This is continued from creating killer content part 2 , and creating killer content part 1
The Feedback Loop
If you want to measure your progress as a writer, don’t measure praise. Measureaction. Measure feedback.Feedback is the breakfast, lunch and dinner of champions.By feedback,I don’t mean merely “comments from readers.” Those can be valuable, but they’re only a small part of the feedback you get. Any observable action people take as a result of reading your work should be considered feedback. This includes watching such things as:
How many people comment, good or bad?
How many people click on your links?
How many people act on your advice?
How many people buy what you’re promoting?
How many links are there to your content?
How many publishers want to use your content?
How many responses do your blog posts get?
How many people sign up for your list?
How long do they keep reading?
How many unsubscribe?
In short, ask at every step: What do they do? Nothing else matters. Writing must serve a purpose for the writer and the reader in order to be effective, and purpose involves action of some kind. If there’s a conflict between what they say and what they do, the resolution is simple: Believe what they do. Getting the right action requires that you obey the First Commandment of Authordom: Know thy audience. There are really only two commandments for writers. It is possible to obey the first and still fail in your task. Even if you know every little detail about your audience, you can lose them quickly if you ignore the next part. So, let’s get to that one right now.
You Got Something to Say to Me?
Know thy audience. That’s the First Commandment for creating good content. The second is just as simple: Have something to say, and say it in an interesting way. I’m amazed at how often I get emails from alleged publishers that meander all over the place, saying nothing you can quite put your finger on, until they slide a pitch in. I’m left to wonder if they had any point or plan in mind, or just pounded the keyboard until it seemed they’d typed enough to try and sneak the sale through. There is nothing wrong with recommending a product. Tell your readers specifically who will benefit from it, and how, and tell them where to go to get it. It’s that easy. One of the things you can do to increase your response rate significantly is to be very clear on who will benefit from your recommendation, and why. If there are people who should avoid it, perhaps because it’s too basic or advanced, or only works for certain business models, tell them that, too. The folks who don’t need it will remember that you watched out for their interests, and they’ll take you more seriously when you do point them to
something later. The people who do need it will notice that you’re not trying to sell to everyone, and will also take you more seriously. That increases the odds that they’ll buy. If
you’ve correctly identified who does and does not need the product, everyone wins this way.
Credibility is a very large part of being interesting. Respect is an even larger part. Stories are good, too, if you’re good at them. Unless you’re much smarter than the average bear, though, don’t start with a story about potty-training your child and try to segue into a pitch for a new piece of affiliate software. It won’t work. Besides, you probably don’t want to attach that image to a product you’re promoting.
Yes. I have seen people do just this sort of thing. It’s an eerie feeling. The same rules apply if what you’re selling is a point of view rather than a product, or a laugh and a click instead of the latest widget. If you’re boring, they’ll stop reading. That’s exactly what you don’t want. You want the opposite.
The opposite of boring is interesting. Stories are one of the best ways to keep someone’s interest. Story-telling is an art. Fortunately, it’s an easy one to learn. There are libraries full of books on how to tell a good story. I’m not going to try and cover every aspect of the subject here. There’s no need for that, as we’re not talking mainly about humorous stories or long works of fiction. The kind of story you need to be able to tell is the one with a point. Personal experience, showing why what you’re saying is important for your reader to understand. Like any “sales piece,” you need to make your reader want the benefits, or want to avoid the problems, that you describe. You want them to take some action, ranging from buying a product to voting for your candidate to laughing at your joke or contributing to your charitable cause. Your story has to move them to that action.
There are as many ways to tell a story as there are people to tell it or stories to tell. As you practice, you’ll develop your own approaches to the process, and your own ways to keep people interested and make your point. For now, let’s cover one of the simplest and most basic formulas. This is one you can use for as long as you like, and it will never grow old… as long as what you’re saying relates to your reader’s interests. The formula is:
Title -> Teaser -> Set-up -> Problem -> Cause -> Solution -> Lesson -> Closer
Hmm. Not really helpful by itself, is it? Let’s expand those a bit. Title: This one is obvious. It’s the subject line of your email, and/or the actual title of your article. Getting a kick-butt title is easy. Bob Serling outlined a simple process for this in his report, “How to Create Powerful Headlines in 10 Minutes.” I’ll paraphrase and shorten it a bit here.
Ask yourself, “What’s the most painful thing (or the most pleasant) that my reader could experience as a result of what I’m discussing?” You want the most powerful emotional factor associated with what you’re going to talk about. Often, if your story is true, you know it from first-hand experience. If the story is an illustrative example, you may need to think about that a bit. What about it would make them drool in wild-eyed anticipation? Or, on the flip side, what would send them screaming, terrified, into the night? Now, phrase your answer as either a problem or a promise. I want to be very clear on something here: In any case where stating the problem is appropriate (even if you think it’s distasteful to focus on the negative), stick with a problem headline. The human mind has a number of functions that draw its focus to problems. It has to solve them, if it sees them as credible. Sure, you can fight millions of years of development of survival instincts if you want. Or, if you’re smart, you can work with them, use them to make your job easier.
There’s a lot of leverage in working with someone’s natural tendencies. The promise headline is more for the “drooling in anticipation” response. Even then, the absence of whatever they’re drooling for can be considered a problem to be stated. But, sometimes you just don’t feel comfortable with it. Sometimes, it really isn’t appropriate. But keep in mind: Those times are rare. So, let’s take a simple example. The inspiration: You just spent three days working on a new report for your visitors, and lost the whole project due to a
power outage or hard drive crash. In a case like this, there’s no way a promise headline is going to work. Every person who’s worked with computers for any length of time knows they should back up their data. Most of them still don’t do it.
Now, you could try a cute title, of course. You really need to be careful with these, though. People will often feel misled, or just tune out when they see what you’re discussing.
Examples of cute headlines for this topic might be:
“The Joy of Reproduction”
or
“Backing Into a Fortune”
Like I said. Cute. Not necessarily going to move your readers to do anything about the potential problem, even though they’re very likely exposed to it as they read your piece.
You want something that will motivate them to read – and then do something with what you’ve told them. Going strictly from your personal experience, you might use something like:
“Could you lose 3 days of work in 30 seconds or less?”
or
“Where the he** did my project go?”
Those invoke fears of lost time, work that has to be redone, and wasted effort and opportunity. Certainly not something many people will find to be pleasant options. Those headlines would work. But there’s a better angle. A bigger potential problem. So, you do a little research and discover the disturbing fact that 85% of businesses that lose their customer database or suffer catastrophic data loss close down within 2 years. (That’s not a made up statistic, by the way.)
Do you think a title like this might work?”If this happens to you, your business has less than one chance in six of surviving!”
Or, even better…
“This will kill your business, 5 times out of 6.”
Losing their entire business is a much bigger concern than just a few days work. That headline has the added benefit of curiosity, which, when combined with a large fear, will get a very high percentage of people to read further. Spend the time you need to come up with a good title, and you’ve already done a lot to improve your chances of getting read.
The End….
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Creating Killer Content Part 3
“New”,supposed to be Alfa Romeo look..
