– [Neil] Hey everyone, it’s Neil Patel. And today I’m going to teach
you about the WHIPS concept when it comes to content marketing. If you follow this
concept, even if you’re not the best writer, you’ll be
able to attract the right type of audience and then
convert them into a customer. With content marketing,
you don’t need to be the best writer, you just need
to understand your reader. If you think about the Neil Patel blog, read any of my blog posts, I bet you’ll see some
grammar and spelling errors. Yes, I have editors and
I try to avoid them, but still there’s errors
every once in a while.
It’s because I’m not the best writer, but I understand my reader really well. If you don’t understand your reader, just remind yourself of your musketeer. If you haven’t filled out
the musketeer worksheet, go to the previous lessons
and then fill it out. You can find it at neilpatel.com/training. This will allow you to truly
understand your customer so that way you can target them
and generate sales as well. When you’re writing, I don’t
want you to just continue to stare at a blank page and
take forever to create content. It shouldn’t. And if you follow the WHIPS concept, you won’t have to worry
about that one bit. WHIPS is all about page awareness and there’s five main sections
of the WHIPS framework from window shoppers, help me, inform me, persuade me, and show me. And I’m going to break them
down one step at a time. So window shopper,
they’re usually interested in purchasing something, but
they might not be from you.
So someone’s like, yeah, I’m
looking to buy this purse. I’m looking to buy this bag or
wallet or whatever it may be, but they don’t know
exactly if it’s going to be from you or another store. Then there’s a help me. They’re aware of their issue, but they don’t know how to overcome it. They’re always Googling,
searching for a solution, and if you’re using the
keyword Ideas Report, Ubersuggest, it’ll help you
find a lot of help me key words.
Then of course inform me,
they’re aware of the solution, but they don’t know where to get it. So when someone’s
Googling for the solution, you want to make sure they find your site. And again, you can get
these keywords the inform me type of ones from the keyword Ideas Report within Ubersuggest. Persuade me, these people know
about a product or service and the competitors, and
that’s a really important part. They not just know about
the product or service, but they know about the
competitors as well.
Here are typical comparison keywords, EX, MailChimp versus ConvertKit. They’re both email marketing solutions, but which one should I buy? And again, if you’re
looking for a comparison related keywords that are more
so related to persuade me, you can find them in the
comparison tab on Ubersuggest. And of course the show me, they knows about the specific product or service. They just need the final push. You just need to tell them, Hey, if you use this product or service, it’ll do this for you, and
here’s how amazing it is. And here’s all the testimonials. Now that you know who
targeting you want to make sure you don’t get stuck in the problem loop. See if you’re a perfectionist,
you’re going to be like, “Oh my God, this piece isn’t perfect. “I can’t push it out there,”
don’t worry about that.
I push out content all the
time that’s not perfect. You also don’t want to be
one that just continually has all these ideas on
what you want to blog on, but you never take action and
you don’t release anything or you don’t want to be that
changeling who create something and then constantly changes
because if you keep changing your content, keep changing your ideas before you publish or write anything, you’re never going to win and succeed.
Instead of continually be
stuck in that problem loop, I want you to take a page out
of Dave Brailsford’s book. Dave Brailsford is a
British cycling coach. His team has won the
Tour de France six times and he believes in marginal
gains, and I do too, and that’s the same that goes
with your content or your SEO. It’s not one shot, it’s not one thing that gets you to the finish
line and beat your competition. It’s a lot of little things that add up and when you do all these
little things right, that’s how you win. Just look at Toyota, they
built a $272 billion revenue a year business. They did it how? By continually getting
better year over year over the last 80 plus years.
That’s the key to success. It’s little small improvements over time. You’re in control of your own success. As long as you try to do little things and continually get better,
you can win big over time. It won’t happen overnight,
but it will happen over time. And to help jumpstart you, I want you to have my 2020 rulebook. You can download this at
neilpatel.com/training. It’s underneath the video in
SEO Unlocked and this rulebook breaks down 20 things that’ll help you become better content marketers. The first one is put people first. If you help people and
always put them first, you’re much more likely to succeed. Number two, you want to
create content that teaches if your content doesn’t
teach and educate people and really provide a benefit
where they’re done reading and they’re like, “Oh, I learned this,” you’re not going to do well.
