If you’ve been in business for a while, I’m sure you realise the importance of sharing content consistently. Most business owners get that.
But if you want to create content to not just tick the box of putting out content, but actually get more leads from your content, it requires more than just showing up on social media or in people’s inboxes and saying “Here I am! Here’s what I do!” Right?
There are specific principles you can follow to increase the likelihood of getting paid clients from your content efforts.
To attract more clients from your content, there’s one approach that’s guaranteed to get you leads more than anything else. And if your content is missing this, you could get likes, but not leads. Let’s face it, it’s leads that you really need.
This approach was first discovered and written about 2,300 years ago and it hasn’t changed. It’s stood the test of time. It’s been studied for hundreds of years and has been backed by science.
When you follow the principles in this approach, you become certain that you will get more leads from your posts, your webpages and your emails if you get them in front of the right people. This is super exciting.
For years I noticed that there was content that pulled me in and content that pushed me away. But I didn’t know why.
It wasn’t until I studied marketing, that I realised the reason. The people who created content that drew me in used principles of influence, whether they knew it or not.
Influence is the ability to change someone’s mind about something or inspire them to take a new action. The dictionary definition of influence when it comes to other humans is the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone.
There’s a misconception some people have about influence and that is that influence is about trying to get someone to do something they don’t want to do. That’s not what influence is about.
If you want to use influence for good, which I’m sure you do, using influence principles in your content is about helping someone create positive change in their life.
And remember you’re not trying to everyone. You’re only speaking to your ideal client – to get the right client to take a step closer to you.
You do this by helping them overcome any blocks they have. The goal is to help people who need you to help them overcome any blocks to moving towards you.
There are a lot of people that create content. But not a lot of people use influence principles in their content. They end up disappointed when their content doesn’t convert.
So, how good are you at influencing people to care about what you are saying?
Peter Cunningham, from Geneva Leadership Alliance said, “You can learn all the knowledge in the world about the changes you want to make, but if you can’t influence other people, you will only have frustration to look forward to.”
Frank Kern, one of the top marketers in the world said, “Inspiring people to put their hard-earned money into your pocket instead of theirs is one of the hardest things to do.”
The ability to influence others is not easy. Knowing the principles of influence can make it a lot easier.
After creating your free content, ask yourself, “Will this piece of content give my target market what they need to know in order to cross the decision bridge?”
The decision bridge is where are they right now and where do they need to be in order to say, “I’m ready to buy”? Where do they need to be?
Your potential paying clients are standing at the decision bridge and they are saying, “Oh, I have a better understanding. Now I know what I need to know in order to get started with your program.”
In this video, I share 3 ways to create influential content from the very inventor of the art, Aristotle. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, and one of the founding fathers of communication theory.
Aristotle believed that persuasion occurs when three components are represented.
2300 years ago, Aristotle wrote a piece on rhetoric. We don’t use the word rhetoric very often anymore, but rhetoric is defined as the art of persuasion.
Aristotle believed that persuasion occurs when 3 components are represented: ethos, logos, and pathos.
1. Influence with Ethos: Ethical Content
The first principle of influential content, according to Aristotle, is ethos, or ethics. Ethics are what make your audience feel they can trust you. This means it’s important to show your credibility.
You show your credibility through:
- Personal branding
- Having confidence in your delivery
- Providing real value
Ethics is about long-term value. I see a lot of people sacrifice it in order to see results and achieve goals faster, but it’s not worth it.
You might be tempted to do quick fixes, like messaging everyone you know asking them to like your stuff. I’ve seen people go into multiple Facebook groups and post the same thing like: “I got 98 clients this week, who wants to know how?”
I’ve also seen people who advertise their business or offers in an email or a webinar, and they advertise that the answers are inside the email or within the webinar. Then when people open the email or attend the webinar, the answers aren’t provided.
This is not an ethical way to operate. People feel ripped off when they don’t get what they were told they would receive.
I get it, this is a marketing tactic, but they are not building a connection with people, let alone credibility. And they are not doing it ethically. In business, you have to do things with integrity.
If you’re in business for the long haul, you have to have an abundance mindset, and you need to avoid unethical tactics.
Reputation over money. Every time.
If you keep your integrity, treat your clients well, and be totally honest, you will maintain your credibility. Reputation trumps over money every time. When you have a good reputation, trust comes along with it.
Trust is exchanged between people much like a currency, it can be given and received. Trust can be built up over time, but once you’ve lost it, trust is hard to rebuild. It’s not impossible to rebuild, however, it just takes a lot of work.
Trust forms the basis of all human relationships and the extent to which you have influence is largely based on the extent to which people trust you and you are willing to trust them.
