Second Lesson From Psychology That Will Help You Grow Your Blog

                                       

 Writer’s Life

Hey,

Last week, I posted a blog post on the First Lesson from Psychology that will help you grow your blog. The number of people that read that post was quite amazing. I hope you have enjoyed it and also learned few things from the post. I am glad you did. 

Oh! For those of you that did not read that particular post, you can read it here.

In today’s blog, I ‘m going to share with you the Second Lesson from Psychology which is to make sure your climax is positive and your ending is happy with the peak-end rule.

Think of an experience like a story that has a beginning, climax, and an ending. The climax and the ending seem to stick with us longer than anything else.

At least, that’s what the peak-end rule teaches us: People don’t remember their experience by its entirety, but rather by a strongly positive or negative impression and its ending.

The Brothers Grimm version (AKA: the original story that comes off super negative).

In 1993, a few psychologists researched whether more pain could be preferred to less. Yeah, seriously.

They had two groups of participants. The first group was exposed to 30 seconds of 14 degree ice water. The second group was exposed to 60 seconds of 14 degree ice water, and then 30 seconds of 15 degree ice water.

So what did they find? The second group of participants actually rated their experience as less painful than the first group.

In the real Grimm fairy tale, one of the evil sisters cuts her toes off and the other her heel to fit into Cinderella’s golden slipper. Seriously. Source.

That craziness. That second group was exposed to super cold water a whole minute longer than the first group!

The peak end of their experience, however, was warmer. Therefore, their ending (although not that happy), was better than their initial experience with the cold water.

So experiences ending even slightly better than they started leave the lasting positive impression.

The Disney version (AKA: you can take out the gore and the story still works).

Another researcher tested the peak-end rule in 2008 starting with a positive experience and ending it with an even more positive experience.

In that study, participants got free DVDs. I wish I had participated, too.

In the Disney version of Cinderella, some smart folks thought the morale of the story could be made without the gore the Grimm Brothers seemed to love. Source.

The people who received more popular DVDs after getting less popular ones rated their experience a lot better than the folks who received the DVDs the other way around (popular first, lesser known stuff at the end).

How Disney storytelling and psychology can help you grow your blog.Click To Tweet

How To Grow Your Blog By Understanding The Peak-End Rule

Shoot for Disney quality content. There’s a reason the folks at Disney read the Grimm fairy tales and thought to themselves, “Yeah, I just don’t know if all that gore is really necessary.”

Even if you’re trying to help your readers change something they’re currently doing wrong, the morale of your story can remain the same and still be lighthearted.

Consumer confidence is super correlated with people’s willingness to buy. So the happier your reader—and the more confident they are—the more likely they are to subscribe, signup, or whatever you’re asking them to do.

1. Focus your content on the outcome of a desirable behaviour instead of what your readers are doing wrong right now.
2. Eliminate words and phrases like “you should…” and “don’t do this…” and replace them with positive words that indicate how their lives will improve after doing something new.
3. Inspire confidence with your content! Help your readers see how you or someone you know has been successful doing something so they can envision themselves there, too.

Recommended Reading:

• How To Create Content That Converts By Writing Your Reader Happy
• How To Turn Your Blog Readers Into Paying Customers

Anticipate the end sooner than the conclusion.

Most of your readers only get through 18% of your blog post. So you should make that first 18% of your post like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel:

1. Start with a visual that grabs attention. Header graphics are becoming pretty commonplace now—and for good reason. Humans understand data from visuals 60,000 times faster than text.
2. Provide just enough contexts in your first 100 words so your readers will understand your post. Don’t bury the idea—or the nugget (whatever you want to call it)—too deep so people never get there once they start reading.
3. Include links to related content as soon as possible. If a reader is more interested in something else that’s somewhat related, give them the path to take to keep interacting with your content.
4. Give them a gift after your first 100 words. Like the DVD example, you can provide a free download to engage them with the content from your post in a slightly different format. People like presents.
5. Give people a way to share your content as they head out the door. I know some of you may be thinking, “Well, why should I give my readers who don’t stick around the ability to share my content?” The answer is simple: More shares = more potential eyeballs on your awesome headline. And that means you have more opportunity to build propinquity throughout your industry with your content.

If you didn’t know this before, this is something you should focus on heavily

1. Every post begins with a visual header graphic with a catchy alternate version of your headlines.
2. The introduction gets straight to the point without a lot of fluff. Then, you hook with interesting facts, stats, and stories.
3. The first paragraph starts as a sentence to ease into reading. By the second paragraph, you should try to have at least one link to related content available.
4. Nearly every post has a free download after the introduction. Your guys are big fans of checklists, worksheets, and infographics.  Make sure you give a gift right away for your readers taking the time to read your content.
5. After the gift, encourage your readers to share by embedding a Click To Tweet right in the body of the post. So if your readers do need to leave you, give them option to share the love with your network.

 That way, you still give the majority of your readers who leave your content early a happy ending.

The end of your blog posts may not be your conclusion. Focus on this instead.Click To Tweet

Make your conclusion a happy ending.

There seems to be a ton of information on how to write the best headlines and hooks to catch people’s attention right off the bat. But there’s hardly anything about how to write awesome conclusions.

That’s a shame since the peak-end rule teaches us that those lucky few who make it to your conclusion remember those final words as their primary experience with your content.

So you need to make your conclusion amazing:

1. Keep it simple. Start by summing up the main points of your content.
2. Provide actionable guidance on what to do next. In a way, it’s a call to action: Become a better [fill in the blank] by doing [fill in the blank] like you just learned from this post.
3. Give them the opportunity to read related content. If they liked your content so much that they made it to the end, give them the gift of seeing other stuff you’ve written that’s similar to the topic at hand. I don’t like the idea of automation here. Curate these posts yourself if you have to so that the context of the relationship from one piece of content to the next is natural.
4. End with a question that encourages comments. The value of engagement through comments is hard to define. But the experience of helping your readers through any questions they have is invaluable if you ask me. You can use what you learn to connect with your audience even better—which will help you create better content.
5. Participate in the conversation. The end might not really be in your comments or on your blog. If people share your content somewhere else, you will want to listen for it and participate in the conversation. That could be an awesome end to your readers’ experience with your content.

Bonus: Politely ask those lucky few readers who make it through your entire post to share it with their friends. Asking for a share like this can increase your blog traffic.

I couldn’t sum up the idea of just being helpful in your conclusions better than Neil Patel:

Don’t do it just because you want them to come back to your blog, but do it because you really care about them and want to help them. —Neil PatelClick To Tweet

Please share this post. Thanks!

SOURCE: Nathan Ellering