All posts by punchline

need a framework on which to build website stories
Website stories (and others!) are best built with five-vital-pieces

Knowing the framework around which you’re going to build a house, or a website, make construction so much easier.

The alternative is to start building, see what happens…and then have to change it all completely.

Getting that framework right is the difficult bit. But once you have it, you’re filling in the gaps.

For a website there’s five cascading pieces from the top which make the writing or explanation of what you’re selling a breeze.

Imagine it as being a pyramid shape, with the main point at the top and the contributing stories filling out its lower sections.

  • First, most important story. Your 2-10 word what and why
  • Subheading. Specific explanation of your offer, and for whom
  • Three bullet points. Key, benefits, explained

These make up a pyramid’s over-riding story, over a backup reinforcement statement, supported underneath with demonstrations.

Nailing these is difficult. But spend your time answering these five-vital-pieces, and your copy almost writes itself.

Your first most important message must be succinct and appealing
The right story about your business rings true and is succinct. Is your’s?
Photo by Linus Nylund on Unsplash

Restricting yourself to 10 words, tell me about your business. Is it simple?

Have you described why someone should be interested in your product or service? Is it succinct?

Have you given me a what and a why? Does it resonate?

Is part of the heart and soul of who you are evident along with your value proposition?

Does what you say sound fresh, because you’ve used familiar (though not overused) terms in a novel way?

If you’ve pulled this off by yourself, you’re magic.

However most of us, myself included, struggle mightily to unearth our own business story.

By ourselves we can’t sort the wood from the trees, spot the gem in the dross, narrow down to the one central truth of what I call your Million Dollar Message.

An outsider is (essentially) the only way to bring objectivity to revealing the essence of your first, most important story.

Writing 10,000 words is easy. Refining your story down to 10 words is arduous.

But get it right, and you’ve faceted the diamond of your story crown.

If you tell your own story - then somebody else can't do so instead
If you tell your own story – then somebody else can’t instead.
Photo by Jacob Mejicanos on Unsplash

There’s an old saying that if you don’t tell your own story, somebody else will.

Which means if we want to have a say in how someone else relates our brand or company, then it is in our major self-interest to deliberately craft that story.

Such an intent starts with your first story – a what and why statement which clarifies what we wish to be known for.

If this story is non-generic – and doesn’t contain nothing words like ‘solution’ and ‘innovative’ – you’ve got better than even odds of someone remembering it.

Further, if your first story has a metaphor to help convey part of the heart of your offer – it is even more memorable.

It means even if an outsider doesn’t remember the exact words, they’ll have a feeling for what you’re about.

So, tell your own story right from the start; and you take away the risk of someone else getting it wrong.

How does you own first, most important story stack up? Need help? Talk to Punchline.

Find the 10 words that matter about your story

Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash

Well-known author of 19 best selling non-fiction books Seth Godin knows a thing or two about writing.

He reckons we scan 10 words the first time we read a page, post, ad or memo.

He recommends highlighting the 10 most important words of the 1000 (or 100 or whatever) words you originally write.

Then start your story with these 10 words, or ones with a pretty similar meaning.

The rest of your story should reinforce and support this theme – what I call your Million Dollar Message.

If your first most important story, and the rest of your copy, don’t reflect each other, you’re in trouble. There’s a disconnect.

If your Million Dollar Message and the rest of your story sing off the same song sheet – there’s a resonance.

Do your first words ring true with the rest of your copy, and more importantly, vice versa?

Out of the blue, sometimes like a business first story, a song may trigger a memory
Out of the blue, sometimes like a business first story, a song may trigger a memory
Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

Sometimes, out of the blue, a song will trigger a memory.

“The Otherside” by Breaks Co-Op came on the BizDojo co-working space Spotify playlist the other day.

I can picture Jeff, a former work colleague and friend singing it at the top of his voice over a decade ago in an office we worked out of. He died, far too early far too young, from a massive, out of the blue stroke.

The trigger(s) for why we’ll remember a particular business when we have need of their particular product or service are many and varied.

But a simple, easily recalled message is certainly one of them.

If their first, most important story resonates at the time a person first read it, the idea of it will pop back later on as well.

We may not sell today, but an on point ‘what and why’ can trigger the sale tomorrow…just as a song can trigger a memory of a lost mate.

