“Everything has [already] been said yet few have taken advantage of it. [A]ll our knowledge is essentially banal.” -Raoul VaneigemIn a world where fewer and fewer interactions are happening in person, and where the supply and demand economics of the attention economy are becoming increasingly fierce, writing is fast becoming the primary mode of communication. The problem is that between email, work memos, sales letters, chat sessions, etc., the written word no longer holds the sacred space that it once did. Further compounding the problem is the fact that (let’s face it) most people don’t have anything new to say. As Raoul Vaneigem says above, “everything has already been said.”
So how does one grab attention in today’s fierce attention economy? The most well-trodden path is to publish a book that someone actually purchases. When someone buys a book, they’re investing money with the intention of investing time -- at some later point -- into reading what they’ve purchased. But most people don’t have the luxury of being a published author, and most writers’ purposes aren’t best-served through traditional methods of publication.
So how do you compete for attention in the much scarier and larger world of emails, blogs, company memos, webcopy, sales copy, etc.? The answer, my friend is spin. While Raoul may be right about the dearth of new ideas, there is by no means a dearth of new angles and new spins that may be leveraged to hook your readers.
Here are 7 methods for hooking your readers with textual crack:
- Leverage Other People’s Personal Brands
Company brands are difficult to leverage, and there are often legal repercussions to misusing a company’s brand or trademark. The personal brands of (sometimes controversial or divisive) famous people, however, are generally fair game. You’ll get slammed with a lawsuit for writing “The Dummies Guide to Learning [whatever],” but if you write an article called “The Elvis Presley Method for [whatever],” or “The James Dean Guide to Being a Body Language Bad*ss,” you’ll likely get away with it. - Leverage Cultural Idioms
Wise (or sometimes unwise) sayings and aphorisms are embedded into every culture’s collective psychology and can be used to ad spin to your rather ordinary point. Ultimately, what you’re writing must have substance, but the scanning eye is much more likely to pick out a well-known idiom and perhaps give your message a little more attention if you’ve properly chosen and applied an appropriate idiom. Which of the two titles are you more likely to read: “A Guide to Saving Money,” or “A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in a Bush: A Time-Tested Guide to Saving Money”? - Leverage Folkisms and Colloquialisms
Cultural idioms, like aphorisms, are embedded into every culture’s collective psychology, but they have the added advantage of being humorous. See here and here for lists of southern folkisms. If you pepper your writing with phrases like “she’s pretty as a speckled pup” or “he was sweatin' like a whore in church on Sunday,” you’re readers will probably continue reading, if only for the continual stream of corniness. - Add Twists to Folkisms, Colloquialisms, Idioms
I once wrote an article entitled “Why You Should Get Up Whenever you Want,” but no one read it. I subsequently changed the title to “Healthy, Wealthy, and DEAD?: 5 Reasons Why Getting Up Early Might be Harmful.” By playing off of Ben Franklin’s oft-quoted saying “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” I was able to hook readers by adding an unexpected twist to accepted wisdom, and it worked. - Observe What Does Well on Social Media
Social media sites like Digg leverage the preferences of thousands to promote the most addictive content. Look at the non-news stories that make the front page and take note of how writers uses titles, subheadings, and text formatting to emphasize their points. - Texturize Your Text
By strategically underling, italicizing, and bolding your text, you can emphasize the most important text and help drive readers attention down your page. By bolding the most important point in each paragraph, you can help ensure that your readers have at least one good excuse to read each paragraph. - Continually Hook Your Readers
In this day and age, text is competing for attention with telephone calls, email alerts, the television, and constant interruptions from others. With this in mind, it’s important to continually hook your readers, drawing them in one or two times per paragraph using the methods outlined above.
--Clay
