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| Playboy's first issue featured Marilyn Monroe "nude" and plenty of stories... some read them! |
In the Content Creation business you sell stories and photos to business people. If you are skilled and proven in a small niche, business people will believe you can do the job. You are hired. Examples or references do not help much. Most people have not experienced writing that sells (exciting, alluring, sexy). Exciting people with a story is not only elusive, it does not work for everyone. A business person who reads your blog or a page on a competing site will not get it as an excited customer gets it. If your story is informative, most people who read will not understand all your key points. If the topic is complex or abstract you need to write in more detail or give more examples. This situation frustrates creative writers and photographers. Yet, when a story (or a picture, video) "works" it's magic. Essentially, a clearly written instruction page can stop the help lines from ringing. A sexy or exciting story or demo of a mobile app can go viral and suddenly you have a product that's selling. As if suddenly people noticed you were beautiful and until now you were "just skinny" or had "nice lines". Why stories excite, allure, entice and actually make us feel sexy is a question asked as long as man has been telling them. There are many theories and techniques used to tell stories which are used in the media and advertising industries. Some products actually depend on good Content Marketing. Traditionally these were not called Content Marketing, they were copywriters in advertising and script writers in media. In Hollywood and on Madison Avenue (the advertising center in New York) there are standard well developed techniques to develop "stories that sell". Yet Harry Potter and Red Storm Rising only comes once in a few decades and even Danielle Steel and Stephen King don't know how exactly it was done (they did not write these books, others did). If they did, they would do it themselves and beat the others. But nobody has been able to come up with a sure formula for great writing.