Blogging To The Rule of Three

Blogging is modern marketing at its best, but bloggers can take advantage of an ancient method of solving proportions called the Rule of Three. 

Basically, the Rule of Three is used when you know three numbers and are out to find a fourth.  Remember those high school algebra problems we used to have to solve:

If ten men can dig a trench in four days, how long will it take seven men to dig a similar trench?

For readers for whom high school is but a distant memory, the process goes like this:

A:C = D:X

A (the ten men) is to C (the four days) as D (the seven men) is to X (the unknown number of days)

So why am I talking about the Rule of Three in my Say It For You blog about blogging?  Since a core purpose of business blogging is to engage readers, you as the business owner want online visitors to your blog to mentally put themselves in the D slot.  In other words, as you’re describing how your product or service solved clients’ problems, the reaction you’d like to elicit in blog readers is sighs of relief that they’ve found you – you can now solve their problems!

• If, with the AirFlow Breeze, homeowners were able to set the thermostat two degrees higher in summer and still enjoy cool rooms while saving money, I can save even more money!
  
• If Classic Cleaners was able to restore a fifty-year old senior skirt, restoring MY twenty-year old dress should be simple!
  
• If that executive who dripped sweat out of fear of public speaking could learn to make presentations to the media, Jean Palmer-Heck can help me overcome my fear of speaking!

In other words, while your blog might offer the story of one or two favorable outcomes of using your product or service, readers will realize you understand their problems and are used to dealing with their issues.  The readers will have put themselves in the D slot! And, because by their very nature, blogs are constantly adding new content, the likelihood of readers associating their situation with the problems and solutions described in your blog posts will be multiplied by the Power of Three!