Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

5 Ways to Get Readers to Respond

Patsi Krakoff — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:43:58 +0000

You spend a lot of time writing content on your blog but if the only comments you get are from people looking for free marketing, maybe it’s time to revise your content strategies. Here’s a guest post from Chris Peterson at Straight North integrated marketing services in Chicago.

1. Your Blog as an Interactive Tool

When it comes to effective Web content, it’s no longer enough to post simple text with a graphic. Online newspapers learned that the hard way, but bloggers are discovering ways to use the Web as a means for two-way interaction – increasing the relevance of a blog while boosting Search Engine Optimization efforts to drive traffic. Below, read about some of the techniques you can use to engage your readers.

2. Polls

Your poll might not be scientific; in fact, the results could actually mean very little. But by providing a simple way for your readers to voice an opinion, you’ve given them an easy way to communicate with you. Ask them how they feel about something you’ve posted, or survey regular readers about what they’d like to see on your blog. Make them feel as if they are a part of the blog. They’ll reciprocate by returning and spreading the word.

Likewise, surveys include options for interaction. For example, a simple poll might allow a reader to click one of several poll responses, while a detailed survey could provide an option for submitting a personalized response.

3. External Links

Embedded links are an easy way to encourage people to use your blog as a resource. This also can help to lower your blog’s “bounce rate” as calculated by Google Analytics. Bounce rate simply refers to how your site is used – a quick in-and-out versus user interaction, with a lower bounce rate indicating greater interaction.

To get the most from your external links, it’s important to give visitors a reason to return to your site. If they come back within 29 minutes – to find additional links to glass block suppliers or to view the contacts you’ve listed for plastic molding services, for example – your attempt was successful. But if they stay gone, it’s a bounce.

4. Internal Links

These links keep visitors moving within your blog. They help readers find the information they’re looking for without backing out of your site and returning to Google. Internal links can give your blog credibility, and they enhance a navigable, interesting blog.

SEO-wise, viewing more than one page at a single site lowers visitor bounce rate and indicates an active, relevant website.

5. Reader Comments

You can generate a lot of user feedback by letting blog visitors speak their minds. Most blogs are equipped with features that allow for user comments beneath individual posts. The response section should be easy to find and simple to use.

(Note from Patsi: You should be continually inviting readers to leave a comment. Ask for their opinion! And not just on your blog… go over to your social media sites like LinkedIn and ask readers questions. You can include a link back to your blog post.)

Of course, the risks of comments include spam and abuse. If you enable comments, be sure to respect reader opinions while filtering irrelevant responses that might turn off your audience. Increasingly, blogs and websites are requiring users to register in order to leave feedback. The benefit is greater user accountability, but it could deter people who view registration as an obstacle.

Consider the tips mentioned above, and as always, observe what other blogs are doing so that you can best respond to a growing hunger for interaction.

What are your favorite tips for getting reader responses? Leave a comment, we’d love to hear from you!

About the author: Chris Peterson is a copywriter for Straight North, a provider of integrated marketing Chicago services. Straight North provides a full range of online marketing services related to Web design and Search Engine Optimization. Follow Straight North on Twitter and connect with Straight North on Facebook.

4 Content Marketing Goals for a Coach Website

Patsi Krakoff — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:21:06 +0000

How should content marketing be used on the home page of your website? What makes good website copy? More specifically, if you’re a professional service provider, like an executive coach, a consultant, a lawyer, health care or financial adviser… how do you create a website that attracts clients and gets potential new leads?

No matter what business you’re in, your content must achieve four things. Here are four goals for your online content:

Connect immediately (by speaking to your readers’ challenges or problems)
Answer questions and educate (by suggesting solutions)
Provide choices without confusion (by providing 3-4 places to read more)
Compel readers to take action (simple sign-up form or contact link)

That’s a basic outline that you could follow, not just for websites, but for your blog and other content marketing pieces.

Let me give you a great example so that these four goals come alive:

Here’s a screen shot of the newly revised website for ScholzandAssociates.com. Chip Scholz is an executive coach. His previous website was well designed, but it had too much information, in my opinion.

Like other executive coaches, he offers many services: facilitation, assessments, leadership development, speaking and books. The challenge is to present all the services to readers, while maintaining the focus on them and their problems.

I think this site does a good job because it’s about the outcomes and benefits of coaching. It backs that up with case studies from Chip’s clients. It’s brief and to the point:

Notice the headline, Be More Effective in Work and in Life. That is a primary outcome of coaching. So instead of “selling” coaching and trying to explain how coaching works, this home page focus is on what his readers and clients want for themselves.

