Cutting Through the Pervayors of the Shiny Objects

Create Content for the Person Who Pays You. Google Isn’t Going to Write You a Check.

Today, let’s talk about how to create content like an information marketer—and how to move your clients toward actually doing business with you.

I wanted to share something that came out of conversations with several clients. It’s something I’ve tried to create content around before, but I hadn’t found a very articulate way of discussing it.

It starts with a potential client I talked to about a year ago.

I had given her some good consultation and found some grave errors on her website. Then she tells me that Yoast, the SEO plugin, is giving a seminar on SEO.

“It’s like 40 bucks or something, so I’m just going to take that and do it myself.”

I’m like, “Okay. Good luck with that.”

Not long after she paid her 40 bucks, or whatever it was, the seminar was available for free.

Jump forward to recently. Another client tells me he went to an SEO seminar, and one of his big takeaways was that the speaker thought the Yoast plugin sucks.

I wouldn’t totally agree. I wouldn’t totally disagree.

The reality is that SEO is part technical and part art. Every day is an education. Something changes. There’s something new that may matter, and there’s something new that may not matter.

There are all kinds of things on a web page that you can manipulate. Some matter more than others. But doing everything a plugin tells you to do doesn’t mean you’re going to rank.

You can have every green bar and every green dot in Yoast when you publish a post. That alone doesn’t mean much.

So let’s get down to brass tacks. This is really about consumer protection in the digital world, and it’s about content.

Give Away the Why and Sell the How

Great marketing is great marketing of information.

Somebody told me long ago, “Give away the why and sell the how.”

Now, in a competitive world, we’ll often give away some of the how, too. I do it myself. But we may not give away the whole thing—the big how.

I was listening to the beginning of James Altucher’s book Choose Yourself while I was working out. He talks about coming up with ten ideas every day and giving them away without expecting anything in return.

I do that all the time.

I’ll put something on Facebook about how to use Facebook, or some other useful thing. It goes out to whoever sees it. I don’t always target it. Sometimes it’s not even really about my business.

If I’m helping somebody with something and think, “You know what? This is good information,” I’ll put it out there.

A lot of times, I put out stuff about football. I put out something about the whole concussion issue.

It’s about sharing useful information and creating thought leadership—or being an influencer, as the kids call it.

But let’s get back to gurus, seminars, and whatnot.

What Are They Actually Teaching You?

You always have to think in terms of what the content is doing.

Are they teaching you how to do SEO? Or are they teaching you how to use their plugin under the context of SEO, so you’ll keep using it and buy their stuff?

There’s a difference.

That’s why we create marketing content, too. We have something to sell. But let’s be a little transparent about it.

The guy who gave the seminar said a lot of things that made sense.

For example: “You’ve got to give people a good user experience.”

Completely right.

Now, how do you do it?

That’s where the explanation often stops.

You hear a bunch of things you agree with. It’s that yes set in sales. Your audience goes, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

Then: “Wow. This guy’s a genius.”

It isn’t necessarily a wrong process. It’s a process that can move you toward somebody’s agenda, and that agenda isn’t always to your benefit. They’re trying to get a sale.

So how do you step back from that?

If you find yourself getting emotional, jacked up, and excited about something, take a minute.

It’s good to be excited. We do things emotionally. That’s okay.

But before you go spending a ton of money, give yourself a chance to double-check the decision. I’ll come back to a way to do that in a minute.

First, let’s turn this around. Now we’re the seminar guy. We’ve got something to sell.

How do we create content that gets people to pay attention?

Novelty Gets People Engaged

I sat with a client the other day, and he explained how he sells his services.

It was so outside the norm that it was freaking brilliant.

It had just enough of that cheesy carnival salesman feel to draw people in, but it wasn’t too cheesy. It was still professional.

It got people engaged. It got them to actually pay attention.

And his numbers were phenomenal.

Novelty matters.

It’s one reason your clients might jump away from you. Things get dull. Or maybe they aren’t dull at all—people are just used to them.

As marketers, we always need to find ways to give people something novel.

One way is to give away ideas, as Altucher talks about. Jay Abraham has talked about this forever through his Strategy of Preeminence: teach people, help them, show them how you think.

Give away the why, with some of the how.

I was sitting down with another client, explaining a strategy. It was going to require some activity on his side, but I showed him how we could reduce that effort by building on what he already does.

The idea was to create more engagement with his website and help him build a community that nobody else in his niche could easily touch.

I told him, “You will be ripped off if you do this.”

People will see it and try to copy it. But copying what they see doesn’t mean they can pull it off.

It requires strategy. Nothing about it is cookie cutter.

That’s novelty with something behind it.

Stop Writing Like You’re Trying to Con Google

So how do you create that user experience?

I was talking to a client who writes his own blog and has been blogging since 2004.

Back then, a lot of us approached Google like a con job.

Slam the keyword. Slam the link. Slam, slam, slam.

If you’ve been around that long, that way of thinking can stick with you.

But that doesn’t make for a good user experience.

People have phones and multiple ways to get the same information you’re providing. Because guess what? Everybody else has the same damn data you have.

I don’t care what business you’re in. That includes my business.

So what makes the experience different?

