Skip to main content
Michigan Farm Bureau Family of Companies

Anatomy of a promo blurb

Short, concise tips can have a big impact.
Date Posted: July 15, 2021

Some of my most rewarding writing projects are for everyday, practical use — concise, utilitarian passages commonly known as blurbs.

Recently a coworker hit me up with this blurb request:

Need your help writing a killer sentence… an intro blurb for a brochure — a section explaining committees a member can join to get involved... The section will be "ways to get involved" …something like this: “Joining a county Farm Bureau committee is a great way to meet other members... local committees include Membership, Young Farmer, Promotion & Education and Policy Development…”

Coworker was off to a great start, giving me just enough detail necessary for a great starting point. After a few aborted false starts (picture a wastebasket surrounded by crumpled up sheets of paper on the floor), I fine-tuned it down to this:

Get Involved

Pitching in to help with a program area is the best way to get a taste of Farm Bureau involvement. What you choose depends on your own interests and priorities — what you want to gain from your membership.

Our Promotion & Education, Young Farmer and Policy programs are great starting points, but there’s more where that came from! Talk with a county board member or your MFB Regional Manager to learn about our full spectrum of involvement opportunities.

Regardless of where you dip your toe, you’ll plug right into a statewide network of like-minded peers — our Farm Bureau family, 40,000 strong — who share your aspirations, your challenges, and your ambition to prosper in Michigan agriculture.

Shakespeare it ain’t, but Coworker liked it so much she called it “fire,” which I think is a compliment. I’m sharing it here for a couple reasons.

First: All five sentences are yours (your county Farm Bureau’s) to use as you like, because like every other Home Office staffer, I work for you, and what’s good for that county’s brochure is fair game for yours — or your promotional flyer, or your county website, or for use in your membership recruitment materials.

Second: With member recruitment and involvement always a top priority, I intentionally baked into it some concepts for all of us to keep in mind when promoting, explaining or “selling” the value of Farm Bureau membership.

Here’s peek behind the curtain of my blurbing brain:

  • I changed the original title “Ways to Get Involved” to “How to Get Involved” because I thought ‘how to’ sounded warmer — more here’s-how-it’s-done. Just today I shortened it to just “Get Involved” — more encouraging, more action-y.
  • I used ‘program’ instead of ‘committee,’ which implies a rigid, formal structure that appealed to post-war generations but which is a real turn-off to non-boomers. ‘Program’ is vague in a good way, implying flexibility. If you really need a noun for a group of members working a specific program, try ‘team,’ which implies cooperative, got-yer-back camaraderie.
  • Instead of ‘joining’ (which sounds like a commitment and commitment is scary) I used ‘pitching in to help’ and ‘get a taste’ and ‘dip your toe,’ all of which sound lighter and more short-term — less sign-here, less like an obligation.
  • I used ‘you’ and ‘your’ throughout to tell the prospective member they have a say in things: “What you choose…your own interests…what you want to gain…your membership.” Those are reminders that Farm Bureau’s grassroots nature means the organization reflects its members’ priorities.
  • That same adaptability and flexibility is also in the third sentence: “there’s more” than just the well-established programs that get most of the attention.

The final sentence is my favorite because it’s about the great unspoken benefit of Farm Bureau membership: how it weaves together 40,000 farm families into a network — a supportive family of allies all looking out for each other and united by common ground despite the diversity of their work.

Again, I share both the blurb and its deconstruction for practical reasons. The blurb itself is fair game for any application where you might find it useful. Also its bite-size components might be useful in your ongoing membership recruitment efforts — long may they prosper!