After five months of spoiling you with fresh content, I was planning to reintroduce my first-ever nugget to the rotation.
Here’s why …
Our subscriber community has more than doubled since the start. So, the old stuff is still fresh for a lot of you.
Plus, the nugget I’m working on needs a bit more care and feeding before I release it into the wild.
Also, it’s been more than five months. And repurposing content isn’t only convenient …
Repurposing your content is smart marketing.
Do you see it too?
Huddled within my attempt to hold onto the past, is a bit of fresh wisdom ready to bound into your life and refuse every command to stay off the couch.
I’m still gonna give you Nugget #1, so this’ll be quick. And partially ripped off from content virtuoso, Ross Simmonds.
. . .
Ross says, “Create once, distribute forever because the time you spend distributing should outweigh the amount of time you spend creating something.”
Like math? Me neither. But consider this …
If you spend 80 percent of your time creating and only 20 percent distributing, you should flip it around so you can juice every drop of value from the asset you spent hours, weeks, or even longer building. 🤔
Imagine you wrote a book designed to help a group of people solve a problem. You wouldn’t get started on your next book right after sweeping up the confetti. You’d figure out all the ways you could amplify your message.
That could be through an email newsletter, social posts, a video series, podcast appearances, guest lectures, and whatever else you can do to bring your thinking to the people who need it.
And if you don’t find new ways to repackage and redistribute your content, Ross tells us “You are essentially doing a disservice to all the people struggling right now with that problem who are scrolling through LinkedIn, waiting for someone to help them.”
Sometimes, that means modifying a piece to fit a different platform. Or it could be as simple as letting some time pass before republishing something in its original form—like I’m doing here, with the nugget that started it all. 👇
Three words that will strangle your sales
Keep it short.
Worst copywriting advice I ever got.
I didn’t know that at the time. I was young. And it sounded like less work. My favorite.
From there, I embarked on a career of summarization.
Writing became an exercise in wrapping things up, every sentiment as crisp as a communion wafer while just as flavorless. Each sentence was stripped of its succulence, every word paraded down the catwalk, all perfect posture with nothing meaningful to say.
Sales didn’t budge, but nobody questioned the copy because it all sounded so good.
Later in my career, I got some new direction. Again, three simple words, only these courtesy of copy legend Drayton Bird.
“Brevity doesn’t sell.”
This made no sense to the Town Elders.
“People don’t have the attention span for long copy,” they shrieked.
Wrong. People don’t have the attention span for dull copy—long or short.
If a sentence’s only job is to get you to read the next sentence, then you can write loads of them as long as you maintain the reader’s interest.
You’d never expect a salesperson to cut his pitch short to beat the traffic home. So why would you sacrifice compelling details for an economy of words? Instead, you need to shepherd your prospect through every reason why they should buy your product, while draining every objection along the way.
The only way to pull that off is through assembling a series of specific, relevant, mouthwatering words.
Written well, copy has the power to be “transportive,” says conversion copywriter, Eddie Shleyner. “Good, long copy lets us fantasize.”
Still not convinced? Let’s try this…
If you’ve ever binge-watched a Netflix series…
If you’ve ever viewed a TED Talk…
If you’ve ever begun air guitaring to “Stairway to Heaven” at the 5:35 mark…
…then you may just have a soft spot for long copy.
So, whether you’re writing copy or evaluating someone else’s, don’t base the success of your message on word count. If it holds your interest from start to finish, it works. And if it doesn’t…
Edit to strengthen your words’ meaning—not to reduce their number.
Only 29 words to go…
Care to shower me with compliments or snarky remarks? Go ahead and get in touch.
If not, here’s a song to play you out >>>
See you next time. – Matt
If you want a fresh marketing nugget emailed to you every two weeks
