5 Steps to Telling Engaging Stories on Your Blog

how to tell stories on your blogThe best bloggers on the planet do three things very well. I call them the 3 E’s.

The first two, educate and engage, are the easiest to master. But the third E, entertain, is the one that will set a blogger apart from the masses.

The best way to entertain, to keep your reader glued to your page, is to tell a story.

What makes a good story?

The famed writer Flannery O’Connor said that a story is ‘a full action with a point.’ What better way to describe a blog post, too? In their most basic form, both a story and a blog post must have something happening and both must end with a point.

I’ve been reading Victoria Mixon’s groundbreaking book, The Art & Craft of Story. While she is talking to writers of fiction, what she says is just as true for bloggers. Her message is this: You are unique. Your history, your life experiences are unlike any other person’s in the world. And looking at your own life will teach you how to tell unique stories.

That’s powerful stuff. If you turn the camera on yourself, could you possibly have ways of looking at an issue or problem that that next blogger can’t duplicate? Could your life experiences relate to a post topic in story form, in a way that drives your point home in a unique and entertaining way?

How to tell an engaging story on your blog

1. Figure out your theme.

What is the one thing you are trying to say? What one thing will apply to all of your readers, regardless of their backgrounds and experiences? The theme is the point of your post. Write it on a sticky note, put it on your computer monitor and keep it front and center with each word you write.

2. Pull them in with an engaging hook.

Your headline and opening paragraph are your hook. Picture your reader browsing in Barnes and Noble. She opens to the first page and reads the first sentence. Will she read the next one (or buy the book)? Or will she put the book down, never to return?

You want your reader to think, “What’s going on here? I must find out!” There are many strategies for this, but making your reader curious or surprised with your headline and hook is one of the best.

Example of a Headline: Why I’m Dumping the Cat’s Eye Writer Blog

If you are a regular reader of the Cat’s Eye blog, this would make you sit up. Is she really quitting blogging? Why? This post prepared readers for my transition from Cat’s Eye Writer to my newly branded Judy Lee Dunn author blog.

Example of a Hook: The other day I unfollowed someone on Twitter. At first glance, we appeared to have lots in common. He’s a writer, I’m a writer. I thought I could learn some new things from him. But then election season hit.

What did election season have to do with anything? I wanted my reader to stay on the page to find out.

3. Paint a setting and introduce characters we will care about.

The character can make or break your post. Make it someone we can emotionally invest in, someone we will care about. Sometimes the character will be you. Other times, you will want to plunk the reader down in the story with you.

Example of a Character in a Setting: There are small towns. There are rural areas. And then there are islands. Islands that have no bridges, only ferries.

Ferries that blow their horns on foggy days. That break down at the worst possible  moment, usually when you have an important meeting with a new client. Ferries that will take you back home if you show up before the last one leaves the dock, at 7:30pm sharp.

When you arrive just 10 seconds late, the ferry workers in bright orange vests are pulling the thick ropes in and locking the gate. And you are stuck on the mainland, cursing that ‘careful’ driver who chugged along at 16 miles an hour all the way along the tree-lined road that leads to the ferry landing.

You would have made it if not for her.

This was a lead-in to a guest post I wrote for Becky McCray’s Small Town Survival blog. I was setting readers up for the challenges of operating a business in a remote location and figuring out how to make it work. I wanted the reader to be right there with me.

4. Set up your conflict (also known as your plot).

This is your problem. What are you helping the reader to solve? It should be a question your reader is itching to know the answer to. This is the part where something happens. Tell us a story about a problem you have had—one that you weren’t sure how to solve.

In this post, Google Said I Died: Will That Be Bad for Business?, the problem was how to control your online reputation when other people with the same name as yours are being talked about on the Web. As the story unfolds, I am at my computer. A Google Alert lands in my in-box, with a link to Judy Dunn’s obituary. So the conflict is this: What happens when a news story about another Judy Dunn hits the Web?:

Example of Conflict: Sometimes a Google Alert comes in that wakes you up. Like last Wednesday, when I found out I had died. It was kind of weird because I wasn’t really expecting it. I was just reading along and, bam, there it was: my death notice.

5. End with a climax and resolution that shows the choice your character made.

This is where you reach the point of your whole story—how it ends and what that means for the reader. The best characters go through a change and make a new choice. So by the time you end your post, you should leave your readers with how and why you changed your mind, your opinion, or your way of thinking or feeling about something.

