…and How it will Help Your Content Marketing and SEO!
What I taught one of my players who was stuck writing an essay.
I gave him what a college professor taught me. And then some other nuances that I learned later on down the line that can really liven it up.
I immediately shared it that night with my son who was in the middle of a college essay.
And which can help you tons with your content.
Content Creation
Here is a terrific formula to create your content. So as you may know I really am a coach. I coach businesses and I coach football players.
Not too long back I’m in the weight room because I help run the weight
program over there at the school. And one of the kids is doing homework because he is behind on his studies and is not allowed to lift weights.
And I ask how he is doing and he exclaims in frustration that he is not so good at writing essays.
Problem
You know you should create content.
- Blog
- Write articles
- Video
- Audio/Podcast
And then you wonder where will you put it? Overwhelm engulfs you and you paralyze and stick with the same ole same ole.
No content creation or distribution.
And if you want to be on the internet. You must create content. Even an advertisement is content.
So just like you or I, the kid on my team is in overwhelm over an assignment that is coming due. And he has donuts worth of progress.
What I taught the kid:
I asked him if I could teach him an easy fast way to approach writing. That was largely inspired by a college professor so long ago.
He was receptive to the idea as a smile came over his face at my invitation.
“Look first thing you got to do is write as if you’re talking to one of your bros.”
One of your guys on the team. How do you talk or write to him?
Because you probably talk to him more more easily than you do when you’re writing for your your class.
This is copy 101.
Write to a singular person not to a faceless crowd. And write how you talk and formalize it up as neccesary later.
So I said to speak to that guy and then as if you’re writing it to me… you know you’re gonna be a little bit more formal because I am your coach.
But it’s football it’s not writing so super heavy-duty formality, but it is still to an authority figure. So you’re gonna write a little differently.
Then write as if your reader is the principal at the school.
And then as if it’s your teacher,
Now you realize that everyone’s a little different. But you want to write as personably as possible. And so now with the teacher you’re going to write it using the words that you know your teacher likes.
And you know your teacher uses certain words all the time.
For us we need to write at about the 6th grade or so level. Unless your audience is super full of their vocabulary and education.
You are safe at about the 6th grade reading. That is the standard for USA Today. Seriously. So you and I should probably acquiesce to their market research .
And on that note. If possible…..
What Are Your Prospects Favorite Words?
You know this is a pretty good habit with anybody is to know what words they use all the time. In fact, I sat with a hypnotist pal of mine today and he kept writing notes as we speak.
And I asked why is he writing while we talk?
He said that, “Tim you are using these certain words that I find so interesting. ” He intimated that these were anchors that I keep repeating. And his lesson for me they were words that are anchors or triggers in my life.
So he will often use some of my favorite words to build rapport with me or myself.
So it helps to use a person’s favorite words. So I ask the kid you can do that right?
He was dialed in.
VAKog*
So I once had a college professor. A little Italian man who was a true educator. He instructed for our assignment that we go home and go find
a tree and write about the tree. ” I want a one-page essay about the tree.”
“I want to know how it and looks, smells, tastes, feels, and sounds in vivid detail.”
My adult self recognizes this as the VACog from NLP.
Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) which is related to hypnosis and specific communication. Teaches modalities and submodalities as a way that we perceive the world and can change our perception of the world.
*V-Visual
*A-Auditory
*K-Kinesthetic(feeling)
*O-Olfactory -smell
*G-Gustatory-taste
Long story short, the discipline uses some distinctions of each modality called sub-modalities. Which my comp prof would call vivid detail.
Additionally, we can experience these internally and externally.
So I told my player that when you write in those vivid terms that person has an experience that is richer than if you write in generalities. When that experience is richer, we can move them emotionally. And…
Emotion Sells!
And that is what we want our reader to experience.
So the kid can get the A.
And you can get the sale!
The best way to feel emotion is usually from what is called associated. As opposed to disassociated.
An Example of Dissociated
^^^Hard to feel lots of thrill and emotion from this view ^^^
Associated
This video is a much richer experience than the photo of Colossus from the parking lot. In POV (associated).
