I was browsing the #contentmarketing stream on Twitter this afternoon and came across a Tweet by Marcus Schaller (@b2bforhumans) - love that Twitter handle, don't you?
Marcus Tweeted:
"Nobody is persuaded by data, they are persuaded by meaning. #b2b #contentmarketing"
There's a nugget of gold in that Tweet. So I decided to play out one version that occured to me.
How many times have you seen content that makes a statement like this:
Our solution will help your company increase productivity by 33%.
What does that mean? I don't have a clue, do you? First of all, what kind of productivity?
Our solution will help your company increase employee productivity by 33%.
Still not sure. In relation to what?
Unified communications and collaboration capabilities will help your company increase employee productivity by 33%.
Closer but not yet there. How?
Unified communications and collaboration capabilities will help you increase employee productivity by 33% by helping workers quickly find and connect with the people and information they need to do their jobs.
To make it meaningful, add interest and tighten up the focus:
Knowledge workers defy traditional automation but unified communications and collaboration tools can help them compress time to task completion by up to 33%.
Meaning is about sharing ideas your audience can relate to and work with, not vague statistics and solution statements. Give them something to visualize, chew on and share wtih others and persuasion will come easier.
*By the way, I made up that statistic for illustrative purposes - so don't go using it.