In the subtitled section, “Is it time to change your strategy?” he further elaborates on the problem: trying harder yet getting the same results.

Then he offers three ways he can help people develop into a leader: through coaching, facilitation and assessments. It’s clear you can click on each one to find out more. Sure, those options are also offered in the navigation bar, but people tend to ignore that and read what’s on the page first.

Chip also makes good use of video. He knows full well that nobody’s going to contact him without first feeling some sort of connection. So the video gives a sampling of what it’s like to see and hear him.

This is just the home page. The subsequent pages have client stories and case studies which further bring to life the work and outcomes of Chip and his business.

Throughout, there are offers to contact by phone, through social media, and his newsletter. To me, this coach site is just right – not too much information, it’s brief, clear and focused on outcomes.

I interviewed Chip to find out why he changed his website, what were his goals, and the “back-story” of this revision. Here is my interview with him.

1. What factors made you decide to change your site?

There are a number of reasons:

**My old site was 7 years old, and technology has changed. The old code behind it wasn’t effective in being picked up by the crawlers.

**I had cobbled together the content from a bunch of different sites, and it was really stale.

**I had a lot more clarity about what my business does, and it needed to be reflected on the site (the case studies are a great add).

**The old site wasn’t social media friendly.

**I am very proud of my blog, and it needed to be more fully integrated into the website.

**Finally, the big reason…I lost weight since the pictures in the 04 site were taken, and needed to reflect the look!!

2. Did you have specific desires and goals? What were they?

My business goals are much clearer and I needed my site to reflect that, and I wanted all new, original content.

3. Did the people you hired make most of the changes?

I approached them, but they were VERY helpful in providing suggestions, and did a GREAT job on helping me focus the site.

4. What content did they ask you to contribute? Did they get involved in the content/marketing, or did they primarily focus on the structure and design?

Flying Bridge Technologies (FBT) is the firm I have been using for the last 7 or 8 years…they did the last two iterations of my site. They are getting much better at the marketing end, not just the tech end.

They did have outside resources to complete many of the tasks. For instance, Aprill Jones wrote most of the content based on our suggestions. Aprill is a freelance writer here in Charlotte that FBT suggested.

The video on the home page was shot and edited by 1060 Creative, another company suggested by FBT. It was a 6 or 7 month project, and there were a lot of moving parts. Add to it that I travel extensively, and it all came together quite nicely.

5. What advice would you have to others looking to change their web site pages?

Get a great firm to work with, like FBT, and open your wallet! It isn’t cheap to have a cool site. This one came in around $11K when you add all of the subcontractors, etc.

Unless you are great at content creation, hire someone to do it.

Oh, and have a GREAT blog, posted consistently.

Patsi: Thanks, Chip, for sharing your process and insights. Of course, I fully agree with you that quality content and design should be outsourced and isn’t cheap. But it’s an investment that pays off over time.

If you offer quality services to your clients, then shouldn’t your web presence reflect that? As they say in one of those television commercials for beautiful skin… “You’re worth it!”

A Checklist for 2012 Content Marketing Plans

Patsi Krakoff — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:23:17 +0000

2012 Content Marketing – how did we get here so fast? I’ve been reviewing my 2011 blog posts, email broadcasts, videos, and taking stock. I hope you’re doing the same, so you’ll get an idea of what’s needed for your own business in 2012. (Photo courtesy Rawich/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Here’s a checklist for reviewing your 2011 content marketing results so you can know where to spend your time and energy in 2012:

What were your most effective blog posts in terms of numbers of page views?
Which posts generated the most comments?
What email promotional subject lines got the best open rates? (Checkout this previous blog post for Subject Line Tips)
Which email newsletters titles got better open rates?
Which white paper or special report got good download rates?
Where did your most qualified leads come from?
Which teleseminar topics got the most registrations?
What were the press releases that got the most clicks?

You should also be taking a look at the quality of your writing, especially for your blog. Although it’s a bit dated, a tried and true review of some sophisticated blog writing concepts is Sonia Simone’s review of the best of Copyblogger for 2008. (I warned you, it’s a bit dated, but the concepts are proven and stand the test of time.)

What about you? What are your favorites? Most importantly, how did you do in 2011, and what are your plans for 2012?

