Business Bloggers Can Take a Lesson From Seventh Grade Teachers

The teachers’ guidebook THINK LITERACY: Cross-Curricular Approaches suggests that 7th and 8th grader should be taught to look for “signal words” to get information about the meaning of the text.  Signal words give valuable clues about:

• Time
• Location
• Sequence
• Importance
• Comparison
• Contrast

Although the majority of readers of SEO marketing blogs don’t tend to be junior high students, as a corporate blogging trainer, I realized that online readers need “signposts” to help them get the most meaning out of our business blog content.

Based on my own experience as both a teacher and then with Say It For You blogging clients from many different industries and professions, I find it’s a challenge to find the precise style of communication that will best connect with target readers. (While this is especially true in business-to-consumer blogging, even with suppliers and distributors, you want to avoid anything that is a barrier to understanding.) “Huh?” is hardly the reaction blog content writers aim to elicit in readers,

“Signal graphics” such as bolding and bullet points in the text can be a big help, but signal words help readers following along with your message. Words such as

• before
• after
• during
• next
• during
• in addition

    help readers link ideas together and understand the flow of ideas.

If you think about it, business owners and professional practitioners are taking the role of teachers in their blogging, and the point I want to stress to content writers in Indianapolis is simply this: The clearer the words in the title are to the searcher, the easier it will be for them to engage, navigate, and transact.