Remarkablogger

New York Times bestseller Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is not about blogging, but my blogging has already improved because of it, and yours can, too. Read on to see what six key qualities are needed to make a blog post "stick".

I won’t spoil the very beginning of the book for you, but it’s good, and I didn’t put the book down for a long time after I started reading it. Authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath are brothers who took different paths in life but both realized they were really onto the same thing: they wanted to know why some ideas are memorable and passed along from person to person (even if they aren’t true) and why some ideas never make it (even when they are true).

They studied stories, urban legends, and proverbs. They looked for the qualities in common that made these ideas stick, regardless of truth or accuracy. We can infuse our own ideas with these six qualities and get our ideas to stick. Whether you are speaking, writing a book, or writing a blog post, these six key qualities are highly relevant to getting your idea to stick with your audience.

Let’s see an example.

The Truth About Movie Popcorn

The popcorn you get at the movies used to be popped in coconut oil, and now it isn’t, because of a man named Art Silverman. Art worked for a public interest nutrition group, and every time he saw a box of movie popcorn, he saw artery-clogging death staring him back. The coconut oil used for popping the corn contained ghastly amounts of saturated fat–the worst kind. I

It was stunningly unhealthy, but Art knew that if he just spelled out the facts, that it would be boring and nobody would listen. So Art had an idea.

At a press conference, Art laid out on the table a medium-sized bag of movie popcorn, a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac & fries, and a full steak dinner & side dishes. The message? One bag of movie popcorn contains 37 grams of saturated fat, which is more than the bacon-and-eggs, Big Mac & fries, and steak dinner… combined.

The message stuck and it spread. It was all over the news, and soon, movie theaters replaced the coconut oil.

6 Key Qualities that Make an Idea Stick

So what are these key qualities? Thankfully, you don’t have to read three-quarters of the way through to finally get to them. They are up front, right at the beginning. Heck, they’re even on the back cover! Even if you never read the book, you could intuit how these ideas could improve your blogging and try them out.

• Simplicity: Not dumbing down your message, but finding the core of it, the intent. Learn how the Army was able to simplify its battle plans in a way that ensured they could be carried out no matter what happened on the battlefield — page 25.
• Unexpectedness: How can you capture and hold attention? By breaking people’s "guessing machines". Find out how a flight attendant got passengers to actually listen to one of the most boring, ignored messages ever: the pre-flight safety announcement — page 63.
• Concreteness: Details and first hand experience drive the point home like nothing else can. See how an elementary school teacher taught her class a lesson on racial prejudice that was so powerful they were forever changed — page 111.
• Credibility: You idea won’t stick if people won’t believe it. Where does credibility really come from? Read how the NBA taught rookies about the reality of AIDS in an unforgettable fashion — page 162.
• Emotional: How do you get people to care about your idea? By focusing on the humanizing details and on the individual rather than the group. Learn how one mess hall in Iraq serves amazingly better meals than any other with the same ingredients — page 186.
• Stories: The most compact and spreadable way to deliver your message without people realizing it is through storytelling. Learn how the dramatic story of a nurse who countermanded a doctor’s diagnosis and saved a baby’s life is used to teach others — page 204.

A Little Bogged Down

Made to Stick isn’t a long book, but there are some places where it drags a little and gives too much information. In the chapter on credibility, the Heath brothers provide several examples that are so bogged down in irrelevant minutiae, the point they’re trying to teach was completely forgotten by me as I read. I found myself saying, "So what?"

The chapter on emotion seemed more like an education in copywriting focused on understanding the specifics of your audience in order to appeal. The chapter gets tangled up in a discussion of whether or not or when people are motivated by self-interest. Not that it wasn’t useful or relevant, because it was, but it felt too long and explanatory to me. 

Will Made to Stick Improve Your Blogging?

Regular readers may remember last week a published a very different kind of post from what I usually do, called How I Brought My Business Back from the Dead with Blogging. I wrote that post after reading Made to Stick. It had an impact on people and drew a very different kind of comment from readers. One commenter even said she had only meant to skim it but found she couldn’t stop reading the whole thing.

I can’t pull off stories like that all the time, but in this case:

• I had a very simple, core idea I wanted to communicate: blogging is good for business.
• That I would share something so personal was unexpected (and there were other unexpected elements, too, like an over-medicated business man suffering delusions of grandeur).
• I provided concrete details we can all relate to that supported the core idea of my example of the idea of "blogging helps business".
• The story details also serve to strengthen credibility: you know it’s much more likely this really happened and that I’m not just making it up.
• I deliberately invoked the emotional angle of taking care of my family and being a responsible husband and father. Because so many of us all share that, it was a way to create an emotional connection. Had I been single with no children, the impact of a failing business would not have been so great.
• The whole thing was told in the form of a story, which itself contributed to the unexpectedness of the post.

That post was the perfect testing ground for the ideas in Made to Stick, because my message to you on this blog cannot get any more core and vital than this: blogging is good for business. Do I need to use these six principles for a screencast on setting up Twitter? Not really. But every blog has one or more core messages, and using the ideas in Made to Stick will help you get those ideas to stick with your audience.

I think that because this book isn’t focused on blogging at all, but on the communication of ideas, that it will be the most useful book any communicator could read. It’s ideas are surprisingly easy and effective to put into practice. Even though it offers a little too much information in places, I recommend you grab this one before the summer’s over.

P.S. - I’ll have some more book reviews coming up over the summer, so subscribe or you’ll miss them!

P.P.S. - My friend and time-management ninja Dave Navarro is going to be part of a live online class tomorrow. His topic: Reprogramming Your Brain for Success.