From the other side of an open-plan office, I could hear the frustration in her voice. She explained to her colleague that this blog post had taken up most of the morning, and there was no end in sight yet.
I had to see what she was doing.
“Angela, what are you trying to write” I asked?
She explained that she was trying to write her first blog post, and it was about the services she provides and how businesses needed them. But, she had also added some story threads about her “own personal journey.”
I could see her problem. Her blog post could turn into a very long and confusing read, mainly because she didn’t know where she was going with it.
The controlling idea
If you’ve read anything by Donald Miller of ‘Storybrand’ fame, you will be familiar with the term ‘controlling idea.’
The controlling idea is what you want your writing to do – the ‘why’ of your blog post. You can apply this to any types of writing: blog posts, articles, books, even your shopping list.
Why are you writing, and what do you want your writing to achieve?
Angela lacked a controlling idea, or, more likely, she had several, and that was her problem.
It’s always going to be challenging to achieve a goal if that goal keeps shifting. Was Angela trying to help her customers? Was she trying to sell her services, or display her authority and knowledge? Or, was she trying to tell her life story?
She was trying to do all those things, and that gets pretty confusing. If she was struggling to write it, how is her audience going to feel reading it?
When we start to write, we all need a controlling idea. That’s at the heart of what we’re writing. Start with the very simple nucleus ‘what do I want this piece of writing to do?’ When you’ve found that, stick it on a post-it note and put it on your monitor. Keep coming back to it and asking yourself ‘is my writing serving my controlling idea?’
Some reasons to write a blog post
Here are a few reasons to write a blog post:
- To help someone – with a single defined problem.
- To show I know what I’m talking about – authority in your area of knowledge.
- To motivate – give inspiration to someone.
- To engage – getting people to start thinking about something to the point they want to come back to you.
- To sell something – to point out the benefits of one of your products or services.
- For search engine optimization (SEO) – to get your website found.
I could go on, but these are the first things that come to mind.
The point is this: strip it back before you start. Ask yourself why you are going to the trouble of writing this and what do you want someone to do or feel after reading it?
Get it down to one purpose and idea before you start. And be ruthless. Throw out anything that doesn’t support that original controlling idea. No side alleys, no mission creep.
If you stick to this rigid and straightforward idea, the writing process will be natural and the outcome more powerful. Your reader will leave your page satisfied, knowing why they went to the trouble of reading it.
If you need any help with your writing or blog posts, give me a call or drop me an email.
