4 ways to jazz up your blog posts
Volume publishing is about – you guessed it – volume. In any other industry you’d see conveyor belts, machines and automated production processes. Not here. Mass content production has its streamlining, sure, but behind every blog post is a writer making sure each word is where it should be and every piece says what it should.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have our crutches. Buzzwords, clichés, stereotypes, generalisations and other writing tricks allow us to quickly resonate with our audience without necessarily having to spell things out. However, too many of these crutches can very quickly turn content from authentic and original to generic and bland.
In today’s attention economy, that’s an immediate handicap that is hard to recover from. Considering over 2 million new blog posts are published every day, and 43% of users admit to skimming blog posts, no one can afford to be dull.
Here are 4 easy wins in the fight against boring blog posts.
You had me at meh-lo
How about that pandemic, huh? That was really something.
The first big no-no is opening your text with one of these vague statements that isn’t exactly untrue but doesn’t really say anything. You know the ones:
“The pandemic revolutionised the way we connect”
“Climate change is an existential threat”
“Discrimination continues to weigh down society”
These are all technically accurate and will bear some meaning to almost everyone. But they purposefully skim very complex topics to try and quickly (and lazily) set the scene for the rest of the article. Here’s the thing, though – the first sentence in a blog post and the opening frame in a video are crucial for engagement. In the age of the internet you must pull people in immediately, otherwise they won’t make it past the first paragraph. Startling stats or a bit of personality are a surefire way to achieve this.
Want an example? Look no further than this piece by our digital media writer Charlie Avery.
Hyperbole? More like hyper-boring!
More and more drivers are resorting to walking to avoid parking fines. Countless people are seeing the importance of good walking shoes as, now more than ever, cars can cost a fortune.
A whopping 80% of executives believe they understand their consumers’ emotional needs and desires, but only 15% of consumers say brands are good at forming emotional bonds with them. Clearly, something is getting lost in translation.
In an attempt to enlist emotion in your reader, you might resort to superlatives and hyperbole. There’s nothing wrong with this per se. As mentioned, opening a blog post with a shocking fact or some choice language is a great way to grab eyeballs, but they need to be used wisely.
Failing to frame big, bold assertions with facts and figures means failing to emotionally engage your reader. It’s a guaranteed way to seem like you haven’t done your homework and it will fall flat every time.
Jargon, be gone!
We drive engagement by leveraging stakeholder commitment and disrupting market flows.
We’ve spoken about jargon before, but it bears repeating. There is a huge difference between credible, authoritative language and the superficial, buzzy lexicon splattered all over LinkedIn. Things like:
“impact change”
“strive to empower”
“is in our DNA”
“moving the needle”
And that’s before we get to the industry-specific jargon that immediately excludes anyone outside of your corporate circle. The same goes for language specifically targeted towards SEO gains. People want to read things written for people, not for robots.
If you want to expand your sphere of influence and connect with a wider demographic, do yourself a favour and drop the I’m-so-important lingo.
Jump off the bandwagon
Amid today’s hostility and division, bonds have been broken. This is why Corporate Inc is releasing new bonds. If you care about diversity as much as Corporate Inc, bring some into your portfolio.
Remember when Pepsi tried to tap into social outrage during the Black Lives Matter protests? It featured Kendall Jenner appeasing riot police with a delicious can of brown sugar juice…and it’s safe to say that it wasn’t very well received.
Tying content to major events or societal conversations is a great way to borrow some credibility and underpin your stuff with gravitas, but the link has to be clear. Have a look at the varying coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s passing, for example.
If you’re an NGO advocating for human rights, maybe the Black Lives Matter movement is something you’d like to weigh in on. If you’re a drinks manufacturer… Yeah. You risk being much more than boring – how about tone deaf and offensive?