Number three, create a conversation. By creating a conversation, by using the words you and
I within your blog post, it’s going to feel like they’re
right there in front of you having a conversation with you and they’re much more
likely to stick around. Four, define your own tone. Use your own voice, do
what’s natural for you. Don’t try to copy someone else’s voice. You also want to write to one person. Remember, yes, thousands
of people could be reading your content, but it’s
one person at a time, so make sure that you’re
writing to that one person. That way it’s much more personable. You can also use Google
voice instead of typing, so in Google docs you can
use the voice feature. A lot of times I’ll just talk
and it’ll write things down and then I’ll go back and then modify it.
Number seven, use active
voice over passive voice. Active voices like you stole
the cookie from the cookie jar. Passive voices like the cookie was stolen from the cookie jar. Active voice is much more appealing. I also want you to keep
your sentences short. Two to three sentences max per paragraph. Typically a paragraph will be
around five or six lines max, hence two to three sentences. I also want you to use simple words. It doesn’t matter if you
went to an Ivy League School or graduated from Harvard, your reader probably doesn’t
have an Ivy League education. I hate when people use complex
words or technical jargon. It’s really a big pet peeve for me. You also want to backup
your findings with research. If you’re using data
trying to prove a point, you need a back it all up with research. If you don’t, you’re not
going to be seen as an expert, and this can be done through
images, infographics, stats, studies, whatever it
may be that shows that you’re just not making up your
data and if you don’t know how to find research within
your space, Google a keyword and add the word data or stats at the end, so like SEO stats, SEO data.
That’s example. 11, read inspirational writers. I read people like Seth
Godin or Guy Kawasaki, love their writing style. Go find ones that really
resonate with you, read it because it’ll help
you become a better writer. You also want to add visual media. I use a ton of images as well
as videos and even sometimes audio file and it helps convey my message.
Image says a thousand words. 13, you want to guide your
user to their next step. Let them know what they
need to do step by step and make sure you interlink to
other related content pieces that can help them with their journey. And of course with your blog posts, I love wrapping things
up with a conclusion. So at the end of my blog post
I always put a conclusion because what I learned over
time through heatmaps studies using Crazy Egg, a lot of people
will go to your blog post, scroll all the way down,
read the conclusion, if they like it, they’ll scroll back up and then read the rest.
15, start with the personal story. Storytelling is a
1,000-plus-year-old marketing tactic. It works really well. I love leading with personal stories and if you look at all the whole
film industry in Hollywood, they love using stories. Is because it’s addicting and
people really get hooked in. 16, edits can wait, your piece
doesn’t have to be perfect. Heck, sometimes I publish
things and then we go back and edit them later because
we found that there was a lot of issues or usually
not actually a lot, but usually small issues and we cleaned them up and that’s okay.
17, end with the question and
when they leave a comment, I make sure I respond to
each and every single one. 18, promise yourself to start. If you don’t have a routine and you’re not writing
content consistently, you’re not going to crank
out enough to get traffic and for SEO to work out for you. 19, create a solid outline. It doesn’t take more than 45
minutes to create a blog post in general once you get really good at it, but if you’re just starting out, of course it usually will take you longer. But my formula is a hook,
then the opening, then a body, and then a close, close is the conclusion. And 20, let the content rest for a day. I let my content sit for
a day before I publish it, and the reason being is
when it sits for a day, what ends up happening
is I’ll think of ways to make it better and then I’ll go in and edit it before I publish.
Now last but not least,
I want you to head over to neilpatel.com/training,
go to the SEO Unlocked, go to this video lesson if
you’re not already there. And below this video you’ll find the WHIPS awareness cheatsheet,
download the rulebook, and of course download the
list post template below and create your first draft post. I look forward to helping
you grow your traffic through content marketing.
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