2. Influence with Pathos: Emotional Content
Aristotle’s second tool of persuasion is pathos, which is the use of emotion.
You use emotions in your content through:
a) Telling stories
b) Inspirational quotes
c) Using vivid language
Brene Brown says “…stories are just data with a soul.” I think that’s really cool. It’s not just facts, but it’s got a soul and a story to it. Great content creators are great storytellers.
You can use stories to evoke emotions. You can talk about real-life examples and you can share inspirational quotes. You can use very vivid descriptive language that describes a scenario and evokes emotion.
Using stories helps evoke emotions.
Some psychologists believe that using human reasoning is simply an attempt to justify your emotional decisions. Whether this is right or not, emotions have the power to trigger action.
The concept of branding is mainly based on brands’ ability to cause emotional reactions and responses to these reactions.
I do know that most people tend to buy emotionally and back it up with logic. Emotions definitely have the power to trigger us to take action.
Without pathos, content would just be a list of facts and no one likes to be bored by plain facts alone.
On the other hand, an emotion overload without facts can make people feel like you’re being too fluffy and they’re not getting value. So it’s about balance.
You want to make your audience feel something. You want them to be moved, emotionally with your content. You want to create that bridge between us and them, which you do by being real, vulnerable, and showing your human side.
The largest engagement I’ve ever received on a post was a super vulnerable post that got over 500 comments. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t do it intentionally. It wasn’t a content strategy. It was a personal post and not for my business.
It was really interesting to see when you talk vulnerably about your struggle like I did in that post, (which was really hard for me) how people responded to it.
Emotion is an incredible way to create that sense of bonding and rapport with people. It helps you bridge the gap between yourself and your audience.
Ask yourself in your content if you are evoking emotion in your content? If not, ask yourself how you can evoke emotion within your content.
3. Influence with Logos: Logical Content
Aristotle’s third rule is logos, which is also known as reason.
- The structure of your content
- Your referencing of studies, statistics and case studies
- Using comparisons, analogies and metaphors
To use logic in your marketing strategies, it’s about empathizing with your audience by meeting them where they’re at. You then explain a different way to look at something.
Having structure in your content is critical. What a lot of people do is they have a topic, and they show up and talk about it, but they don’t have a clear thought-out structure, with a planned intro, body, and call to action.
They don’t divide their content into these 3 clear pieces and they don’t practise it and take it through an actual formula.
To apply reason in your content you have to think through a few things:
Every piece of my content that I put out that is not a simple connection piece or a fun piece, but a piece of value content all follow a structure.
I use 7 ingredients that I incorporate in my content. I actually am going to be teaching this in an upcoming master class.
This structure helps people stay engaged and keep reading. If your content does not have structure and a nice clear flow, people can feel like it’s disjointed. If it follows a clear, sequential flow, it is easier for people to take in.
Structure helps people stay engaged and keep reading.
If you think about the way a book is written. It’s not like the author just puts all the ideas on paper and presents it to you.
They take the time to read every word and they think about the storyline and they craft it around a structure.
Statistics also come under logos. You need to reference studies, case studies, data, and real-life stories.
Analogies and metaphors can be really powerful because they help people see things in a different way. This is about meeting people where they are at, and explaining to people a different way of looking at things.
The structure I use always meets people where they are at. You usually meet them with the struggle or the problem, whether that is directly or indirectly.
Most people aren’t walking around thinking they want their amazing, epic dream life. Most people are thinking about one specific problem or their many specific problems.
The structure is to meet them where they are at and shift them to a different way of looking at something. A mistake a lot of people make is they insult people’s intelligence.
Aristotle’s 3 lessons of rhetoric fundamentally address how human beings are influenced. Ethos, pathos and logos have had the ability to influence people throughout the centuries.
In the words of Aristotle himself, “The art of persuasion lies in knowing how to combine these three principles in the right amounts.”
This is the fun, creative side of the process.
There are multiple ways to influence the brain, I’ve just shared 3 of them here.
I created a free, live, online masterclass that shows you other principles of influence, plus how to apply them, in my upcoming masterclass on Tuesday 3rd August.
I’ll be sharing:
- 3 Unique & Unconventional Ingredients that can INSTANTLY transform your content
- The Psychology Of Influence Principles The Experts Use to inspire people to take action
- My Signature ‘Content Roll-Out Map’ to create your 30-Day content plan in less than an hour
- The EXACT Words and Phrases to NEVER Include if you want to resonate with the right people.
- The Psychology Of Influence Principles that experts use to inspire people to take action
- Before and After Content Makeover Examples, so you can see the principles in action, to save you a lot of time and confusion!
…so you have a reliable strategy you can use to attract new clients with your content & make $10k+ every month.⠀
Click here to find out more or register
Leave a Reply