hoped would help, using a contraption to blow air over a box of ice into a series of tin pipes, eventually using a half-million pounds of ice.

At Say It For You, we remind content writers that, however fascinating the tidbit or story may be, in content marketing the information needs to make a difference to the target readers. Meanwhile, keep “harvesting” those valuable “Did You Know?” facts and anecdotes!

 

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Content Lessons From the Stanley Cup

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“Of all the major sports trophies, none can compare to the storied history and quirkiness of the Stanley Cup, Sean Hutchinson explained in a fascinating 2017 Mental Floss magazine article. Although hardly an avid hockey fan, I couldn’t help noting – and sharing with Say It For You readers – quite a number of valuable content writing lessons in Hutcheson’s anecdotes and observations….

A new Stanley Cup isn’t made every year.
Unlike other major league sports trophies, a new Stanley cup isn’t made every year.  Instead, after each championship, the names of the players, coaches, management, and staff of the winning team are added to the cup.

Unlike a personal diary written in a notebook, Artem Minaev explains in firstsiteguide, blog entries are displayed in reverse chronological order, with the newest post on top, pushing previous posts down the list.. Older posts remain on the site, accessible in the “archives”, providing valuable resources available to readers.

The cup is always changing.
Between 1927 and 1947, a new, more streamlined and vertical incarnation of the cup was used. with a cylindrical shape. But, by 1948, the trophy had become too tall to hold or put on display, so the shape was changed to the tiered version used today.

Unlike the more static web page content, blog posts allow new insights and information to be constantly added without losing the cumulative power of older posts. The content can  incorporate the company’s history while showing what is being done to adapt to modern trends.

The cups are not always perfect.
Many champion player and team names are misspelled on the Stanley Cup. The name of the 1980-’81 New York Islanders is misspelled as “Ilanders,” and the 1971-’72 Boston Bruins’ name is misspelled as “Bqstqn Bruins.” Most of the errors are left as they are—it would be too costly to fix the mistakes. However, after 1996 champion Colorado’s Adam Deadmarsh’s name was spelled “Deadmarch”, it was correct after he publicly stated he was heartbroken by the error.

One function of any marketing blog is updating and correcting information, including your own older entries. Mistaken data may have been inadvertently published on your business blog. There may have been updates in a company policy, or in one or more of the products. Or, there might have been a recent development in your industry that makes one or more of your former blog posts “incorrect”. At Say It For You, we recommend going back periodically to former blog posts and insert corrections, perhaps in bold type.  That way, when online searchers find that “old” post, they can see that the company is keeping its readers current. Failed links and misspellings can be fixed as well.

Watch for more Stanley Cup content lessons in Thursday’s Say It For You post!

 

 

 

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Blogging to Show How the Land is Really Shaped

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“Spook hills”, such as the one in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada have become tourist spots, because in those locations, objects appear to move uphill on a slightly downward road. Paranormal believers have their own theories about this, and scientists once assumed a magnetic anomaly was at play. However, advanced physics now shows that “magnetic hills” are nothing more than optical illusions due to “visual anchoring of the sloping surface.” What actually occurs, we know understand, is that if the horizon is either not seen or not level, people’s eyes are fooled by objects they expect to be vertical but aren’t.

Debunking myths requires an understanding of how misinformation works, according to theconversation.com. “First and foremost, you need to emphasize the key facts you wish to communicate rather than the myth. Otherwise, you risk making people more familiar with the myth than with the correct facts.” Next, you need to replace the myth with an alternative narrative, “fighting sticky ideas with stickier ideas.”

Interesting. As far back as 2009, in Say It For You’s second year of creating marketing blogs for businesses and professional practices, I understood that while one of the functions of a marketing blog is debunking myths in that abound in every profession or industry, we needed to “give the camel a coat”. I’d read in Zoo Vet, of all places, that camels build up resentment towards their human handlers, who can calm the animals by handing over their own coat to the beast to jump on and tear to pieces.

From that article on camel behavior, I learned a valuable metaphoric lesson about blog content writing – readers don’t like to be “made wrong”. As content writers, then, we need to “throw them a coat” in the form of intriguing, little-known information about the company’s products and services, about the company founders, or about the industry or profession. While addressing misinformation shines light on the practice or business owner’’ special expertise, the technique must be used with caution, so that readers feel smarter, not “shown up”.

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Blogging to Bust Myths and Build Trust

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mythbusting

“Was the oldest woman a fraud?” asks Smithsonian.com, referring to French socialite Jeanne Calment, who appeared to be making history when she died in 1997 at the age of 122. (Later investigation revealed that Jeanne had actually died at the age of 59 in 1934. Her daughter had actually assumed Jeanne’s identity, later dying at the age of 99.) Valery Novoselov, assistant professor of the Department of Gerontology and Geriatrics of RUDN University, known for studying medical documents to investigate the deaths of famous Russians, was actually the mythbuster, revealing that the reason for the hoax had been to avoid the payment of inheritance taxes on Jeanne’s estate.

One of the bigger myths about trust, says Charles Green in trustedadvisor.com, is that trust takes a long time to create, but only a moment to destroy. That in itself is a dangerous myth, Green contends. Human emotions take roughly as long to get over as they take to develop in the first place. Trust formed quickly, Green agrees, can be lost quickly; trust formed at a shallow level can be lost at the same level.  But trust formed deeply, or over time, takes deeper violations, or a longer time, to be lost. Thinking of trust as something you can lose in a minute makes you cautious and unlikely to take risks. But the absence of risk is what starves trust, is the point Charles Green wants to make. There simply is no trust without risk – that’s why they call it trust.

Business blog posts are actually the perfect medium for “mythbusting”, I teach at Say It For You. Blog content writing has the power to clear the air, replacing factoids with facts, allowing readers to see their way clear to making decisions. Offering little-known explanations that explode common myths is a good way to engage readers’ interest. Done right, blogging about myths related to our own products, services, and company history can provide value-packed “verdicts” on each false claim or misunderstanding. Citing statistics that disprove popular myths gives business owners and practitioners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise.

There’s a proverbial fly in the ointment here, though. People don’t really like being proven wrong. And, since one of the purposes of any marketing blog is to attract potential customers to the business’ website, it would be a tactical mistake for blog writers to prove those online visitors wrong.  The skill lies in engaging interest, but not in “Gotcha! – I’m-the-expert-and-you’re-not” fashion. (Anyone might reasonably have come to the conclusion you did, should be the message, without knowing the facts I’ve researched and which am providing here.)

Many misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves in the natural order of business, in the form of questions and comments from readers and customers. Shining the light of day on that misinformation is one function of blogging, and, provided your blog post is well written, perhaps with a bit of tongue in cheek, it can offer enlightenment in a way that engages searchers and keeps them coming back.

The goal – blog to bust myths while building trust!

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