Using the Google Said I Died example again, I end with the resolution of the problem. I show the steps I took to manage my online reputation so I could be sure that the good stuff I was doing online came up higher in search engine rankings than the other Judy Dunn’s:

Example of a Climax/Resolution: If you are a solopreneur or small biz owner and people relate to your name, rather than your business, it makes sense to keep an eye on the places you are appearing on the Web. You may not have died, like I did, but one of your name-alikes might have done something truly dreadful, like embezzling the company receipts or breaking into a family’s house and drinking all their Scotch. Here are some things you can do to separate yourself from them:…

What about you?

Do you ever tell stories on your blog?

Do you think that a good story draws the reader in and helps them remember your post?

What kinds of stories could you tell on your blog?

Let us know in the comments what your experience has been with telling stories in blog posts.

A guest post by Judy Lee Dunn, owner of Cat’s Eye Writer. Subscribe to her Judy Lee Dunn blog for writers and get a free report: 30 Design and Content Secrets to Skyrocket Your Blog.

How To Create The Next Step For Your Readers

When you’re writing an article, inserting The Next Step should be really simple.

And it is, if you are clear what you want the customer to do next.

But hey, we all know what we want the reader to do next, and yet there’s still a bit of doubt. Are we doing the next step right? Or not?

So here are three methods for implementing the ‘Next Step’

Method 1: Editorial Next Step
Method 2: Sales Next Step
Method 3: Embedded Next Step

Let’s examine all three of them a little closely, shall we?

Method 1: Editorial Next Step

In every article your core goal is to get the reader to experience a new world. The reason the reader reads your article at all, is because you’re taking them on a new journey. This journey depends on what you’re covering in the article. You may be showing the reader ‘how to increase prices without losing customers’. You may be showing them how to ‘fix a roof on a garden shed’. You may be asking them to watch the video on ‘One Man, One Cow, One Planet.’

In every case, you set out to change, or at least nudge the customer into doing something. That was your goal right from the start, or you wouldn’t have written the article in the first place.

So your final take on most articles would be to nudge a reader to move to the next step.

And this is what I’d brand an ‘Editorial Next Step.’ In effect the editorial nudge has no sales activity in it at all. It’s just saying something like:

a) Read more articles on pricing strategy.
b) Read the continuing series on how to create more durable roofs.
c) Watch the video on ‘One Man, One Cow, One Planet because it will help you understand what’s happening to our soil.

The Editorial Next Step is just the push to get the person reading the article to do something. And in a way, the nudge is what the reader is expecting to get that nudge. It’s a signal that the article is done. So when you look at the ‘moral of the story’ in fairy tales, you notice the same nudge.

The story ends and there’s a moral

That’s an example of an Editorial Next Step. Which is all very fine, if all you want to do is ‘complete’ an article, or get the reader to read or do something. But what if you want the reader to buy something as well? Ah, that’s the ‘Sales Next Step’.

Method 2: Sales Next Step

The Sales Next Step is simply a call to action to buy something. Or do something that is more than likely to lead to sales. But how would you know if the nudge is leading to sales or editorial? Well ask yourself this: Will the customer feel a bit of resistance when they go to that next step? If so, then it’s a Sales Next Step.

So if the customer has to fill in a form, opt-in, jump over some barriers, sign up, pay for something etc., then it’s a Sales Next Step. The Editorial Next Step feels like friendly advice. e.g. “Hey see this movie, or you really should read this book, or go read other articles, or watch this YouTube video”.

The Sales Next Step is different, and you know there will be at least an iota of resistance when the person reads your message. And it’s more than likely that your message will be ‘salesy’ e.g. Sign up for this course; Sign up for the workshop, etc. Which leaves us with just one last method to the ‘Next Step’: The Embedded Next Step.

c) Method 3: The Embedded Next Step

You noticed the ‘One Man, One Cow, One Planet’ nudge didn’t you? And you did feel curiosity when I mentioned it once. Then I mentioned it again. And then again at the start of this paragraph. Now imagine I never once told you to see the documentary, you’d still be slightly eager to check it out. And the reason was that the information was embedded as ‘editorial’ content.

For instance, if I’m writing an article on Pricing Strategy, and I give examples of how we did the 5000bc.com pricing strategy, then I’m embedding a next step. When I’m writing an article in 5000bc and give you information about how we conduct The Brain Audit workshops, I’m embedding that next step into the article.

And the embedding is clearly a sales pitch? Or is it? Some people may not see the sales pitch in it at all. It may appear to be 100% editorial. And that’s the beauty of the Embedded Next Step. It has no next step involved. It’s not asking you to buy anything, there’s not a link in sight anywhere, there’s nothing. But part of, or the entire article revolves around the product or service.

