How to write a promotional blog in an hour and a half - workshop slides facilitated by www.glassworks.nz

1. Please grab a drink and form
a group with two or three
others
Talk about why you are here

2. Will’s First Draft Process
For writing opinion based blogs and articles
Heading
•A catchy title
Stand/Subheading
•A summary of what to expect
in the blog/article
Opening Paragraph
•Draw the reader with a
gambit or remarkable idea
Conclusion
•What has the reader learned
about the opening and stand
Fact/titbit 1/quote
•Some influential statement
Fact/titbit 2/quote
•Another influential
statement
The cement
• Bind it together and make it
smooth

3. The Heading and the Stand (five mins)
Attract the reader with a snippet of what they’ll learn
• Why it’s hard to be a man … at Christmas (Guardian)
Spare us the penguin cufflinks, jaunty hip flasks and waffle bow ties. No man
wants to end up looking like a 1970s antiques dealer with a serious drink
problem.
• Insurers face City probe for spying on us amid claims that companies are
trawling social media to harvest our data (Daily Mail)
The Financial Conduct Authority will look at how insurers use 'big data‘
Concerns that customers have no idea what information firms have on them
Some insurers are looking at Twitter and Facebook to find out our habits
• Tech divided over digital assistants (Stuff)
As companies rush to dominate the digital assistant market, debate
continues over whether they should be sassy a woman or a machine.

4. The Opening Paragraph (10 mins)
An interesting or remarkable statement to catch the reader’s attention
• There aren’t many times when it’s harder to be
a man than a woman. Generally speaking, we
earn more than women of the same age and
background, spend less time on housework and
childcare, and are allowed to go grey without
being accused of “letting ourselves go”. (Guardian: Why
it’s hard to be a man … at Christmas)

5. The conclusion (ten mins)
Paragraphs that remind the reader what they learned, and return to the ideas in the Stand.
• Buy us socks, buy us hankies, even buy us
slippers if you must, but please leave the
cufflinks and bow ties where they belong –
in the past. (Guardian: Why it’s hard to be a man … at Christmas)

6. Interesting facts, quotes or titbits (ten mins)
Take an observation of real things that help form your opinion – if you’re writing about agile then
you have a ready source of quotes in this very room!
• Take Marks & Spencer’s Christmas range... the
“waffle” bow tie “gives you a modern look that will
see you from day to night in sharp style”, while the
USB cufflinks are “great for office-to-bar wear”.(Guardian:
Why it’s hard to be a man … at Christmas)
• The newly appointed 54-year-old mother of three
said many women would rather go home to their
families in the evening. "Maybe the business dinner
is a vestige of old business life," she added. (Stuff: Women
who avoid boozy work dos)

7. The Cement
Linking paragraphs, context and your own ideas
• Of course, after-hours dinners and boozy late nights have always been part of
the work environment. From the martini-fuelled lunches of the '50s and '60s ,
which we saw so brilliantly showcased in Mad Men, to the '80s power lunches
that would start at a restaurant and end in an all-night members' club, these
hospitality events are often the unseen glue that holds business relationships
together. (Writer’s opinion linking paragraph in Stuff: Women who avoid boozy work dos. This links two
quotes with context from interviews.)
• But it seems it has taken the appointment of the first female director-general of
the CBI, Carolyn Fairbairn, to point out how much women - particularly those
with children - feel left out. Context for quote in Stuff
• Bricks-and-mortar shops are even worse than websites, with cheap, nasty and,
above all, useless items placed front and centre until you can barely reach the
tills for driving gloves, money clips and silver-plated collar stiffeners. (guardian)

8. First draft done? What’s next?
• Polish
• Review, edit, edit, edit, lie fallow, review etc
• Publish
• Pictures and graphics? Make it look lovely
• We have the Blog-In blog http://wellingtonblogin.weebly.com/blog – send me
your blogs and I’ll post them up. William@glassworks.nz
• Promote
• Tell everybody – twitter, FB, linked-in, and I’ll do some promotion of the
whole site, too, and there’s nothing to stop us promoting each others work.