Want to discover the potatoes' secret to popularity?
Join Ivan Meakins as he decodes how, in ,1776, Frederick the Great used this seemingly mundane vegetable to impart an important lesson in content creation.
Learn about the human brain's reaction to novelty, the addictive dopamine rush it triggers, and how you, too, can sprinkle this 'secret' ingredient into your content.
Together, we'll draw inspiration from Victor Schwab's '100 Good Advertising Headlines and Why They're So Profitable' as we dissect the power of secrets in compelling an audience.
From books to blogs and case studies, we'll uncover the art of keeping solutions under wraps for a dramatic reveal, all while avoiding the pitfall of clickbait.
Are you ready to trigger that dopamine rush in your audience's brain? Tune in and let's uncover these secrets together.
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If this episode sparks off any new ideas, we would love to hear them! Please email us at info@writebusinessresults.com OR fire us a DM on social media. Links to all our favourite haunts are below:
LinkedIn:
Instagram:
Want to discover the potatoes' secret to popularity?
Join Ivan Meakins as he decodes how, in ,1776, Frederick the Great used this seemingly mundane vegetable to impart an important lesson in content creation.
Learn about the human brain's reaction to novelty, the addictive dopamine rush it triggers, and how you, too, can sprinkle this 'secret' ingredient into your content.
Together, we'll draw inspiration from Victor Schwab's '100 Good Advertising Headlines and Why They're So Profitable' as we dissect the power of secrets in compelling an audience.
From books to blogs and case studies, we'll uncover the art of keeping solutions under wraps for a dramatic reveal, all while avoiding the pitfall of clickbait.
Are you ready to trigger that dopamine rush in your audience's brain? Tune in and let's uncover these secrets together.
---------------------------------------------
If this episode sparks off any new ideas, we would love to hear them! Please email us at info@writebusinessresults.com OR fire us a DM on social media. Links to all our favourite haunts are below:
LinkedIn:
Instagram:
Hey, what's up guys? This is Ivan Meakin, the newer listening to content on tap sponsored by Riot Business Results. This is the show where I go on a mission to unpack all those tiny little details that make up fantastic content. I report my findings back to you and I try and give you some practical tips that you guys can take home into your next project. If you do like what you hear, please do all those classic podcasty things you know like share, subscribe, tell your friends about us all that kind of stuff. It helps us spread the word and reach more people just like you, which is awesome. Also, if you wanted to have a more in-depth conversation about what you're hearing today, just set us up on LinkedIn. You can go to the Riot Business Results LinkedIn page or you can go to my own personal LinkedIn page and FireCTM. We can spark a whole conversation there. Thanks, guys. Let's just crack on with the episode.
Speaker 1:Quick fact for you in 1774, nobody liked potatoes Now, most of all the citizens of the Prussian Empire, who eyed this new foreign food with absolute hatred, suspicion. The emperor at the time was a guy called Frederick the Great, and he had a really big problem because he knew that potatoes would be the key to solving the hunger crisis that he was facing. At the time. The people were having none of it Prussian. So what? The first thing they did is they refused to eat potatoes and farmers refused to grow them. One colorful report, actually from the time, mentioned the townsfolk of a town called Coldberg, reporting saying that these buds weren't fit enough even for their dogs. So you can imagine how badly they must have hated them. But Frederick needed people to accept the potato because he knew how nutritious it was and he knew it could be a huge help in solving kind of empire-wide hunger. But Frederick had a little trick up his sleeve and he was going to season these potatoes with a little something that was going to make them absolutely impossible to ignore. It's not salt and vinegar, it's not cheese and onion. Here we are here. What he did is he planted a royal field of potatoes near his palace and stationed guards at every little entrance point to stop people from going in to see what was being grown and, naturally, what this did. This secret peaked the townsfolk's curiosity and then something amazing happened. The people decided that anything worth guarding was worth having themselves. So what they did is they decided to steal potato plants from the royal field to plant in their own gardens, and very soon after that, all the people of the country were growing potatoes, eating potatoes, and developed a quite a fond taste for them, which is why they became a staple all over Europe. And this campaign worked an absolute treat and the potato became the new kind of superfood of the country as a result.