Time for some examples…

a) How We Consistently Increase Prices Without Losing Customers (And this article may contain the strategy of how we’ve increased The Brain Audit prices from $20-$119. And how it’s actually increased sales).

b) Will Customers Buy On Trust And Reputation Alone? (And this article may contain the story of our product on ‘Blackbelt Presentations’ and how we generated $30,000 on the weekend, without a sales page—and on trust and reputation alone).

So as you can see, the Embedded Next Step is kinda like a case study in the article. It doesn’t have to smother your article. It just has to be reasonably prominent.

Example, Example…

Let’s take the example of: Will Customers Buy On Trust and Reputation Alone? In that article I can write about the concept of trust, about the concept of what causes people to trust, give them examples about the ‘Black Belt Presentations’, but also give them examples of how Jack Johnson fans will buy the next album based on an announcement alone. Or how Apple will sell a new product without really having the product on the shelves yet.

We’ve covered a lot, so let’s just summarise and then see where we can use these three ways to use the ‘Next Step’.

Summary:

1) The Editorial Next Step is to get you to do/read something.
2) The Sales Next Step has more resistance involved. And involves some sort of sales pitch, no matter how minor.
3) The Embedded Next Step has no links, no call to action, nothing. But it becomes the focus of the article. It becomes the primary case study, possibly secondary case study as well. And sure it can share the spotlight with other case studies too. But there’s no call to action. That’s why it’s called ‘embedded’.

So where do we apply these next steps?

1) The Editorial Next Step is usually placed inside the article itself. Often just after the summary. It’s more than likely to be the last few sentences of the article, though it can appear before the summary from time to time—but that’s rare. (You’ll see an Editorial Next Step at the end of this article as well.)

2) The Sales Next Step has a clear demarcation. It sits away from the editorial, and it’s clearly a sales-based nudge. Anyone looking at it should be able to tell it’s a next step leading to some product/service offering. (You’ll see a Sales Next Step after this article.)

3) The Embedded Next Step is embedded in your article itself. The ‘One Man, One Cow, One Planet’ could have been an embedded next step, if I had any financial gain, but I don’t. Besides this article is long enough, without having to bear the weight of a few cases studies as well.

So there you have it.

Three ways to get the customer to the next step. Now insert it into your articles. You can insert just the Editorial Next Step or both Editorial and Sales. Or all three.

Be clear what you want the customer to do, and they’ll do it. Because you’re the one who provided the next step for them to take.

A guest post by Sean D’Souza who is a writer, marketing guru and expert on sales psychology. To read more articles by Sean, and get a very useful free report on “Why Headlines Fail”, go to PsychoTactics.com

 

The Definitive Guide to Successful Online Writing

Do you ever think about giving up on writing?

On some days does being a writer just feel like a big struggle?

This is a normal reaction.

We live in a fast, information-filled world that bombards us with a constant stream of technology. We’re told about countless things we “must” do in order to succeed as a writer.

It’s overwhelming.

You may find yourself wondering…

a) is writing the right choice for me?
b) do I even have the writing skills necessary to “make it?”
c) what do I really need to know about writing to succeed?

Well, guess what?

The Write Guide for a Stumble-free Path to Success will point you in the right direction so you can pick yourself, stop second guessing yourself, and get you moving onto a smoother writing path to success.

Read on to learn how.

Every topic in this post will give you an important piece of the writing puzzle. Put them all together and you will have the complete view of what you need to succeed as a writer.

This guide gives you clear steps, insight, and beneficial ideas, that help you understand your strengths as a writer. Plus, you will learn some of the most important skills for writing in today’s world so you don’t have to waste anymore time going off your path.

And there’s more. This guide gives you personal attention. We are all different, so generic advice just doesn’t cut it. That’s why The Write Guide for a Stumble-free Path to Success is designed to help you discover what’s important to you personally, as well as just how you can keep yourself intact while navigating through the Internet writing jungle.

All the articles we link to in each chapter provides information that is easy to grasp, straightforward, and unmissably useful.

Are you ready to stop stumbling and start moving smoothly?

Okay. Let’s do it!

Introducing:

The Write Guide for a Stumble-free Path to Success

You may use this guide by clicking on any of the chapter links below to jump straight to a topic or you might choose to start at the beginning and read through to the end.

Chapter 1. Your Personal Writing Road
Chapter 2. Your Writing Kickstart
Chapter 3. Online Writing that Works
Chapter 4. Blogging Essentials
Chapter 5. Get it Done
Chapter 6. Keeping the You in Your Writing
Chapter 7. Bonus – Notch Up Your Creativity

Chapter 1. Your Personal Writing Road

To know if you are a successful writer you must have a personal definition of what success is and it’s important to know where your specific strengths lie. The tips and information in this chapter will help you with this.