Truth resonates in a business story as in a personal story. Lies will be caught out
Truth resonates in a business story as in a personal story. Lies will be caught out.
Photo by Joël de Vriend on Unsplash

Fiction is wonderful.

Not only does it allow us to imagine we’re in a different world, era and situation, it enables us to safely become aware of different ways of thinking.

When we’re reading or watching fiction, we know it is a made up story – even if it might be based on something real that happened.

It is when the lines between truth and fiction are blurred that trouble ensues.

Making up a story about your business brings the same problem.

Not knows what to believe. Trust is eroded.

Now the headline for this article is a tweak on 1960s advertising gury Bill Bernbach’s dictum ‘the most powerful element in advertising is the truth’.

And given the sophistication of advertising and the influence of the internet, it now means your advertisement is your story and your story is your advertisement.

If your story doesn’t ring true – and people are remarkably clever at sensing any lack of veracity – then you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

A well-told truthful story trumps advertising spin any day.

The truth resonates, a non-truth dies.

The story behind any photo is paramount
Your first story must be succinct and attractive. Story is what moves us.
Photo by Jorik Kleen on Unsplash

We’re a self-interested species, and we’re driven by story.

As much as we might care about others, it’s our own now and future which more concerns us.

The lens with which we view any advertisement or offer is naturally biased towards what we see is in it for us.

What might be non-interest today could well be “I’d better find out more”, tomorrow.

But given the plethora of offers which cross our paths every day, achieving just the tiniest amount of curiosity is a good start.

Does your offer solve a problem?

Do you get to the point as quickly as possible?

Does it sound attractive?

You’re after story sweetness – a combination of beauty and brevity, a call to attention which leads down the path to a call to action.

It’s not easy to achieve…but that’s what you’re aiming for.

(And if you’re having trouble unearthing your own Million Dollar Message, give Punchline a call. We bring clarity)

Make me feel something in your first story, and you're much better off. Then you connect with someone's emotions
Make me feel something in your first, most important story, and you’re much better off Then you connect with someone’s emotions.
Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash

As much as we like to think we’re rational, coolly evaluative creatures, at our heart, we’re ruled by our heart. It is what we feel that counts.

Sure, we’ll justify decisions we make, pointing out why something’s features and benefits are useful to us.

But that’s after the intuitive gut-response. This comes first.

This heart…felt, reaction is an aspect to include in all storytelling if possible.

If we can include it in our first, most important story – perhaps as a metaphor – so much the better.

Because we’re not automatoms, operating on logic.

We’re human beings, often within a business environment, looking for products and services which make our lives easier, better, more rich, more fulfilling. Again, it is what we feel that counts.

We’re emotional creatures – so don’t be afraid to appeal to that ‘feeling’ part of our psyche.

We don't care about your product, performance or profit. We care about ourselves and how your story makes our lives better
We don’t care about your product, performance or profit. We care about ourselves and how your story makes our lives better.
Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

It’s not about your product, it’s about the story of how it benefits its buyer.

It’s not about your performance, it’s about the story behind doing something better, and as a result, someone else is better off.

It’s not about your profits, it’s about the story of how helping your customers, by default, provided a financial return.

Though your business can’t continue to exist without making money – other people don’t care about that as such.

What we care about is what drives you, whether as an owner or employee in a company to turn up and do your job – for the betterment of other people and the planet.

What drives you needs to be nailed as succinctly as possible.

What drives you needs to be expressed as a what and a why.

What drives you needs to be a Million Dollar Message to which someone else easily and readily nods their head in agreement.

Having someone from outside your organisation can help you obtain a different perspective on what you offer
Perspective, especially from someone outside your organisation, is in the eye of the beholder. Use others to help you find a new perspective.
Photo by Keith Misner on Unsplash

We all get so wrapped up in our own business we can lose objectivity, lose perspective of what we actually do.

It’s the not being able to see the wood for the trees phenomenon.

Having someone else with which to bounce around your idea of ‘business self’ is an invaluable resource.

Preferably you need a person with naive intelligence – the quality of asking obvious (but counterfactually non-obvious) questions.

Such a person needs to be a reflective listener as well – clarifying if what you’re saying is actually what you’re meaning.

Another person’s perspective, carried out with compassion, is a wonderfully liberating aspect for a business.

Find such a person…and use them.

Such a person could of course be Punchline – give us a yell.