by Keith Keller | Sep 5, 2016 | GUEST BLOG POSTS: Social Media & SEO
BUILD TRUST BY SHARING YOUR STORY Guest Blog Post By Andrea Scoretz Storytelling serves as a way to make information stick in the reader’s brain. It makes complex ideas understandable. A good story allows the reader to relate to you and your plight, creating an instant connection. A good story seduces us to the point that we cannot stop reading it. We simply must know what happens next!! It’s the same feeling one get’s when binge-watching a Netflix series. 🙂 We want people to feel emotionally invested in the stories we share. We want people to care about what we have to say. The human brain wants to find the meaning in what we are reading. It actively seeks out meaning, even when we don’t notice it’s doing so. The meaning our brain decodes from stories has the ability to influence our entire lives. The stories we share are seeds. The quality and level of authenticity is the water that turns those seeds into a lasting, mutually beneficial relationship. What you share with your reader has the potential to impact them for the rest of their lives. That’s the power of storytelling for business. Words are insanely powerful. In fact, writers are some of the most powerful people in the world. Which means quality is incredibly important if we want to connect with our readers. Particularly if we want our readers to respond favorably. (IE: click link/buy product/like page etc) We are in the age of content shock (I wrote about that here). To permeate the content shock wall we need to make sure our stories are succinct. The message must...
by Keith Keller | Jun 8, 2016 | GUEST BLOG POSTS: Social Media & SEO
DO YOU SUFFER FROM CONTENT SHOCK? Guest Blog Post By Andrea Scoretz I’ve heard from a few sources now that the appetite for quality content is diminishing, and that other factors too are playing a dominant role in what has been labelled as “Content Shock”. I know there’s more to getting our message moving through social networks than content alone. But the message is in the content, so shouldn’t quality matter? Experts are saying that if your specific market is already saturated, you’ve got some tough decisions to make. Perhaps you’ll need to rethink your niche, come up with some hard cash for advertising, or brainstorm some next-level ideas to establish and maintain an audience. Although I’m not questioning these perfectly logical suggestions, good content still remains a mandatory piece of the puzzle. Because when we offer unnecessary, redundant, and insincere content to our audience, we risk eradicating the trust we worked so hard to build, and inadvertently question and discredit their intelligence. Serving someone dog food and attempting to convince them it’s prime rib is a quick way to lose a customer. If we want to keep our audience loyal and engaged, we need to do away with hollow content. That means no more made-in-China, one-time-use, throw-away content that’s destined for junk folder landfills. Content that lacks connection equals lost credibility. And whether we choose to admit it or not, we are desperate for connection. It’s what we live for. As a technical writer, I’ve produced my fair share of connection-less content. Instructional manuals anyone? Ugh. People avoid them like the plague, and they’re often considered a...
