Business Bloggers Put things Readers Care About in Jeopardy

Freelance blog content writers can find a wealth of business blogging assistance in Writer’s Digest, so this week I’ve been sharing some favorite parts of the Digest with Say It For You readers.
 

Author Steven James teaches budding novelists to maintain suspense in their writing. “Thriller? Mystery? Literary fiction? It’s all the same,” he says.  “Building apprehension in the minds of your readers is one of the most effective keys to engaging them early in your novel and keeping them flipping pages late into the night.”

Of the six techniques James suggests writers use to create suspense, the one that appealed to me most as a corporate blogging trainer was this:

“Put characters that readers care about in jeopardy.”

“We create reader empathy by giving the character a desire, wound, or internal struggle that readers can identify with.  The more they empathize, the closer their connection with the story will be.”

Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware  stresses that people want to do business with people they like and trust. Readers need to see how much you care even more than how much you know. If readers empathize with the business owner of practitioner, that creates empathy. And blog writing, more personal than traditional website content, is ideal for showing how much you believe – in your industry, your cause, your products – and the way you believe a business or practice should serve clients and customers/

While Indianapolis blog content writers may not be able to put characters readers care about in jeopardy, we can show how certain things readers care about can be put in jeopardy –  our health, our self-confidence, our safety, our careers, our appearance, our property, the proper education of our children. “The threat,” James remarks, may involve the character’s physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, or relational well-being.”

On the other hand, I’ve found, in too many SEO marketing blogs, the content is meant to scare consumers, with the message geared towards creating enough fear about a particular problem that readers will be moved to do something about that fear – now!

As a professional ghost blogger, I advise taking a middle ground. Go ahead and identify ways in which something customers value could be in jeopardy.  Assure searchers they’re not alone in this dilemma or need.  In fact, as you hasten to assure them, you've solved these precise problems for customers and clients many times before.
 

In blogging for business, go ahead and build up the suspense, but   quickly follow with enough information so that the solution is more compelling than they ever bargained for!