“Term-Dropping” Blog Content Writing – Cozy or Uncomfortable?

No worry.  My Say It For You blog isn’t about to engage in political commentary. It’s just that, in a recent story carried by the Indianapolis Star, reporters Gomez and Davis did something I think would be a very good practice for Indiana blog content writers to adopt.

The subtitle of the article (“House doesn’t plan to vote on Gang of Eight’s bipartisan measure”) was using a kind of inside lingo (“Gang of Eight”), an expression that regular followers of political and legislative news would recognize.  Good tactic.  In blogging for business, I’ve found, gearing your language towards a target audience, using terms that mark familiarity with the subject, adds an air of “coziness”, a “ we’re-in-this-thing-together” tone.

Maybe. Because what if a reader happened NOT to be familiar with the term “Gang of Eight”? That reader might actually be “turned off” by the unpleasant feeling of not being in the know about some elementary information tidbit that everyone else apparently understands!  For precisely that reason, I believe, the two reporters go on to clarify: “The Gang of Eight is a group of eight senators – four Republican and four Democrats – who worked on the original version of the bill.”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary has three definitions for “lingo”:

1. A foreign language
2. The special vocabulary of a particular field of interest
3. Language characteristic of an individual

In terms of business blogging help, we content writers must shoot for #2. Using the “lingo” and terminology of our field of expertise can demonstrate we’re current and at the top of our game – so long as we’re not leaving anyone out of the “secret”. Wed never want our online visitors to be turned off by us “speaking a foreign language”! At its best, our blog content creates ‘coziness” and engagement!