Showing Ideas Instead of Telling Facts

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“Great stories show ideas instead of telling you facts,” storytelling expert Karen Eber explains. We live in a story world, she says, with stories providing ways to:

  •  differentiate yourself
  •  build connection and trust
  •  create new thinking
  •  bring meaning to data
  •  influence decision-making

The “tools” we can use to accomplish these goals include the three story elements of character, conflict, and connection, the author adds.

Working “against” us as storytellers, she cautions, is the fact that most of what is read is easily forgotten, citing the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, a visual representation produced by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus of the way learned information fades over time. In fact, he discovered, the biggest drop in retention happens soon after learning.

For us storytellers and content marketers, the encouraging note is in the “how” – the same set of information can be made more or less memorable, Ebbinghaus discovered, depending on how well it’s communicated in the first place.

Two important elements important in improving retention are time and repetition, Olivia McGarry points out in the LearnUpon Blog. “Spaced learning is considered one of the best methods for combating the learning curve.” Varying the content format using visuals, storytelling, and gamification, helps enormously, making sure learners know that completing the training will help ease their “pain points” and solve problems.

McGarry suggests that, when students share knowledge with each other, that goes a long way towards improving retention of the material. In that vein, at Say It For You, I advise content writers to periodically compose entire blog posts around questions posed by readers.

As content marketers, with the ultimate goal of influencing decision-making, we must help clients differentiate themselves, build connection and trust, create new thinking, and bring meaning to data, always remembering to show ideas rather than merely telling facts.

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Ask “Have You Read?” and “Have You Tried?”

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“Have You Read?” (a two-page section of Bookmarks Magazine), I couldn’t help thinking, is a great way to offer options without being commanding or “pushy”.  A parallel tactic is described in a Learn Laugh Speak post on polite ways to offer alternatives. When customer service hospitality workers need to offer alternatives better suited for a customer, they need to do this without coming off as pushy or rude. It’s a good idea, the trainers explained, to offer have-you-tried choices, allowing the customer to feel more in control of the decision-making process.

  • What if you…?
  • How about trying…?
  • Have you considered….?

When it comes to converting readers into customers, our job as content writers is to present choice, we stress at Say It For You. Given enough “space” to absorb the relevant and truthful information we present over time, consumers are perfectly able to – and far more likely to – decide to take action. Defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. Even showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience in providing solutions to very that problem can help drive the marketing process forward.

Offering options using a “Have you tried…?” approach may prove the way to avoid a “hard sell”. At the same time, you don’t want to force a visitor to spend a long time just figuring out the 57 wonderful services your company has to offer!. What you can do is offer different kinds of information in different blog posts.

What we content writers can take away, I believe, from both the Bookmarks article  and the Learn Laugh Speak guidance for hospitality workers is the importance of allowing customers to feel in control of the decision-making process.

 

 

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The Content Marketing Challenge is Always the Same

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00:00:08 seconds is all you’ve got, Paul Hellman points out in his book You’ve Got 8 Seconds: Communication Secrets for a Distracted World, referring to the precipitous drop in the average attention span,
The challenge, Hellman acknowledges, is always the same:
  • Getting heard
  • Getting remembered
  • Getting results
.For sellers and speakers, Hellman recommends three main messaging strategies:
  1. Focus – design a strong message
  2. Variety – make routine information come alive
  3. Presence: convey confidence and command attention
Whether you have an exciting new product to pitch, an inspired speech to give, or an important email to send, Hellman advises, start with your conclusion, tell how you got there, then repeat the conclusion.
In a sense, focus is the point in content writing, particularly in blog posts. At Say It For You, we firmly believe in the Power of One, which means one message per post, with a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business, geared towards one narrowly defined target audience. For readers who might want more in-depth information, provide a link to another source or landing page (or simply tell readers to watch for further information in your next post.
Still, as Marcia Hoeck of copyblogger.com emphasizes, “no matter how brilliant your ideas are, you can’t offer them to your prospect unless you’ve made her look in your direction first.” As content writers, our “bait” consists of article titles. These may or may not consist of “keyword phrases” designed to win search, but may be curiosity-stimulating “starters”, such as the ones I took from a news magazine:
                      Finding…  Could…Things just… The impossible…The hidden…Who is…
One very practical and specific piece of advice in Hellman’s book is this: Avoid lists longer than three items.  Being partial to bullet points myself (they help keep both readers and writers “on track”), I recalled that according to the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, the recommended maximum number of bullet points is five.
In content marketing, our ultimate challenge truly does remain the same – getting readers to take a desired next step. 
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Chocolate Chip Content Marketing

