I can’t get this idea out of my head:

If something catastrophic happens to Earth, we lose billions of years of evolution and thousands of years of advanced human civilization. Colonizing Mars isn’t just something we can do–it is also something we should do.

Seven years ago, I couldn’t have imagined myself saying those words. I’m not a space geek. I’m not obsessed with science.

But a handful of minutes listening to Elon Musk’s story and vision at the Inc. 500 conference in 2008 changed all of that.

Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are both known for their seemingly mystical power to distort reality. What gives them this ability isn’t a quirk of a charismatic leader; it’s a learnable skill called storytelling.

The better at storytelling someone is, the more that readers and listeners are transported to a whole new world. According to studies conducted on this transportation phenomenon, great stories alter beliefs, result in the loss of access to real-world facts, evoke emotions, and significantly reduce ability to detect inaccuracies. To understand this phenomenon, you don’t need to look any further than your own personal experience desperately rooting for an immortal, time-traveling mutant in X-Men or another equally impossible character and plot from your favorite movie.

To understand how to develop this storytelling superpower and use it for good, I interviewed 11 top online storytellers who collectively generate hundreds of millions of pageviews every month and asked them to share the secrets of how they craft stories.

1. Balance The Universal With The Specific

When I first started using social media in 2009, I was in the midst of a divorce, and my business had been pulled into the divorce. I was basically $100,000 in debt and on the verge of personal bankruptcy.

Sharing my life stories on social media was like therapy, only cheaper. The unreconciled part of your story is your greatest source of untapped power. What I learned is that one of the keys to social media is balancing the universality of your experience with the specifics that are your own. I do this by:

Tapping into universal themes. I ask myself, “How do I increase the likelihood that people are going to identify with my story?” The idea that your journey is unique is actually a false construct of our own ego’s need to differentiate. Research shows that if we empathize with the characters in a story, we are more likely to accept a story’s main message (e.g., being an organ donor or dealing with cancer better).

Being specific. While we share similar themes as we journey through life, it’s the details that set us apart and make us unique. It’s essential to share those specifics. When you get into the specifics, what you’re actually doing is transporting people into that world. It’s like, “Oh, I’m traveling through time and space into that moment with you, because you’ve given me enough specifics to color the experience.” These are what any good movie or book does. Two decades of academic research have affirmed the power that a detailed narrative has on readers.

2. Be Unapologetically Authentic

I am all about unapologetic authenticity. I don’t mean it like, “This is what I am saying because I don’t give a fuck.” I think that’s kind of self-serving. I mean it like, “This is what I truly feel, and I’d like to share it in a way you can relate to.”

The difference is going from “I learned not to hire my friends because when I did my business failed” to “Yeah, I hired my friends, and it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever done, and here’s why. They stole from me, and they made me feel bad about myself.”

The second type of story is more relatable because many people have experienced it for themselves. No one has the story “This bad thing happened to me, but I am great now!” That’s the story people have when they either haven’t dealt with it, or they’re lying about it, and they want to spit-polish their personal brand. Even the most successful people in the world constantly face huge challenges behind-the-scenes.

Being unapologetically authentic means asking yourself, “What’s something that people wouldn’t necessarily expect to learn from someone like me?” and sharing the following parts of your story:

• the mistake I made and its repercussions;
• my raw and mixed feelings I had about it;
• what I learned or would do differently if I had another chance; and
• the positives that came from the lesson.

If you want to listen to examples of unabashedly genuine storytelling, listen to the THE MOTH Podcast.

3. Test Your Story Until It’s A Wow Every Time

The first iteration of the pitch you use to sell your idea, product, or company is usually garbage. Borrowing the lean startup methodology from the tech world, it’s key to get real world feedback on that story as fast as possible and then keep making improvements. If you do this, it will rapidly get better and better. If you don’t, you will waste valuable time promoting an ineffective story and lose windows of opportunity.

Eventually, after dozens of iterations, you’ll get a wow every time. I’ve used this approach every time I’ve raised capital, and we’ve raised $9.5 million so far. The difference between going with my first story and my wow story has been remarkable.

I recommend first testing your pitch on your friends and family who are closest to your target audience–tell them the story, watch their reactions, and ask for feedback. When I’ve finished a story, I ask “What parts resonated with you the most? What didn’t resonate as much?” Asked this way, it’s safe for them to give you the critical feedback they otherwise might be afraid to share. You’ll see patterns emerge as people mention the same parts over and over. This feedback tells you which parts to expand on, cut, or further develop.

Professional comedians understand that going with your first story is the equivalent of doing a prime-time special after only one or two warm-up shows. In reality, star comedians like Amy Schumer, Kevin Hart, and Jerry Seinfeld do hundreds of small, underground shows to test their material. Once their material is ready, they perform to sold out venues globally. If the top storytellers in the world follow this process, that’s a clue that you should too.

4. Do A Double Punch With Visual Stories

As much as we like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, we are not. If we were, no one would throw away their perfectly working iPhone 5s to go pick up the latest Apple toy. We largely make decisions based on emotions, and then rationalize them later with logical arguments.

So how can you incorporate emotion into your facts and data? Use a visual story.

Imagine I am asking you to make a donation to a charity that builds water wells in the developing world. I may tell you that 750 million people don’t have access to clean water today. That number is just another faceless statistic that you will probably forget tomorrow.

However, if I show you a picture of a little boy drinking out of a puddle of what looks like sewage water and add the caption, “1 in 7 people don’t have access to clean water,” suddenly, it has a lot more emotional weight. It has a face.

Now I add a story. “This is James, he is 6 years old and he lives with his mother and seven siblings. His mother walks 20 miles every day to fetch drinking water from the nearest well. Sometimes the well is dry and James gets thirsty so he drinks from nearby puddles without realizing how dangerous it could be for him. There are 750 million people like James.”

Now this statistic is a lot more powerful because I have armed it with the persuasiveness of a visual story. It makes people feel the need to take action.

