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In Blogging – the Devil is in the Details

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“Whether you’re measuring engagement in terms of blog comments, social media interaction, or a combination of metrics,” James Parson opines in contentpowered.com, “ there’s one universal constant. You want more engagement.”

Engagement facts, Parson thinks, are some of the most interesting, because analytics reveal that details as seemingly insignificant as the placement of a punctuation mark can make a big difference.

“Devilish details” include these:

  • Including a hyphen or a colon in the middle of a blog post title can increase search engine click-through by as much as 9%. (Notice what I did in the title of this post?)
  • 54% of blog posts that rank well include an image or video.
  • Best time of week to bring a blog post “live”? Tuesdays and Wednesdays (What day is it today, again?). What time? 9:30-10AM Eastern.
  • “Listicles” beginning with an odd number outperform lists beginning with an even number by 20% (Who knew?)
  • Blog headlines with only 8 words do better than those with a different word count. (Words in my title – count them!).

Entertaining and, to an extent, enlightening info, to be sure. Can’t help thinking about what Neil Patel had to say about “over-optimizing” a website or blog, which is “Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.”

Main thing is, as we teach at Say It For You, content is meant to be written for people. Sure, you want good ranking so more people see your blog link, but first and foremost, you’re writing blog content to solve problems and appeal to customers, clients, and prospects. So, yes to the listicles, the short headlines, and the images, and certainly yes to providing “snippets” to give web searchers snippets a preview of your content.

With those “devilish” details in mind, still it pays to never lose sight of the essence of content marketing: creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content.

 

 

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Contrarian Content: Go Ahead – Blog to Differ

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contrarian blogging

Whatever the conventional wisdom is, Brute Squad coach Ariel Jackson begs to differ. “In order to progress, we need to stop automatically accepting conventional wisdom as dogma and train ourselves to explore nuances and identify new approaches,” Jackson says.

There’s something very appealing and curiosity-stimulating about contrarian content, and, whether it’s business-to-business blog writing or business to consumer writing, being a contrarian has two effects:

  1. making readers sit up and take notice (This is not going to be same-old, same-old, readers realize.) 
  2. clarifying what differentiates your business or professional practice from its peers. (Again, why should we choose you if you’re serving up the same product and service as everyone else?)

On the issues relating to your field, what words should follow “I beg to differ”? When online readers find your blog, they want to know “Who lives here?” To be perceived as not only a provider, but an influencer, you need to formulate – and clearly state – your opinions!

Neen James explains the subtlety well in Speaker Magazine.  A Subject Matter Expert or SME, she explains, knows something, whereas a thought leader is known for something. Thought leaders know how to present ideas in ways that appeal to a marketplace craving direction and wanting solutions to problems. Those ideas, those opinions, often go against conventional wisdom, James adds.

“I hope I change some minds along the way, and I hope my mind is changed here or there,” Ariel Jackson says in his introductory blog posts. “What if I start my blog, writing strong opinion pieces and then later change my mind about the right way to do things?” is a fear one new blog content writing client expressed.

The way I answer that question is this: People are going to want to do business with someone who has something to say about the way they choose to operate within their world, offering strong recommendations and opinions in their blog.  People are going to LOVE doing business with a real person, someone who’s continuing to think about improving the way they operate and how to incorporate new knowledge and new developments..

Blog content writing is an absolutely wonderful way to express what you think and why you do things the way you do. It’s also the ideal vehicle to ride as you change and develop in your thinking as a business leader.  Go ahead – beg to differ (including with your own earlier ideas!).

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