Content marketing tools and training.
Business and personal bloggers might seem to be on two ends of a spectrum. On the one side: logic, strategy and profits. On the other: empathy, passion and heart. Never the twain shall meet, right?
There’s one point where they do come together, though. Whatever moves you to build an audience for your content, you need to inspire one key response.
More than admiration, money or attention, you need to earn your audience’s trust.
If you’re trying to sell products and services online, you’re probably looking for that one magic key to make your business work.
You buy CDs and DVDs that will tell you the secret.
You subscribe to sites like Copyblogger to study the secret.
You look at mega-successful sites in your market and try to reverse engineer the secret.
After all of this searching, you may be tempted to believe there is no secret. But the secret is real.
It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want. ~Spock
The Star Trek franchise has created dozens of memorable characters and inspired an incredible degree of connection and passion in its fans. One of its most enduring characters is Mr. Spock, the eminently logical half-Vulcan first officer in the original series.
Spock’s controlled, cool demeanor won him legions of fans, including millions of women who wanted to Pon Farr his pointy ears off. When I sat down to write about the need for rational, logical planning for your blog, what better model could I have found?
Imagine this, if you will.
An old woman, near the end of her life. Shivering in a fleabag apartment without heat in the winter. Walking four miles each way to the food bank, to carry home unmarked cans of mystery meat. Not even a cat to keep her company, because cat food is expensive.
Then one day she dies, and the neighbors find $2.7 million wadded up in her mattress.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about some ways you can keep your reader’s attention. But I didn’t mention one of the most important techniques–one that requires no particular writing ability, no creativity to think of a great hook, and no hours of research to find the most compelling facts to tell your story.
This easy technique is infinitely versatile. I use it in nearly every piece I write. But it’s so deceptively simple, you might not be taking full advantage of it.
Don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing . . .
Whenever you study a creative form like copywriting, you spend a lot of time on technique. You think hard about headlines and metaphors and what specific details you’ll use. You worry about positioning and persuasive structure. You’re trying to keep all the rules and guidelines in your head.
But if you want your content to keep bringing them back, it’s gotta swing.
