I would rather eat a jar full of troll nails than say something lame like “put yourself in your audience’s shoes”, because there is no way you can do that. WE as human beings, can’t do that. Heck the world is ending because we’re simply incapable of understanding the other guy’s point!
So what I want you to do instead is to let your content cook for a bit before you serve it up. Finish your writing and then walk out of the room. Take a walk and get some sun. Adopt a cat or a dog, or a giraffe. Start a zoo. Get really excited. Fail to get your paperwork sorted. Go bankrupt. Sell your over-mortgaged zoo to Zuckerberg or Bezos. Then come back to where you left your content. The idea is that the next time you read it, you have to make sure that you’re not the same person any more. And if you still feel perfectly comfortable with what you wrote, then you’re not doing it right.
From Creating To Critiquing
Everything you’re doing is in the pursuit of the Jackpot Dot.
Let me lay it down for you:
- The empty document is your canvas. Put all your material on to the board. One paragraph for each part of the discussion.
- Reorganize the paragraphs so that the progression makes natural sense.
- Edit the content for flow making sure the end of each paragraph passes your reader’s attention effectively on to the next paragraph.
- Do feel free to throw in your own mix of tricks and techniques, of course.
- Now leave the room. Or work on something else. Do something to distract yourself. Simon Sinek makes an excellent argument on why healthy distractions are a critical creativity ingredient in this 2 minute clip.
- Come back to it after a while and go through it. In the beginning you were the creator, now you’re the critique.
- Don’t ask yourself why you wrote what you wrote. Of course you can connect all the dots.
- The objective is to help your audience connect the dots, by making your content good enough to bring somebody from dot 1 to dot 3, while giving them enough to be able to figure out dot 2 on their own. Dot 2 is the Jackpot Dot!
- Scrap whatever doesn’t make sense to you. Reorder the paragraphs if you have to. Exercise no mercy. Rip off that band aid, nice and slow!
- At this point you will be left with the truly effective material. Now repeat steps 1 to 4 a few times and your content is now ready to be served.
A lot of writers insist on making their content as comfortable as possible. The impulse to give your audience everything on a silver platter is a very strong one. But that is not how you’ll be able to pull your audience into a relationship. Both parties need to be committed in order to reach Happily Ever After land.
The Jackpot Dot is the part where your reader takes everything you give them (dot 1), and then goes on a quick crusade to find the truth (dot 3). The truth (dot 2) is the prize. That is what will give your reader that dopamine rush. That is what they will take with them.
Digital Marketing Dynamite 