If you’re still having trouble, check out my recent post on ready to publish articles. Content marketing is easier when you can outsource some of the writing and researching to qualified writers. A great way to short-cut the time needed to research, write and publish quality online content is to find a good writer to supply articles.

Now, I’ve got to get back to my own review. 2011 was a great year, let’s see how much better we can do in 2012. Happy writing!

Content Marketing Tasks: Practice Makes Progress

Patsi Krakoff — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:15:09 +0000

If you’ve spent your career avoiding certain marketing tasks because you don’t think you’re any good at them, you struggle each time you try, and you end up with weak results, take heart. Persistence has been touted by poets for a reason.

Your brain learns a lot each time you try something, even if you fail. If you stop trying, you’ll walk away with nothing. If you persist, however, the rewards are huge.

Example: public speaking. Many small business owners and entrepreneurs including many of my clients love the chance to get up and speak. The larger the group, the better. In my experience, they are extroverts. They love people and love conversations.

On the other hand, they usually don’t like writing. (Which is why they are my clients… they need content and they need to publish on the web – blogs, e-newsletters, ebooks, etc.)

Other people tend to focus their online marketing on content; they write books and they publish blogs and newsletters… and they hate speaking. They would rather have a root canal than deliver even a 3 minute elevator speech at a networking event.

While you can outsource your written content, especially online, you can’t outsource your speaking. You’ve got to deliver a speech yourself in order to represent your business and get clients.

Make no mistake, there is magic that comes from speaking from the podium. It works like a magnet for drawing people to you, creating credibility and potential working relationships.

You have to persist at things in order to learn them. Writing gets better each time you write, the same goes for blogging, revising web pages, writing sales copy, email promotions. The more you practice the better you are and the easier the task becomes. Here’s an example:

Case in point: Last December I spoke to 200 people at our local Lake Chapala Society about The Aging Brain. Two years ago when I did my first presentation there, I spent weeks preparing and practicing. This time, my third speech, I spent a few hours preparing the research and making notes, and zero time practicing the delivery.

It was so easy and enjoyable I never would have dreamed that this would ever be possible a year ago. They’ve asked me back. Instead of avoiding because of the work and stress involved, I’ve reached a point where I now seek out speaking opportunities.

What have been your experiences tackling something you thought you weren’t good at and practicing to get better? Please share.

Content Marketing Tip: Start with Ready-to-Publish Articles

Patsi Krakoff — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:47:38 +0000

Content marketing is easier when you can outsource some of the writing and researching to qualified writers. A great way to short-cut the time needed to research, write and publish quality online content is to find a good writer to supply articles.

For example, as a former executive coach and psychologist, I write for other coaches and consultants who are too busy with clients to write their own newsletters and blogs. You can find good writers in just about any field.

While this has created a good business for me, doing what I love, I don’t see many people using other people’s content for optimal results. Furthermore, when they do use writers, they don’t personalize it to make it their own.

Content marketing doesn’t work as well without unique and personalized copy. Some people use canned articles ‘as is’. They don’t take the time to add their own stories, to explain how it is for them in the work they do.

You need to connect the dots for readers.

Tell them why this article and these ideas are important to them.
Tell them about the work you do with your clients.
Tell them how they can learn more about what you’re publishing.

In my ebook Content Marketing with Blogs, I talk about the 4 Es: educate, entertain, engage and enrich the lives of people each time you write and publish on your blog. When you write, think about elements of each goal:

Educate
Entertain
Engage
Enrich

I think we’re all very good at our professions, we know a lot, and some of us are good about writing what we know. Or, we hire a writer to do that for us, and buy ready-to-publish content that’s full of research and facts. We’re good at educating our readers.

But to entertain readers, we have to become more real, by telling stories of the work we do with clients.

To engage readers, and to enrich their lives – we have to do even more. We need to write stories about why we care about the work we do with clients, and WHY we do what we do.

We need to communicate that passion. It’s what I call your back story. What’s the background you’ve had that compelled you to go into the profession you’re in today?

That story is very interesting to people. It’s what will resonate with them and make them want to work with you.

Like anything, it’s how you use content that counts. Ready-to-publish articles are great when you take time to personalize them, and connect the dots between quality research and facts, and how you, as a professional, can help solve people’s problems.

What do you think about using outsourced articles from writers?

