Although Cebalt's blog is highly detailed, he uses an informal and yet professional voice to personally speak to the reader as if the reader was a client. For example, in one post about using multiple marketing strategies and thus focusing on the one audience that is the closest to the problem one's grassroots organization is trying to help or solve, Cebalt uses figurative language:
"Let's consider the term "grassroots." Note that it is plural. One blade of
grass standing alone is virtually invisible; but a small patch of grass is the
start of something that can grow. The point: As a nonprofit communicator, you
can't rely on any one grassroots marketing strategy; your outreach efforts have
to be used together to create a multiplier effect, to reach people with the same
message in multiple places and formats."
Cebalt is able to literally show the reader why multiple marketing strategies work (i.e. making the reader visualize grassroots vs. one small blade of grass). Like in this post, Cebalt uses the phrase "the point" with a colon following it to add emphasis to what he wants the reader to remember and also exactly how he wants to reader to interpret his use of figurative language. Also, in Cebalt's case, commas and semicolons are the magical figures of punctuation. They help gather his big ideas into one large, complex, and intertwined sentences. Like in the post above, he uses two commas and a semicolon all in one sentence. This helps characterize his professional and informal voice because he knows enough about the subject of these posts to be able to summarize complex ideas into long sentences and easily get the point across. In other words, he knows what he's talking about. Aside from telling the reader about different PR/marketing strategies small nonprofit organizations can use, he actually touches on the concept of a "voice" in PR writing:
"Your writing may not have any specific problems like spelling or grammar, but
it could just be plain boring. Around here, we call that sort of writing
“lifeless.” When we revise we say “breathe some life into it” by adding personal
interest stories and finding a new way to state an old idea or removing business
jargon or clichés.You don’t want your audience to fall asleep or lose interest
while reading your material, you want them to get excited about your
organization and motivate them to take action. They might not jump for joy, but
some degree of excitement would be great."
This quote summarizes Cebalt's voice in his own blog. Although some of his "how-to" instructions in his blog may seem bland, he makes more engaging by adding questions at the end of posts like, "Am I right?" or "Discuss among yourselves, then come back. Back? Ok." Let's get back to our point." Likewise, he quotes famous sayings from people like Henry David Thoreau and Winston Churchill and also examples from his personal life and family and connects them to the post of the day, or even in one case he links popular culture and the television show the Sopranos to the blog post of the day. His examples, questions, and short sentence structure and abrupt punctuation help his professional and informal voice becoming engaging, and also encouraging because it is like he is personally speaking to the reader. As shown in the two examples, the diction he uses is very simple. He rarely uses flashy adjectives or adverbs in his posts, which is one of the reasons why I have characterized his voice as professional. But because he speaks personally to the reader it is more of an informal voice, which stays consistent in throughout his blog no matter what the subject of the post is about. An emotion that I thought was being conveyed in many of his posts is the emotion of hope, as his titles of posts are encouraging. Examples include, "In times like these, motivation matters"; "How to implement social media marketing without having to learn any of the icky new techy stuff"; "If you aren't in the race, you can't even lose!"; "One blade of grass, or the whole yard?" He makes it seem as if small nonprofits can easily overcome obstacles: they can overcome the "icky techy stuff", reach a "whole yard" of people, etc. With such encouragement, the reader can see that this blogger really cares about what he is writing about and truly hopes to help out small nonprofits with PR, especially because his blog posts are very detailed and with many tips.
Like it or leave it, Cebalt's professional and informal voice complements this blog by making small nonprofits hopeful and believe that their PR can have a positive social effect if they listen to his voice.
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