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Another and Yet Another Almanac Tidbit

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Tuesday’s Say It For You blog post centered around one information tidbit from Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac, explaining what the “sugar plums” famously mentioned in “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. Today I’ll cite some other tidbits from the Almanac that I and fellow content marketers can put to good use in our content…

Tidbits about the history of popular products:

(Possible content writing purpose: educating readers about the history of the product the client manufactures or sells)

  1.  The origin of Rubik’s Cube
    The Rubik’s Cube, never intended as a toy, was a 3-D model used by a Hungarian professor more than fifty years ago to explain spatial relationships to design students.
  1. The origin of Post-It Notes
    A chemist at 3M Company found the slips of paper he used to mark his place in the church hymnal book would not stay put. Wondering if an adhesive previously created by a colleague (a product which had been considered useless because it was not very sticky or strong) might work on paper…  

Tidbits about company or product names:

(Possible content writing purpose: educating readers about the history of the company and choice of company name) 

  1. The sport of volleyball
    As educational director of the YMCA in Holyoke, Mass, William Morgan noticed that not al the men had the vigor and stamina needed to play basketball. He invented s sport he called “mintonette”, asking A.G. Spaulding & Bros. to develop a ball for the new sport. The game proved a hit, but one delegate was troubled by the name and suggested “volleyball”.
  2. From one code to another
    When Drexel Institute of Technology graduates Joseph Woodland and Bernard Sliver discovered a way to stock and track inventory, they filed a patent describing  “article classification through the medium of identifying patterns”. Since Woodland knew Morse Code, the new technology was named the barcode.

Tasty “almanac tidbits” help content readers who visit the website feel an “I’m-in-the-know” connection with the providers of products and services.

 

 

 

 

 

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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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Rolling a Picasso in Your Content

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“Roll a Picasso” is an art game developed by Emily Glass for use in an art or art history classroom, but it it makes for a fun exercise for groups of any age. Each roll of a die relates to a printed key, directing the “artist” to draw the head, the left ear, the nose, the mouth, by copying the shape on the chart. The different combinations of the 24 shapes make for a high degree of variety in the finished product. It’s interesting that, just days after posting “Telling Your Business Story Through a Brand New Lens”, I was introduced to this visual proof of how, by creatively combining – and recombining – a finite number of elements, we can continue producing engaging marketing content.….,

In corporate content marketing training sessions, I teach that effective blog posts are centered around key themes, just like the recurring musical phrases that connect the different movements of a symphony.  As you continue to write about your industry, your products, and your services, we tell business and practice owners, you’ll naturally find yourself repeating some key ideas – in fact, that’s exactly what you should be doing, we explain, to keep the content focused and targeted while still offering variety.

  1. It’s important to stress that blog and social media posts tend to be most effective when they focus on just one idea. A content writer might go about:

    – busting one myth common among consumers of their product or service they’re marketing

– offering one testimonial from a user of that product or service

– describing an unusual application for a product

– describing one common problem their service helps solve

– updating readers on one new development in that industry or profession

– offering a unique opinion or slant on best practices

Each post is similar to one “roll of the dice”, with the long-term effect being your “Picasso” work of art!

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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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