Ben Toalson: Let's do a mental exercise.
You bump into a friend on the subway you've been meaning to invite to
a charcuterie party because you know she's all about the charcuterie.
For some reason she doesn't have a cell phone or any other way to
get in touch so this is your one chance to make the invitation.
You get through the catching up phase of the conversation and she says, "Oh!
My stop is coming up."
As the train pulls into the station, you blurt out, "Hey!
I'm hosting a party tomorrow at seven.
You're welcome to come."
She starts walking toward the door and says, "Thanks.
What's the occasion?"
You maybe have a few seconds to convince her to show up.
What do you say?
Your success depends on whether you can give an answer that
piques your friend's interest in the space of one sentence.
In this case, simply shouting, the word "charcuterie" would probably do the trick.
This one-sentence test can be used on any piece of content you make.
Can you sum up in a sentence or maybe two, the most interesting thing about it?
If you were to share that sentence with someone in your target audience,
would they stop to read, watch, or listen to what you've created?
Because the reality is when someone comes across your content,
they're making snap judgements and decisions about whether or not
something is interesting enough to merit their time and attention.
You have a tiny window of time to convince them that what
you're offering is worth consuming before they move on.
The thing you're offering could be learn how to do XYZ with a how-to article.
Relax and hear interesting or inspiring ideas with a podcast.
Or literally roll on the floor laughing with a video comedy sketch.
In module two, you learned about audience research
and how to look for the real words and phrases
people use to describe their problems and struggles.
If you use that language as a part of the offer you're making
in your titles, subject lines, thumbnails and descriptions,
and if you're concise enough to communicate your offer
within the small window of time you're afforded, you'll
have a much easier time earning your audience's attention.
Let's check out some real examples of this idea in action.
Em Connors is an online course creator and marketing
coach who shares tons of Canva tips through Instagram.
We're going to check out one of her Instagram reels and see if we can
spot some of the things she did to make her offer clearly interesting.
First, she uses elements that identify the target audience, the
Canva logo, so you know immediately that this has to do with Canva.
And the word Reel, which is an Instagram-specific format.
If I'm a person who uses Canva and is also trying to make content
on Instagram, I know right away, this is probably relevant to me.
She also addresses a pain point by saying, "transform any graphic into a reel."
A pain point is a specific struggle or problem someone is experiencing.
Here, Em is appealing to anyone with the pain point of wanting to make
video graphics, but not knowing how or not having the time to animate.
Since the Reel will autoplay, let's watch the
first few seconds and see what else we discover.
Em Connors: Here's how to turn any social media graphic that
you have already made in Canva into a reel in about two seconds.
Ben Toalson: Just in the first few seconds, Em has
already indicated some kind of value to the viewer.
Value could have something to do with time or money or even energy.
So when she says "graphic that you've already made in Canva," you might think, 'Nice.
I don't have to spend the extra time or energy making something from scratch.'
And then she says, "in about two seconds."
so you're telling me that I can do this in less
time than it's taking for me to ask this question?
Let's check out another example.
Jay Clouse is a creator educator who runs The Lab, an online community for creators.
He also conducts creator interviews on his Creative
Elements podcast, and shares his insights and
experience through his Creator Science newsletter.
We're going to look at two things from Jay: an email
subject line, and the companion YouTube video title.
This email subject line comes out of the gate strong with
$200,000 per month communicating value to the reader.
That's followed by something surprising.
Coloring Book Empire?
What this subject line is really saying is if this business,
a coloring book empire that you wouldn't expect to be a high
dollar business can earn $200,000 per month, maybe yours can too.
The video title does something similar mentioning $200,000
per month and the surprising "coloring book empire."
But first, it identifies the subject as a YouTuber.
If you're a YouTuber with a type of business you're
pretty sure will never earn $200,000 per year,
let alone per month, this is instantly intriguing.
Jay knows that his audience is full of people who are trying to
build a business and make an income from their creative work, and
these examples do a fantastic job of appealing to those interests.
For the next example, we're going to hang out for a little
bit longer on YouTube and this time look at thumbnails.
Asha Downes runs a brand called Naturally High Hair,
where she takes a scientific approach to helping folks
with 4C and similar type hair grow long, hair natural.
Let's take a look at the thumbnail for one of her videos.
When looking at a sea of thumbnails, we tend to notice faces before we notice anything
else.
