Why Business Blogs Shouldn’t Sport Spadeas

“Spadeas wrap the Pioneer Press sections, which means they get read first,” a Twin Cities advertising department explains to prospective advertisers.”  In fact, readers MUST open your Spadea Section before they can read the paper. This means readers see and interact with these innovative ad pages before they read that day's news.”

A spadea fold is a separately printed, unbound broadsheet that is folded around a newspaper or other periodical, or around one of its sections, appearing as a partial page or flap over the front and back. The New York Times implemented a spadia ad campaign for the first time back in 2007, I learned.

In blogging for business, I guess, the equivalent of a spadea might be the call to action. But, is it ever a good idea for readers to see and interact with the call to action before they read “the news” (meaning the useful and current information you provide in the content of the blog post itself? Not.

I teach new Indianapolis blog content writers that, when people go online to search for information and click on different blogs or website pages, they’re aware of the fact that the providers of the information are out to do business. But at Say It For You, we know that the secret of successful business blogging is not coming on too strong. To the extent a blog has any similarity to a spadea, it’s that the blog is an “advertorial”, while the spadea is its brasher “cousin”, an advertisement.

To the extent that a blog post is “wrapped” in something, that something should be the leitmotif, or unifying theme of the entire blog.

Leitmotif means "leading theme" in German. In music, "the leitmotif is heard whenever the composer wants the idea of a certain character, place, or concept to come across," explains Chloe Rhodes in A Certain "Je Ne Sais Quoi",

Whenever I'm sitting down with business owners as they're preparing to launch a blog for their company or professional practice, I find that one important step is to select 1-5 recurring themes that will appear and reappear over time in their blog posts. The themes may be reflected in the keyword phrases they use to help drive search, but themes are broader in scope than just key words.

In choosing “wrappers” for blog content writing, don’t think spadeas; think leitmotifs!