5. Add Uncertainty To Your Plot

Everywhere around the world, there are three components to a story; plot, character, and lesson learned. The big question is, “What makes a plot a plot?”

Consider two stories about the same thing:

Story 1

I got up this morning, got my car, and then came to school.

Story 2

I got up this morning and went outside. My car was gone. Instead of my car, there was one wheel on the ground. “What happened here?” I wondered.

Which one is better? If you asked 10 people, they all would give the same answer–number 2.

What got you interested? The unexpected! A plot is not a plot until something unexpected happens. That’s when our brain goes out of autopilot and pays attention.

As human beings, we operate with an expectation of what will happen next. For example, let’s imagine that I’m driving along on autopilot and a truck pulls out. If I stay on autopilot, I am a goner. So the surveillance system in our brains detects the unexpected. My brain starts shouting, “Truck! truck! truck!” The emotion breaks through habit. Without that sort of a break, the story is uninteresting.

The surveillance system detects the anomaly and our experience of that is anxiety. The big question then is how readers respond to the anxiety. Do they “react” with fear for which they are hardwired (fight, flight, freeze), or can they access emotional resources (hope, solidarity, self-efficacy)? Our cultures developed stories to help us access the emotional resources of the protagonist and take purposeful action.

6. Disrupt Your Industry’s Fairy Tale Stories

At Greatist, where we have 10 million visitors per month, our approach to storytelling is to turn fairy tales into the authentic stories our very specific audience is aching for.

The most common type of story you’ll find in the media is the fairy tale story:

I had a challenge.

I overcame it.

Things are perfect.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t fit the messiness of most people’s reality. Authentic stories resonate more because they hit on a specific challenge your audience is facing, which hasn’t yet been told at the level of depth they desire.

For example, instead of just telling the classic before and after fairy tale (e.g., overweight person gets confidence boost by losing weight), we share the story of “Before,” “After,” and then “Ever After” with an emphasis on the latter. We talk about how most people going on diets actually feel more insecure. We talk about how they realize that what they want is confidence regardless of their weight. These body-positive stories make up one of the most popular categories on Greatist.

The more you understand your audience’s specific challenges, the more deeply your authentic story will resonate. This is exactly how we wrote an article, “31 Healthy and Portable High-Protein Snacks,” that was shared 999,000 times. This article isn’t a storytelling article per se, but it does solve the story that busy mothers live daily: the struggle of finding healthy on-the-go recipes that can keep their kids engaged.

7. Come From A Place Of Stillness

People often look externally to create content; getting distracted and losing focus in the process. They think, “OK, what is this person doing?” or “How do these people think about what I should do?” Really the process should be, “What do I feel at the deepest level that I want to express to the world?”

Vulnerable storytelling cuts through the noise online and connects with people at a deeply human level. Through introspection, we gain deeper self-insights, subsequently helping us to communicate more authentically.

Here’s a process you can use to create content that is authentic to who you are:

• Figure out your process to help yourself get to a place of stillness: whether it’s journaling, whether it’s meditation, whether it’s exercise, whether it’s cooking, or something else altogether. Research shows that journalling is especially powerful as a tool to understand ourselves, improving our physical and mental health in the process.

• Create raw and vulnerable content that is not aimed to validate or prove yourself. When you do that, you’ve reached a place of comfort within yourself.

• Be clear on your “why.” When using social media, be sure to ask yourself, “Why am I using this and how is it adding value to whatever it is I’m trying to create?” I’m obsessed with Instagram. I love Facebook. But I am very clear about what my intentions on these platforms: to inspire.

8. Use Open Loops To Create Anticipation

Ever watched 24? Lost? Game of Thrones?

Ever wondered how they keep the attention of millions week-after-week?

Every show subtly starts multiple open loops, closes most of them by the end of the episode, and leaves at least one big open loop that the next episode resolves. An open loop is basically plot or subplot that has been started but not finished.

Nothing grabs our attention faster than the need to know what happens next. Our mind is wired to want to close these open loops.

We can all easily use open loops to tell stories even though we aren’t Hollywood storytellers with big budgets. The main way I communicate with people online is through newsletter emails, which are read three to four times more than the average email newsletter. This is because I create open loops that intrigue people. One simple open loop I created with just a few sentences in one of my emails went:

In 2007 I ran an evil experiment. The result of the experiment bumped my opt-in rate from 20 percent to 50 percent. I may show you the whole experiment at some point if you are interested, but I digress. The point is…

Jesus! I got so many emails asking, “Tell me, what is this thing?”

When most people create articles, social media posts, and email newsletters, they tend to make the mistake of not connecting each post to their larger narrative. Therefore, I recommend creating the overall plot of your content upfront just like a TV show plans all of its episode. Here’s the exact process I use:

• Write multiple emails at once. I’m a very visual person, so I put multiple windows across my one screen and start writing across them.

• Move story elements around. Once I have written an email out, I start moving around story elements, and playing with them.

• Open loops. I then decide how to open and close each story element.

9. Use Quotes To Build Characters

When most nonfiction writers think about storytelling, they focus on plot and ignore the importance of developing a character. Yet readers prefer stories where they can relate to the main character. Developing those characters is how they become relatable.

I’ve now written two books of interviews with dozens of entrepreneurs and professionals to capture their best practices about professional reinvention (Reinventing You) and how they became recognized experts in their field (Stand Out).

The biggest thing I learned about developing characters is to let their voice shine through. The way someone speaks is incredibly distinctive, and it can tell you a lot about who they are. While you need to paraphrase at times, I love to let interesting, original quotes shine through. Bestselling author Daniel Pink told me about his practice of responding to every fan email personally, admitting, “On a tactical level, it’s insane.”

Here is the specific process I use:

• Record the full interview. I record interviews (with my smartphone if we’re meeting in person, or on Skype) so I don’t have to rely on abridged notes I’m jotting down.

• Notice when passion spikes. If there’s an area where they seem particularly passionate, I’ll make note of it. When someone is speaking in a unique voice, you can tell it’s them and not a corporate spokesperson.