Chapter 2. Your Writing Kickstart

As a writer, sometimes you need a kickstart or some secret insights to rev yourself up so you can keep moving on your path to success. Use the topics in this chapter to get your writing engine going.

Chapter 3. Online Writing that Works

Here are your simple tips and methods for writing in today’s world so no more unexpected pitfalls. These ideas work, are easy to use, and will help give you the confidence you need to stay on your writing journey.

Chapter 4. Blogging Essentials

Most writers today who are trying to succeed online, at one point or another, are also bloggers, or at least contribute to other blogs. Here are the essentials you need to you can write content that generates traffic, readers, and conversions or sales.

Chapter 5. Get it Done

Writers often have so many creative ideas in their head they either feel blank, don’t know where to begin, or get so scattered they don’t complete projects. Use the following information to get your writing done.

Chapter 6. Keeping the You in Your Writing

Don’t lose yourself in the writing jungle. It’s important to keep your ideas intact because your unique voice is what the world most needs from you as a writer.

Chapter 7. Bonus – Notch Up Your Creativity

Every writer, newbie or seasoned, needs a creative boost now and then. Feel free to use the ideas in this chapter whenever you need them.

Your writing path does not have to be such a struggle. Let this resource ease you past the potential pitfalls so that your writing journey will be long, prosperous, and filled with joy.

What aspect of writing are you struggling with? Let us know in the comments below.

A guest post by Karen Daniels, topselling amazon author and online writing coach who blogs at zencopy.com. Check out her free Authors Writing and Branding Resource.

How to Get a Grip on Plots and Sub-Plots When Writing

Imagine you’re having a discussion with a hyperactive, talkative teenager.

And the conversation goes like this…

“We went to the mall, and like, there was this fire in the mall. And we went from there to the cinema, but we didn’t have any money and anyway the popcorn machine was broken, and so we didn’t really want to go to the movies without popcorn. But right after that we went to have some pizza and there was this creepy guy outside the store. But listen to this—because that’s not the best part. The best part is the Sylvie dumped Josh, and like, they ran into each other in the street…”

When we, like, write copy for our website, we like, sound a lot like that teenager

What we tend to do is go all over the place with our copy. First of course, we’ll try to stuff in about five concepts in our headline. Then we’ll try and fill in a whole bunch of sub-heads that we want to drive home.

And then our first paragraph tries to cover all the possible points. And like that teenager, we have the entire story in our heads, but nothing quite gets across to the client. And that’s because you’re trying to cover way too many points too quickly.

And as you’ve worked it out for yourself, this bounce and jumping around is exhausting for the reader or listener, and hence is a big mistake.

So let’s see how this mistake unfolds when we write copy by examining an actual piece of copy.

Headline: Are You Fed Up With Unprofessional Contractors …
Body text:
That don’t call you back or even show up?
Are you done with contractors that lack the ability to communicate in a timely manner?
Or run away from problems that crop up during and after a project?
Are you over dealing with the hacks of the world?
Have you enough of sitting home babysitting people that are you uncomfortable with?

So what’s wrong with that sequence?

Technically, nothing. The headline is perfect. It gets my attention without too much of a fuss. But then I go to read and I get between three-five main plots and no sub-plots. And how do we know they’re main plots? Because we can list them out and see for ourselves. They all want to take centre stage.

Main plot 1: Don’t call you back or even show up
Main plot 2: Lack the ability to communicate in a timely manner
Main plot 3: Run away from problems that crop up during and after a project
Main plot 4: The so-called professional is nothing but a hack.
Main plot 5: Discomfort. Having to babysit people that are you uncomfortable with

Just like that teenager’s story, it’s possible for us to jump from one to the other, without so much as pausing for breath. So now that we know we’re creating bounce, how do we get rid of this bounce? And how do we still use all of the point we want to cover on our web page?

Here’s how you do it.

Just like a movie, you have a main plot. And you have sub-plots. So what’s your main plot? It’s the client’s most pressing problem. That’s obvious, isn’t it? You’d want to get the client’s attention by driving home the biggest, scariest, buggiest problem, wouldn’t you? And here’s how we go about it.

Headline: Write your headline. Let it cover ONE big problem (that big, buggy problem)
Body text 1: Drive home the problems involved with that ONE point.
Body text 2: Drive home the consequences of that ONE point.
Body text 3: Drive home the solution to that ONE problem.
Move to the next point.