Now describe that experience adequately with vivid VACogs and you will move your listener from where they are now to where you want them to experience emotionally.
Visualizing yourself chomping down on a lemon can you give you not only an emotional response but a physiological one.
Good writing should move your reader emotionally. Moving their associations can help that along.
Facts Tell, Stories Sell
So notice that most of what has been said here is in story form. Hopefully interesting enough to get you to this point.
So as humans we love stories.
In fact, when I chat with my team, I call it story time. They think it weird at first. Then I see individuals clearly moved emotionally.
And when I have that. I have them.
But we all love the analytical as proof. Since we know:
“We do things for emotional reasons, and justify them with logic later.”
So in order to write well you must:
- Speak directly to your audience as an individual. You must use their words and level of typical vocabulary.
- Write with their perspective in mind.
- Move them emotionally.
- Tell it via story.
- Back it up with facts. Even if all you are doing is placing what looks likes facts into a bulleted list. 😉
- Know all the angles on your topic.
One more for you.
This is a favorite of mine and a great way to get multiple perspectives.
Perceptual Positions
Now in all of these NLP examples I am dumbing the concepts down to make my point.
You are very welcome to look into it further. And I have tons of experts on my podcast. And my pal Adam is a sales expert and should be contacted if you have more interest.
So for our purposes Perceptual Positioning is to visualize an experience such that we perceive it through multiple perspectives.
- Our own
- The listener/reader
- Birds Eye/Google Earth
The first one is easy. What is your agenda or position on a subject you wish to write or talk about? You know it well. You have emotions and feelings around this topic.
The Second one is your reader. This person that you wish to convince has their own agenda and feelings and beliefs about your topic.
Your goal is to wear their shoes for awhile. To get into rapport with them. Feel what they feel. Gain empathy for their wants, needs, desires, pains around your subject matter.
The birds eye view is like Google Earth. Seeing the first and second subjects below as if from above.
Much of the emotion is gone up there as you are so dissociated from the two people down below in front of one another.
You can zoom in closer. Or to the side of the home or room. What else is happening? What other information are you missing about this subject?
Now you are ready to write.
Hopefully, on even dull subjects in business, you can write with some flare that causes your reader to feel.
Your reader is desperate to feel.
Oh one more:
Too many of us allows perfectionism to justify procrastination. As Nike says. “Just do it.”
Get it better on the next run.
Manifesting the Scott Adams Method of Writing
Now, when I say “write,” I’m talking about communicating something so another person wants to read it, understands it, and gets something out of it.
For a business owner, that might mean somebody picks up the damn phone.
That’s the kind of writing I care about.
You can spend a lot of time worrying about whether you’re a “good writer.” Or you can learn a few principles, put something on the page, and work on making it better.
The second option gives you something to work with.
Scott Adams covers a lot of these fundamentals in his lesson on becoming a professional—or just better—writer. His discussion is a good jumping-off point for explaining how I think about teaching writing, whether you’re 16 or you’ve been running a business for 30 years.
Start With Something Worth Saying
People get hung up on the writing before they know what they’re trying to say.
They sit down at the computer and think, “Okay. I need to write a blog.”
About what?
For whom?
What should that person understand when they’re finished?
If you can’t answer those questions, you’re making the writing harder than it needs to be.
Start with an idea. A question somebody asked you. A mistake you keep seeing. Something you explained to a customer yesterday.
If you’re in business, you probably explain useful things all day long. Then you sit down to write and suddenly act like you have nothing to say.
You’ve got material. Start there.
Write Like You’re Talking to Somebody
One of the easiest ways to make writing difficult is to decide you need to sound like a writer.
Out come the big words. The long sentences. The stuff you would never actually say to another human being.
Why?
If you were explaining your service to somebody sitting across from you, would you talk that way?
Probably not.
Pick a real person. Somebody you’ve talked to before. Explain the idea to that person.
That gives you a place to start. You know what they understand. You know where they get confused. You know what questions they’re likely to ask.
You’re having a conversation on the page.
And yes, you can clean it up afterward. Talking gives you the material. Editing helps the reader follow it.