• Let great quotes go long. Typically you don’t want to bore readers with long block quotes from someone, but if their personality shows through, it’s worth it–they get a payoff from getting to know the speaker better.

10. Find And Reverse-Engineer The Emotions Behind Great Stories

My boutique video production company, Hayden 5, has created viral videos with tens of millions of views, award-winning videos, and films. What I’ve learned is that no matter how simple or complicated a story is, you can reverse-engineer the emotions.

When we start working on a project, we always tell our clients to tell us about a story in a video that made them emotionally react in a certain way. Then we take a look at why it stood out. It usually comes back to two questions:

1. What’s the basic emotion?

2. What made you feel it?

Why are emotions so important? When stories effectively trigger emotions, people:

• Remember things better. A study that analyzed the responses of 414 young adult participants found that emotional stories were 29 percent more remembered and recalled by the respondents than neutral stories.

• Are more empathetic and understanding. A joint analysis of speakers and listeners’ brain scans demonstrated that the listener of a story tends to be in sync with the speaker in terms of brain activity, indicating a deep sense of empathy in conversations.

A great video that triggers very raw and real emotions is “Going to Visit Mum.” For me, it was that relatable feeling of being missed. Here’s how I would describe it:

It’s that scenario when you were a kid, and homesick on some trip away from “mum,” or a loved one. There’s something about that phone call, and something even more special about finally reuniting. In this case, the mother and son have been away from each other for so long, and when they reunite, you know it’s going to be emotional. In my opinion, the filmmakers here took a basic emotion that many people can immediately relate to, and amplified it. On top of that, it was real.

Other great videos that are great to practice your emotional deconstruction skils with are below:

• Ultimate Dog Tease–the Maple Kind (170 million views)
• Giving Is The Best Communication (1 million views)
• Trojan Condoms Unrolled (1.3 million views)
• DollarShaveClub.com–Our Blades Are F***ing Great(20 million views)

11. Bring Them Through An Emotional Rollercoaster

I like to take people through an emotional rollercoaster. From ups and downs, to happy moments and even sad ones–you want your story to be like a rollercoaster in which people won’t know what to expect next.

By taking people through different emotions they are more likely to bond with you, just as in a relationship. For example, you’ve bonded with your significant other or family members because you’ve been through a lot of emotions with them. For example, in an analysis of 108 Super Bowl ads, the dramatic plot structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, conclusion) was the most well-received form of plot development.

Through emotional rollercoaster storytelling you can do the same thing. It not only will help capture and grab your reader’s attention, but it will help you convert more readers into customers.

This article originally appeared on Inc.

Richard Branson, arguably one of the most likable entrepreneurs in the world, views his likability as one of his competitive advantages. Research backs this up. Likable people are more effective leaders, build deeper relationships, and have better reputations.

The good news is that likability is a learnable skill.

The challenge and opportunity is that what it takes to be likable goes through shifts, and we’re at a major turning point.

In just the last 10 years, we’ve gone from hundreds of thousands of people creating books, videos, and articles to billions. That’s an exponentially bigger and quicker shift than the discovery of the printing press. Today, our content is our first impression. It reminds people that we exist, and it deepens relationships.

To gain insight into how to create content that deepens relationships and increases likability, I interviewed some of the country’s most successful content creators who have built deep relationships with millions of people through photos, articles, videos, and podcasts.

1. Start a Daily Journal. Then Publish the Best Stuff

I’ve found the most effective way to build true relationships through content is always authenticity. Something heartfelt and genuine tends to stand out pretty profoundly from all the noise online. Readers can even overlook inconsistencies, extra words, and more if the writer is being true to himself or herself.

A couple years back, I wrote an especially personal account of getting six-pack abs in six weeks (long story short: It wasn’t worth it). I just told the truth, no matter how painful and uncomfortable. In return, people connected with my message in a powerful and inspiring way. Over 20,000 people shared the story on social media, but what was most meaningful were the people who shared their own stories, their changing perspectives, and their truth–and it in no small way validated what I was building with Greatist, which now has 10 million visitors per month.

Being authentic can be surprisingly challenging, especially since there are so many expectations in terms of how people write, what stories they tell, and how they tell them. And that’s exactly why saying it like it actually is can be so sticky and not only drive clicks but also build real relationships.

I find the most successful way to write from a place of authenticity is actually just to…

• Write without worrying about misspellings and grammar.
• Write without worrying about making sense.
• Write without worrying about crafting a real beginning, middle, and end.
• Write on your cell phone on the subway or the bus.
• Write in your head, even, while you’re walking.

The more you write, in my experience, the easier it is to piece the best parts together later in a way that tells a compelling story. And the more likely it is that at some point you’ll forget about everything else and write just for you.

When you make your thoughts public, don’t be afraid to share the things you’re a little uncomfortable with having out there. At the same time, delete the things you’re a lot uncomfortable with the public seeing. Maybe save it for a later, maybe save it for never. The most powerful pieces shouldn’t betray you; they should be true to who you really are.

2. Create 10x Better Content

I create in-depth guides that aim to be 10x better than any other related content on the internet. In my experience, the rewards of creating 10x content are exponential. For example, I created a 40,000-word guide on content marketing. It took me months of time and thousands of dollars to create, but it ultimately led to 361,494 visitors and 8,421 email opt-ins. As a result of going beyond incremental improvements, the guides rank in the top 10 for the words they’re optimized for on Google and spread virally because people want to share them.

Here’s the replicable process I use to create guides:

• I identify the keywords I want to own on Google where I can create 10x better content than the other top search results. Brian Dean of Backlinko has created a great resource on how to do this.

• I make my content 10x better. I follow the checklist below:

	Step-by-step
	Up-to-date
	Better written
	Lengthy (the longer the better–usually)
	Conversational (use the words “you” and “I”)
	Better designed (include images, screenshots, etc.)
	Compatible (mobile, tablet, and the Web)

• I spend as much time marketing my guide as I do creating it. Beyond sending the guide to your email list and social media followers, I recommend creating a list of influential tweeters and bloggers, reaching out to them, and making it easy for them to link to.