When Business Blogging Works Too Well…

Patsi Krakoff — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:45:04 +0000

Blogging for your business works like this:

You blog about the problems you solve for your clients
You get found on the Web by the people who need your services
People get to know you, like you, trust you
They email or call and hire you (photo courtesy ddpavumba)

But then your business grows, you get busy, and what happens to the blog? I’ve seen hundreds of business blogs written by smart professionals who haven’t been posted since last summer.

Here’s my own example. I think I enjoy blogging for other people more than I do for myself! The more work I’m getting ghost blogging for executive coaches, the more interesting my writing becomes, and the more fun I’m having. It’s all good, really, except for a few problems…

I am quite simply more excited about creating content that markets for other professionals than I am for myself and my own business blog. I have long since stopped worrying about being “normal,” so that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

But here are some problems… All the while, my ranking on the Top 42 Content Marketing blogs is slipping. I went from #4 to #10 to #17…to #45. I may soon be off the list entirely. Yikes! (List now defunct, but you get the point!)

In case you haven’t noticed, I used to be an almost daily blogger here, then it went down to 5 days a week, 4 days, and now 1 or 2 blog posts a week.

I guess the problem is this: blogging for your business is the best darn way to market on the planet. It’s working for me to get found, get known and get clients. It works for my clients.

But like many smart professionals, my clients eventually find that business blogging eats a large chunk of time out of the day. That’s time they could be spending with clients, earning money.

So they call me and outsource their blogging with my services. I’m happy, they’re happy, but my own blogging and marketing suffers.

With all the new clients, I don’t have time to blog about blogging, or write about writing on the web, and share as much as before. That’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation and a description of a good problem to have.

When your online marketing is working like it should, you have to cut back on things that take up too much time. Outsource, I say, get some guest bloggers to fill in.

But above all, don’t stop marketing, and don’t stop blogging. It’s too important for getting found on the Web. My solution is to start hunting for qualified guest bloggers who can write with passion about online marketing with content.

You interested? Email me!

Business Blog: 4 Reasons to NOT Write Your Own

Patsi Krakoff — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:14:40 +0000

Guest post by Adam Kosloff.

You’re swamped.

You barely have time to scan the headlines of your favorite news feeds. Probably the only reason you clicked on this article was to check out whether it might provide instant value to you. Can this article save you time and/or money and/or hassle?

Hopefully, it can. And not because this article will tell you anything you don’t already know – rather, it will remind you of business principles that you already apply in your everyday professional work but which you forgot once you started marketing online.

Here’s the message, loud and clear: 99% of busy business professionals and attorneys should not – repeat, not – waste their precious productive hours writing their own blog posts and website content. If you are guilty of this practice, stop it. You will burn yourself out, and your business will suffer – even if you enjoy doing the writing.

Not convinced? Consider these four arguments.

You earn the most money – and generate the most productive return on your time – when you stay in your “area of strength. The more time you blog, the less time you will have available to serve your clients. Let’s do the math. Say you’re an attorney who bills out at $250 an hour. Currently, you write three blog posts a week. It takes you about an hour to write each post. $250/hour X 3 hours = $750.This means you are investing a whopping $750 every week into your blog. Are you really getting a return on that investment that justifies this practice?
You are not a professional blogger.You have been trained as an attorney, corporate executive, or entrepreneur. Even if you consider yourself a master writer and communicator, web writing is its own very cagey animal.Creating ongoing, tonally accurate, riveting web content requires specialized skills that you must hone over years of practice. Undoubtedly, you could learn how to write more effectively for the web. But why bother? Your time and resources are extremely limited. You must husband them for the crucial tasks of operating your core business.
It’s hard to keep up your blog.Perhaps you don’t mind – or even enjoy – updating your blog. That’s great. However, blogs work best as referral generating machines when they get updated regularly with exciting, innovative, search engine friendly content.Say you want to take a three-month business trip (or, God forbid, well earned vacation). Who will upkeep your blog? Someone in your office? Or will it be you — plugged into your laptop when you should be courting clients or lounging on a white sandy beach?Moreover, just because you have the creativity and stick-to-itiveness to write your blog today doesn’t mean you will be in the mood — or have the initiative — to persist through the inevitable creative blocks and day-to-day business interruptions.
It’s surprisingly easy and cost effective to outsource your business and lawyer blogging. Believe it or not, many highly educated professional writers specialize in “ghost blogging” for business executives and attorneys. These pros can write in your voice – about whatever topics you want. And they can do it for far less than the $750 a week you indirectly pay (out of your own time) when you update your own blog.

Does hiring a “ghost blogger” always make sense? No.

