Hi! You have been asked to write a blog post for your class. One of the items on the rubric is “engaging content”? Well, if you want people to read your blog then you need to make sure that your blog is fun! It needs to make people want to read it.

I would recommend that you research creative writing or engaging writing. One of the really good courses I found is on Coursera and it is called “Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious content” by professor Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsilvania. The course is made up of 4 modules; how to make ideas stick, how social influence shapes behaviour, the power of word of mouth, and social networks. You can get through it in a weekend probably. And for your information, you can go through coursera coures for free as long as you do not do any of the quizzes etc.

I loved this course because it gave quick applicable tips about how create engaging content. It did this using what he calls the SUCCES acronym :

Simple: stick to one piece of information and use analogy to make it memorable and imaginable. Make people want to seek more information.

Unexpected: Violate expectations. Create a curiousity gap so that people are surprised. Remember that repetion can dull the surprise.

Concrete: Show dont tell. Make your idea visible. Think of climate change vs global warming. Which one is more visual to you?

Credible: Remember that numbers are not memorable on their own. You need to give context to numbers. E.g. california has a population of 33 million – does not tell you much. But california’s population is more than the population of New mexico, oregon, (list additional 10 states) combined gives it more credibility.

Emotional Stories: Ask why 3 times to get to the real reason behind something and use a story that tugs at our hearts to leave the audience with a feeling.

One of the examples he gave was an apple mac book air ad. This exemplifies many of those tips. Number one it focused one simple piece of information about the macbook air, its size. It did not go into too many details about internal memory or capcity or screen or any of this. There was one message that it is light and thin. It was also unexpected to find a laptop coming out of that envelope – especially 12 years ago when laptops were much bigger than they are now. Instead of saying “this laptop is only 0.5 inches thick” they showed you the laptop coming out of the envelop which gave it a context and credibility. I can go on and on about how amazing this ad is – including this wonderful song “new soul”. But I will let you watch it for yourself.

Good luck and i look forward to reading your blogs soon.

References: Images from Pixabay ;