3. Understand the Trigger Words That Cause People to Value Your Content

Relationships are built by adding value over time. That’s how we built our company to 75 employees. However, value is a misunderstood word. Most people don’t realize that value is often created by valuing.

For example, you can give someone the best advice in the world, but if they don’t value it, they’re not going to take action. Therefore, the advice isn’t going to add value to their life.

In a fascinating study, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found that people who couldn’t experience emotions because of brain damage lost their ability to make simple decisions because of all the pros and cons. So, emotions help us value things.

Certain words are particularly powerful for triggering emotions, and many of those words vary by industry. To uncover trigger words, I recommend the following process:

• Identify Possible Words to Highlight. Write down all of the words and phrases your customers use when they’re talking about the problem they want your product to solve.

• Rate Them. Try to identify which ones have the highest emotional value. For each word, give your best guess on how much emotion would be triggered inside someone in your target market on a 100-point scale (1 being zero emotion and 100 being a nuclear explosion of emotion).

Let’s say we wrote down the words “relationship,” “sex,” and “cheat.” “Relationship” is not a very interesting word. It’s kind of boring. So, I might say that the word “relationship,” even to someone who wants one, might be 10 or 15. Now, what about the word “sex”? Sex is a very emotionally charged word. Just saying the word gets everyone to stop and pay attention. That might be an 80.

As my friend, Joe Polish, likes to say, “The difference between a $1 bill and a $100 bill is just the message that’s printed on it. They each cost the same amount to print, but you get very different results at the grocery store.” To spark some ideas on $100 words you can use, I recommend reading “50 Trigger Words and Phrases for Powerful Multimedia Content.”

4. Understand Your Ideal Customer Deeply. Then Segment

Our primary goal is to understand our target market very, very deeply, and we live in an amazing time where we can do that with free tools. For example, I spend five or six hours per day analyzing and trying to understand the data we collect from Google Analytics about the tens of millions of visitors our network of sites gets per month. In short, Google Analytics should be your best friend.

Once we understand our target market deeply, we divide it into three to five different segments based on demographics (i.e., age, gender, etc.). Every segment requires additional time to target, so three to five segments is a good balance of not too many and not too few.

The more we refine and understand each segment, the more we can:

1. Target ads so only our target market sees them.
2. Make the ad creative and more appealing.
3. Customize the messaging to speak to the target market’s problems and goals.
4. Use language and examples they can relate to.
5. Analyze their unique behavior using Google Analytics. (We learn by observing the most popular content they navigate to.)

With this level of customization, only the right readers come to our site, and those readers trust us and get huge value because our content solves their problems.

I suggest checking out “The Small Business Guide to Google Analytics,” if you’re a newbie.

5. Explicitly Ask Readers to Comment

I’ve written 150 posts on LinkedIn, and they’ve generated 50,000 comments and ultimately over $1 million in new business. One of the ways that I’ve been able to generate so much conversation is by encouraging readers to comment by:

1. Asking them multiple, specific questions.
2. Bolding “you” and “your” to put the ball in their court.
3. Being active in the comments section.

Comments are powerful because they deepen your relationship with the commenters and everyone else reading. Furthermore, many platforms decide to feature content based on how many comments it has.

As an example, here is my call-to-action at the end of “5 Keys to Great Storytelling: Lessons from Barbara Corcoran“:

Now it’s your turn. Which of these five keys to great storytelling do you think is most important? How essential overall is storytelling to you as a business person? What questions do you have for Barbara Corcoran? Let me know your story in the Comments section below, and please do share this post with your network.

6. Use the Ask Approach

Just as in-person conversation is the best way to build relationships offline, email is the best way to build relationships online. Email beats social media because it has higher open rates (22.87 percent versus 6.15 percent). And people read most emails, whereas they view only a fraction of their social media.

With most email newsletters, the open rate for individual subscribers goes down over time. However, I’ve found a simple approach that actually flips that trend, so open rates go up. I call it the “Ask Approach,” and I’ve helped my clients earn over $37 million from applying the approach because they’ve had deeper relationships with and understanding of their readers. Here’s how it works:

• Ask a question. Every email you send out should have some sort of next action, which can be a question. This sets the expectation of a back-and-forth relationship rather than a one-way, passive broadcast.

• Ask people to hit reply. Instead of saying, “Click on this link and fill out this survey,” say something like, “I’ve got some emails planned out over the next couple of days, but before I do that, I want to make sure that what I cover is useful to you. Would you just do me a favor? Hit reply to this email and tell me, what’s the biggest challenge you’re having when it comes to XYZ?” It’s more personal, and it’s easier.

• Respond to that reply. When you have a small email list, I recommend that you read every response and reply to every person with a personal message that shows you’ve read their email. For example, you could say, “Thanks so much for taking the time to do this. What you said about XYZ is something that comes up over and over again.”

As your email list grows, you can bring on team members to help personally respond to each email and maintain this personal touch.

The Ask Approach works on two levels:

• It builds a much deeper relationship. It is a tremendous opportunity to stand out and get your market to bond with you because you took the time even though you’re busy. When you do this, it’s like a part of people’s brains light up. Then, whenever you publish something (on any platform), they’re more likely to respond.

• It helps you understand your market at a deeper level. By understanding your market’s challenges, you’ll be in a much better position to solve those challenges with future content.

7. Ask Questions Others Don’t Have the Balls to Ask

As your fan base grows, it can be challenging to serve both newbies who are coming to your content for the first time and diehard listeners who are experts. My podcast, The Art of Charm, has 1 million listeners per month, and I pride myself on being able to serve both audiences. Here’s how I do it:

I listen with a beginner’s mind.
I think about it as if I’m the audience member, and I ask myself, “What do I really want to know?” This makes sure the content is fun to listen to and easy for beginners to understand.

