I used to always say that my last meal would be a cheeseburger and french fries.
Then I read an article once that was all about last meals and I was like, maybe I need to think bigger! Maybe I want Thanksgiving dinner, too. Maybe I want surf & turf, too.
But you know what, while it was great to hear all of the other opinions on last meals, I still want a cheeseburger and french fries. And that brings me to this.
Do you want to know what my number one content hack is?
Read what other people are saying about the topic you are about to write about and make notes of all of the ways you disagree with it.
You’ll still hit all of the key points that need to be covered, but it will be uniquely you because you’re showing your dissenting viewpoint.
That’s how I wrote this post.
5+ Content Hacks to Use When Your Goal is to Make Your Reader Fall in Love With You
Most of the content hacks that I read when preparing for this post were about how to make your content convert the most amount of people possible to your mailing list.
We at Odd Noodle love getting people to our mailing list as much as the next guy, but there’s a big difference between us and them.
We don’t want the most people possible.
We want the right people.
We want people on our mailing list who already believe that the way we want to teach them to do things IS the way they want to do things.
That means by the time they get to the mailing list, they already understand what we’re about.
And that means that when it comes time for them to hear about an offer from us, they already trust us.
So these content hacks that you’re about to read are to help you with that. Creating content that gets you the right people.
Content Hack #1: Give it away.
Big. Value. Asset.
Have you heard of it?
It’s a free resource you create and make available on your site.
It’s not an opt-in. You are not using it to collect email addresses.
It can be an ultimate guide like what we’ve done with The Odd Noodle Playbook.
Or you could do a really in-depth how-to/explanation of something specific.
But the idea is that you give something with tons of value away on the site and people that go through it are going to understand your philosophy and trust that you have valuable information for them.
Then, when you do get them on your list, they are much more invested in what you have to say.
That’s the kind of email list we want to build.
Content Hack #2: Set One Main Purpose for Every Piece of Content You Create
Every time you write a post, record a video, or create an opt-in, it should have a singular purpose.
In a post like this one, where I’m sprinkling links to other content, the purpose is to get you to move around Odd Noodle and learn more about what we’re about.
I have that link above to the Odd Noodle Playbook and I hope you check that out.
Then there are posts like 17 Motivational Quotes for Entrepreneurs. That one gives you a glimpse into my personality and worldviews.
And that’s important when it comes to the next Content Hack.
Content Hack #3: Bring you.
I already wrote all about the horrible thing that is happening to the internet in this post on SEO Copywriting.
It’s gotten very boring. The last thing you want to do with any of your content is bore people.
Think about all of the millions of messages that you come across in a day.
It’s estimated that the average person sees 5,000 marketing messages every single day.
We have a system of business that we believe in here at Odd Noodle. It goes like this:
- Get them to notice you.
- Get them to pay attention to you.
- Get them to trust you.
- Convert that trust into money.
So imagine that you are writing a blog post and sending it out into the world through whatever marketing means you choose.
That is one message in 5,000 that the average person is seeing in a day.
Getting someone to notice your message under those circumstances is no small feat, but there are plenty of tactics to help you accomplish that. (Good titles, good SEO practices, etc).
Getting someone to pay attention to you is a little different.
First of all the information you’re providing has to be spot on. That’s the baseline. You have to be able to provide all of the answers to whatever problem you’re addressing with your content.
If you’re writing a post about how to grow tomatoes, it needs to be comprehensive and accurate.
But that’s not going to be enough to get them to pay attention to you.
I mentioned in the title of this section that your goal is to have your readers fall a little in love with you.
I mean it. Think about all of the emails you get on a daily basis. Not from work people or your family, but from things you’ve signed up for online at some point.
How many of those do you open every single time? How many of them do you even occasionally open?
All of the ones that you don’t open? They don’t have your attention.
Whatever reason you signed up to get emails from them, you didn’t fall enough in love with them to look forward to and then open their emails.
So how do you get your audience to fall in love with you?
It’s the same advice your mom gave you when you were nervous about dating.
Just be yourself!
(I’m so old.)
But, it’s true. You need to inject some of your story and your personality into every piece of content that you create.
It’s gotta be authentic and it’s gotta make your reader see that you are a real human who is maybe a little like them.
That’s when they start to see you as their guide on whatever journey you are taking them on.
It’s not as hard as you think it is.
Since Hack #3 is now super long, we’ll talk about how to do it in Hack #4.
Content Hack #4 – Make them feel something.
In every single post that I write, I try to get an emotional response.
It doesn’t have to be like reading Wuthering Heights and you are weeping for Catherine and Heathcliff.
It can be something funny that will make your reader smile.
It can be a story of the frustration you felt when your entire garden was eaten by deer and rabbits in one night.
It can be just a little bit of wistfulness at the idea of how quickly your children are growing up.
In the Motivational Quotes for Entrepreneurs post, there’s some emotion in most of the quotes that I mention.
But the one that I wanted to sort of be the star of that show was the one from Mark Twain about staying away from people who belittle your ambitions.
I had something to say about that one and I knew that it would have an impact on some people.
The idea is that when someone reads that and they feel something, it resonates with them.
They pause and think, “I’ve felt exactly like that”.
That’s when they start to pay attention.
That’s when someone starts to listen to you.
That’s when someone opens your next email because the last one meant something to them.
I re-read that and it sounds like a manipulation to get someone to pay attention to me.
And it can absolutely be a manipulation. So you need to use this new skill wisely and treat that attention very, very carefully.
You do not want to break that bit of trust that you’re building.
Content Hack #5
All of that, Hacks 1-4, is the hard stuff. It’s the stuff that if you miss it, these following easy things aren’t really going to do a whole lot for you.
- Have a call to action in every post. If you practiced Hacks 1-4, then you should have a reader who is falling for you. Make sure you’re letting them know what to do next. Send them to your BVA (Big Value Asset) or let them know how they can get on your email list.
- Write headlines that get noticed. No one can pay attention to you if you haven’t gotten them to notice you. Headlines are a way to get noticed.
- Use good SEO practices. Keywords in headings, alt text, title, url and answer all of the questions that your reader might have on the topic you’re writing about.
- Don’t make these web design mistakes. You don’t want people clicking away from your awesome content because your font is just too darn small.
Did I Make You Cry?
I hope not because that was not the intention of this post in any way.
Unless you flipped over to the motivational quotes and the Mark Twain one made you cry. I can understand that.
I hope that I might have made you smile at least once and I hope that you were not only well-informed but at least a tiny bit entertained, too.
If you’re into blogging then these hacks will help you immensely.