Are there good and bad ghost bloggers out there? Of course.

Whether or not you hire a corporate or attorney ghost-blogger, remember these key business principles and apply them to your online marketing efforts:

Stay in your area of strength.
Maximize your work efforts, so you can spend time with your family and pursuing leisure activities.
Locate and retain qualified outsourcers to dispatch with work you don’t have time or skill to do well yourself.

Today’s post is from contributing writer, Adam Kosloff:

Adam Kosloff is a Yale University educated writer who has written over 25,000 articles for the web, including thousands of content pages and “ghost blog” posts for attorneys and corporate executives. To learn more about his web writing services, please visit www.virtuosocontent.com.

Adam is also the author of a popular diet science eBook, The Low Carber’s Survival Guide (www.lowcarbsurvivalguide.com).

If you’re a coach, find out how you can outsource your blogging with Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D. Click here: WritingontheWeb.com blogging services.

If you’re a lawyer, find out how Adam Kosloff can help you with your blogging: VirtuosoContent.

Why Writing Like You Talk Works Better for Your Brain

Patsi Krakoff — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:49:37 +0000

Works Better for Your Brain" alt=" Why Writing Like You Talk
Works Better for Your Brain" />

Works Better for Your Brain" width="150" height="150" />Today’s guest post is by Barb Sawyers:

Many experts who try to write their own content need to rewire their brains, to abandon the lessons drilled into them at school in favor of the more conversational approach that works better online. The good news is that they can evolve.

Think about the conclusions of Dr. Norman Doidge in The Brain that Changes Itself, and other neuroscientists who have confirmed that people can recover or develop new regions to compensate for brain damage caused by strokes or congenital defects.

If they can make changes this profound, certainly you can rewire your writing process, even if it’s deeply entrenched from higher education, professional experience or other neural programming. Your neuroplasticity, as the brain geeks call it, means you can move from an objective style that builds walls to content that sticks to emotions and subconscious longings.

Yes, this takes practice, discipline and an open attitude, but luckily some of these changes come easily because they’re based on talking, the communication mainstay we all learned before writing.

I don’t have a million dollar research grant, but let me share what I’ve learned as my writing has adjusted. If you compared scans of my brain before and after writing for the web, I bet you’d see different areas light up, maybe new synaptic tangos too.

Because web communication is two-way, encouraging comments, “likes” and other interactions, it’s more similar to a conversation. This style of writing allows you to engage more personally.

It encourages you to tap into the “what sounds right?” school of grammar that tells you to write “Sawyers’ book,” not “Sawyers’s book” and stop worrying about split infinitives and other silliness. It naturally connects thoughts and tells you when to pause or respond to a concern you just know your reader has.

The efficacy of talking, versus writing, is also demonstrated by how you converse with your team when the news really matters, work up to talking to the person you met on a dating site or close big sales in-person.

On the other hand, you probably get upset when people write when they should talk. Think about how you feel when a friend texts to cancel a date, the call center rep reads a script instead of answering your question or the presenter recites the words from the slides.

In some of the writing sites I frequent, there’s lots of hissing from the old-school grammar sticklers, lamenting the abuse of pronouns and the rise of the passive voice. But let me insist that these old rules, while sometimes helpful, should be superseded by two questions: “what sounds right?” and “what helps us understand and connect?”

Conversation, not formal writing, is your ticket into the brain. It can be challenging to abandon old rules. But as Dr. Doidge and other neuroscientists would suggest, you can do it!

About our guest author:

Barb Sawyers helps experts pull ideas out of their heads and onto the page through her book, Write Like You Talk–Only Better, Sticky Communication blog and writing services.

Basic Human Motivation: 4 Ways to Engage Readers

Patsi Krakoff — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:01:43 +0000

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 and minds of readers on a profound level.

We can learn a lot from evolutionary studies. Our brains haven’t changed much, nor have our fundamental motivations.

I suggest a frame work for understanding basic human motivations: the Four Drive Theory, presented by Professors Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Noria in their 2001 book Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices.

There are many theories about what motivates behaviors, but I like this Four Drive theory because it is based on studies of primitive man, primitive societies, and the evolution of brain functioning over the last 100,000 years.

It doesn’t matter if you view humans as being motivated according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or Freud’s Pleasure/Pain framework, or any other drive theory. What matters for marketing is that you understand basic human drives, and what drives peoples’ behaviors at their most fundamental sources.