I look for holes in my guest’s expertise.
I ask a lot of questions that nobody else either has the balls or the presence of mind to ask, but that listeners really want to know. As a result, advanced listeners get content that they haven’t heard anywhere else.

Here’s the counterintuitive concept: Many listeners, especially advanced ones, aren’t just listening so they can learn for themselves. They’re learning so that they can share their knowledge with others and build their reputation as an expert.

If someone has holes in their expertise, they are less credible as a thought leader. I help them fill in those holes, and therefore, I help them share their expertise better.

What I do is very similar to software testers in the technology world. I help the software in people’s minds run better by finding the bugs.

8. Take the Content Is King Approach

There is a conflict that all content creators need to resolve upfront:

How much do you promote your product in your content?
versus
How much do you just create really good content?

I strongly believe that content is king. The “content is king” approach leads to more appealing content, which leads to more viewers and deeper relationships among those viewers.

If 1,000 people see your video with a model drinking Coke versus 1 million people seeing a great video with a small, subtle plug for Coke at the end, you’ll have more reach and deeper relationships with the latter. I don’t think that individuals and companies should be afraid to make their brand so SUBTLE that it’s barely noticeable.

One video we created that epitomizes the power of this approach is “First Moon Party” for the new brand, HelloFlo. It went viral and was seen by 30 million people. This one video alone put the company on the map.

9. Use Metaphors in Your Content

In a great TED talk about online reputation, Juan Enriquez shares how hard it is to erase your online reputation by using a simple metaphor, “Your online life is as permanent as a tattoo.”

The metaphor, along with the image he shares (see above), cause viewers to quickly understand what he’s saying.

That’s the power of visual metaphors. They simplify complex concepts into concrete ideas that readers quickly understand intellectually and emotionally.

Decades of research by renowned cognitive neuroscientist George Lakoff shows that, contrary to popular belief, the brain is wired to understand complex concepts with metaphors, not abstract reasoning. Consider the metaphor of, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” This simple metaphor has survived for centuries and in different cultures. If you use the right metaphor, your ideas can stick too.

I look for metaphors that:

• Explain themselves. You shouldn’t have to explain a metaphor. It’s like a joke. When you have to explain a joke, it’s not funny anymore.

• Evoke emotion. I look for metaphors that make me feel something. I particularly like ones that are witty and make me laugh.

• Are familiar. I like using familiar metaphors that people can immediately relate to in their day-to-day life.

My process for incorporating metaphors into content involves:

• Noticing great metaphors that I resonate with while reading.

• Keeping those metaphors in a PowerPoint idea bank.

• Looking for photos that really embody the metaphor. For example, take the metaphor of “a wave of emotion washed over me.” I would literally look for a photo of a wave to put in my idea bank.

• Referring back to the idea bank for new ideas when I’m creating content.

10. Add Photos That Evoke Emotions of Awe, Surprise, or Disbelief

I use photos and GIFs to spark emotion, which causes a connection with readers and increases the odds that they’ll share the article with people in their network.

As a very basic example, compare how the text and image below make you feel differently:

Cute Kitten

That’s the power of images.

Here is specific advice you can use:

• Add multiple images. It’s not enough to add one stock image to an article. For example, on our site, Dose, which has tens of millions of visitors per month, we use an image for every list item.

• Search on Google Images or Giphy by emotion. For example, let’s say I want to search for a photo that evokes surprise. I’d simply search for “surprise.”

• Select photos based on what’s worked before. I prioritize images and GIFs that have been proven to be successful already. As a rule of thumb, if it’s a GIF I’ve already seen before, I assume it’s more likely to be emotionally resonant than one I haven’t seen before.

Borrowing from Dave Kerpen’s tip above…now it’s your turn! Which of the tips above resonated the most with you? Why? Let me know your story in the Comments section below. I read every comment, because I love connecting with new people and hearing what works for them.

This article originally appeared on Inc.

Warren Buffett, Arianna Huffington, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson have built great companies. But the reason you know their names is because they also created great content, which developed their personal brands.

Does this make them attention-seeking CEOs courting personal celebrity?

You may think so if you’ve read the classic academic study turned bestselling book, Good To Great. Jim Collins and his research team uncovered a surprising feature of wildly successful CEOs: extreme humility. Almost all of the CEOs he found who built great companies are unknown to the public.

That being said, in today’s age of social media, things are different. There’s a case to be made that all great CEOs should start the habit of consistently creating content that shares their expertise and story.

But what exactly should we write about?

Our response to this will impact everything else.

I interviewed top content creators with millions of fans to help you find the solution that works best for you…

1. Turn Incoming Questions Into Content

As a result of contributing to publications like Entrepreneur, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review, I frequently get emails from people asking questions. I used to just respond with an answer. Now I have a better system…

Step 1: Ask them to ask the question on Quora

I learned this strategy interviewing technology thought leader Robert Scoble for my book Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It. When someone emails him an inquiry, he promises to respond if they post their question on Quora. A response on Quora can help five people, whereas a response through email can help only one.

Step 2: Turn the question into an article

Another approach is to turn interesting questions into blog posts (like these posts on how to become a successful podcaster or how to start writing for high-profile blogs). Each has thousands of views, expanding the number of people my advice can help.

Step 3: Keep a questions master document

I jot down interesting questions on my smartphone when I’m on the go. I collect my notes on a master list that is now more than 50 pages and has plenty of material to keep me inspired for years.

2. Have A Solid Decision Making Process Because Quick Decisions Are Often Unsafe Decisions

Blake Goodwine, CEO of Lionize Media Group

The quality of our lives, businesses, and content is determined by the quality of our decisions. Have a better decision making process, and you’ll be able to pick topics better.

We’ve built an audience of tens of millions of visitors monthly as a result of our unique process. We try many topics (going in with the belief that we know nothing) and then deconstruct what works and what doesn’t.