In her thumbnail, Asha shares a before and after picture
showing her hair growth progress, and in case it wasn't clear
that this was a before and after, she also includes the dates.
If you're a person with a similar hair type, struggling
to grow your hair longer naturally, this before and
after might be interesting enough to get you to click.
Asha doesn't stop there though.
She reinforces the offer with text saying, "do this for longer 4C hair."
This makes it clear that the purpose of the video is to explain how
she went from the hair length and her before photo to her after photo.
I wanna note another great thing Asha did.
Using photos of herself versus a client or stock photo, she adds a touch of authenticity.
It gives the video a greater sense of credibility and
helps the audience put more trust in what she has to say.
Now, let's hop from YouTube over to Twitter and check
out the beginning of a well-crafted Twitter thread.
A lot of Khe Hy work centers around helping creative entrepreneurs
take a more healthy and effective approach to productivity, which
is the aim of the first Tweet in a recent Twitter thread he posted.
The first tweet of a Twitter thread is a bit of a mix between a title and a description.
It's what someone uses to decide whether or not to
continue reading the thread, but you also have more
characters to work with than your typical title.
Khe opens his tweet with a list of productivity techniques.
People who are working to be more productive will
probably recognize these techniques right away.
He then follows with, "you've probably tried one of these productivity frameworks."
At this point, some are nodding their heads yes, and others are thinking, 'no, I've actually
tried all of them.' He continues, "The problem?
They all have flaws."
Now it's getting interesting.
If you're a person who's tried some of these productivity frameworks
and gotten suboptimal results, this statement does two things.
It says "they have flaws," which implies that if
something didn't work for you, maybe it's not because you
failed, but it's because of the flaws in the framework.
What a relief.
It makes you curious about what those flaws might be.
He finishes the opening Tweet with, "let me show
you what these are, and a better alternative."
So if you're a person who's struggled to succeed using these
techniques, you feel some relief that maybe it's not you and
you're curious to read about the better solution Khe is offering.
I want to call out a small but cool thing Khe does with this tweet.
Even though it's only text, the Tweet was composed with the visual in mind.
Look at the list again.
It could be put in any order, but it's written in an
order of shortest to longest number of characters.
This makes it visually interesting and attracts your
attention even before you know the contents of the text.
Now we're going to look back at YouTube for our final example.
Jonathan and Ashley Longnecker of Tiny Shiny Home have
a two hour long video on their YouTube channel where
they document the process of building a solar shed.
Their offer is showing people how they build a solar shed through
behind the scenes footage, but they're also offering entertainment.
This is already pretty intriguing right from the start,
but do I really wanna spend two hours watching this?
Let's see what techniques they use to make their offer interesting.
Let's start with the video title.
Family Builds Incredible Earth Bag, solar Shed
Office, full movie documentary, time lapse.
There are a couple of really interesting attention grabbing things they've done with the title.
First, they use targeted language, the words "family", "earth
bag", and "solar shed" are appealing to a very specific audience.
They would catch the attention of the target audience right away.
Second, they use descriptive language to set expectations for the audience.
Using the words "documentary" and "time-lapse," make it
clear what style of content the audience can expect to see.
Now let's take a look at the first couple of sentences of the description.
Family of Six builds hyper Adobe solar shed office slash guestroom with zero experience.
11 months of hard work condensed into just two hours for your viewing pleasure.
Right away.
They use even more targeted language.
Family of six.
This also adds intrigue and causes the audience to ask
how or why, and to crave the answers to those questions.
In this example, "family of six" and "zero experience" are especially intriguing.
How did a family of six do this with zero experience?
I have to know.
Finally, they use value language, "11 months in two
hours," to tell the audience that they get to experience
11 months worth of work and a fraction of the time.
They also tag on "viewing pleasure," asserting that watching
the documentary is going to be a pleasing experience.
If you're a person who's interested in homesteading or building
a solar shed and has a couple of hours of free time, this
video title and description are probably enough to convince
you that watching this video will scratch your D I Y itch.
These are just a handful of examples of how matching what you
offer in your content to what you've learned from your audience
research and making a concise offer can make your content
interesting enough to earn your audience's time and attention.
If you did this with every piece of content, you'd
be head and shoulders above most of what's out there.
But what if we took this idea even further?
What if your content wasn't just interesting but irresistible?
In the next lesson, we're going to check out more creator
examples and discover how we can use an irresistible
angle
to make content that people will flock to.