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Tidbits Add Interest and Strengthen Your Slant

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In this week’s Say It For You blog, I am focusing on fascinating knowledge tidbits from The Book of Bizarre Truths.  Including  interesting snippets of knowledge in blog content not only serves as an attention getter,  but can actually strengthen your “slant” on the topic your want to discuss with your readers.

In fact, I have a strong opinion about “slant”. When blogging for business reveals your unique philosophy, your “way of being” within your field, potential customers and clients feel they know who you are, not merely what you do, and they are far more likely to want to be associated with you. For that very reason, one important facet of my job as a professional ghost blogger is to “interview” business owner and professional practitioner clients, eliciting each one’s very individualized thoughts. But even if the format of a blog post isn’t interview-style question-answer, when we tell the story of a business or a practice to consumers, we “frame” that story a certain way.

That’s a good thing, because when online readers find a blog, one question they need answered is “Who lives here?” Providing information about products and services may be the popular way to write corporate blog posts, but in terms of achieving Influencer status – it takes opinion, we’ve learned at Say It For You. Darren Rowse of problogger.com agrees: “There are many factors that set great bloggers apart from the rest, but one that I’ve seen continually cropping up over the last few years is that they often have and are not afraid to express strong opinions,”

One big advantage of including information tidbits is that they “soften” the effect of the strong opinions business owner or practitioner might express in the blog, while at the same time helping to explain the reasoning behind the “slant”. For example, this tidbit about Henry J. Heinz could be perfect for several kinds of blogs: As Heinz was riding an elevated train in New York back in 1896, he noticed an advertisement for a shoe store offering 21 different styles of shoes. Captivated by that ad quantifying the product offering, Heinz decided on the now-famous “57 varieties” motto.  Any type of business  might  to refer to Heinz 57 in order to tout its own wide variety of products or services.  On the opposite side, a specialty boutique, a private school, or a country club might use this tidbit in a blog, suggesting the contrasting exclusivity of its offerings and its clientele.

Incorporating tidbits in content marketing can add interest while strengthening your slant!

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Using the Bizarre to make Things Plain

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Did you know? The first step on the moon by astronaut Neil Armstrong was with his left foot, The Book of Bizarre Truths reveals.
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In corporate blogging training sessions, I often recommend including interesting tidbits of information on topics related to your business (or, if you’re a freelance blog content writer, tidbits related to the client’s business). The tidbit not only serves as an attention grabber, but can be used to explain the way a product or service works. The left-foot item, for example, might be used in a podiatrist’s blog.  Psychology Today reports that, while the majority of professional soccer players are right-footed, those able to play equally well with both feet earned a substantial salary premium. Speaking of salary, the word comes from the word salt, which ancient Roman soldiers received as part of their pay. Career coaches might use that detail in their blog posts (in fact, the Zip recruiter blog does just that).

Celery was once considered a trendy, high-fashion food, served in its own vase and placed in the center of the table, Bizarre Truths tells us, and EatingWell.com tells readers how to make a “centerpiece you can eat”. Restaurants might use that tidbit in their blog, as might cooking schools. The OpenTable restaurant delivery company helps readers “elevate the ambiance” in setting the dining table. Dieticians can use the tidbit to emphasize the antioxidants and fiber contained in celery, and the fact that celery contains apigenin, which is an anti-inflammatory.

The shoe has been a symbol of fertility, Bizarre Truths tells readers and, in some Eskimo cultures, women wore shoes around their necks in the hope of getting pregnant. This tidbit might be featured not only in a shoe company blog, but even on the website of a fertility clinic! “Fingernails grow faster on your dominant hand” is a natural for a manicure salon blog, but could easily be adapted for a preschool discussing the importance of hand dominance in developing fine motor skills in children.

Bamboo is the world’s tallest grass, growing as much as 34 inches in a day. Not only might this tidbit prove useful in a blog promoting a lawncare service, it might be used by a company installing flooring or one promoting the advantages of bamboo hand towels or offering tips for cooking with bamboo shoots.

In blogging for business, you can often use bizarre tidbits to capture interest and make things plain!

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In Blogging, Use Numbered Lists; Don’t Forget the Subscript

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A subscript is a character that is set slightly below the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. The National Geographic’ magazine issue “100 Places That will Change Your Life” is a great example of the way content writers can use subscripts in the titles of blog posts..

Under the name of each place the National Geographic authors recommend you visit, they’ve described a specific experience you can enjoy:

  • In Qutu, China, you can learn Shaolin kug fu, the martial art developed by monks in the 15th century.
  • In Oaxaca, Mexico, you can learn to prepare tamales using chocolate, grasshoppers, and corn fungus.
  • In Jamaica, make sure to meet the Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who fought for freedom from the British.
  • At Ellis Island, you can discover parts of your own family history.
  • In Vietnam, you can wander the spice forests.
  • In Bali, Indonesia, look for stunning penjor, bamboo poles adorned with frit, flowers, ad coconut leaves that display Hindu offerings during the festival of Galungan.

