Post-It Note Blogging For Business

Several years ago, while serving as an English tutor at Ivy Tech Community College, I created a writing guide for my students, urging them to complete the first three steps before sitting down at their laptops to write an assigned essay. They were to use Post-It® Notes to jot down ideas. That way, the order of the different paragraphs could be switched around. Blog content writers can follow an identical process in organizing their thoughts…

Step One: Select your topic. (Hint: Your TOPIC is not necessarily the same as the title for the post. Your topic is also not the same as your thesis statement. Your topic IS the answer to the question I might ask a person who’s just finished reading your blog post: “So…what was the subject of that piece?

Step Two: Compose your thesis statement. Another way to think of your thesis statement is your “one-sentence speech”. The thesis statement tells the reader what your particular “slant” is on the topic. Are you out to explain how to use a product or service? Are you intent on raising awareness of a problem you know how to solve? Are you aiming to demonstrate your involvement in your community?

Step Three: the three-legged stool
Just as a stool will not stand firmly without having at least three legs, you should plan to have three “legs”, or points to use in proving your thesis.

Step Four: Support your points
This is where students would find statistics, or articles by authorities who have opinions that support their ideas. (Even in this digital age, I used to advise students to print out pages they were going to quote, so that they could highlight specific passages they might cite.) On a Post-It®, which they’d affix to the page, they’d capture the information needed to cite that source on their References or Works Cited page).

Step Five: Outline your paper (or blog post)
With your tools now “lined up”, you are ready to decide in what order you’ll present the ideas. (This is where you experiment by moving the Post-It notes around). Once you’ve settled on the order, it will be easier to see which element is best for capturing attention at the start, as well as which makes for a powerful ending statement. This can also be the ideal time to select a title to arouse readers’ interest.

Try Post-It® blogging for business!