Category Archives: Online Persuasion

Basic Human Motivation: 4 Ways to Engage Readers

If you are writing content designed to persuade and influence, you need to know what makes people tick. (photo courtesy of digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net) There are universal drives that are common in all human beings, across cultures, across the globe. When you create content that appeals to either of these four basic drives, you can’t help but engage the hearts…

Content Marketing that Speaks to the Old Brain

You get better results with your content marketing when you speak to the “old brain,” the one that’s also known as the primitive brain or the survival brain. Knowing how the brain works will help you write better as well as help you with presentations to influence others. There are a few principles to remember, and here’s…

The Homer Simpson Guide to Neuromarketing

Content marketing experts and the people who write marketing messages ought to understand how consumers’ brains work if  they want to engage and create trust and loyalty. The problem lies in assuming people are in charge of their own choices… Everybody thinks they are in control of their behaviors and decisions. We think we are…

Neuromarketing Books for Marketing to Brains

If you want to know more about how to write content that makes an impact on the brains of your readers, here are some interesting sites and books about the emerging field of neuromarketing. There are new neuromarketing companies and books galore, and I believe most offer important clues for content marketers. Here are a few of…

Neuromarketing Research: 3 Keys that Trigger a Buying Decision

The study of the buying decision process, or neuromarketing, has had a tremendous impact on content marketing. More brands are being studied in laboratories around the world as consumers are being hooked up to brain imaging machines, fMRI, EEG and other devices so that they are monitored while they read marketing messages and make decisions. Neuromarketing is extremely…

“WIIFM”? Neuromarketing Improves Your Odds

Every time I read about a new neuromarketing study, it seems they’re only confirming what copywriters and marketers knew all along: to get readers to take action, you must address the “what’s in it for me” filter in consumers’ minds.  Easy, right?  Well… Although we can’t directly cause people to do something, we can use knowledge…

Writing Compelling Content:
What Drives Your Readers?

In a recent blog post, Compelling Content:  What Are Your Readers’ Hot Buttons?, we explored the top 10 hot buttons and the use of emotional words and phrases to tap into these issues.  Here’s another model based on only 4 drivers. 4 Drives in a Nutshell Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices (Jossey Bass, 2001),…

5 Content Marketing Questions:
Get Readers to Take Action

What will make your web readers take action or not? Content marketing isn’t successful without results. So when writing a blog post or a web page, keep these key questions in mind. You want to inspire readers to pick up the phone, click here, sign up, register, or remember your brand. Here’s a final note…

5 Content Marketing Questions: #1 What’s the Problem?

In a previous post, Writing Web Content that Gets Results: Questions, I reviewed the basic rules of writing web content. In this post, we’ll explore the 5 content marketing questions that will help you organize and simplify your web page and blog writing by asking 5 important questions: What is the problem (pain, predicament)? Why hasn’t…

Compelling Content: What Are Your Readers’ Hot Buttons?

How do you write compelling content that attracts and engages readers? Ahhh, that question again…(followed usually by how do you turn readers into buyers?) First, let’s deal with the compelling content thing. Your content isn’t going to market a thing if you don’t reach inside the heads and hearts of your readers. Obviously it’s all about your…