Welcome to day 3 of “Making Your Stuff Cool.”
As previously discussed, I’m talking about driving up the interest of your audience by making your information “cool.” On Monday, we talked about the “Radio Test.” On Tuesday, we talked about combining the interests of your audience in new and original ways. Today, we’re going to apply the technique of fortune-telling to your thought leadership.
Here’s what we know about all people: they’re fascinated with predictions. I was just reading an article the other day about the end of the NHL regular season, and the writer talked about his predictions, and the predictions of readers who commented on them, at the beginning of the season.
You might or might not be surprised to learn that the writer was completely wrong about a number of things he thought would happen. In spite of that, the article was still informative and enjoyable to read.
The point I want you to take from that is that while it’s even more fun when people get it right, nobody cares when they get it wrong.
In fact, if you make a lot of predictions and only get a few right, you can focus on those few correct ones and people will generally forget that you got some of the others wrong.
Now let’s take this one step further, beyond just making predictions.
You can use those predictions to draw a crowd by how you talk about them. For example, you could make a prediction about what you think smartphones are going to be like in a year, and then point to a major change that will happen because of that. Maybe people will trade in or throw out their iPhone, and that’s how you begin your story. Of course, not everyone will upgrade, but if a few people do, that’s a valid prediction.
Maybe you could talk about what industries will be in decline, or what will happen if the President gets re-elected, or if his opponent gets elected. Maybe you could talk about technologies that will be made obsolete.
My prediction is that if you use this to your advantage, you can make your content fun and interesting to the people you want to attract and bond with.
Coming up tomorrow, we’ll talk about using a technique from a marketing copywriter who was born in 1866. You’d never believe this tactic is so old because it works so well. I’ll see you then.
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