This theory doesn’t exclude other theories, but as a framework for marketing, I think it works quite well. Keeping these four things in mind, you can create more effective marketing that reaches the subconscious brains of your consumers.

These four fundamental drives motivate all human beings. Some are stronger drives than others, but we all have all four operating in the background of our lives.

Neuroscientists and anthropologists know that our brains haven’t changed much over the last 100,000 years. We are still driven by four key motivators. Everything the brain does is strongly motivated by these four drives:

The drive to acquire objects and experiences that improve our status relative to others.
The drive to bond with others in long-term relationships of mutually caring commitment.
The drive to learn and make sense of the world and of ourselves.
The drive to defend ourselves, our loved ones, our beliefs and resources from harm.

Each of these drives has been shown to exist in all human beings, in all cultures, all over the globe, throughout history for the last 100,000 years.

These common drives are what ensured our survival in dangerous primitive environments. They also ensure our survival in the modern world.

Owning an iPad, or a BMW, may not seem to be essential for your survival, nor are many of the other consumer items on the market. But acquiring goods can improve your status among your tribe, thereby ensuring your attractiveness to your mate and family. It improves your ability to bond, to learn, and to defend yourself and protect your family.

These four drives play heavily into why we buy, what we read, where we surf the Web. Everything marketers create appeals to one or several of these four drives. When you create content that appeals to our innate drive to improve our status among our tribe (or family), you tap into a powerful force.

And that’s just one drive, one opportunity to engage reader’s emotional responses. In some people, one drive will be more motivating than another.

For example, as a psychologist and journalist (some say I might be a psycho-journalist), I have a strong drive to learn.

My drive to learn is overwhelmingly strong at times, almost to the point of ignoring my need to acquire money. (I may die poor, but I’ll be extremely knowledgeable and happy to share what I’ve learned.)

My drive to bond is weak, I prefer to bond with a select few rather than with most people. I will defend myself and my husband, my kitties and my property with the ferociousness of a mother lion, often to my surprise.

How can you market to me? Tell me there are secrets to content marketing or neuromarketing (or tennis) I need to know, that will make my life easier, and save me time. Reassure me there are no risks. Let me know that you can be trusted to answer my questions with easy follow up access.

What about you? What are the best ways to market to you, considering your nature?

Content Marketing that Speaks to the Old Brain

Patsi Krakoff — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:56:37 +0000

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 a great story that makes this come alive… (photo courtesy Mantas Ruzveltas /FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

A Marketing Moment with a Homeless Man…

I want to share an excerpt of a story by Patrick Renvoisé, from his book Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Customers’ Brain. He tells the story of how he earned the equivalent of a $960/hour consulting fee from a homeless man…

One evening as I was entering a restaurant in San Francisco, a homeless person stopped me. His sign read, “Homeless. Please HELP.”

The man showed all the signs of distress with sad empty eyes. He looked me directly in the eyes, and I was compelled to hand over a few bucks. However, something led me to go further with this particular man.

Like many of my clients who try to get responses from marketing, his message was weak, and certainly not unique. So I gave him $2 on condition he let me change the message on his sign for at least 2 hours.

The man agreed, and I wrote a different message on the back of his sign. Later, we met up again.

He insisted on giving me $10, because he had made over $60 while I was having dinner. His usual take averaged $2-$10 an hour.

As my entire interaction had lasted only 30 seconds, this eight dollar profit translated into a $960/hour consulting fee, not bad.

All I did was apply what I know about the brain and marketing messages that get people to act.

Here’s what his new cardboard sign said:

“What if YOU were hungry?“

This message has unparalleled impact because it speaks a powerful language understood by the true decision maker in the brain, the old brain.

This is what makes the message much stronger:

It grabs our attention because it appeals to the self-centered nature of our old brains
It appeals to our survival instincts
It stimulates our emotional engagement as we imagine what it feels like to be hungry, through mirror neurons that spark empathy
We can relieve our discomfort by taking action, by making a donation, thereby feeling good about ourselves again
Our reward centers in the brain are satisfied when we take action

Learning more about how people make decisions will help you to become better at what you do. The true decision maker lies in the old brain, out of our conscious awareness.

How can you apply the lessons of this story in your own content marketing and blog writing? I can think of a few ideas, what are your examples? Please hit the comment button and share…

I’ll be sharing more about how important understanding the brain is for content marketing, so if you don’t want to miss a post, use the subscribe buttons at the upper left of this blog and subscribe to WritingontheWeb.com.