Make the Reader Do Less Work
Adams uses a simple example in his lesson:
“The ball was hit by the boy.”
You understand it. But turn it around:
“The boy hit the ball.”
There’s the person. There’s the action. You get it.
That’s what you want to look for in your own writing. Can you say it more directly?
Business owners do this all the time. They take something simple and dress it up until nobody knows what the hell they’re talking about.
“We provide comprehensive solutions designed to facilitate improved customer acquisition.”
You help businesses get customers.
Okay. Now I understand. Tell me how.
Your reader already has enough going on. Don’t make understanding your business another job.
Get Rid of Words That Aren’t Doing Anything
Once you have something on the page, look at what you can take out.
Does that word help?
Does that sentence explain something?
Did you already make the point two paragraphs ago?
Sometimes we keep words because we worked hard on them. We like the way they sound. We think they make us look smart.
But the reader wasn’t there while you struggled to write the sentence. They’re just trying to get through it.
“It was very, very hot.”
“It was hot.”
Maybe “very” matters in a particular sentence. Fine. Keep it if it earns its place.
But don’t leave extra words lying around just because you typed them.
That’s a useful lesson for a young writer. It’s a useful lesson for the rest of us, too.
Give Them a Reason to Read the Next Sentence
Your opening has a job.
Get somebody interested enough to keep reading.
You can start with a problem they recognize. A surprising observation. A question they’ve been asking themselves. A story that goes somewhere.
You don’t need three paragraphs announcing that you’re about to discuss a topic.
Get into it.
Think about the difference between introducing “the importance of clear business communication” and saying:
“Your customer read your whole page and still doesn’t know what you do.”
Now we’ve got something to talk about.
The reader can recognize the problem. They might even be wondering whether they’re doing it themselves.
That gives them a reason to read the next sentence.
Help Them See What You Mean
If I tell you to “create an engaging customer experience,” what picture shows up in your head?
Maybe nothing.
If I describe somebody opening your website on their phone, squinting at the text, hunting for a phone number, and finally giving up, you can see it.
Now we can talk about the customer experience.
Stories, examples, and specific details give people something to work with.
This connects to something I talk about with content: put the reader inside the experience.
Let them recognize the frustration. Let them picture the situation. Help them understand what changes when the problem gets solved.
You know your business from the inside. Your reader may be encountering it for the first time.
Give them something they can see.
Get Something on the Page. Then Fix It.
A blank page gives you nothing to edit.
You can sit there waiting for the perfect opening, or you can write down what you’re trying to say.
It may be rough. It may wander. You may discover that your best point is halfway down the page.
Good. Now you’ve found it.
Move it up.
Cut what you don’t need. Explain the part that’s confusing. Break up the sentence that tries to do six things.
Writing and fixing are part of the same process.
That matters when you’re teaching somebody young. If they think good writers produce perfect sentences the first time, every rough sentence feels like proof they can’t write.
It’s a draft. Work on it.
Business owners need to hear that, too. You don’t have to get the whole article right before you’ve written the first paragraph.
Keep Your Voice
Cleaning up your writing shouldn’t erase the person behind it.
If somebody knows you, they ought to be able to hear a little of you when they read your work.
Your expressions. Your observations. The way you explain things.
That doesn’t mean keeping every repeated word or every detour you’d take in a conversation. It means keeping the personality while making the message easier to follow.
Adams talks about finding your voice in the lesson. That’s an important distinction: you can improve the writing and still sound like yourself.
You don’t need to become somebody else to communicate well.
Remember Who You’re Writing For
This is where it comes back to marketing.
You can write something that impresses you and does absolutely nothing for the person reading it.
Did you answer their question?
Did you explain something they needed to understand?
Do they know what to do next?
Those are useful questions.
And if you’re writing for your business, remember that Google isn’t the customer. A keyword doesn’t have a problem you can solve. A person does.
Teach that person something. Help them make sense of their situation. Give them a reason to trust your judgment.
Teaching a 16-year-old to write brings you back to the fundamentals: have something to say, explain it clearly, use examples, and keep working on the draft.
Those fundamentals don’t expire when you get older.
Neither does the need to practice them.