The Bliss List for Business Blogs

Three tips to remember in revamping your resume, advises J.P Hansen in The Bliss List, include:

Explain, don’t list.  Write three full sentences about your current or previous job with three to five bullet points highlighting your achievements.

One point I mention in corporate blogging training sessions is that bullet points in general are a good fit for blogs. Yet using only telegraphic style  (brief, omitting “an”, “and”, “the”) in blogging would take away from the natural, conversational flow that marks the most successful blogs.
 

Limit activities.  List just two hobbies to showcase your interests without seeming preoccupied.

The better blog pages give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ interests and core beliefs. In other words, one function of blog writing is to reveal the people behind the business.

Use active language. Opt for strong, positive verbs like sold, earned, and developed. in writing for business – more verbs makes for more dynamic blog content.

Especially for smaller companies, “verbification” of the business brand should be an actual goal of blog marketing strategy. As Bits.blogs.nytimes points out, "There is a strong positive marketing value from verbing, because verbs connote activity and excitement."

“Powerful writing is focused,” says Dustin Wax of lifehack.org on the same note. “Good writing has a point, a goal that it is intended to achieve.  That goal might be to sell something, to convince someone of something, or to explain how to do something, but whatever the point, informs every line.”

“Our society tends to value abstract thinking…but this tends to lead to particularly limp and empty writing…..Powerful writing doesn’t just show, it shows in real-world ways that are easily approachable."

One tip for Indianapolis blog content writers: Keep the Bliss List next to your content writing calendar!