For example, for an area of our site, we take the 20 best articles and the 20 worst ones and print off all the analytics. Then, our team sits in our conference room and goes through tons of pages of analytics until they find common factors among good and bad.

Often, the common factor in the good is the polar opposite of the common factor of the bad! That’s the variable that we key off on and focus future articles around.

For analyzing what works and what doesn’t on your site, I recommend Google Analytics. For analyzing content online, I recommend Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo helps you see the most shared content for any keyword and allows you to export it into an excel document. Once it’s in Excel, you can import it into Silk and see a visualization that will give you even deeper insight.

Read the full interview I did with Blake…

3. Your Role As A Writer Is To Say What We Are Unable To Say

Over the years, I’ve helped authors like Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, and Robert Greene create and market their books. Whenever I’m working with a client (or on my own content or books), I ask one simple question, “What is the thing that only you can say?”

If something could be covered just as well by someone else, you should leave that to them. Your energy is best focused on the thing that only you can say and you feel needs to be talked about because it cannot be found anywhere else.

When you follow these steps, you basically invent a new category, which is one of the laws of a book I highly recommend, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Inventing a new category is so important because it’s how you differentiate yourself. It is inherently not as exciting if you’re a slightly better version of an existing thing.

4. Innovate On What Has Already Been Popular

We live in a world where the amount of content online is doubling every year while people’s attention spans are remaining the same. As a result, a lot of great content isn’t being read.

What I’ve learned by co-founding Spartz Media, a network of sites (like Dose.com and OMG Facts) that collectively reach 45 million visitors per month, is that you can create real value for your target audience simply by exposing them to an idea that is circulating elsewhere online, which they haven’t seen yet.

You have a better chance of creating virality by taking an idea that is already spreading virally elsewhere and repurposing it for your niche audience, than trying to come up with an idea from scratch.

To pick a viral topic first understand what’s spreading. Look at the ‘most popular’, ‘most shared’, and ‘most read’ lists on other sites that have content relevant to your target audience. This is a gold mine of data informing about what your audience is most interested in.

From there, you can add value with your unique spin, taking the content up a level using your interests and insights on it.

As Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Read the full interview I did with Emerson…

5. Have A 24/7 Research Mindset

It may sound counterintuitive, but the most time intensive part of my article creation process is the research, not the writing. I’m constantly researching, so I always have ideas in my head that are incubating subconsciously and staying top of mind. As a result, the actual topics of my articles often arrive through creative insight. I call this my 24/7 research mindset, and it has helped me to write eight blog posts a week while running my two software companies.

Here is my process:

Write down a content idea and all of my initial thoughts on it. I don’t worry if the ideas aren’t fully developed. The key is to write them down.

Research. When I consume content, in the back of my head, I’m always evaluating it as a potential source for an article.

Put the research in a database. When I find something interesting and relevant, I paste the URL into an Evernote database that includes:

• A topic’s possible main points
• Links to sites that give extra information on the topic
• Examples of the topic

6. Skate To Where The Puck Is Going

Many people try to game platforms like Google to get search traffic. The problem with this approach is that just as it starts working, Google changes its algorithm in order to feature the best content. If gaming is your strategy, you’ll always be playing catch-up.

At Greatist, we skate to where the puck is going. And that is always towards quality. Instead of us trying to keep up, these platforms have actually caught up to us. As a result, we get millions of visitors from search traffic every month.

Here’s how we stay ahead:

Live and breathe our market. I believe you should only write about topics that you’re actually following personally. There’s just no replacement for knowing a space really well.

Notice patterns and trends. We go to where our narrowly-defined target market is and listen by observing what gets shared and reading comments.

Curate the best content. We link to the other content, add new perspectives, add more research, make it more usable, and fill in holes.

A great example is our spaghetti squash recipes article, which has been shared 120,000 times and is #2 on Google’s search results for ‘spaghetti squash recipes.’ We follow Pinterest closely because that’s where our target market is.

We noticed a pattern: spaghetti squash recipes were getting attention. So, we pulled together the nine best, healthiest spaghetti squash recipes and created a valuable article!

Read the full interview I did with Derek…

7. Don’t Ask Yourself What The World Needs; Ask Yourself What Makes You Come Alive

Over the last eight years, The Art of Charm podcast has grown to be a regular top 50 podcast that attracts 1.4 million listeners per month.

I originally created the podcast for guys that were like me and interested in the same things (i.e., how to gain the confidence to approach women). However, as I got older, this personally became less interesting to me as I had beaten the topic to death and entered a different stage of life. So, I had a difficult choice to make:

1. Do I create content in new areas that reflect my evolving interests?

2. Do I do stay focused on what will most directly grow our business?

Here’s how I solved this challenge:

• I always focus on what I’m most interested in. Then, I work harder and my passion is contagious to listeners. The podcast has expanded from exclusively offering dating advice to also offering advice on general relationship building, finance, career, life-hacking and fitness.

• I mentor other team members who are more interested in topics directly related to our core Art of Charm business. This helps us stay innovative at our core while allowing individuals on my team build their own personal brands.

Read the full interview I did with Jordan…

8. Get Your Inspiration From Unrelated Fields

While most content creators innovate based on what they see working in their industry, I personally try to avoid looking at what other designers are publishing so I don’t “contaminate” my ideas and end up unconsciously creating similar work.

Instead, I get my inspiration from other fields. For example, even though I’m a designer, I am subscribed to newsletters pertaining to legal advice, self-improvement, and even articles to CFOs. No one else in my field is reading them, so I get ideas that are more creative and unique as a result.

When I explore other industries unrelated to mine, I keep an eye out for things that are unique and original and take mental notes. For example, If I get an email with an intriguing headline and open it, I know something about it caught my attention and I try to analyze what. I recently opened a Groupon email with the headline “Best of Groupon Deals… The Deals That Make Us Proud (Unlike our nephew, Steve)“. So I examined exactly what I liked about it. Was it something that they said?

