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Sharpening Your Content Creation Saw

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“Imagine if you learned 1% more today. That doesn’t seem like very much, right? Now, imagine you learned 1% more every day, 365 days a year. You would have increased your knowledge 365%,” estate planning attorney Brian Eagle wrote in honor of the March 2nd Read Across America Day, emphasizing that reading can keep your mind sharp and creative..

At Say It For You, we couldn’t agree more. Reasons our content writers make “reading around” such an important part of our daily routine include:

  • We need to keep up with what others are saying on the topic we’re handling. What’s in the news? What problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to the industries/professions of our clients?
  • We need a constant flow of ideas, and those ideas can come from unexpected sources.
  • We improve our own writing skills by reading books and articles about good writing.
  • By reading, we uncover little-known facts that we can use to explain our clients’ products, services, and “corporate culture”.
  • Since we’re in the business of selling and marketing, books and articles on those topics are interesting to us and important to our work.

Not only does “reading around” itself sharpen our skills and broaden our horizons, we often both collate and “curate” others’ material for the benefit of our own readers.

Collating is one important way in which content marketers can bring value to readers. Using content from our own former blog posts, newsletters, or even emails, then adding material from other people’s blogs and articles, from magazine content, or from books, we “collate”, or sort, that material into new categories, summarizing the main ideas we think our clients’ readers will find useful. When we curate content, on the other hand, we are giving credit to the authors of an article or post, but then adding our own “take” on that topic.

The term “sharpen the saw”, spica.com explains, comes from a story about two foresters. Competing to see who could cut down trees faster. While the younger man kept hard at work, the older of the two took a break during which he sharpened his saw. Although he had worked less time, he ended up winning the contest.

For us content marketers at Say It For You, reading around is our way of sharpening our saws!

 

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Using “Did-You-Knows” to Suggest “Don’t-You-Wants?”

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Did you know that a) Asia is bigger than the moon? b) Alaska is the westernmost, easternmost, and northernmost state in the U.S.? c) Maine is the closest state to Africa? These are just three of the “facts that will change how you look at the world“.

As a blog content writer, I find seemingly “useless” tidbits of information extraordinarily useful for capturing readers’ interest, adding variety and fun. But much more than that, I teach at Say It For You, tidbits can be used to: 1. describe your way of doing business 2. clarify the way one of your products works 3.explain why a service you provide is particularly effective in solving a problem 4. Debunk myths about your business or profession.

For all these reasons, in corporate blogging training sessions, I often recommend including interesting tidbits on topics related to your business (or, if you’re a freelance blog content writer, related to the client’s business). If you can provide information most readers wouldn’t be likely to know, so much the better, because that information helps engage online readers’ interest.

The big caveat, however, when using tidbits and unusual facts is that the information has to be tied to the readers’ problem or need. Why does the business owner or practitioner care about the information? Why will the info potentially make a difference to readers? The secret is creating a clear thought path from the fascinating facts to the benefits online readers stand to gain.

For example, a travel agency blog might use the fact that Maine is the state closest to Africa to promote a tour of Quoddy Head Light, a quaint Maine lighthouse located at the easternmost point of the United States.

A travel agency might also spark interest in travel to Asia using that tidbit about the continent being bigger than the moon. But there could be marketing power in that fact for other enterprises as well. Because the brain perceives the moon as being farther away when it is high in the sky and closer when it is near the horizon, appearing larger when viewed through trees or buildings, Krisztian Komandi blogs in medium.com about the influence of optical illusions on business decisions. A fashion blog can explain how certain fabric cuts make the waist appear more chiseled.

A little-known fact can become the jumping-off point for blog marketing content.

 

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You Don’t Have To Be a Blog Content Writer to Write

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“A writer writes, always.,” says the grand-prize winner of the Writer’s 500-word essay contest Michelle Y. Green. She doesn’t have to be at her keyboard or scribbling in a journal to write, she explains, because simply being curious and paying attention to details are any writer’s greatest tools.

In fact, several of Michelle Green’s pieces of advice for those new to writing are a perfect fit for blog content writers.

