👉 Go deep. Answer questions from every angle. Make a sincere effort to produce the best page on the Web for the topic.

3. Be the best answer for your audience every step of their way
We know it's important to be that "best answer." But only 48% of us are answering questions for each stage in a customer relationship.

👉 Get inside the customer mindset. The best way I know to do this is to Undercover Boss your own site and pose as a would-be customer. What questions pop into your head? What site-navigation friction gives you a rash?

4. Relatable and capable
It's not just what you say, it's how you say it (and who is saying it). Do you use accessible language? A warm tone? Does your writing sound like it's written by an actual person with an actual beating heart having an open, honest conversation with one single human being? And not a "segment" or a "persona" or an "audience." ONE. PERSON.

👉 What's the narrative that every one of your competitors tells? Flip that narrative. Exploit the gaps. Write the perspective no one else will. That truth builds trust and affinity.

5. Roll your own research
Fully 85% of bloggers who publish original research report better results with their blogging (39% of them report very strong results).

6. 'But I have no money. I can't afford custom research'
Fine. Consider this instead: Only 1% of writers always cite or quote outside experts. Yet those who do are more likely to report strong results.

👉 Find those experts. Ask them what they think about the issue you're exploring. Write that isht down.

7. Use a ridiculous number of visuals
A mere 3% of bloggers include 10+ images per post. But those who do are 2.5x more likely to report "strong results" than the average.

👉 "Visuals" could be graphs, charts, video, gifs. You get the idea.

8. Write 20 headlines before selecting one
Most writers—58%—write 2-3 headlines. But those who brainstorm big and write up to 20 report far better results.

 

 

👉 I know this sounds nuts. But I've changed the subject line of this email newsletter 30 times before hitting SEND. Obsess, my friends. It pays off.

9. Write as many first lines as you do headlines
I can't cite data here; just do it, okay? A headline makes a reader click; a first line entices them to Keep. Going.

10. Two words: Editing. Process.
Roughly 30% of us have a process for editing. (Five years ago, only 10% of us did.) Writers with a process—even if it's self-editing—are 50% more likely to report better results.

👉 "Editing process" sounds as much fun as peeling hard-boiled eggs. Worth it.

11. Eyes on analytics
Writers who measure the performance of every post are far more likely to report "strong results" than the average blog-post writer. Only 43% of us said we measure content marketing ROI. And of that 43%, less than two-thirds said they were any good at it.

Tying our efforts directly to revenue is critical because more results = more buy-in = more budget. "The work of aligning stakeholders isn't a big, fat obstacle to doing your job... It IS your job," as my friend and B2B agency guy Doug Kessler says.

12. Update your best posts
Writers who consistently update older posts are twice as likely to report success: 35% of writers who update old content report "strong results." Just 16% of us who do not update old content say the same.

13. Distribution is your job, too
Before they put a single pixel on a page, 93% of the top-performing content marketers think through distribution through organic, owned, paid, and influencer-outreach channels.

👉 Planning for distribution when your writing is still mewling in infancy is like starting a college plan for your newborn. It's the right and responsible thing to do.

* * *

Binge both benchmarks. They're delicious:

 

Here are 4 things worth sharing this week:

1. The Early BERT Catches the Worm

Last week, Google announced that BERT—its deep-learning powered natural-language processing model—would now power search queries. That shift changes everything—and also nothing, assuming you're focused on expert-driven, well-distributed, trustworthy content, says Chris Penn. As in: everything we talked about above. With BERT:

Choose quality over quantity. If you can, create high-quality content at scale, but if you must make a resourcing choice, choose quality first. Quality of content is paramount now.

Here is a very detailed look at what post-BERT SEO looks like.

2. Small of Duty

There are three ways that small and midsize businesses can best their bigger competitors. Said another way: On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog. Especially if you focus your efforts correctly. Read the three ways piece.

 

One of the best examples of persuasive communication is 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg's recent speech to the United Nations Climate Action Summit.

Four minutes long. 500 words. Short, declarative sentences. Some only 3-4 words, including the "How dare you...?!" refrain she repeats throughout.

It's a speech, sure. But it's also a good model for when you need to make a case for something in almost any format. Nick Westergaard breaks it down.

▶️ ▶️ ▶️ Related: It took me a long time to internalize this lesson. If you're scared of public speaking, the most important thing to remember is this: It's not about you.

4. Practical Ways to Write Copy that Converts

I love these 7 hyper-specific ways to write copy that converts. We're talking about relatable writing in this issue, so take special note of #7:

👉 Use your customer's voice. Does your copy read like your customer wrote it?

Compare the feature pages of Etsy and Amazon Handmade, two competitors in the handcrafts e-commerce space:

 

 

Yes: Etsy's voice reflects its customers' independence, creativity, imagination.

No: Amazon's voice sounds like the accounts department wrote it.

Why: The right voice signals "you belong here."

 

Check out the other six conversion tips. [via Marketing Examples]

 

QUICKIES

🏠 Why I Built a Tiny House. I work out of a tiny house in my backyard. It's the smartest thing I ever did for my work life. Here's why, and what it looks like.

💬 7 Words from the Working World. Hit reply to this newsletter and use lucubration in a sentence. Best answer gets a prize.

 

🎥 Marketing With Video Free Online Forum [Live on 11/15 + On Demand thereafter. FREE] Tim Washer on not overthinking video (I need this one). Goldie Chan on LinkedIn video secrets. Sponsored by our friends at Vidyard. 100% free. Did I say that already?

 

SHELFIES 📚
What I'm reading

The Unamerican Dream by Carlos Hidalgo
A personal story of how Carlos—wildly successful yet profoundly miserable—reset, recalibrated (and what we can all learn from it).
Money quote: "Be OK with being happier instead of being a hustler."

Think Do Say by Ron Tite
Brand purpose + living that purpose + sharing it = this book.
Money quote: "If you benchmark your own industry, you'll just copy your competition."

 

STANDOUT SENTENCE OF THE WEEK 👏 👏 👏
Writing that deserves a slow clap. This week's Standout Sentence is actually a headline, nominated by a reader. If you have a sentence to nominate, hit reply and forward the sentence and URL.

Kevin Plank founded Under Armour in his grandmother's basement in 1996. He recently stepped down, and Morning Brew's headline on the announcement read like it was waiting years for just this moment:

 

23 Years Is a Long Time to Hold a Plank
 

LOVE LETTERS

💌 To the fantastic Jay Baer and Oracle Marketing Cloud for featuring me in this video series. (You know Jay's a good friend because I hate video, but I did it for him.) Here I give an important piece of advice that will change the way you communicate through your newsletters.