How to Write Brilliant Business Blogs, Volume II

Suzan St. Maur

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781631577468
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

It is easy to find out how to set up a business blog, but not so easy to find out what to write for it. In this volume, we look at what you can write for your business blogs that makes use of your knowledge of your business customers and prospects—how to create business blogs that address your readers' real business problems and issues, how to use humor, passion, and compassion to enhance your business blogs, as well as proven formats like testimonials, case studies, and much more.

CHAPTER 1

Emotions in Your Blogging

Humor and Jokes

Most people like a joke and a laugh, and every now and again, a humorous blog post will lift your blog site and get you some surprisingly good traffic, too, provided that you use an appropriate headline. If you can, though, you should theme your humor to your business and to your readers’ interests.

While humor can entertain and provide comic relief, use it carefully. Individuals vary widely as to what they consider funny, especially when you cross cultural lines. Certain topics may be taboo, distasteful, rude, or just not funny to some of your readers. So, keep this in mind as you select topics and wording for your particular audience. If there’s any doubt in your mind that jokes may cause offense or not be understood, just some light-hearted, amusing or entertaining material will do—to help reinforce your personal as well as professional relationships with your readers, customers, prospects, and beyond.

Should you want to try writing custom-made jokes for your blog site, I’ve added a few notes about it in the following section. But, if you haven’t got the time or inclination, you can use the following options.

Use Google to Find Jokes

Nearly all jokes have been around for years and no one can remember who wrote the originals. Many are derivatives of earlier jokes, having been updated and adapted. As far as I am aware, there can be no copyright on standard jokes for these reasons.

However, if you take a joke from a website, you should say in your blog post where you got it from and include a link to that website. And, in any case, there’s nothing to be ashamed of for the fact that you have curated some jokes from around the Internet, carefully selected by you for your readers’ or customers’ entertainment. No one will expect you to write jokes from scratch unless that happens to be what you do for a living.

So, to find some jokes about your area of business, do a Google search. Here are some examples of what I came up with:

Your Business: Landscape Architect—I Searched: Jokes About Gardening

• My wife said she’s leaving me because of my unhealthy obsession with plants. I said where’s this stemming from, petal?
• Gardening rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
• New gardeners learn by trowel and error.

Your Business: Veterinary Surgeon—I Searched: Veterinarian Jokes

One day at the vet’s surgery where I take my cat, a man and the receptionist were verbally sparring. After a few minutes, a technician came to her co-worker’s defense. “Sir,” she asked the aggressive man, “do you know what happens to aggressive males in this surgery?”

Silly questions people ask their vet:

• My cat just came in from the garage and I was wondering...how many calories are in a mouse?
• I have a neutered male cat. How old should he be before I can breed him?
• What should I feed a borderline collie?
• What size litter box do I need to keep my cat comfy?
• Is it normal for a dog to shed?
• How can I keep my cat from stealing my husband’s toothbrush?
• My cat passed a stool on the indoor rug and it’s stuck in the vacuum cleaner. Any suggestions?
• How can I get the secret recipe for your special dog food?
• How do I stop my cat from giving food to the dog?
• Your food turned my dog into a stud. Now what do I do?
• Do you know how to toilet-train a cat?
• I have three cats. Is it true that a special brand of cat food makes the poop smell better?
• Will chewing pop cans remove enamel from my puppy’s teeth?
• Where can I get a six-toed cat?

Your Business: Travel Agent—I Searched: Travel Jokes

• I had someone ask for an aisle seat so that their hair wouldn’t get messed up by being near the window.
• A client called in inquiring about a package to Hawaii. After going over all the cost info, she asked, “Would it be cheaper to fly to California and then take the train to Hawaii?”
• I got a call from a woman who wanted to go to Cape Town. I started to explain the length of the flight and the passport information when she interrupted me with “I’m not trying
  to make you look stupid, but Capetown is in Massachusetts.” Without trying to make her look like the stupid one, I calmly explained, “Capecod is in Massachusetts, Capetown is in Africa.” Her response ... click.
• A man called, furious about a Florida package we did. I asked what was wrong with the vacation in Orlando. He said he was expecting an ocean-view room. I tried to explain that is not possible, since Orlando is in the middle of the state. He replied, “Don’t lie to me. I looked on the map and Florida is a very thin state.”
• I got a call from a man who asked, “Is it possible to see England from Canada?” I said, “No.” He said “But they look so close on the map.”
• Another man called and asked if he could rent a car in Dallas. When I pulled up the reservation, I noticed he had an one-hour layover in Dallas. When I asked him why he wanted to rent a car, he said, “I heard Dallas was a big airport, and I need a car to drive between the gates to save time.”

And, so on. It really is easy and a win-win all around with humor as long as you credit your source.

How to Tailor Jokes for Your Own Blog

Often, you won’t find a joke that’s absolutely right for your blog and your readers. But, there is a relatively simple way of tailoring jokes by adapting a core concept from one joke and building another story around it that’s relevant to your needs.

