Take a page from Ben and Jerry’s playbook.
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The other day I got into a spirited discussion about desserts with a friend. This friend made the case that Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk Ice Cream is harder to stop eating than other kinds of desserts. She had given the issue considerable thought. The secret to NYSFC’s success? The chunks.
This particular flavor has chocolate ice cream laden with generous chunks of white fudge, dark fudge, pecans, walnuts and fudge-covered almonds. You can’t walk away from a pint, argued this friend, because the voice inside your head is saying “just one more chunk.” And before you know it, you have plowed through more than you intended, “just one more chunk” at a time.
I think she’s on to something. (I also think Ben and Jerry are on to something – most of their ice cream flavors rely on the chunk method, with enormous success.) And this same principle – the just one more factor – should also teach us something about enticing readers through content.
Consider the success of the listicle format. What is a listicle, besides a fully chunked article? Numbered points reassure the reader that they’ll be rewarded with at least “15 ways…” (or whatever) for taking the time to skim a piece. They can alight from chunk to chunk, chewing their way through an article before they even stop to think about it.
Your content already uses chunks – headers, graphs, etc. But consider, particularly during the structuring stage of content creation, how you might space chunks throughout your upcoming pieces to make them as enticing as possible to readers. Here are a few possibilities:
A word of caution: all-chunks is just as bad as no-chunks. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons infographics sometimes fall flat: too much chunk. Don’t forget the chocolate ice cream to hold it all together.
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Posted By
Carolyn
Categories
Compound Return Newsletter, Content Marketing