How to Write Anything for ANYBODY*

Yeah. You read that right. Including the asterisk. This one is for the content writers.

Writers' block: How many times have you opened your notebook, or MS Word, or that Evernote and tried to write something hoping it makes sense. Could be an email, a brochure content, website, a greeting card for your newlywed friends, blog post; you name it. Where you slogged for hours and hours and hours and just could not come up with anything sensible. Anything that made you happy. Something that gave you that satisfaction of coming up with something that will be compelling and moving enough for your reader/user. Well, I have struggled with it for the longest time too. In would sit for hours on end and drum up enough emotions and feels and write something highly inspiring. But once I got a fresh set of eyes on it, my colleagues said that I lost the message. And some times, I would sit down and write the message clearly and repeat it for consistency, and I would get feedback that it lack that lucid personal tone that people expected. It would baffle me to no end, how the perfect content style eluded me. Don't get me wrong, I got really good reviews and feedback too, but it would be hits and misses. Some times I would come up with amazingly well knit copy which would get views, retweets or recommendations. And at times, I would produce utter crap which I would be ashamed of. Until I started really thinking things through. Thinking about the purpose of every written content. Those of you who follow my blog or medium regularly, would know that I have been obsessed with purpose driven design of things. Strategy, Art, Content, Brand et al. I decided to apply the same to written content. And its surprising how much your content improves once you start asking yourself the question Why? Why am I writing this email? Why am I writing this blog post? Why am I writing this website copy? Why am I writing this report? And that my friends is the secret to how to writing great content. At least the first step to it.

1. Ask yourself why

Yes. Everything needs to have a purpose. Else your content does not serve any purpose and apart from the fancy words and the slick language in your content, you have nothing as it adds no value to anything. So ask yourself why. But how do you do that? Why am I writing this email? To start a conversation with Sam. Why do I want to start a conversation with Sam? Because I want to build a professional connection with him. Why do I want to build a professional connection with Sam? Because he has marketing knowledge that I would like to learn from and advance my career. Fair enough. This exercise, as you will later see, is the difference between a drab subject line saying 'Introduction' with a drab email body to an eye catching subject line and pleasant Email body. But for now, list down your purpose of communication: To sell Sam a pair of pyjamas. This exercise will do two things: - It will keep you from drifting away from the content's main purpose and cut away slack. Those filler lines that just take up unnecessary space. Your content has one purpose. After reading this, your reader will take this action. That's that! - It will make you ask yourself out of basic common sense: Is email the best way to do it? My friends, this itself will save you a lot of hard work and wasted effort. Terrible example, but, you already have Sam's number. You have heard that he is fairly active on LinkedIn. Can a simple message/whatsapp or call do the job? If yes, then don't bother with the email. Simple.

2. Core Drivers

Ask yourself, why would your user take that action. (In case you have not figured yet, there are going to be a lot of Whys in this post) So, why would Sam want to meet with you? And this is an important aspect of designing content for any audience. One size rarely fits all and hence, what would compel a young 25 year old tech savvy entrepreneur to buy pajamas is completely different to why a married woman with three children would buy them. And that is why, this activity will help you narrow down things and help customize it according to your receiver. Great. So , why would Sam want to meet me? For this, you need to answer a few questions: - What is the best way to influence Sam's decision? Would an email do? Do you have to make FB ads? Would making online advertisements better? - What is his demographic persona? Does channel does he rely on? Does he post online at all? What motivates him? What is his daily context? What are his incentives? What doesn't? - What would he want/benefit from someone like you? Any collaboration has to be mutually beneficial. You get something, what does Sam get out of this? And the answer need not be money or any other materialistic things. It could just be the pleasure of working with people. But at least you now know how to spin the conversation. Of course you could now scale and blow this up to make this about a segment of customers from a market. Define by age, for example, and do primary and secondary aassesment to gather critical ethnographic traits of your segment in more depth:

3. Create & Evolve

Once you have the above things listed down, convert them to the email. Start and end with the call to action. Keep the content shot and crisp (people do tend to drone on and on). An app that helps me keep that in check is the Hemingway Editor. A few things to keep in mind: - Have a strong title/subject line. Enough info to pique curiosity, enough information to encourage them to click on it. Kind of like link baiting but without the dramatics. And bait & switch. And the fact that you should actually provide value. - Short sentences. Short paragraphs. - Highlight wherever necessary. Use italics and underline only if the situation warrants. - Always end with a clear, strong ask and make it easy for them to respond and follow up. And voila! You can write anything for anyone. All it needs it a little thinking through.

*Using this framework can only provide a best case heightened probability of response from your reader and does not guarantee it. That can only happen by using all data points available at your disposal and incorporating insights and learnings gleaned from them into the content over a period of time.

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If you enjoyed this, I would recommend reading a few more essays I penned around similar topics. Read more about applied behaviour change. Read about campaign success measurement. Follow me on @Slim_Snail on Twitter.