🍊Content Quick Start: An important storytelling tip

Maybe the most important storytelling tip

Great marketers are storytellers.

It doesn’t matter if their medium is a 2,000-word blog post or a 20-word ad. When they can, they tell a story.

Stories resonate. We feel them. We remember them. We relate to them, for good or bad.

And so, as marketers, we try to write them.

Now, let me save you from a rookie mistake: putting too much in one story.

We’re not writing epic novels here. A marketer’s story is short. Sometimes very short.

There’s no room for layered themes.

Pick One Thing you want to stick with the audience.

One feeling, one piece of information, one key takeaway.

Build your entire story around that.

When you’ve finished writing your draft, walk away from it for a little bit. Then come back and read it ruthlessly.

Cut away anything that distracts from the One Ring Thing.

Tangents, sidebars, “oh that reminds me of another thing” moments - gone.

It’s a lot easier to stick to One Thing when you’re working with 20 words than when you’re working with 2,000. But it matters in both.

Chances are good your audience will walk away remembering just one takeaway (if they remember anything at all). Keep your story focused on the One Thing you want them to remember most.

(All that stuff you cut? Save it in a scrap file. You don’t need to murder your darlings; you just need to bench them until it’s their time to shine.)

There can be only one,

Dana

P.S. Are you registered for Content Camp yet? June’s camp is filling up. If you want “doing content” to be easier in the second half of the year than it was in the first, grab a spot and join us.

P.P.S. I’m a nerd and love my people, so I’ll send a 10% discount on Content Camp to anyone who can name both the classic fantasy movies I referenced in this email. Send me a reply, but no cheating! 😉