Who Else Is Doing It? Business Blog Readers Will Want to Know

“The Best Way to Filter Coffee” could have been a classic SEO marketing blog title rather than an article in Mental Floss magazine. Why do I say that?

Business owners, professionals – and those of us who provide blog writing services to them – need to include more usable advice, more about the core beliefs of the business owners, more “how to” and less “we do” than the website might include.

But, at the bottom of the page with the coffee-filtering history and advice, Mental Floss has a chart titled “The National Buzz”, which answers the question “Who hogs the United Nations’ coffee pot?” This mini-article is an example of a blog content writing technique I recommend – it provides some startling statistics.

There are several ways statistics provide value in blogging for business:

• Grabbing blog visitors’ attention.
   
• Mythbusting: (If there’s some false impression people seem to have relating to your industry, or to a product or service you provide, you can bring in statistics to show how things really are.)
   
• Demonstrating the extent of a problem. (Once readers realize the problem, the door is open for you to show how you help solve that very type of problem for your customers!)

In this case, Mental Floss lets readers know the annual per capita consumption of coffee in different nations.  Finland is highest at 26 ½ pounds of coffee consumed by the average person over the year.  Norway is next at 21.8 lbs., and the US is next to last at 9.3lbs. a year average consumption per person.

Remember when we were kids, and we wanted to get our parents’ permission to do something “all the other kids” were supposedly doing? Grown-up blog readers still look at what others are doing when making a purchase of a product or service.  That’s why, in corporate blogging training sessions, I encourage content writers to include statistics about “all the other kids”.

“When buying products, consumers are influenced by references,” choosing products that appear to have a “higher status”, explains Professor Nienke Vlutters of the University of Twnte.

In blogging for business, don’t forget to tell them “who else is doing it”!