Speaker 1:So look, why am I telling you this story? Well, first off, I think it's fascinating. I'm a bit of a history nerd, but what I do think it does really well is it shows how something that's undesirable at the time, like a potato, can become or transforms into, like this, royal prize, all by peaking the curiosity of the audience with a secret. So what that got me thinking right is how content creators, copywriters and sort of marketers use secrets in their copy or their content to drive people insane with desire. And they do it all the time, right? Copywriters do it, marketers do it. So what we want, what I wanted to do in this episode, is how can we take the secret and season our own content with a few secrets to create desire in our, in the audience. So that's what we're gonna do here we're gonna unlock the power of the secret. We're gonna look at why secrets work, what they affects they have on the human brain and how we can start using them in our own content to draw in an audience. Because, make no mistake, the very same tactics work just as well on the modern-day manner women as they do on the 18th century Prussian peasant right. We only need to take a quick look the science to understand why.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about why this works so well, right? So firstly, there have been countless studies proven that our brain releases dopamine when we encounter something novel. This is the built-in reward system that we have inside our brains for discovery, new stuff. And the more that we seek out Stuff that's exciting, something that's kind of new, a novel, or we kind of solve the secret to something, or we hunt for the secret, the answer to a certain secret, the better we begin to feel and the more we're inclined to repeat that process in in the future, when our brain forges Kind of neural networks and makes us kind of hunter things that make us feel good, right?
Speaker 1:So, just like Frederick the great with his potatoes, you know, what we can do is content creators, is use well-placed secrets to add a huge amount of novelty to a product or to a service. What that does is that fires off that dopamine that we have makes us kind of eager to find out more. So one of the first places is a great secret will crop up in content or copy is probably going to be the headlines, right? So the headlines blogs, the headlines of ad copy, the headlines of a book or a podcast, whatever it is right, or the thumbnail of, like, a YouTube video. So if we look at some of the most famous kind of headlines throughout history I've taken these from a great article called a hundred good advertising headlines and why they're so profitable that's actually an ad itself by one of the most legendary copywriters of all time, victor Schwab. So let's just go through some of these, right, and to give you an example of what I mean.
Speaker 1:So first one, the first one that came up, is the secret of making people like to Kind of praise and talking about that. There is a secret. Some other, less kind of obvious ones is when doctors feel rotten. This is what they do. No, interesting, what is that? Why some food explode in your stomach, okay, why do they? That's a pretty good one, right? You want to figure that one out. So it's also a good talking point to share with your friends at the pub, right, if you figure that one out. Another one that probably all of you are going to be familiar with is how to win friends and influence people. You know, that's obviously kind of putting a little breadcrumb trail for for a reader Discover the fortune that lies hidden in your salary. So these are all like really good examples of like a secret headline to draw people in straight off the bat with that kind of hunt for answers. So that's why it works.
Speaker 1:And you know basically one thing that you'll notice when you look at these headlines and if you do read all hundred of them as well probably about 60% of them are secret, your fit. But the reason why they do that is that the headline touches on something valuable, like a valuable piece of hidden information that helps the reader achieve something. When there's no description of what that is or no real hint of what it could be, the only thing that the headline is promising is that there's something that can help you. There's something out there that can help you. If you read on, you're going to get to uncover the secret of what. That is right. That's important. We'll come to why that's important in a little bit.
Speaker 1:One thing just to sidetrack this podcast a little bit into saying is like a disclaimer, like when you're using secrets in your headlines and your copy, just avoid making wild claims that you cannot back up. That's really important, right? So the headlines I've said, I've told you about above, are brilliant examples and they've all been rehashed by marketers for decades now. But one thing that I'm not a huge fan of, and I think what some people do not everyone, but some people definitely do is go to down that clickbait road so they make the headline so attractive and so big and bold and then the rest of the copy just can never really quite deliver on that. So if you have integrity as a content creator, I wish I would hope that you don't do that, and that's something that I believe truly that if you are going to use these, use these to offer value and back up what you say, rather than conflate your message with dramatic ideas that you can't back up because you don't have the skill or it's just literally impossible to do. So that's one thing I would just sidetrack on and get back to it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so when we talk about the secret and when we talk about using headlines to kind of hit the secret, it's important that you kind of keep the solution a little bit hush-hush for the big reveal and kind of leap the big reveal over time. Because if you give your secret away in the headline or straight into the kind of the lead part of the copy, it's not really a secret anymore in the game's up and it can be quite anti-climactical. In fact, the dopamine hit we get when we encounter a secret is at its peak when we're actually on the hunt for the answer. So the highest moment of enjoyment for us as human beings when we're on the hunt for a secret is the hunt itself. As soon as we find out what the secret is, the dopamine wears off and then we're on, we move on to finding something new, to feel that dopamine hit. That's why, interestingly, when you watch a horror movie, some of my favorite horror movies of all time or thriller movies of all time are the ones where the horror or the hidden mystery is not revealed until the very, very end.