Once I figure it out what is attracting me, I’m able to use the same approach to keep other people’s attention. In this case, I could modify the headline and use it in the subject of a newsletter or marketing email on my work: “Best of We Are Visual… The Slides That Make Us Proud”.

Read the full interview I did with Nadine…

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Special thanks to Ian Chew, Gleb Ditrikh, and Sheena Lindahl who volunteered their time to edit this article and do research. If you’re interested in contributing to future articles, being recognized for your contributions, building a relationship, and learning more about creating world-class content, then please fill out the form below.

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Quote Sources:

• Skate To Where The Puck Is Going To Be.–Wayne Gretzky (modified)
• Quick Decisions Are Unsafe Decisions.–Sophocles (modified)
• Your Role As A Writer Is Not To Say What We Can All Say, But What We Are Unable To Say.–Anas Nin
• Don’t Ask Yourself What The World Needs; Ask Yourself What Makes You Come Alive.–Howard Thurman

This article originally appeared on Inc.

An article was posted on Inc. called Bill Gates Predicted Today’s Technologies in 1999. It was shared 38,000+ times.

Have you ever wondered what makes some ideas go viral and some die?

Jonah Berger, UPENN researcher and author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, does more than wonder. He is one of the world’s leading researchers on virality, and he has this to say, “Many people assume that for something to go viral you must be lucky. There is a science. It’s not a perfect science. You can’t guarantee 10 million views, but it you understand the psychology behind why people share, you’ll be more successful.”

As we go deeper into the age of social media, understanding these principles has never been more important. Actually, understanding them is like having a superpower.

The right idea packaged in the right way at the right time can overthrow a government, launch a new product to millions of people, or change the way a community thinks about a topic overnight.

To understand these principles and what makes articles like the one on Bill Gates go viral, I interviewed entrepreneurs who’ve cracked the code to consistently generating millions of shares of their content…

1. Write and Test Multiple Titles

Our network of sites attracts tens of millions of visitors per month. In my experience, the difference between a good title and a bad title can be the difference between getting 1,000 views and 100,000 views. If people don’t click to read your content, they sure aren’t going to share it.

Fortunately, title testing doesn’t have to be a complex ordeal. Here’s the simple approach I use:

Step #1: Create 5 titles. Each title should try a different angle; don’t just slightly change the same title. For example, let’s say one title is ‘6 Ways To Be More Productive’. A variation like ‘6 Ways To Be Super Productive’ would be too similar. Instead, I try a very different angle like ‘6 Habits To Follow Immediately After You Get Up’.

Step #2: Get fresh perspectives. I email 5-10 of my closest friends the 5 titles and have them pick 2 or 3 they would be most likely to click on. You don’t need to share the whole article since you are just testing the title. Also, don’t let respondents see each other’s feedback as that might alter how they respond.

Step #3: Make Minor Modifications. Use the title that your friends pick the most. At this point, I get feedback on different superlatives like exceptionally, worst, or best.

This process works on multiple levels. First, it gets past availability bias, which is our tendency to get attached to the first responses we come up with. Second, after hours of working on an article, we often lose touch with how people with a fresh perspective will react. Finally, we can take advantage of the wisdom of crowds phenomenon, which is that groups of diverse, independent individuals often make better decisions than individual experts.
2. Use This Tool

As Emerson said, the one element that affects virality more than anything else is your headline. 8 out of 10 people will read a headline, but only 2 out of 10 will read a post.

The best tool for creating viral headlines is BuzzSumo, because it allows you to see the most shared articles for any keyword(s). When using BuzzSumo:

Step #1: Type in keywords related to your field or sector. This returns the most shared articles on the web over the last year with those keywords in the title.

Step #2: Look for patterns. Look for patterns in the most shared articles. You will almost always find some. Like I did, you may find that articles with specific numbers in the title do better (i.e., How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500 was shared 10,000 times).

Step #3: Improve the top titles. Try to come up with a better variation by cross-referencing it with these headline formulas. If you’ are unable to, then move onto the next title in the Buzz Sumo list.
3. Don’t Publish Unless Your Content Sparks An Extreme Emotion

The content on our sites is shared millions of times per month. In my experience, the key to creating viral content is setting the bar really high. If you use humor, it needs to be hilarious. If you provide an insight, it needs to be groundbreaking.

Your goal should be to create content that’s so good, readers simply can’t continue their day without clicking on it in their social media newsfeed and sharing it as they read it.

While this sounds intimidating, it’s really not so hard when you know the formulas to use. First, you need to think about how your content will spark the strong emotions of awe, curiosity or disbelief. To do so, I recommend this great step-by-step resource put together UPENN Researcher, Jonah Berger.

Then, look at your content through the reputation lens and ask yourself the following question:

“Will readers be proud of branding themselves with your content? Does your reader want to be the reason all of their colleagues, friends, and family get to experienced the content?”

Remember that for someone to share your content, they must attach it to themselves in front of all their social media followers. This is no small feat given how ferociously people protect their reputations.

If you hit on emotions and identity, you have a strong likelihood of having successful content.
4. Narrow Your Audience, Don’t Broaden It

I’m a big believer that the more you narrow your target audience, the more readers you can actually reach. We’ve seen that play out on a big scale with Greatist, which now has 10 million visitors per month. Constraining your audience to reach more people may sound counterintuitive, I know, but here’s why going narrow is so powerful:

Helps You Pick The Best Platforms. Helps you decide whether you invest your resources in reaching and optimizing for Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, etc. for the most successful distribution.

Helps You Make Your Content More Relevant. If you’re somewhat relevant to everyone, you’re really relevant to no one–and in the saturated content space online, success only comes to the signal, not the noise.

Helps You Create Content That Gets Shared Big Time. The more content resonates with someone, the more likely they’ll share it. So instead of asking yourself, “How can my post reach 1 million views?” you should ask yourself, “How can I make something that a particular group of 10,000 people would love so much that they just have to share it with their network?” And even though a piece of content might be for a very specific audience (56 Reasons You Should Move To Finland Immediately, for example), if they love it that much they’ll probably share it with their entire network.

