But-What-If Blog Post Writing

Ironically enough, it was in Discover Magazine that I discovered an article that can serve as a model for effective business blog posts. :”The Revolutionary Rocket That Could Shuttle Humans to Mars” uses four steps that blog content writers might follow:

Step One: Describe the issues facing your potential customers, showing you understand the challenges they face.  “Traveling to Mars is not easy, which may be why no one has ever tried,” reporter Steve Nadus observes, listing the problems in detail:

• It would take six to nine months to get to Mars using today’s chemical-fueled rockets.
• Along the way, you’d be dosed with unsafe levels of radiation.
• Once having arrived, you’d be stuck for as long as two years waiting for Earth and Mars to move closer to each other again.

Business owners and professionals can outline both those problems that brought readers to the site to begin with, plus some readers hadn’t even been thinking about.

Step Two: Offer solutions, both traditional and nontraditional. “But what if there were a better way””, asks Nadus, going on to describe a prototype rocket engine being developed that could make space travel faster than ever before.

Step Three: Add a generous sprinkiling of human interest. Nadus tells the story of Costa Rica-born Franklin Chang Diaz, founder of the Ad Astra company, where scientists have spent the last 30 years tinkering with rocket engines.  At age 18, readers learn, Diaz came to the U.S. with $50 in his pocket, speaking very little English.

Stories about business owners’ early struggles make for compelling copy in business blog posts.

Step Four: Allow readers to imagine themselves not merely using the product or service, but being part of something big and important. The first person that is going to walk on Mars has already been born…Mars is just the beginning.”

Successful blog content writing has readers wondering “but what if….?”