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Write memorable content, with help from your childhood holiday.

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Taking a beach holiday this summer? It could teach you something about writing vivid and memorable content.

Whenever I go near a beach, it short-circuits to my childhood. Why? Because it triggers memories from all 5 senses:

Touch: the comforting feeling of warm sand; the uncomfortable feeling of bobbly pebbles.

Sound: seagulls clamouring; children shrieking; waves rolling in and out.

Taste: chips, ice cream, sandwiches – all with a generous side helping of sand. (When I was very little I thought that the word sandwiches came from early beach holidays, rather than the 4th Earl of that Kent town.)

Smell: chips, strawberries and sea spray.

Sight: distant horizons and different sorts of footprints in the sand.

Lots of prompts, making vivid images in my brain.

27464575046_53f7ac2b10_oWhy are childhood memories like these so powerful? There is a passage in one of my favourite communications books – Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. The authors describe it as:

The Velcro Theory of Memory

It includes an exercise which asks you to remember a variety of things. As you work through these commands, make a mental note of how you approach your answers and how you feel. Here is my summer holiday version of this exercise:

  • Remember the 1st line of Oh I Do like to Be beside the Seaside.
  • Remember the capital of Spain.
  • Remember the definition of an ice cream cone.
  • Remember the definition of laziness.
  • Remember a childhood holiday.

As you respond to these requests, you’ll notice different things happening in your mind. You might have to think about how you explain the idea of laziness. Recalling the name of the capital city might mean rifling through a mental fact file and/or remembering different images and feelings. It depends on whether or not you have actually been there.

Dan and Chip describe memory like a piece of Velcro, with a hook side and a loop side. Our brains are home to countless loops and, I quote:

The more hooks an idea has, the better it will cling to memory.

I am willing to bet that recalling a childhood holiday conjured up the most images and feelings. Or, in Heath terminology, lots of hooks. The brothers also point out, wryly, that a new credit card number usually has only one hook… if it is lucky.

27499008495_2d97d00287_hHow a beach holiday helps your content.

Childhood nostalgia is a good example of how sensory details make any type of content more vivid and memorable. Dan and Chip call it concrete. If you give your reader a real sense of how a service or product looks or feels, you will make it tangible for them.

Take your holiday. You could describe it in general terms and say it was great. Or you could focus on something more concrete and specific: how you made a huge sandcastle, so vast it needed planning permission. Or how the seagulls are cheekier than ever and managed to make a quick getaway with your chips.

Do this, and like the sand on your chips / ice cream / sandwiches, your content will successfully stick in the mind of your audience.

Images by Vervate www.vervate.com.

Related posts:

  • How to write memorable copy. Try mnemonics.
  • Win that business. Write as you speak.
  • Give your website a distinctive voice. Learn from the wireless. Part 1.
  • Give your website a distinctive voice. Learn from the wireless. Part 2.

Filed Under: Effective communication Tagged With: visual stories, writing that hooks you, writing tips for the web, writing web content

Miranda Birch

About Miranda at Miranda Birch Media: your marketing will make a deeper impression once I interview the people who will help your organisation to grow: leaders, clients, volunteers and staff. From these conversations I unearth the themes (clients call them ‘nuggets’) that will land most powerfully with your target audiences. As your content mentor, I’ll also help you turn these nuggets into client case studies, About and Home pages, thought-leadership articles and other content that will prove you’re as good as you say you are.

One last thing… There’s another ‘Miranda Birch’ out there, who writes books about ‘dominance and submission’. This is not me and has nothing to do with my company Miranda Birch Media. I’d love you to dominate your niche, but not in the way she means! Email me now and we can have a chat about where you want to get to and how I can help.

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