Indianapolis Business Blogger’s Magazine Challenge – C

“Is cardboard OK?” is the question that caught my eye in Birds and Blooms magazine as part of the self-imposed magazine challenge blog writing exercise I took on this week for my Say It For You blog. 

With the whole idea behind the magazine challenge being to combat “writer’s block” (you know, that time when, inevitably, blog content writers get stuck thinking up new ideas to keep their business blog posts engaging), I’d come up with the concept of leafing through popular magazines to spark ideas to help owners explain what they do and how and why they do it.

The article about using cardboard in gardening does two things that I teach newbie corporate bloggers should be included in any SEO marketing blog strategy::

• It debunks some common myths. While consumers might worry about the formaldehyde in the glue used with cardboard, it’s at a very low level and will decrease as time goes on, Birds and Blooms assures readers.
   
• It deals head-on with a touchy issue (in this case, environmentally non-friendly materials or practices). While it’s perfectly OK to leave cardboard in the garden to break down on its own, before you grow vegetables in cardboard be aware of what the cardboard held before (could it have been used to ship industrial chemicals?)  In general, Birds and Blooms assures us, cardboard should be fine.

Think about your own business, I ask owners in the course of providing them with business blogging assistance: Is there anything that might be considered unsafe, cruel, or environmentally non-friendly about your industry or your business? What are you doing to mitigate those factors?

Certainly, I explain, the content on a website can deal with the subject and offer reassurances, but there's nothing like the cumulative effect, spread over time, of stories, testimonials, tidbits, and information delivered through corporate blog writing.

And when it comes to any negative comments or negative PR, business blogging is the ideal vehicle for defusing and offering reassurances.

Is cardboard OK in blogging for business?  You bet!