I just finished the book, How to Castrate A Bull. It’s the semi-autobiographical story of one of the co-founders of NetApp, Dave Hitz. It’s a good read with some great advice on how you grow from the garage, to a multi-billion dollar company, crash down to nothing (during the Internet bubble) and then rebuild yourself again. One of the topics that stuck with me (along with how to castrate a bull. He actually tells you how to do it. Fascinating) was the method he uses to prepare for a presentation. His method, Feeling, Action and Content, frames what he wants to say in a way that inspires people to take the action he wants them to take.
Feeling
His method starts out with what you want the audience to feel. This should be an emotion that grips the audience and puts them in the right frame of mind to accept the action. Feelings include: anger, sadness, joy, excitement or dread. The trick is to pick a single emotion and focus your efforts on developing it. Applying this to blogging means that your posts should carry a tone that gets your readers ready for action.
Action
Once your audience is in the proper emotional state, it’s now time to prompt them to action. An action could be as simple as continuing their great work or more detailed like meeting their sales number. The action should be clear, doable and measurable. Preferably, your call to action will be a single thing that your entire audience can participate in. Resist the temptation of multiple actions since that will confuse and distract. Remember, you are going for an emotional connection that will resonate enough that your audience will equate that feeling to action. For bloggers, it might be a request to post a comment or visit your site.
Content
Now I know this sounds counter intuitive for us bloggers but when talking to a group of people (and extending that to your readers), content is not as important as the feelings and action you want people to take. Why? Well, feelings, emotions and actions will be remembered while content will not. The content is really used to reinforce your feeling and call to action. It has to be good and factual, yet in the end, most people won’t remember it. On the flip side, they will remember bad, poorly explained content, so you don’t get off that easy. As bloggers, we understand that content is king but remember that your content must be incapsulated into something that readers feel and want to take action on.
Your Call To Action
In the comments, put in your favorite blog post or speech that inspired you to action. What feelings did it arouse in you? What content sealed the deal? Was it the content or the feeling that you remembered?
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Author Bio
Jarie Bolander is an engineer by training and an entrepreneur by nature. He is presently VP of R&D at Tagent, a company working on breakthrough technology that will help reduce medical errors. Jarie also blogs about innovation, management and entrepreneurship at The Daily MBA and has recently published his first book, Frustration Free Technical Management. You can also follow him on Twitter @thedailymba
To get things rolling, I figured I would take my own call to action and share something that inspired me to action. The post was from Zen Habits (http://zenhabits.net/2009/11/the-little-rules-of-action/) and it dealt with getting stuff done.
What feelings did this post arouse in me?
It was that you will never be perfect and that it’s better to get something done and put it out there then to toil on it forever.
What content sealed the deal?
It was the first sentence:
“Too often we get stuck in inaction — the quagmire of doubt and perfectionism and distractions and planning that stops us from moving forward.”
This really struck a chord with me.
Was it the content or the feeling you remembered?
I remembered the feeling that I just need to create and the mantra of “Forget Perfection.”
Thanks Jarie. Before I write a blog post, I write an objective or an outcome I want from my readers. I usually have lots of material I’ve collected and organized in folders on my PC or on Evernote. So after writing my objective, I start writing immediately. I don’t care what I write. I just start writing with the outcome in mind. No editing (which is very hard for me). I just write. I edit later. I fill in facts, when needed, later. But spilling my brains with an objective in mind gets the juices flowing.
Doug-
I do the same but call it the Theme. That way I have something down that I can throw away later.
Jarie
Let me clarify. I’m not talking about the theme an english professor talks about. No, the objective I write identifies my audience and how I want them to feel when reading the post. It includes what I want them to do after reading the post. It’s something completely different than a theme. It may approach the “Theme.” But it isn’t the same. It does include the “feeling” you mention in this post though.
Doug-
Thanks for the clarification. You’re right. My theme method does not take into account the feeling I want to get across. I am now starting to do that and will try your objective method.
Jarie
Jarie, this is a unique take on the importance of feeling, action and content in blogging. I like the advice about focusing on one emotion and call-to-action and using content to support the call to action.
Chris-
I think we sometimes loose the feeling part of a post. It’s really easy to do when you focus on the content.
Jarie