Why Should I Care About Your Content?

Attention and time are at a premium. If you find you are experiencing information overload, so is your prospective audience.

And yet things do manage to grab our attention, how does that happen?

If matters to you, it will matter to someone else. Viral content is something people connect with so much they want to share it.

How do we tap into this power of caring and sharing?

Does this sound familiar? “Write about what you know” or “You can’t sell something you don’t believe in.”

Personal experience wrapped in a story creates a message that sticks. Where do these stories come from?

Imagine two rings, one ring is your personal story and one is your audience’s needs or interests. The goal is to find the sweet spot, that place that overlaps. That is the place where you harvest your stories from.

This is key to telling a story that gets noticed. People only pay attention to something that directly relates to their lives. This is out of necessity, there is so much content out there.

Connecting with and harvesting your own stories is a skill that can be learned. It is process of uncovering why you think something is important. Then fleshing out this ‘why’ into stories that illustrate your connection to what you do.

The next step is thinking about your customer base, what are their needs? What stories would appeal to them? You need to tell the right stories to the right people to grab someone’s attention. Creating a story that stands out is imperative to creating the traction you want with your audience. Focusing on universal themes like health, love, success or loss are powerful because we have all experienced these situations.

How can you tell if you story is worth telling? Make sure the story resonates with you first. First ask yourself, what do I love about this story? Tell your story to other people, what did they find interesting about the story? Take that feedback away and start crafting a narrative that sticks. Make the theme is universal enough to speak resonate with a large audience and small enough to include your unique point of view. It is your life that gives the story it’s meaning.

I will be facilitating a workshop at Pausefest on February 13, exploring the world of Explainer Videos. I will teach the fundamentals of creating a narrative for your video and my co-facilitator will focus on DIY techniques for producing your video. For more tickets and information visit the Pausefest website.