In this example, we use one core concept—the ridiculous notion that someone is so obsessed by his sporting interest that he will miss his own wife’s funeral—which can be adapted to a number of different circumstances: A golfer and his buddies were playing a big round of golf for $200. At the eighteenth green the golfer had a ten foot putt to win the round, and the $200. As he was lining up his putt, a funeral procession started to pass by.

The golfer set down his putter, took his hat off, placed it over his chest, and waited for the funeral procession to pass. After it passed, he picked up his putter and returned to lining up his putt, and completed it, thus winning the game and the money.

Afterwards, one of his buddies said, “That was the most touching thing I have ever seen. I can’t believe you stopped playing, possibly losing your concentration, to pay your respects.”

“Well,” said the golfer, “we were married for 25 years.”

You could adapt the same core concept and make the joke about many other outdoor sports and activities, including soccer, baseball, football, lacrosse, field hockey, cross-country, or marathon running.

Shorter Jokes That Depend on a Play on the Words

A substantial proportion of the jokes you hear and see depends on a play on the words to provide the humor. With a little imagination, you can use these as core concepts and adapt them, so they’re perfect for your readers.

Let’s take a look at a few: I have emboldened the part of the joke that can be used as the core concept, around which you can substitute new circumstances to make the joke work in a different context (adapted from “The Horse Lover’s Joke Book,” by yours truly):

The local riding club arranged a holiday dinner for its large committee, but unfortunately the event was a disappointment. One committee member complained to the club Secretary. “The food was awful,” he said. “Can you do something about it?”

“No,” replied the Secretary. “You’ll just have to bring it up at the next committee meeting.” A young woman went to the doctor with a badly sprained ankle. The doctor bandaged it up for her.

“Will I be able to ride a horse when it’s better?” she asked.

“Of course you will,” replied the doctor.

“That’s odd,” said the woman. “I’ve never ridden a horse in my life before.” The husband was complaining again. “You’re so absorbed in your horses, I’ll bet you don’t even remember when we got married.”

“Of course I do, darling,” smiled his wife. “It was the day after I won my first ever Medium test on Aurora.”

During a particularly spectacular pirouette in canter, the horse threw a shoe and it flew over a hedge, down a bank, and out of sight. The horse and rider left the arena and went back to the yard, to find their instructor was there waiting to give a lesson to another livery owner. The rider told the instructor about the thrown shoe and how it happened.

“Aha,” said the instructor. “Do you realize that shoe went over the hedge, down the bank, on to the 4-lane highway below, and hit a motorcyclist hard on the head. He went out of control, a big truck and an RV swerved to miss him, collided, rolled over, and by the end of it 14 vehicles were involved and several people were injured.”

“Oh, my God,” said the rider, by now in tears and extremely distraught. “What can I do? What can I do?”

The instructor thought carefully for a moment. “In your shoes, I would use a little more inside leg and shift your weight slightly further round on the outside seat bone.”

The headgirl in the riding school yard was furious as one of the working pupils arrived late again. “Angela,” she yelled, “you should have been here at half-past seven!”

“Why?” asked the pupil. “What happened?”

The stable boy got his courage together and went to see the yard manager to ask for a raise. When he entered the office, the yard’s accountant was there too. “I’d like a pay rise,” stammered the young stable boy.

“Well, young man,” said the accountant while the yard manager nodded wisely, “due to the fluctuational predisposition of the global competitive equestrian economic climate as juxtaposed against the individual staff productivity within this particular enterprise, in my judgment I feel it would be fiscally inappropriate to elevate exponentially your specific increment.”

“Yer what?” said the puzzled stable boy. “I don’t get it.”

“Exactly,” said the yard manager.

Just for fun, here’s my own adaption of one of the previous jokes, substituting appropriate words, for my business:

The husband was complaining again. “You’re that absorbed in your business blogging and social media, I’ll bet you don’t even remember when we got married.”

“Of course I do, darling,” smiled his wife. “It was the day after I first joined LinkedIn.”

Passion in Blog Posts

A number of people I know in some businesses—mainly those connected with personal, spiritual, intellectual, and other more cerebral issues—write blog posts or articles in an incredibly powerful, passionate way, which hits you in the face with its value and earnestness.

If, that is, you can grasp their key points right away.

Trouble is, in the flurry of passion within which those thoughts try to emerge, the average reader can’t necessarily grasp just how important—or where—the key points are.

So, Passionate Experts: Take Note

Passion, power, and practical usability = not a perfect mix.

The whole blogging phenomenon has given passionate bloggers or writers the opportunity to share their views in writing, without the threat of an editor lurking with a blue pencil to change their words and water down their enthusiasm, albeit in the name of clarifying vagaries and making the text easily absorbed by the masses.

For followers of such bloggers and like-minded readers, these rushes of densely packed words are comprehensible and share the high levels of emotion that drive their inspiration...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• What the Reviewers Said
• Chapter 1 Emotions in Your Blogging
• Chapter 2 Real-life Examples
• Chapter 3 Personal and Social Topics as Business Blogs
• Chapter 4 Sensitive Style Issues
• Chapter 5 The World Around You
• Chapter 6 Blogging with Video, Audio, and Associated Media
• Glossary
• Further Reading
• Index
• Adpage