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How I write content people remember
Stop trying to say everything and focus on one idea that changes what your audience believes
Kateryna Abrosymova
02 Oct
Read any SEO blog. Can you tell in one simple sentence what you just read?
The ways writers were taught to write SEO content can be summarized in one word: comprehensive.
When you're aiming for “comprehensive,” you work on the length. You try to squeeze as much as possible. You want your content to become an ultimate guide.
The thing with ultimate guides is that they don't stick in your memory. And they don't change anything.
They may rank, but they don't give you a reason to remember one company over another. And they certainly don't make you think differently. If you want to create content people remember, start with a logline.
In today's newsletter:
Why your content needs a logline
How to formulate the one idea you want people to remember
Why challenging a belief is more powerful than adding information
Your content needs a logline
A few years ago, I bought a book by Blake Snyder called Save the Cat. In this book, Snyder makes a point that you should never start writing a movie script without a marketable logline.
It's a one- or two-sentence pitch of a film. Logline must be compelling enough to make people want to read the entire script, and decide to invest in the film production.
Here are some examples of the loglines:
The Matrix: A computer hacker learns his reality is a simulated illusion created by machines and joins a rebellion to overthrow them.
Jurassic Park: Cloned dinosaurs escape their enclosures on a remote island and terrorize the park's visitors.
Titanic: Two young lovers from different social classes fall in love aboard an ill-fated luxury ocean liner.
You immediately know what each movie is about. But more importantly, you know what makes it this movie and not any other movie.
A logline strips a story down to one idea. And that's exactly what good content needs to do, too. Instead of trying to cover everything you know about a topic, it needs to give the reader one idea they can remember.
How do you formulate this one idea?
It's not the topic or the title of your piece. It's about what it changes.
I wrote a newsletter on homepages a couple of weeks ago. When I posted it on LinkedIn, I got a reply: "This resonates. Reviewing my homepage now..."
This is exactly the reaction I want from a reader. Not "Great article. Very comprehensive."
I want them to question something they're doing so they think: “Wait. Maybe I've been approaching this wrong.” And then I want them to pick up a new approach.
To achieve this, you need a point of view for every piece.
Here's a way to formulate it:
[Who] is now [believing X] instead of [Y], because [implication].
For this newsletter, it could be:
B2B marketers are now checking whether their content can be summarized in one idea instead of trying to communicate everything at once, because that's how you make content memorable.
Here are a few more examples from my own writing.
B2B marketers are now looking for ways to stand out instead of copying what the category already looks like, because when products become similar, the brand becomes more important.
Content marketers are now starting with the perception they want to create instead of the topics they want to cover, because content should build the knowledge you want people to have about your product.
B2B companies are now treating their homepage hero as a conversion tool instead of a place for clever brand statements, because people can't buy what they don't understand.
None of these ideas is particularly complicated.
Memorable content creates a belief
The value of ”educational" content is: Here is some information you didn't have before.
But information doesn't change behavior. You can read a 4,000-word guide on content strategy and still do exactly what you were doing before.
To change behavior, your content needs to answer: What does the reader believe after reading this that they didn't believe before?
Maybe: "SEO isn't enough anymore,” or "AI making content cheaper makes differentiation more valuable." Those are beliefs.
Once someone believes something, they're much more likely to do something differently. And that’s a way to develop trust towards your brand, build an audience, and acquire customers.
The belief you want to create is your one idea.
When you have it, your distribution gets easy. You don't have to figure out how to "repurpose" 13 unrelated insights into a LinkedIn post, a newsletter, and a video.
More information doesn't necessarily create more value. But one idea does, because it changes how people think.
Don't educate. Create believers.
If all your content does is give people information, AI can do that too. Ask ChatGPT for "a comprehensive guide to content strategy" and you'll get one in seconds.
What AI can't give your audience is a reason to believe your way of looking at the problem.
That's where your brand comes in.
See you next week
Today I had a call with an agency that had decided to let go of its marketing department and rethink its strategy from scratch.
They had a lot of content on the website. When I asked what was wrong with it, they couldn’t quite explain it. They just said: “That content isn’t written the way we want.”
I think I understood exactly what they meant.
Kateryna
P.S. At Zmist & Copy, we help B2B tech companies create memorable content.