Leave a comment with your entry for this month’s content challenge. You’ll have the chance to win a really good book!
Hey, it’s February! And that means we have two new prompts for our 2017 Content Excellence Challenge.
This month, we’re going to send a copy of Jonah Sachs’s book Winning the Story Wars to five randomly selected commenters. (See the details below for more about who we will and will not be able to send books to.)
Remember, you have two weeks before comments on the post close, so don’t dawdle. 🙂 Give the creative prompt a try and show off how it turned out.
February’s Creative Prompt: Speak to one person
This is one of my all-time favorite ways to make your writing much better, instantly.
The prompt is:
Craft your writing to speak to one, and only one, person. As you write, imagine you’re sitting down with this person over a nice beverage.
Keep in mind that this may take some courage. The political climate at the moment is so charged that even rather innocuous statements can take on a political meaning.
But fortune favors the bold. The courageous voice will always win out over wimpy, dull, “safe” content.
Why it works
When you write for a crowd, you start to pontificate. That verb comes from the word pontiff, and it means to speak to an audience as if you were the Pope delivering a speech from a balcony at the Vatican.
That works great for the Pope, but it won’t work for you.
In your content, imagine one perfect human who’s the exact right match for your business. (Re-read this post if you need better clarification on who that might be: How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content.)
I like to visualize this person in great detail. Not just gender, age, or other raw demographic information, but the kinds of details a novelist notices.
- What kind of drink are you sharing? A beer? A coffee? Kombucha?
- Do they have freckles?
- Are they tall or short?
- What are they wearing?
- Where are you meeting?
- What color eyes do they have?
This mental exercise is just to let you imagine a real, warm, flesh-and-blood human across the table from you.
Now, with your next piece of content, write individually to that person. Choose your words, your tone, your metaphors, the stories you tell, and the points you make all with that human being as your audience of one.
If you’re going to play along in our contest this month, leave a short paragraph in the comments showing us how it looked. No more than five lines — just enough to give us a flavor of the tone and voice.
February’s Productivity Prompt: The pivotal technique
This month’s prompt for productivity is one I’ve used for many years, detailed at some length in my post on The Complete Flake’s Guide to Getting Things Done.
It comes from Robert Fritz’s Path of Least Resistance, and in a nutshell, the technique is:
- Visualize where you want to go. In other words, what will the world around you look like when you’ve achieved what you want? Get extremely clear on this.
- Notice where you are now. What does the world look like as it is today? Get extremely clear on this.
- Without a lot of drama or self-flagellation, notice the specific differences.
The point here is not to beat yourself up about all the ways in which you don’t live up to your dreams. The point is simply to get very clear on where you are, and where you want to be.
The next step is just to figure out … what the next step is. What action, large or small, would move you in the right direction?
You can keep cycling through these steps — today, tomorrow, or quite literally for the rest of your life. Each cycle “pivots” you in a small way in the right direction. Over time, small pivots, with forward movement, add up to major changes.
Notes on the contest
A few caveats and clarifications for the free books:
- We’ll choose five folks at random from those who leave a comment with a brief (five lines or fewer) example of how they used this month’s creative prompt.
- You’ll need to be in the U.K., U.S., or Canada, so we can get a copy to you without a lot of delivery stress. If you’re somewhere else and there’s an easy way to get a book to you, we’ll consider it.
- If we choose your comment, we’ll contact you via the email address you leave in the comment form.
- We won’t share any of your info or use it for something weird, because that would be really dodgy. We’ll just send you your book.
- Comments that look spammy will get deleted. The editorial team, as always, has the final word on what looks spammy. If you want more specific advice, check out my podcast episode on Leaving Much Better Comments.
Let’s hear those one-to-one voices! Drop your entry in a comment below …
Reader Comments (6)
Joshua Seymour says
My One Ideal Client is a happily married, bi-lingual family-valuing Coach, Consultant, and Expert whose average value per client is $3,000 or more, who has a list of 5,000+ prospects and/or is currently getting at least 5,000+ unique visitors to their website per month, who is willing and able to execute and who is enthusiastic and coachable.
My Chief Aim is generating $1,000 a day in recurring revenue by helping ONLY my ideal client get what they really want quickly, so I can get what I really want.
My Next Step is testing the digital marketing and sales vortex that attracts ONLY my ideal client into my business and evolving the process, until I reach my goal.
Lori Tian Sailiata says
Did you catch the webinar?
Terrific, wasn’t it?
An hour and a half of great advice that you would just love to put into practice…like yesterday.
But if your house is anything like mine, the phone rang around minute 13:47, the dog needed let out about 42:34, and that cute UPS guy–with his brown shorts even in the dead of winter–buzzed the front door at 1:12:46.
There’s always the replay and transcript, but you never seem to get all of the way through them without real life interrupting all over again.
—In 5 lines, I could get out the Problem and even Agitate it a bit, but not present the Solution. P-A-S technique.
Thanks, Sonia. That was fun!
Rohan Bhardwaj says
Sonia, you are a rockstar. The moment I read your musings I fell in love with them. That being said, I write for blog for the person who needs a reality check, motivational round up or a reassurance.
I write for the person who is struggling to get from point A to B. The starting points could differ. The courage, vision and work required for the journey is similar.
On a side note, I read about writing to one person on Seth’s blog a while back here : http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/05/how-to-write-copy-that-goes-viral.html
Stay Awesome.
Jennifer Fabiyanic says
Are you getting that “3 o’clock� feeling too?
I used to feel totally drained at this time of day. It would worsen into the evening so I would watch TV until bedtime. Mornings were also hard, even after a good night’s sleep. I found that I wasn’t excited about anything. I felt like I was really dragging through life.
But I don’t feel bad lately, even at night. A month ago, I even started taking exercise classes.
I attribute my elevated energy levels to a change in my diet. Only after cutting out carbohydrates, then weaning off of sugar and dairy products, was I able to achieve a new appreciation for my time. I am now cooking more meals, saving money and getting more done each day.
When I first heard of The Diet, I was not only skeptical, but too exhausted to imagine myself changing my entire life to make room for it. It requires daily cooking, which I had only done on special occasions, along with giving up some of my favorite foods. The good news is that after the initial 30 days, not only could I have my favorite foods again, but I had a new understanding of what the foods were actually doing to me on a physical level.
Thanks for the prompt, Sonia!
Amy Ray says
I’ll play. This is for the would-be traveler.
***
In the 1995 romantic comedy, “While You Were Sleeping,� Lucy always carries her passport. But it’s blank — a sad reminder that her dreams of traveling is on perpetual standby.
While it is an enjoyable movie, it left unanswered questions. Why didn’t Lucy just book a flight and take off to Europe? What held her back?
Maybe she was worried. About paying for the trip. About traveling alone. About being safe. Sound familiar?
What if you can’t afford the perfect getaway? What do you do in an emergency? Are you an easy target for criminals? These are legitimate questions. But don’t let these concerns prevent you from getting your passport stamped.
Jennifer Weiss says
“We provide you with the same service we provide our own business. We’re not interested in being labeled “creativeâ€? or “wowing other people with our talentsâ€?, we’re interested in you. We won’t stop until we know everything there is to know about you, so we can tell the world what makes you amazing. We’re interested in people becoming obsessed with your brand. We are interested in you.”
Copy for new marketing services page on the website for our company.
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