The Best Content Evokes This One Thought

I'm finally coming up for air (no, that's not the thought you want to evoke).

For the last two months, I've been heads down in private beta mode with a new content product I'm bringing to market. If you follow my daily LinkedIn posts, you might already know about it - including the ups and downs from my "Startup Diary" posts.

I share stories about our screw ups and miscalculations, plus the victories. It's generating a lot of inbound messages, many of gratitude as they follow a similar journey bringing their own products to market.

And that's the point: a good story is "good" because we can relate to something about it - the characters, the situation, the setbacks. It's relatable raw emotion.

The Story Behind the Story

Stories connect us.

What your prospects see on your social posts and comments, the insights they discover from your blogs, and the reminders they get in your newsletter all shape how they perceive your brand.

If you're doing content right, many will interact with your online presence well before the first email, the first call, or the first meeting. Your content has to be good. Really good. And it can't feel like AI wrote it.

Because we've all developed AI smell detectors.

AI can be a useful tool, but there's something it can't do: feel.

That's reserved for us humans.

No matter what you sell, how you make someone feel is usually the difference between winning a deal and getting the "sorry, we picked someone else" email.

You Have to Make Prospects Feel This

I see this repeatedly: generic content repels. The more AI-sounding it is, the faster you alienate your audience because they know it's not your thoughts. Most professionals are now able to recognize 100% AI-written content because of its generic style and tone.

On the flip side, the best content creates this emotional thought:

I want that to be my story.

This is true regardless of what you sell. It works for SaaS products, cybersecurity, commercial real estate, tax advisory, consulting, agency services, you name it.

You simply need a story that your audience can identify with - a story that they would like to make their own. Plus, it has to feel achievable, not out of reach.

Capture the Story

AI can generate words quickly, but it can't share your unique customer experiences. Nor can it provide real-world context that resonates with your clients and prospects. The stories it tells are made up, or have already been told. They're not real. Smell test, here we go.

You need real stories.

To get your audience to identify with your story, you'll want to capture your existing customer's thoughts and experiences.

I do this using by asking one question:

Think about the last time you were using our product. What were you looking to do that day, not just with our product, but what were the other things you had to get done that day or week?

Listen and take notes feverishly. Record your conversation if you can - it might even turn into a testimonial video.

Use numbers in your story.

→ "I got to page 1 of Google within 5 days"

→ "We saw a 30% decrease in phishing emails"

→ "We started saving 4-5 hours a week instantly. That's over $30,000 a year we don't waste anymore."

Numbers are the heart of your story. They help to create the "I want that" feeling.

The SEO Benefits of Customer Stories

This approach allows you to tell the story of the journey that got your client to a place they wanted to be. When you share this journey with others like your client, they can visualize themselves on the journey, too.

These thoughts make your content 100% unique, which is what Google wants to see for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

Their algorithm favors helpful insights that it doesn't detect anywhere else.

A Very Fast Way to Make Great Content

Creating high quality original content for social, websites and newsletters can be a lot easier than you might think.

This brings me to why I've been hunkered down.

Meet our new product, MakeMEDIA. It enables you to create SEO-rich content just by talking through a guided interview. It creates a detailed outline, like a slide deck for a presentation, on topics you know well. Just talk and it transforms your conversation into valuable content that can help advance your Google rankings.

It's now in open beta so if you'd like to try it out, visit:

MakeMEDIA →

Click Join Beta and you'll get the instructions and access code to sign up. It melts 4 hours of painful writing down to a 15 minute easy conversation.

Now I'm curious:

What customer stories could you share to make your content more engaging?

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