“Stories: The Six Words That Will Rivet The Attention Of Anyone Who Reads Or Hears Them” by David Garfinkel
Here they are:
“Let me tell you a story.”
Many “story experts” say we are hard-wired to deliver our full (and uncritical) attention at the very prospect of hearing a story. It’s genetic. To survive, we developed a reflex to blot out all else to hear stories. This was particularly important when all wisdom (including information about how to survive) was passed along in spoken form.
The good news: It works in writing, too. There’s nothing like a story to get people engaged in reading what you’ve written.
A few days ago, I got an email from…
… a very bright entrepreneur in Chicago who has a strong business on the Web.
He asked for some help in sprucing up the Web site copy. It was good (and the fact that the business was already working quite well was proof positive of that), but the first thing I noticed was that just about everything was bullet points.
No stories.
It’s not that he had no stories to tell. It’s not that he was unable to tell them. It’s just that he didn’t know the best way to use them in his copy.
I like his business so we’re working together. I can tell the Web site is going to be even stronger when I take the stories he’s been telling me and strategically place them into the copy.
Stories aren’t hard. They’re the most natural thing in the world.
Every time someone tells you about something that happened, you’ve just been told a story.
The key to making stories work is to make them lively and relevant to what your reader is interested in.
Use visual descriptions. Use dialogue, instead of paraphrasing what someone said. Describe feelings, both positive and negative ones.
And don’t forget about beginning, middle and end. Some people begin halfway through their stories so you have no idea what they’re talking about; other people get off-track and never finish the tale.
Look for examples of stories in copy — they’re few and far between, but well worth searching out.
Did you know that the world’s most successful advertisement of all time, which has brought in over $1 billion in sales, is the Wall Street Journal’s “Two Young Men” letter?
It begins, “On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men grauduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men… “
Think about it. A story. Sorta folksy, wouldn’t you say?
Last night an old friend called out of the blue and told me he needs to increase his telephone sales. Let’s see if you’ve been paying attention. Can you guess what I told him?
David Garfinkel is one of the best copywriters on the internet and was a speaker at Armand Morin’s Big Seminar Series and Carl Galletti’s Internet Marketing Super Conference. You can learn more about his books and training courses by clicking the links below.
David Garfinkel is founder of the World Copywriting institute and is considered by many people to be the best teacher of copywriting in the world. The stated mission of the World Copywriting Institute is to “eradicate copywriting illiteracy in the world.” Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the world’s best selling series of marketing books, Guerrilla Marketing, says, “David Garfinkel is the best copywriter I know.” Sign up for David’s free World Copywriting Newsletter. and you get a free one-hour downloadable teleseminar on copywriting. Also visit David’s World Copywriting Blog:
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