Blogging for Business With the Rule of Three

Years ago, at a National Speakers Association meeting, I remember being taught to create a “one-sentence speech”. 

The idea was that anyone who’d been in the audience should come away being able to summarize in one line what I’d said; otherwise, my speech would not have been well-constructed.  Today, as a professional ghost blogger and corporate blogging trainer in Indianapolis, I apply that same “one-sentence” rule to business blog writing.

A second step, useful in both speech preparation and blogging for business, is to apply the Rule of Three.  I first heard of the Rule of Three at Toastmasters, but came across it again today in a SpeakingResource blog post. With each blog post focused on one main idea, freelance blog writers would use three points to illustrate and to expand on that idea.

Daniel Janssen of Speaking Resources suggests one possible arrangement:
 
1. An anecdote
2. Some statistics or facts
3. A personal experience

Blog content writers for a professional practice, for example, might describe three benefits readers could derive by availing themselves of that practitioner’s services.

Or in blogging for a business that sells three different versions of a given product, each of the three paragraphs might describe which situation would be best matched with each version of the product, (A company that sells a hair product with different formulas for curly hair, frizzy, or fine hair, for example, might devote a paragraph to each type).

The same concept holds true for Sapeurs in the Congo, who “wear designer clothes and serve as ambassadors for moral conduct, proper etiquette and peace” and who have very strict fashion rules, including a dictate that the perfect ensemble may contain no more than three colors.
 

From fashion to speechifying to corporate blogging – stick to the One-Sentence Speech and the Rule of Three!