Made to Stick

Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath

Do you write a blog?*  Do you want more readers?  Do you want your message to be understood?  Do you want folks to tell others about your site?  Of course you do.  I think I know someone who can help.  Her name is Gabrielle.  Her friends call her Gabby.  Gabby's melting point, her flash point, the point where time stops, is in the study of how ideas spread.  What makes people remember other people?  What makes people want to tell others about those people?  The flint that caused her flame was The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.  Oddly, Gabby's fascination with idea-spreading was for years, a universe away from her day job as a professional recruiter and night time passion of her career advice blog.  That is until the time that she bought a case of Heath Bars and stepped in the largest glob of bubble gum ever.  Lets see what Gabby found out.

One evening as Gabby sat staring at her computer sipping a glass of Merlot and chewing on thirty pieces of Bazooka bubble gum while trying to forget about her recent break up with Glen, her mind drifted to her blog.  How can I get more readers, she wondered.  In one swoop of total randomness she entered "tipping point stickiness" into Google.  Then she scrolled to the thirtieth set of pages and saw Dan Heath's name.  Craving a Heath Bar at that very moment, she clicked on Dan's name.  A couple of clicks later and she was on the Made to Stick site.  A couple of days later Made to Stick arrived in the mail from Amazon.

In the introduction to Made to Stick, the Heath Bros give credit to Malcolm Gladwell for the inspiration behind their book.  That was was all Gabby needed to know.  She tore into the book.  Before even finishing the introduction, Gabby discovered a major flaw in her blog.  The lads call it the Curse of Knowledge.  She thought of it as speaking Latin to a Chinese audience.  She wrote for career guidance professionals while her audience consisted of those looking to change careers.

Gabby finished the book in two days.  She discovered that the Bros wrote the book around six principles to help people spread successful ideas.  Reading the book a second time, Gabby sipped at these simple principles while thinking of her own writing. 

The first was Simple.  The Bros said to find the core idea and to express it in the form of a compact idea.  Gabby thought, "what was the core idea behind her blog?"  And how could she convey this in a short, simplistic and powerful way?  The Bros spoke of proverbs, metaphors and analogies to help this process.

The second was Unexpected.  How does she get a reader's attention?  The Bros said to break a pattern.  They go on to tell a story about a journalism class and how its teacher rocks their world with one simple exercise.  This story was Gabby's most favorite part of the book.  She would never forget it. 

The third was Concrete.  This one hit home.  If you know your readers, you'll converse at their level.  The Bros said, "we forget that other people don't know what we know."  Gabby thought, I need to know who is reading my blog and then talk with them on their level.

The fourth was Credible.  Gabby wondered, is my stuff credible enough to draw readers?  The Bros talk about finding credibility through friends, relatives, authorities and anti-authorities.  They also said it comes by way of stories, vivid details and statistics.  Credibility was a difficult principle for Gabby to envision.  The best she could take away here was to tell stories and fill them with vivid details. 

The fifth was Emotional.  The Bros said to make people care about our messages.  One way was to form an association between something folks care about and something they don't.  Another was to appeal to people's self-interest and identities.  Gabby knew that in order to reach people who were looking for career advice, she would have to form associations between their existing dilemmas and then a potential improved future.

The sixth was Stories.  Gabby's knees went weak.  She loved to tell stories.  This would be the first change to make on her blog.  She could tap into the wisdom of those who had walked the pathways of career change and by telling those stories, offer hope and inspiration to others.

Gabby read the book a third time.  She was so excited!  She was going to mold and bake the Heath Bros' six principles right into her blog.  Maybe one day her stuff would be so good that people would remember her and talk about her blog.  Maybe one day then, she'd be as popular as Penelope Trunk.

*I have a personal distaste for the word blog.  Ok, I hate it.  But this story isn't about me.  It's about you and the opportunity that you might have after reading the Heath Bros' book, to improve your, errrr, blog :-)

dave smoked-n-signed this book.

Comments

[Tim Draayer]

Made to Stick is an excellent book. I consider it to be a must read for anyone who wants to make their point of view stick in the minds of their audience.

[dave]

Thanks for stopping in Tim! Good point.