First, I'll show you a nightmare. A copywriter sent it to me in response to the task: "Write a piece for the media about the use of online payment systems for restaurants. The material should be useful and interesting to the magazine's audience so much that the editors will publish it for free."
Text from the copywriter:
Text from a copywriter
To save time, I prepared a document about how we work on materials at the agency. I give it to new writers to read. If they don’t run away in horror and get to work, it’s a good sign (not really).
Attitude to the text
The text must be valuable. To understand what is valuable in content japan mobile phone numbers database and why it becomes popular, read the book "Contagious" by Jon Berger. I wrote about it in my selection "Little Manipulator's Library" . If you don't have time for the book, read its summary at Megaplan .
Core Values
Social capital — a person receives something valuable and passes this knowledge on to others. This could be news, useful advice, or professional material. In this case, a person shares content for selfish reasons — this way, he looks important in the eyes of others and feels a sense of belonging to something big and cool. It’s funny, but most of my Facebook friends who share news about quotes, oil, and bitcoins don’t understand anything about it.
Relevance - trending topics. The text contains relevant information for the audience it is intended for.
For example, if we translate an interesting Western article about marketing, we adapt it for the Russian audience: we select similar instructions and guides, add examples from the Russian market, and find the latest news.
Here's how we did it in translating materials on content marketing: in the first chapter, we expanded on interesting but little-covered passages in the original and supported them with five relevant Russian cases. Another example from the same series is the chapter on paid content promotion : here we omitted and did not translate passages that were not relevant to the Russian segment of the network (for example, on content placement networks or a short guide to advertising on Twitter) - but added materials on advertising in myTarget and VKontakte, and supported each point with links to large Russian-language guides and cases. It now has little in common with the original - but it is useful, practical and relevant.
Relevance also applies to the topic of news, recent events. If we describe advertising on Facebook, we always talk about new formats. An example of our article about advertising on Instagram .
Emotions are another factor: people are more willing to share content that evokes emotions and impresses. Emotions can be anything from joy and inspiration to anger and fear. The fact is that the emotional component makes you want to intervene and “talk about it.”
To touch people’s nerves, use “sacred cows” — topics that excite everyone. It is important to keep in mind that people are not as willing to repost negative content as inspiring content. But you can count on a flurry of comments and discussions on the topic. This works especially well on Facebook. Here are some surefire topics for this social network:
policy;
religion;
breast-feeding;
motherhood;
children;
parents and old people;
vaccinations;
family;
helping one's neighbor;
patriotism (we have it now);
vapers;
homophobia (specifically homophobia, not gays);
Ukraine
Maxim Ilyakhov has been very relevant among marketers lately.
If you want your content to create a stick in the anthill effect and evoke an emotional response, use it. This method is not for the faint of heart, but there are some harmless topics on the list.
In texts for a blog or the media, emotions need to be handled carefully, they are not always appropriate. If it is a business case, then the living component in it is the revelation of the person who came to this. Or the story that is so loved at TEDe. In other respects, you need to look at the final goal of the text, the audience and the topic.
Story - If you have the opportunity to use a story, you should definitely do it. Stories make texts come alive, they are easy to remember and tell to others. You can feel a story. And if it has characters, you can associate yourself with these characters. Here is what Berger writes about stories:
Stories give people an easy way to talk about products and ideas. Subway may have low-fat sandwiches and Lands' End may have great customer service, but unless there's a trigger in the conversation, there needs to be a reason to tell the story. Good stories provide a reason, a kind of psychological blanket that allows people to talk about products and ideas without feeling like advertising.
We need to build a Trojan horse - a container in the form of a story that people will share, while also talking about our product or idea.
Practicality is the most important component. After reading the text, people should take away something that they can apply in their lives. This component inspires trust, gratitude, and a desire to receive new information.
Such articles need to be supplemented with examples and detailed instructions. For example, this is how we implemented it in the material for the magazine "General Director" : we described in detail how to work with negativity in social networks and how to grow brand advocates.
But there is little capital in the text. You need to support the information, collect data and write the text as if you were making a movie. Let's move on to our checklist for preparing the material.
Checklist for preparing a cool text
1. We make a preliminary plan of the article - the topic we want to cover. This is the first basic plan, which will change significantly in the end.
2. Read information and news on this topic to look at the story from different angles and see what we might have missed at the idea level. Write down interesting details and what can be included in the article.
3. Communicate with the client or the hero of the article — the main source of information. Collect information and ask questions at different levels. Be sure to cover the topic from different angles. Understand the pros and cons.
