Cultural Allusions Cut to the Chase

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“When a narrative alludes to something that has become a part of society’s consciousness,” Scribophile.com explains, that’s called a cultural allusion. The reference might be to:

  • a fairy tale
  • the Bible
  • Greek or Roman mythology
  • a work of literature
  • a TV character
  • an expression

In content writing, we’ve found at Say It For You, the “big deal” about cultural allusions is that, when they work, they instantly put the reader and you “on the same page”. It’s a way of saying to readers – “You know what I mean!”

Here are some interesting examples of cultural allusions I found in article titles:

  • “Riches from Rags”, a story about the Vinted luxury clothing resale firm, is a play on the expression “from rags to riches”.
  • “The L Word” – an article about loneliness, is a play on “the F word”.
  • “Like Mother, Like Daughter”, is a play on the expression “like father, like son”.
  • “The Group That Reads Together, Stays together” is a play on the aphorism “The Family that prays together, stays together”.
  • “Friends With Health Benefits: – a play on” represents a play on “friends with benefits” (people who engage in intimacy without really formally dating each other).

“We’ll always have allusions,” writes Veronica Sanchez of Vanderbilt University, using as an example Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in which King alluded to the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bible.

The point of using allusions in writing blog posts might be to:

* get readers thinking about your subject in a new way
* get a point across without going into a lengthy explanation
* cement a bond between the writer and readers based on shared experiences and knowledge

The caution, of course, is that if the reader does not know the underlying story, literary tale or other reference point, the result might be annoyance rather than appreciation, reminding us as content writers to gauge our readers’ level of education and likelihood of familiarity with the reference.

Cultural allusions can certainly help “cut to the chase”, but it might be best to do just enough explaining to make your point clear.

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Self-Help Titles Teach Variety

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Browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble, I came across an entire three-shelf section of self help books. The variety of titles was astounding, perfect examples of how a single topic can be approached in a plethora of ways:. Here are just a few of the titles:

  • Already Enough
  • Wild Calm
  • Yay All Day
  • Wander the Stars
  • Slow Down, Take a Nap
  • What’s Behind the Blue Door
  • You Meet You
  • Always Change a Losing Game
  • The Other Significant Others
  • Atomic Habits

When it comes to content marketing, all the titles show above could be classified as “Huhs?”, meaning that each needs a subtitle to make clear what the book is actually about. “Oh!” titles, we teach at Say It For You, are self-explanatory, and from an SEO (search engine optimization) standpoint, make a direct connection to the query readers type into their search bar.

For either straightforward or “Huh?-Oh!” titles of blog posts, one way to engage readers is using the sound of the words themselves, repeating vowel sounds (assonance) or consonant sounds (alliteration), so that searchers use their sense of hearing along with the visual.

Just as titles “grabbed” me as a bookstore browser, it’s important to have “ringing” in blog post titles, we teach. Titles matter in two ways:

  1. For search – keywords and phrases help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or professional practice has to offer.
  2. For engagement – after you’ve been “found”, you’ve gotta “get read”! (Of course, no clever title can substitute for well-written, relevant content that provides valuable information to the readers.)

But when blog content writers try being too clever, too general, or too cliched, that’s not good, either, Authormedia points out in “Top 5 Blog Title Mistakes Authors Make” The overriding criterion is whether you can deliver on your headline promise in the body of the post.

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Writing About WIne and Other Difficult Content Tasks

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“Using words to describe wine is fraught with peril and leaves wine writers exposed to ridicule,” Gus Clemens writes in an article  I found reprinted in my Indianapolis Star the other day. “Writing about wine is like dancing about architecture,” he complains. Although many familiar terms about wine tastes and smells are delicious to imagine and easy to understand because we know them from the fruit we eat, other terms, such as “leather”, “granite” or “green bell pepper” sometimes make us ask, “Are they just making stuff up to appear superior?”

Interesting. Just a couple of months ago, I posted a piece on introducing “insider terminology” to blog readers. The point I was making is that, in content marketing, once you’ve established common ground, adding new vocabulary  or “in-words” actually adds value to readers’ visit, giving them a sense of being “in the know”.

Offering online readers more than a description, but an “experience” is, in fact, one of our biggest challenges as content writers. Our goal is, through what they see on the page, to give visitors a “taste” of the benefits and satisfactions they stand to enjoy when using your products or services. 

“Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his book All Marketers Tell Stories. While effective stories have authenticity and an implied promise of satisfaction, they must also, he stresses, appeal to the senses rather than to logic

With readability being a critical yet often-overlooked aspect of writing (as StraightNorth.com explains, content  must be matched to the education and sophistication level of your intended audience. In the case of a wine vendor, is the content targeted towards experienced wine consumers or is it intended to draw in “newbie” enthusiasts?

Humanizing your marketing content is a way of bringing readers “backstage”, keeping the company or professional practice relatable. Building a story around the “leather” or “granite” element in the services and products you have to offer can mean turning information-gathering into an experience!

 

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To Say Me Is To Know Me

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“There is a lot happening out there, seeming as if it’s everything, everywhere, all at once. The events are relentless, but so is the pace with which language adapts to the changes—with new and newly prominent ways of referring to a wild variety of very specific things,” Nick Norlen, Senior Editor of Dictionary.com writes. “The most recent additions to Dictionary.com come from just about everywhere, spanning the multiverse-like complexity of modern life.”

Norlen explains several of these new nouns:

  • Digital nomad (person who works remotely while traveling for leisure)
  • Nearlywed (person who lives with another in a life partnership with no wedding planned)
  • Rage farming (the tactic of intentionally provoking a political opponent)
  • Heritage language (a language used at home and spoken natively by the adults in a family, but not fully acquired by the next generation)
  • Deadass (adverb meaning extremely or completely)
  • Superdodger (Person who remains uninfected or asymptomatic even after exposure to a contagious virus)

Then, at our quarterly meeting of the Financial Planning Association of Greater Indiana, one of the speakers discussed the difference between the terms “phishing (fraudulent e-mails and websites) and “smishing” (fraudulent text messages), not to mention “vishing” (fraudulent phone calls).

Plain language matters in marketing, LinkedIn advises. Users – “Whether you want to inform, persuade, or engage your audience, you need to use language that they can easily comprehend,”

There’s another way to look at terminology, I remind content creators at Say It For You. Once we’ve established common ground, reinforcing to online visitors that they’ve come to the right place, it’s actually a good idea to add lesser-known bits of information on our subject. Doing that might take the form of arming readers with terminology that is new to them, adding value to the visit, but also giving those visitors a sense of being “in the know”.

Psychologically speaking, content writers can introduce industry “jargon”, then allude to those new words later on the content, giving an impression of “collusion” with the reader, smoothing the way towards a call to action.

New words and phrases emerge as a direct response to new concepts, the Macmillan Dictionary explains. Creative combinations of words stick “because they fill lexical gaps.” As content writers, we can help prospects “know” our clients by giving them the words to express what those business owners and professionals do.

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Does Fact-Finding Break Trust or Make It?

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The main purpose of a financial advisor’s initial meeting with a prospect, as it’s currently conducted, is to gather facts and information that will help the advisor create a financial plan for that high net worth prospect, Ari Galper writes in Advisor Perspectives,.  Problem is, Galper points out, in any sales context, until the prospect feels in their gut that this advisor is the one for them — that there’s something more to the process than just “running the numbers”, nothing is likely to happen. That’s because, Galper asserts, being cross-examined is the opposite of trust-building. What’s more, he says, contrary to what many marketing gurus teach, prospects’ ultimate decisions are not driven by information but by emotion.

This insight translates into content marketing in two important ways: 

  1. Offering little-known explanations and citing statistics that explode common myths is a good way to engage online readers’ attention, offering business owners and professional practitioners the chance to showcase their own knowledge and expertise in interesting ways. The fly in the proverbial “ointment” is that people don’t like to be proven wrong. The skill lies in engaging interest, but not in an “I’m-the-expert-and-you’re-not” fashion. Allow for the fact that anyone might reasonably have come to an incorrect conclusion before becoming aware of the facts you’ve now provided.
  1. While Galper stresses that in a financial advisory setting, trust-building questions need to precede fact-finding queries, when it comes to online content marketing, the process is reversed. The “fact-finding”, accomplished by having content writers gain an understanding of the target audience, comes first.  Only then can the content in an article, newsletter, email, or social media post result in a “meeting” of business owner and reader “prospect”. In content marketing, you have have to know your target audience before asking them to take action. Consider age, gender, nationality, where your target readers “hangs out”, what they read and watch, and what they’re saying on social media, in interviews and in focus group.  What causes do they support?

For financial advisors at an initial interview with a prospect, putting fact-finding first can break, not make for, trust. For content marketers, fact-finding before-the-fact allow the creation of the “right stuff” for the “right readers”. 

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