Speaker 1:Because normally the big reveal, the big horrific reveal, the big mystery is a bit disappointing. It's a bit of an anti-climax and you've spent your whole time getting pumped for this reveal, for it to overwhelm you a little bit. So just remember, guys, the thrill when you're using a secret in any content. Really the thrill's in the chase, not in the reveal. Think about it like a breadcrumb trail for your prospect to follow. The more clues that you leave along the way, the more the excitement builds and the more appealing that your product or your solution becomes to the prospect. And if this isn't a book, that's again each chapter or each subheading of a chapter. If you're revealing your secret again to each chapter, it's a new one for time worth. The point of the book is kind of climaxing into the big reveal.
Speaker 1:It's important that each of the chapters reveals something, gives them some piece of information that they need to unlock the rest, otherwise they will just disengage. And for an example, if you're using a blog, what you could do is in the very beginning of that blog, in the headline or in the introduction piece of copy, the paragraph, you can make a really nice promise to say read on and the secret will be revealed piece by piece to keep them engaged. And for a book, an obvious place to look for a curiosity inducing secret would be the title or subtitle of the book. That's a very obvious one. There's a book called the Secret which kind of sums that up quite nicely. But if you don't want to be super obvious about it, you could have, like, for instance, a case study revealing using one of the headlines that we used in the Schwab examples. He could say something like he had failed four times before he learned this. It's a pretty interesting title for a case study.
Speaker 1:Perhaps you want like a header of a chapter. It might read something like 90% of investors get this part wrong and that's your subheadie. So if people are skimming through the book, they'll see that bit and like, oh geez, what's that, and then they'll be more inclined to read the copy. I mean, a lot of readers of business books these days do skim. Unfortunately Tensions my hands are quite short. I mean, I do a lot of skimming in business books as well, right? So if you can create great subheaders like that, you're going to be get a more likely chance that the reader will invest their time to read what that is, because you're dropping a secret, it's a dopamine hit and they're going to be on the hunt for answers. Okay, you can also drop your secret in the introduction of the book. You can make a big promise that they'll uncover as they go through the book, or the theory, the argument you have that you're going to lay out in the book, and if they read on they just might be able to join the success club right Of the other people who have done this too. So that's a good way to kind of get people salivating mentally right At the content in your book is by dropping a secret in the introduction.
Speaker 1:In fact, actually, exclusive secret clubs are a brilliant way of getting people curious. Marketers use it all the time as well. Humans are status creatures and since the earliest years that we've been around, the one thing that grants us status today is, in a big way actually, is knowledge right. Knowing more than your peers or being perceived to be more knowledgeable than the people around you is a huge elevator in someone's status today. So if people like knowing things that others don't and if they want to be the most interesting person in the room in their industry and you're dropping industry secrets 90% of investors don't know this thing. Naturally, people are going to be inclined to want to know that because they want to be the part of a 10%, you'll be on to a winner. If you could do that, they'll probably be likely to recommend the book to other people to be seen as someone knowledgeable and someone smart and a source of information that people go to. You'll be more likely to get referrals. Your book will be more widely discussed as a result of that. So let's wrap things up Just to remember that curiosity is what we're looking for here, right?
Speaker 1:The secret is the mechagnism by which we achieve curiosity. There's that great line from the film Django and Chain, which Leonardo DiCaprio delivers with just awesome talent. He says you have my curiosity, now you have my attention. I always thought that was a cool line because it makes sense, right. When you have someone's curiosity, you have their attention.
Speaker 1:The way that we get curiosity is by putting secrets and littering little breadcrumb trails of the secrets in our content. Right, it's one of the best ways that you can do it leverage the power of a good secret. All we have to do is to find the right way to work it into content, which is probably where the challenge lies. But hopefully this episode has given you some ideas on how you can start leveraging secrets in your work, and I hope that has been useful for you. So if you spend time practicing weaving in secrets into your headlines or into your books or blogs or podcasts or whatever you're going to use it, you're going to be rewarded with eager, fresh eyes, hungry to find out more, fueled by this dopamine hunt for answers. So I hope that was useful. Guys. Until next time, keep creating, keep telling stories and I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, thanks again for listening to another episode of content untapped. Firstly, let me just say a massive shout out to Write Business Results. If you are interested in finding out what we're up to at Write Business Results, create content to grow a loyal audience. Please do get in touch at info at writebusinessresultscom and we will get back to you post haste. Secondly, if you wanted to continue the conversation about creating great content or anything that you're listening to on this show, give us a DM to the Write Business Results LinkedIn page or you can DM my personal page and we can spark a whole new conversation about any of this stuff. We love having conversations about content, so the more the merrier, guys, thanks again for listening and I will see you next time.