Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip. Thank you for joining me today.
What I like to discuss is writing effective copy for social media, your website, or for your blog. There are some tips that I am gonna provide to you today that will help you engage more with your subscribers or readers and also engage with them better.
One of the first ones I want to discuss is speaking your fans language, or your readers language. What you want to do is mirror the types of content that they want to read and also lead them into the direction that you want them to perceive your content and think about your brand, if that makes sense.
So, the first thing you need to do is ensure that you are creating personas, which is something I discussed in a previous episode where where you basically identify who your key consumer is and look at maybe what their age demographic is, what their needs are, what their desires are. Then what you want to do is create that type of content that is going to relate to that demographic or persona.
You might want to is lead them into thinking a certain way about your product or service. I read about a study in 1974 at University of Washington where people wanted to study the reliability of eyewitnesses. They use certain statements to see what the outcome was for the study.
They had some statements written down for groups of people about a car accident. The first one said, “about how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other”. The next one said, “about how fast were the cars going when the cars collided into each other”. Next they said, “about how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other “.
There were a few more conditions or statements that changed certain word or group of words to make the accident sound slightly different. When we look at the results of the study, people tended to have different answers based on what statement they read. Basically, when they heard “smash”, the amount of people that thought it was a serious accident or how fast they were going was higher when you use the word smash. Hit and bump was lower, and then there was also a word used that was “contacted”, which actually had the lowest amount of responses or or the lowest speed related to the accident. Smashed being the highest and then contacted contacted being the lowest.
These are words that you can use in your marketing. It can be verbs and it could also be adjectives that describe a product or service that make people feel a certain way about how they are going to perceive your product or service. Will it do a good job? Will they be happy with it? Is it sturdy? Is it fast or is it slow, depending on what it is. Make sure that you are using great content and leading words to describe your product and service. Most importantly you want to offer a solution. Make sure that if you have a product or service, don not just put out a statement saying, “hey this product is on sale for 20% off”. How does it solve a need I, or have a problem I have.
Make sure using descriptive language again to describe your product and service. You want to use active words when you are writing, this way people feel like they are engaging with it. Make sure that you write in the first or second person. Make sure you don not write in a passive tense Write in a future or present tense say, “this product is awesome and it can help you do X”. If you start talking about how I help people in the past there may not be enough relation there to make someone feel excited about it. Say, “you can enjoy this on the lake”. Let’s say you are selling life preservers or floats for little children. Say, “your children will never have to worry about swimming again”. Make it feel like there is action going on when you are talking about your product and service, make it active.
You might want to imply scarcity to your product and service if it is something that you offer as far as product, make people feel like there is a fixed amount of that product, so that they want to buy it. When it is a service, maybe you can apply your time is worth money, therefore you do not have a lot of appointments or time slots left. Using scarcity is a great way to make someone pull the trigger faster when they are looking to buy a product or service. And then, lastly, make sure you are giving them more than they expect and maybe it is a then expect. Maybe it is a bonus. Maybe it is an extra. Maybe something you add when you ship a product. Maybe in the service you can provide the more quality or more value.
So those are some quick things that you can do to improve the content for your marketing campaigns, whether it is social or email. Make sure you are following your fans and your customers and you are learning about them. Build that persona, speak their language, and then you also want to make sure you are offering a solution. Writing with an active tense and then, again, implying scarcity. And then lastly, giving them more than expect.
Thank you for joining me today and listening to my tip. I can always be found at HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also subscribe on iTunes, to my podcast. So, we will see you next time, when I record the next episode. If you have a feedback, please email to Hank@HankHoffmeier.com.
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