In Blog Content Writing, Begin With What they Get!

July fourth, 2012 was a big news day.  Capping more than fifty years of research, the European Center for Nuclear Research announced they’d found the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle”, which gives all other particles their mass.  “Scientists and journalists scrambled to tell the public exactly what the Higgs boson was and what it did – not always successfully,” according to Time.

Since “explaining stuff” is a big part of any blog or web page copywriter’s challenge, I could really relate to what writer Jeffrey Kluger called the “odd and merry disconnect between how little most people truly understood the breaking news from the physics world and the celebratory reaction that nonetheless followed it”.

Certainly one highly important function of any company’s – or any professional’s – blog is to share news and announcements. And as those of us who provide blog content writing services know, readers must buy into the idea that this news is something they should care about.

But, before readers can care, they need to understand what it is that has happened! It’s hardly likely that any “celebratory reaction” is going to ensue if you haven’t gotten to Square One in terms of your audience comprehending your news. (What???” doesn’t usually lead to “Yeah!!”)

Given news on the order of “Salk Vaccine Works” or “Man Lands on Moon”, observes Kluger, we “get” it. But understanding the existence of a particle called the Higgs boson – that’s a “far harder hill to climb,” he says.

I once heard WIBC Radio”s Denny Smith make a comment that I considered very relevant for SEO marketing blogs: People are looking to their advisors for more than just information, he said. They need perspective. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post needs to address unspoken questions, beginning with “What does that mean?  What is that all about? Only after the light of understanding “dawns” can readers ask the only question that can really make a difference for the business owner or professional practitioner: “I get it, but how does that news affect me?”