When Greatist was starting out, we wanted to reach “everyone with an interest in health and fitness being easier.” That was silly. That’s a huge market, obviously–but no one can start there. Instead, we moved to 18-35 year olds looking for a trusted health and wellness source online. Then we went to “18-35 year olds trying to just make healthier choices.” Each time we’ve narrowed down our audience, our audience has become easier to find, our followers have become more engaged, and our traffic has grown in a big way.

To keep that momentum, we’re always on the lookout for new, niche audiences that no one’s served especially well with content. Once we identify a group, we do a little method I call “The Little John“:

1. Write down who our audience is.
2. Define what we want them to do.
3. Narrow the audience down more. Waaay down.
4. At the same time, broaden the ultimate call to action.

Let’s assume we started with “Millennials” and ended up narrowing down our audience to “young students on a budget and with limited time.” Now, if we want to offer recipes, instead of sharing a list of things to cook with expensive ingredients that take hours to make, we’ll offer recipes that save time and money. Suddenly the piece of epic content we’re creating is uber-relevant to a specific group of people… and it offers the best, most exhaustive and comprehensive answer to address a very real challenge they’re facing.

As a relevant example, our article, 34 Healthy Breakfasts for Busy Mornings, has been shared nearly 600,000 times.
5. Use This Type Of Image (Not All Images Are Created Equal)

It is no secret that visual content is some of the most viral content online. While most people know this, they usually miss out on how to use visuals most powerfully. Here’s how I incorporate high-quality, viral visuals:

Step #1: Simplify Main Concept Into A Metaphor. If people don’t quickly understand your idea, chances are they’ll promptly leave. I simplify concepts in two ways. First, I think of a metaphor that communicates the concept. Decades of research shows that, contrary to popular belief, the brain is wired to understand complex concepts with metaphors, not abstract reasoning.

Step #2: Simplify The Metaphor Into A Visual. Images are particularly good at evoking emotion, and emotion is one of the core reasons that people share content online. Then, I think of a visual that embodies the metaphor. If a photo can’t capture the essence of the metaphor, I hire an illustrator. A great place for inexpensive illustrators is Fiverr.

Step #3: Find A Visual That Evokes Emotion. Not all images are created equal. To find viral images, I recommend searching by emotion, not just by topic. For example, let’s say you want to show surprise. Search ‘surprise’ on Google Images.
6. Use Your Own Curiosity As A Litmus Test

The way that I think about viral content is, “What is going to be crazy, crazy, crazy interesting for me?” When I do that, my content goes viral for two reasons:

It deeply resonates with a small group of people who will share it. I know that a small fraction of people are going to be equally crazy about it, and they’re going to share it with others as a result. There’s a lot of vanilla ice cream content creators out there that are like, “My audience is anyone interested in being a better person, male or female, any age.” That content is going to fail.

My authentic passion shines through. Passion is contagious. When I’m passionate, my listeners become passionate. I don’t try to hide that passion or who I am by putting up a ‘professional / business facade’. Instead, I focus on being myself. What I sound like on my podcast is how I sound when I’ve had a glass of wine with friends that I grew up with, and I’m goofing around. That’s the you that people want to build a relationship with.
7. Rewatch (or Reread) and Dissect Your Favorite Content

It takes creative risk to express your message in a way that captures attention and starts a conversation.

The goal of taking risks isn’t just to push the envelope for the sake of pushing the envelope. It’s about finding the most effective way to communicate a message in an attention-starved world.

“You don’t get credit for being safe,” sums it up perfectly. If what you’re creating is going to piss some people off, but it also happens to be brilliant, that’s OK. Think about what they pull off on SNL and The Daily Show. Many people aren’t pleased about it, but the reward is great, and the audience they appeal to loves it. One video that we did the creative and production for is Trojan Condoms Unrolled, which had 3 million on all the video platforms it was shown on. It has a few sexual innuendoes, but overall, it is tasteful and informative.

In order to be creative, you don’t need to be a genius who creates completely original ideas from scratch. An approach I recommend is:

• Look at existing viral hits and draw from them, but be unique in your approach. I recommend looking at Ad Week, YouTube viral hits, what’s trending on Facebook, BuzzFeed, and Kickstarter Popular Projects for ideas.

• Develop the creative concept. In the video world, this means brainstorming, creating a bullet point/visual summary, and turning that summary into a script.

• Look for niche creative talent. I recommend looking for people who are expert at creating exactly the type of content you want to create. In other words, don’t hire the horror writer to pen a comedy. In order to find these freelancers, I recommend searching the credits on existing viral content you like and then finding people’s profile on IMDB or elsewhere. On Youtube, the credits are often in the description under the video.

Guesses On Why The Article On Bill Gates Went Viral

Ultimately, it’s impossible to know why a specific article goes viral. Minor changes in images and titles can have a surprisingly big impact. The timing could be wrong or the initial audience might be the wrong one. However, based on what I’ve learned from the people I interviewed in this article, I can make a few guesses on why the Bill Gates article went viral:

• Visual Metaphor. Rather talking about predictions at a conceptual level, the author uses Nadine Hanafi’s strategy of visual metaphors. Bill Gates is someone everyone knows.

• Curiosity.The author uses Blake Goodwine’s strategy of setting a really high bar on the emotional impact. To restate his words, “Your goal should be to create content that’s so good, readers simply can’t continue their day without clicking on it.”

• Buzzsumo. If you search “Bill Gates” on Buzzsumo, you will see that there have been dozens of articles on him that have been shared tens of thousands of times. This is a good indicator that this is a topic that people like sharing.

Those are my guesses. What do you think are the keys to making ideas spread that weren’t mentioned in this article? Which of the ideas in the article most resonated with you? Leave your thoughts in the comments. I read and respond to every comment, and I’d be very curious about your thoughts.
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Special thank you to Ian Chew for being an integral part of putting this article together.

This article originally appeared on Inc.