Turning up the Tension in Your Blog Content Marketing
A great deal of blog content marketing on the web these days appears to be the same old things, with nearly nothing that’s brand new, noteworthy or exciting that deserves the attention of readers. One of the best methods to stand out from this is by regularly adding an element of tension to your blog posts. This may be achieved in a few ways.
Journalistic Writing Versus Blogging
Journalistic writing is the kind of writing used by newsprint and magazine writers. It centres around the 5 W’s to be able to report the facts:
- Who
- What
- When
- Where
- Why
The 5 W’s are utilized as a checklist to help ensure that nothing that is essential is left out.
Journalistic writing is additionally an “inverted pyramid” design of posting, with all the meaty info within the very first part or even the second, and then eventually tapering down to less and less important info until the content finally concludes.
With this particular style of writing, there’s seldom any kind of “twist, or little suspense in the tale” at the conclusion of it. About the sole place you actually see tension consciously being used is in the title. A great headline is created to lure those skimming a newspaper or blog into reading the whole post.
Scientific studies show that 100% of people will read through a headline, but just 70% will read the first section; and then it’s down to just under 50% of readers who end up reading down to the second section of the piece. That’s a steep drop off of readership that you cannot ignore as a certified content creator attempting to make money from your blog or site.
Your blog content should come across more like a personalized story, rather than a stuffy old newspaper article. #ContentMarketing
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For that reason, it’s imperative that you learn and practice a lot more personalized writing if you’re serious about your blog content marketing. This used to be called “magnetic marketing,” but nowadays we opt for less jargon and just say that we need to add tension or suspense to our writing.
Marketing as Storytelling
I always enjoyed writing stories when I was a kid. I remember when I was in grade six I had an assignment to write a story and tell it before the whole class.
Now I can honestly say, I don’t remember what that assignment actually was, and I don’t even remember the story I wrote. But I do remember that in my story I had the phrase “… by the time I crawled out of the garbage can…”
I was laughing so hard because I just loved that visual! I don’t know if everyone else was laughing at me or with me – but I didn’t care! It was funny to me and my exuberant telling of the story totally sold my classmates and teacher.
My teacher chuckled at me and said “Now there’s someone who really enjoys his own writing!”
It was true.
Out of all the things I loved about writing, it was the joy of visualizing scenarios in my head, and then trying to put into words what I was seeing.
I think nowadays, particularly in the marketing world, we often get so focused on the end result that we forget that stories are not only engaging, but they’re essential in helping people make decisions, such as buying and selling online.
All written content online is selling. Probably one of today’s hottest trends in marketing online is storytelling, but it’s really nothing new at all.
When we use a story telling approach in our content, we are actually helping our readers and audiences to make better decisions.
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Storytelling is as ancient as time itself, and one of the earliest things we indulge in as children. “Once upon a time, there was a…” is a common storytelling method since it works.
All successful stories have a start, middle and end. They do not even need to be extremely long. Think of Aesop’s Fables. What many of the best stories do have is a twist inside the tale – that is, a surprise ending. Or maybe they may end with a unique issue which was meant to be revealed during the telling of the story – a moral, if you will.
A Dash of Suspense
Every good story has several elements of suspense.
In my younger years I found writing to be such a joy that I didn’t think of such things because my stories were meant for myself. But as I grew older, I learned that the really good stories were crafted. There were elements in these stories, such as tension, suspense, drama, and description – all of which required at least a little practice in order to become skillful.
All good things in the internet marketing world require learning and practice, and blog content marketing is no exception.
You learn the art of selling. You learn the basics of sales funnels. Social media marketing, video, email marketing, return on investment… all of these are essential for success online. And content marketing is another skill that you can practice and become skillful at.
And discovering what people like and don’t like is a key component to content marketing.
For instance, in many stories we like to have a happy ending. It’s thrilling to be seated on edge, not knowing how the story will turn out, but inwardly hoping it will be well.
Even children’s stories such as “The Three Little Pigs” and “Little Red Riding Hood” keep you in suspense until the end (if you’re a kid, that is). We move from an unhappy scenario to a fortunate one where everything is resolved.
This approach of implementing suspense and tension works with your blog content too.
Think about the problems that people in your niche have, and how they can be solved. What solutions have you discovered in business? What has actually worked for you? What setbacks did you have? These are points of tension that your readers have as well.
Thinking about your own marketing journey, such as successes and failures, can help you identify points of tension that you should share with your readers. #ContentMarketing
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Did your online journey involve a lot of side quests and distractions? What lessons can you offer your readers with your insights?
Remember, this isn’t just tension for the sake of a story. This is the kind of real life tension that struggles, has problems, quits, starts again – and that you need to talk about with your readers.
Adding tension and suspense like this will be more than vivid and enthralling, it’ll additionally help position you as an authority in your niche. This may be the pot of gold at the end of your content marketing rainbow that you’ve been searching for.
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