6 STRATERIES FOR A SUCCESSFUL BLOG

How to share your ideas in a compelling way? How to make sure that people will remember them?

There is an easy strategy to achieve these goals. And it is not a secret. Yet for some reason only a few do it properly. How so? 

The strategy was described by Chip and Dan Heath in their super popular book Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

Here is their model:

And now in my own words:

1) Make sure you have a simple idea to communicate.

2) Have something unexpected to share, otherwise your audience will get bored.

3) Be specific, because vague ideas are difficult to visualize and remember.

4) Make your message credible by using internal logic and external authority.

5) Appeal to people's emotions.

6) Tell stories (human brain loves them!).

It sounds easy enough, right? But I know from my own experience that to use these principles you need to be very determined and disciplined. I used to have a blog here, and I eventually started hating it. Why? I felt that my ideas were not entirely coherent and compelling, but I did not work hard enough to change this. Eventually I deleted everything. I knew that it was my fault. I knew that I need to be concise, to tell more stories. But I was not organized enough to follow through. I think a lot of people who have something interesting to share fall into the same trap.

Now I am giving myself a second chance.

My plan is to practice the SUCCESs model in every blog I write. For example, in this blog:

1) I started with a question to draw my reader's attention. 

2) I mentioned something unexpected (having a successful blog is easy, yet few people do it).

3) I offered a simple idea: there are six strategies for achieving this goal.

4) I described these steps.

5) I increased credibility by appealing to an external authority (famous book).

6) I told a story about my old blog. (Not sure I did very well with this step as my story was not particularly vivid or emotional).

Clearly, there is plenty of room for improvement. But this is just the beginning!