Antwon Davis's List: Blog Posts I Dig

• Write down anything you think could be your hidden talent on a sheet of paper: things you might like but haven’t tried, things you liked in the past before life interrupted

• The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling: Applied to Blogging

   

  What follows here are The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling. Apply them to your blog, and over time you’ll find yourself on a bestseller list in your niche.

• 1. Concept: in novels this is a compelling “what if?” idea, such as… what if you could raise the Titanic?… or what if Leonardo DaVinci put secret messages into his paintings?

   

  For bloggers, your concept is your U.S.P. – Unique Selling Proposition – and the inherent value-add of your brand, product and message. What if I could save your marriage? Your life? What if you changed X to create Y?

• 2. Character: in novels this is the vehicle by which the reader is taken on a vicarious journey, one that elicits their emotion, empathy and fascination. The root for the hero, because they are the hero.

   

  For bloggers, the character of your site is also empathetic and vicarious, in that you are illuminating solutions to problems in the real world of your target audience. You are not writing about you, you are writing about them. The reader is the hero of your story.

   

  3. Theme: in novels, theme is what a story means in real-world terms, how it makes the reader respond, it elicits thoughts and emotions that relate directly to the human experience and their take on it.

   

  For bloggers, the theme of your site is the set of value propositions upon which it is based, a direct focus on how your message and product relates to their lives. Your theme is the benefit of what your blog stands for.

   

  4. Structure: great stories have a succinct structural model, based on a four-part sequence of set-up, response (to an inciting incident), attack and resolution. With lots of milestones and mission-driven criteria along the way.

   

  For bloggers, structure means unfolding your story in the same fashion – a set-up that opens the story from the reader’s point of view, showing how the typical response or condition creates problems and/or opportunities, showing how the reader can and should attack those problems (using your solutions), and then demonstrating how and why your solutions will work for them. Like a novel, your blog should deliver a meaty, satisfying ending.

• 5. Scene Execution: a novel is composed of a series of scenes, each of which must be in perfect balance, with perfect tone and context, in relation to the overall arc of the story.

   

  For bloggers, this translates to a point by point dismantling of misconceptions and the seeding of the case for your product or solution. Each element stands alone with a mission, which is in context to the larger mission of the post itself. If your post is about “X Ways to Do Y,” for example, then each of those steps is the equivalent of a scene.

   

  6. Writing Voice: all writing is not created equal, and some writers set themselves apart not only with their storytelling, but with their literary style, humor, passion and elegance. Voice is the collective effect of the words on the page, the use of language, the images and emotions evoked.

   

  For bloggers, your voice is your brand

  . It must be strategically defined and developed, and then rendered consistently as you move forward through a series of posts that always illuminates the brand as an empowering sub-text that resides beneath the content itself.
• n rendered consistently as you move forward through a series of posts that always illumin
• For bloggers, your voice is your brand. It must be strategically defined and developed, and then rendered consistently as you move forward through a series of posts that always illumin

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