So how does this look when we put the teenager’s story in this format?

Headline: We went to the mall and there was a fire.
Body text 1: What happened next (at the mall)
Body text 2: Then what were the consequences?
Body text 3: How did we escape the fire?

With the teenager, she’d complete one story, and move to the next. And the next. But you may have made your point with a single story. So what do you do with the rest of the stuff that you so badly want to get across? You bring it up later. Let’s see how. But first let’s get back to our example.

Headline: Are You Fed Up With Unprofessional Contractors …
Body text: That don’t call you back or even show up?
Body text 1: What’s the problem with not calling back or showing up?
Body text 2: What are the consequences? Describe the emotion that the client feels, in detail.
Body text 3: What’s the best way to avoid such a desperate scenario?

And then you present your service

Body text 4: Presenting XYZ contracting company.
Body text 5: Drive home the point of calling back. How you do it. When you show up. How you follow up.

Notice we haven’t gone to Point 2 yet. And yes, I know, you’re itching to drive home that point

But notice something? The customer doesn’t care about your itch. They’re locked in to what you’re saying. You’re the first person they’ve met who isn’t like that teenager, jumping from story to story.

The customer’s biggest problem is ‘unprofessional contractors that don’t call back or show up’ and you’re doing just that. The customer wants to know more about that story in detail, before they’re ready to move to the next story.

So once you present your company and why you bring the ONE solution, you can now move on to the next story.

Except you don’t have to tell the next story in as much detail. You can now roll out the remaining stories in slightly less detail in a feature/benefit format that looks like this:

Feature 1: Benefit 1. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah.

Feature 2: Benefit 1. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and more blahdee blah, blahdoo, blah, blah, blah.

And so on with Feature 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8—and so on. And add benefits to every one of those features

You can have as many as 8-10 paragraphs rich with details of the problem and the solutions you bring to the customer. And having locked into the main problem and seeing how you bring that solution, the customer will happily trundle through the rest of the points, and get more convinced by the minute about your expertise and professionalism.

In short what you have is a main plot. And you drive home that main plot.

And then later, pull in the sub-plots, but without the same level of intensity as the main. Just remember that you can pick any plot to be the main plot. (e.g. ‘Sylvie dumping Josh’ has more drama than ‘no popcorn at the cinema.’ And then re-tell your story on the sales page.

ONE plot at a time :)

By WTD contributor Sean D’Souza who is a writer, marketing guru and expert on sales psychology. To read more articles by Sean, and get a very useful free report on “Why Headlines Fail”, go to PsychoTactics.com

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The Headline Breath Test

By Sean D’Souza of PsychoTactics.com

Do long headlines work? Or are short headlines better?

The answer doesn’t lie in length. It lies in the ability to say the headline aloud in one breath. Let’s assume you sit down and write an absolute stunner of a headline, your next job is to read it back aloud.

Can you read it?

Ok then say this headline aloud: HOW To Recognise Six Difficult Telltale Signs Of Disinterest And Lack Of Motivation In Your Student And Customer.

Ran out of breath, didn’t you? And even if you didn’t quite run out of breath, you’ll still struggle to recall the contents of that headline. And the reason why you need to read the headline aloud, is because that’s what the customer is doing anyway. And if you can’t say it one in breath, you can’t hear it in one breath.

And as a result the headline message gets garbled.

So let’s look at some of the most enduring headlines ever…

1) How to make friends and influence people.

2) Do you make these mistakes in English?

3) They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play…

Ooh, that last one was a mouthful, wasn’t it?

No matter how you try, it’s hard to say: “They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play…” in one breath. So what’s going on here? How come this headline works when it clearly fails the breath test?

It’s called punctuation

If you have a long headline, all you have to do is punctuate. How you punctuate it is totally up to you. You can use brackets. Or an em dash. Or a comma.

So the same headline can read like this:

They laughed when I sat down at the piano (But when I started to play…)

They laughed when I sat down at the piano—but when I started to play…

They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play…

And a good reason for the existence of punctuation is to have pauses. When you have that pause in-built into your headline, a reader can read it as if it were two sentences. So even though it looks like one big sentence, it’s really two.

There are lots of things that can cause a perfectly good headline to become perfectly useless. And instead of debating long and hard about the length of headlines, just do the breath test. If it fails, add some punctuation. If it still fails, dump the headline and start again. ;)

About the author
Sean D’Souza is a writer, marketing guru and expert on sales psychology. To read more articles by Sean, and get a very useful free report on “Why Headlines Fail”, go to PsychoTactics.com