Hola. Welcome to Part III of my series on The Anatomy of Viral Business Content! (If you’re just joining us, you should read Part I and Part II first — and subscribe to get the whole series!)
Let’s dig in, and start talking about CONTENT.
If you follow the suggestion in Part I and use a BOLD VOICE…
And you follow the suggestion in Part II and stir up a little CONTROVERSY…
But end up saying something nobody cares a hoot about…
Well, my friend, you fail!
One of the biggest, most important things you MUST remember if you want to create viral content is…
You’re readers are selfish monsters!
“My lizard brain tells me to share these children on Facebook!”
Don’t worry, so am I. So are you! We all are.
It’s a fundamental part of the human experience. We all have needs, wants, desires… We all have a lizard brain…
We all want to be entertained… Enlightened…
We want good feelings…
And the best way to get a bunch of people interested in a piece of content you create is to…
Build it around the burning desires and questions of your ideal audience!
Tomorrow, we’ll talk more about AUDIENCE.
But today I have to mention it simply because if you want to know what to say, you first have to know who the heck you want to say it to.
And that usually comes from the people who will be best-served by buying your products and services.
If you have an email list — and you should — you need to create content that will attract the type of people who will be a fit for your list…
You want to attract FUTURE BUYERS!
And so what you have to do is look at the products you have now, or will be creating in the future…
Look at who will get the most VALUE from them…
And think…
“What are their nagging questions and burning desires?!”
My first viral post here at Breakthrough Marketing Secrets was “My response to a copywriter looking for career advice.”
The world of wannabe direct response copywriters is huge.
For good reason.
When you get good in this biz, you’re literally able to turn your words into cash. You can, as the Beatles were known for, sit down and “write a swimming pool.” They wrote songs, we write sales letters.
But the gap between what copywriters were promised when they got into this biz… And the typical experience in the first few years of a freelance copywriting career… Can be big.
I’m talking gaping chasm.
And so copywriters are rabid for good career advice.
Doubly so from someone like me who’s built a bit of a reputation in the biz. (At one time I was accused of being the “poster child” for the one of the world’s top trainers of direct response copywriters.)
And so when I went on to a bunch of LinkedIn groups for copywriters and aspiring copywriters and shared this post…
Well…
Of course there was going to be some level of interest and engagement.
It was a hunk-a-hunk-a burnin’ question!
If you’re a copywriter, and you want to be successful, you absolutely want to know what it takes to be successful.
And as you’re sitting down to create YOUR business content…
You have to ask yourself…
What are my customer’s nagging questions?
What are their burning desires?
If you have a sales team or customer service department that regularly connects with customers, even better… They KNOW. Because they get asked the questions all the time.
It’s up to you to turn those questions and desires into content for your site.
Sit down with a piece of paper…
Write out every question you can think of that you can answer…
Spend 30-60 minutes pouring the questions out onto the paper…
And when you think you have them all, come up with some more…
By the time you’re done, you’ll have months’ or even years’ worth of content for your business website or blog.
In fact, if you simply want effective content (that probably won’t go viral, but it will still help you make sales)…
You may not have to have a bold voice — in fact, you could be only mildly interesting!
You absolutely don’t have to create controversy — you could me as middle-of-the-road as it gets!
As long as you get this one thing right — speaking to their nagging questions and burning desires — you’re well on your way!
(In fact, you probably shouldn’t even really AIM for viral content. You should aim for good, engaging content, that speaks to your audience’s nagging questions and burning desires. If it goes viral, that’s a BONUS. Base hits still score points. Not every hit has to be a grand slam.)
So, let’s say you’ve sat down and written an interesting, engaging piece of content that’s in a strong voice and has a little edge to it…
What do you do next?
How do you get those first eyeballs?
I’ll show you what I did next (including some pitfalls to avoid). That’s tomorrow.
For now though, I’d love your comments below.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
PS — Part IV is live! Keep reading…