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“No one is buying chocolate chip ice cream anymore,” a Mental Floss Magazine article points out. Thanks to a buffet of options and flavors, chocolate chip is now being perceived as passe and boring.  What’s more, due to health concerns, overall consumption of ice cream has dipped in recent years, the authors lament.

Ice cream is hardly the only area in which what was once the rage is now hardly remembered. Ponchos? selfie sticks? Hoverboards? (Who’d be caught dead?) Some things, of course, were made obsolete by technology (think paper maps, pagers, overhead projectors, typewriters, and telephone books).

Staying on top of trends becomes a crucial element in content marketing.

“The information you put on your website reflects your business, so ensuring you strike the right tone and include the necessary information is critical, IntuitMailChimp cautions. E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) have risen to the top of copywriting trends, Lauren Jefferson writes in Focus Copy.

“As consumers increasingly seek alignment between their purchases and personal values…brand ethics will become essential,” Vericast.com adds. “Instead of relying on broad demographic information, new technologies allow brands to create highly tailored campaigns to resonate with specific consumer groups.”

Despite all the trends that have come and gone, as content writers, we’ve learned at Say It For You,we can take courage from the fashion industry. There a sense of nostalgia has been awakened, with trends from the 70s and 80s making a comeback over the past decade.  Tailored jackets and cinched waists are fashion staples that have made a comeback.

Reminding content writers that there is no lack of resources available to our readers, I recommend going beyond presenting facts, statistics, features and benefits. By sharing some “chocolate chip ice cream” nostalgia, we have a better chance of engaging our readers.

 

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Reaping Testimonials of the Right Kind

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A new marketing rule issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission has now opened the door for financial advisors to incorporate testimonials, and Andrew Johnson, writing in ThinkAdvisor, wants to make sure advisors reap testimonials of the right kind and in the right way….

Many of the cautions and concerns Johnson mentions are centered around compliance (legal) issues. For example, advisors should disclose if the testimonial is coming from a current or past client, if that client has been compensated in any way for providing a testimonial, and if there are any conflicts of interest.

But at least two of the questions the author raises are relevant for any business owner or practitioner, I believe:

  1. How will you request a customer’s feedback? What will be the timing of the request?
  2. Once testimonials have been received, will all of them be displayed? If not, how will those used be selected?

Remember the 1977 movie about aliens called “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”?  As I like to remind both the content writers at Say It For You and the clients who hire us, the goal of a blog marketing is to not to attract customers per se, but customers “of the right kind”. These are customers who have a need for and who will appreciate the services, products, and expertise being showcased in the marketing content.  On our end, “getting it right” takes planning and thought. Ask yourself: Are you selecting the right keyword phrases? Are you establishing the right clear navigation path from your posts to your landing pages? Are you blogging for the right reasons and with the right expectations?

In one of my earliest Say It For You blog posts, I recommended using testimonials and success stories to boost credibility. I quoted an observation by Webcopyplus.com that testimonials help your business in two ways, helping new customers decide to do business with you, but also fostering commitment from those providing the testimonials.

One common practice I’ve been careful to avoid when it comes to testimonials is writing remarks, then asking the client to approve and “own” them. In every one of the testimonials shown on my website, the words were created by the customer, never by myself or by another of the Say It For You team. I strongly disagree with Quora contributor Michael Stephen who says the following: “If a customer agrees to provide a testimonial, don’t wait for them to write it. They are busy, they are distracted with life, they don’t have the time. The solution? Write it for them forward it to them and let them know they can change it anyway they like.”

Yes, we “say it for you” in case study, blog post, and newsletter content, but, when asking for (“the right kind” of testimonials, we want our clients to say it for themselves!

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