One of the things I told this client was to start studying copywriting.

He said, “Yeah, I think I’m writing toward Google a little too much.”

I’m like, “Yeah. You’re working too hard.”

He was doing really well for a tough keyword in a fierce marketplace, but the conversion wasn’t there.

We had done the foundational SEO work. He was publishing fresh content. He had a good position on the first page.

But the business results weren’t where they needed to be.

He says, “I’m writing to Google too much.”

I go, “I know. I keep saying that.”

We’ve got to get out of that old way of thinking.

What Do You Actually Want the Visitor to Do?

Here’s a little SEO geekery.

The client starts talking about his bounce rate.

I’m like, “Compare your own bounce rate against your own bounce rate.”

Look at what it tells you about your site and your visitors. Don’t treat it like some magic number that explains whether Google will rank you.

I’m more interested in what happens when somebody gets to your website.

Do they find what they came for? Do they leave immediately? Do they go through more pages because there’s something worth looking at?

Most of all, do they pick up that damn phone and call you?

Or email you? Or do whatever your most wanted action is?

That’s what we’re trying to create: an environment where people want to stay, explore, and take the next step.

So how do you write content that helps make that happen?

Put People Inside the Experience

One of the things I explained to this client comes from the world of NLP and hypnosis: association and dissociation.

When I was a kid, we’d drive north of Los Angeles, up around Santa Clarita and Castaic, where Magic Mountain is.

We’d be little munchkins in the back of the van. Mom and Dad would be driving, and we’d see Magic Mountain off in the distance.

Back then, there wasn’t much development around it. You could see straight over to Colossus, that big wooden roller coaster.

Of course, we’d start trying to talk our parents into going.

“Can’t we just go for a little bit?”

You know how you did it as a kid. You’d try to talk your parents into anything.

But we were looking at the experience from the outside. We weren’t on the ride.

That’s dissociated.

Now imagine actually being on the roller coaster.

You’re sitting in that little seat. They bring the safety bar down so you don’t fall out.

You move forward. There’s that little jolt.

You hear the sound of the ride. A wooden coaster has a different sound from a metal one.

You start going up. You’re above the ground now, and you feel the wind.

Then you start climbing that big hill.

The wind gets into your hair. You feel that little chill. You hear the climb.

Then you reach the top.

Gravity changes.

And whoosh—you go down.

Maybe I did a good job of getting you into that experience. Maybe I didn’t. But if you’ve been on a roller coaster, you probably felt some of it.

You’ve experienced it.

It’s the same thing with the lemon demonstration.

Imagine slicing a lemon into quarters. Pick up a wedge and bite into it. Feel that lemon juice in your mouth.

You’re probably salivating a little bit right now.

I know I am, just thinking about it.

That’s what I mean by associated. You’re putting yourself inside the experience.

When we write our blogs, we need to connect with what our prospect, our reader, is experiencing around whatever the topic might be.

We need to get into their shoes.

That’s rapport. That’s empathy.

Look at It From Their Position

One of the models I like to play with is what NLP calls perceptual positions: first, second, and third position.

First position is your own perspective.

Imagine we’re sitting in a room. You’re talking to me. Maybe you’re selling your services.

You’re telling me what you want to tell me, from where you’re sitting.

But to build rapport, you need to come over to my perspective for a minute.

Wear my shoes.

What am I seeing? What am I feeling? What does this mean to me?

That’s how we want to write.

There’s a challenge in sales, though. Sometimes, when you’re in deep rapport with somebody, the persuader gets persuaded by the person they’re trying to persuade.

You get talked out of the sale.

So you need a way to step back and check yourself, too.

That’s where the third position comes in.

Imagine looking down at the two of us talking. You’re observing the conversation instead of being caught up in it.

I like to call it the Google Earth position, or the bird’s-eye position.

We’re looking down at the building we’re in. We can zoom in and out, like Google Earth or Google Maps.

From above, we can see what’s going on outside, around us, and farther away.

Zoom in, and we get a close frame.

Zoom out, and we get a wider frame.

It gives us perspective. That’s what this little tool is about.

And that’s also how you can double-check yourself when you’re all excited about a seminar, an offer, or something you’re about to buy.

Step back. Look at the situation from outside it for a minute.

When you practice moving between perspectives, it becomes easier to do it quickly.

It helps when you’re writing, too.

You can ask, “What is this person experiencing? How does what I’m saying look from where they’re sitting?”

Write to One Real Person

In copywriting, people will often tell you to write as if you’re writing to one person.

Who is your customer? Who is your prospect?

Pick one person you’ve actually talked to before and write directly to that person.

That makes your words more meaningful.

You aren’t just filling a page with information. You’re talking to somebody.

You know what they’re worried about because you’ve heard them say it. You know where they get confused because you’ve had to explain it. You know what they want because they’ve told you.

That’s why, when I talk about this subject, sometimes I say:

“Screw Google. Write to the person.”

Google is not going to pay you anything.

The person reading your website might.

Give that person a reason to keep reading. Give them something worth exploring. Help them understand what you do and why it matters to them.

The more you can walk in their shoes and have empathy for the person reading, the more compelling your content will be.