  • Many writers add one sentence, then subtract two or three words. Instead, just let the words flow.
    Blog content writing should be conversational and informal. Are second drafts even needed? Yes, but later, after you’ve let the thoughts flow, we tell content writers at Say It For You. Even more important than checking for spelling and grammar errors, though, is visualizing your target readers, and making sure your blog post is addressed to them, in their language, and that you’ve addressed their concerns.
  • Read what others are writing.
    Reading, bookmarking, clipping – and even just noticing – new trends and information relating to your business field goes a long way towards keeping the blog “quiver” stocked with content ideas. Blog marketing involves knowing what’s being said by competitors, what’s trending, what aspects of your field are being discussed..
  • Enjoy research.
    To deliver quality writing of any kind, you’ve got to keep educating yourself, reading everything you can get your hands on, citing sources by paraphrasing and hyperlinking back to the page where the information originated. You then “translate” that information by putting it into context of your primary topic.
  • Notice details.
    Successful blog content writing is all about the details. Websites provide basic information about a company’s products or a professional’s services, but the blog content is there to attach a “face” and lend a “voice” to that information by filling in the finer details about the people behind the business and the choices they’ve made.   .

You don’t have to be a blog content writer to write – just feed your own natural curiosity – and take notes!

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Elevate Your Word Game in Blogging for Business

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“I learned the hard way that my marriage was on the edge of collapse – again” and “The Bitter Truths I learned About My Eating Disorder – After Being Pregnant” are both decent titles for a pitch, says Estelle Erasmus, who, in Writer’s Digest this month, teaches writers tactics for capturing the attention of an editor. (The expression “the bitter truths” is quite cliché, Erasmus noted, but having an eating disorder rear its head during pregnancy is different enough to catch attention. She suggested changing the title to “Getting Pregnant Spiraled Me Into an Eating Disorder”.)

Tips offered by Erasmus that are remarkably relevant for business blog content creators include:

Clarity is key, more important than beautiful language.
Titles represent crucial elements in capturing the interest of both search engines and online searchers. But, aside from Search Engine Optimization considerations, the title of a blog post constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors that if they choose to click on the title, it will lead them to a blog post with information on the topic named in that title.

Find the emotional implication behind what you’re writing about. There has to be a transformation that takes place, one to which readers can relate.
In blog marketing, those who make the most emotionally persuasive argument win. The goal is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message.

Active verbs work best, helping to paint a picture for readers.
The very purpose of the blog content is to showcase the accomplishments of the business and products and services it brings to customers. That’s why using the active voice makes so much sense in corporate blog writing.

Focus on a small moment in time, not a a broad all-encompassing saga.
At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the Power of One, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience.

Elevate your word game, learning to think in sound bites by watching TV with the captions on.
Blogs, unlike brochures, client newsletters, online magazines, and websites, are short and concise, more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces.  That’s what makes it so feasible to use blogs to achieve the frequency that’s needed to win online search engine rankings.

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Variety is the Spice of Blogging

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“Variety is the spice of life, and of reading,” Diana Pho writes in Writer’s Yearbook 2023. “Watch how you balance dialogue, narration, and exposition on the page….Break up your sentence structure to keep your reader’s attention,” the fiction editor advises. “Break up your sentence structure to keep your readers’ attention.” While you’re at it, a second Writers Digest advisor, Steve Almond, suggests, “Why don’t you consider a new POV (point of view)?”

In business blogging, it’s generally a good rule to keep sentences short. Short sentences have power, we teach at Say It For You, and, particularly in titles, can more easily be shared on social media sites. However, not every sentence should be kept, and long sentences can be woven in with shorter ones. Then, once in a while, it’s a good idea to add an extremely short statement to add “punch” to the post. What’s the definition of a long sentence? According to thejohnfox.com, any sentence of more than 100 words is “almost guaranteed to be complex, complicated, and enormous”.

“The purpose of paragraphs is to break up an article into its logical divisions so that readers can easily grasp the thought,” explains freelancewriting.com. Each paragraph contains a single phase of the subject. Paragraphs in journalistic writing are usually shorter than in other kinds of writing. While varying the paragraph size in each post is a good idea, long paragraphs can be perceived as off-putting “wall of text”. “Start with a sentence that makes the reader ask a question, Wayne Schmidt suggests. (People hate unanswered questions.) It doesn’t have to be a literal question, just something that piques the reader’s curiosity.”

In blog marketing, variety is important not only in terms of sentence and paragraph length, but also in terms of the layout of the post itself. Different Layouts, writing coach Tony Rossiter explains, fulfill different purposes, including saving space, attraction attention, and raising questions. When it comes to business blogging, the placement of Calls to Action needs to be varied. Variations in the way the content itself is presented include beginning with the conclusion, then using the remainder of the blog post to prove the validity of that assertion. Bolding and bullet points add variety to the visual; impression.

Variety is the spice of blogging!

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