The way this wonderful magazine issue is set out serves as a reminder of several blog writing tactics we emphasize at Say it For You:

  1. Present information in numbered lists – Lists spatially organize information, helping create an easy reading experience, working well for scanning and skimming online searchers.
  2. Use “huh-oh” titles – “Huh?s” arouse curiosity; the “ohs” make clear what the article is about and use the keyword phrases.
  3. Offer specific advice and tips, thereby demonstrating that we understand our target readers’ needs.
  4. Include startling statistics – “Only an estimated one in 1,000 to 10,000 survives to adulthood” (describing why readers might be interested in rescuing sea turtles in Costa Rica). Opening your post with a startling statistic can be a way to grab visitors’ attention. If there’s some false impression people seem to have relating to your industry, or to a product or service you provide, statistics can serve as myth-busters.

In blogging, use numbered lists, and don’t forget the subscripts!

 

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Do-You-Know and Can-You-Guess Blog Marketing

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“Do You Know Who Invented These Life-Saving Vaccines?” the editors of Mental Floss Magazine ask readers. (Who created the rabies vaccine?) “How Much Do You Know About Black Cats?” (Are there more male than female black cats?) “How Much Do You Know About Jeopardy? (How many clues are written for each session?)”Can You Guess the Gadgets Star Trek Invented?” (TiVo was not.) (“Can You Define These Colonial-Era Slang Words and Phrases?” (What does it mean to describe something as macaroni?)

“Interactive content creates a two-way dialogue between two parties, seopresser.com explains. Quizzes grow your list in several ways, Chelsea of herpaperroute.com adds, because:

  1. In order for them to see their results, they must sign up to your list.
  2. Readers will be segmented depending on what answers they click on.

At Say It For You, we’ve found, even if readers are not required to sign up for your list, quizzes are a very good strategy in blog marketing. Blog readers tend to be curious creatures and “self-tests” tend to engage and help readers relate in a more personal way to information presented in a blog.

Another aspect of quizzes is that they offer variety. Since one of the biggest challenges in blogging for business over long periods of time is keeping the content fresh, quizzes help vary the menu.

To me as a content writer, there are three even more important aspects to quizzes in blog posts:

  1. People are looking to their advisors for more than just information; they need perspective. In other words, quiz questions and answers can to offer a different perspective on fact sets readers have forgotten.
  2. When readers strain to remember something and then find the answer, they tend to repeat that fact set in their conversations with others.
  3. Our curiosity is most intense when we’re testing our own knowledge, making tests, games, and quizzes hard to resist.

All in all, “Do-You-Know?” and “Can-You-Guess?” are great tactics for blog marketing.

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In Sustained Blog Marketing, Look for the Overlap

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James Marshall Reilly likes to think of the speaking industry as falling into a number of different buckets, including:

  • distinguished celebrity
  • leadership
  • health
  • the economy
  • gender
  • science
  • arts
  • education
  • inspiration
  • authors
  • technology
  • spirituality
  • futurism
  • sports

The key, Reilly tells speakers looking for engagements, is to start thinking about where your topic will fit, understanding that there will likely be overlap.

At Say It For You, we think overlap is an enormous advantage in blog marketing.

1. Years ago, I remember reading a quote from career coach Nancy Ancowitz. “Effective self-promoting,” she taught, “is finding the overlap between what you have and what your audience wants.” Of course, blogging is the essence of self-promotion, allowing business owners and professional practitioners to find the overlap between what they do and what searchers want.

2. Another way to understand and use overlap in blog marketing has to do with keeping on keeping on. Blogging is a perfect example of a long-term strategy that is too often abandoned due to short-term discouragement. It’s the week-after-week, month-after-month work of creating new, relevant, interesting, and results-producing blog posts that gets many down. Just as Reilly explains to speakers that they can “tweak” their material so that their content is tied to some of the popular topics audiences are interested in hearing about, blog content writers can use precisely the same strategy.

You’re creating content to market bedroom furniture. You can relate that topic to:

  • health – lighting, clean-ability, and air quality in a bedroom
  • arts – appropriate artwork to display in the bedroom
  • technology – thread counts in bed linen
  • science – antimicrobial treatment of linens
  • gender – studies proving that men and women react differently to smell, sound, and color
  • celebrities – Elton John photographed amidst fur blankets in his bedroom on a private plane

For sustained blog marketing, look for the overlap!

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