ComHacker.org

by Patricia Mayo

In the first installment in this series on communicating a message with pictures, I introduced this concept and talked about the purpose of a picture, how to use images to draw attention, and putting the reader in the picture’s shoes.

This time I get to dig into one of my all time favorites - directing attention. The nuances of this use are just so much fun to me - not that I take great joy in fiddling with people’s heads. I just like figuring out each case and exactly how your eyes will be influenced by a picture.

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Trisha, @mayobrains on Twitter

by Patricia Mayo

Maybe being lazy is a good idea, according to - you guessed it (well maybe you didn’t) - Seth Godin. He calls it “keeping copy out of the way of your message“… but I know better.

Photo by Paul Mata

This isn’t the first I’ve heard of the concept. A lot of great and well-renowned books on copywriting say pretty much the same thing. Some of my favorite quotes by famous authors say pretty much the same thing.

Get to the point. Quickly.

But, you see, I have a little problem with broad stroke “solutions.”

by Patricia Mayo

ChaCha is a whole new beast of search. If you thought it was tough getting a regular search engine to spit out what you really need for certain queries - then be prepared for sheer torture with ChaCha.

That, my friends, is what proved “third try is a charm” completely, and utterly, wrong.

I asked ChaCha because I was having a hard time finding what I needed through regular search. Usually I figure that’s because I’m using the wrong words - so maybe the “search pros” at ChaCha could figure it out.

Well, that is - if they can figure out what I’m asking in the annoying 160 character limit without an ability to follow up with the last person who tried but failed.

So I reverted to the tried but true “monkey see, monkey do.” In my fifth and finally successful try, I said “see this? This is what I want, but free.” For that I could’ve used Google’s “sites like this” function, and that’s what I typically do - because ChaCha has always been this way for me.

What am I doing wrong here folks? Why can’t I get what I want out of ChaCha?

(By the way, I really do have a ChaCha t-shirt. Two, in fact. I have a special affection for them too, being they were my first “geek shirts.”)

by Patricia Mayo

The “experts” say you should include pictures in anything you publish online - but they never say what to look for in a picture.

Photo via Fail Blog

They say a picture is worth a thousand words - but very few realize exactly what they are saying with their pictures.

Normally, we aren’t aware of the messages these images are communicating - but that just makes the message even more powerful. Just ask any pro selling through a catalog or direct mail.

The difference between a good image and a bad image is very cut and dry - success, or failure. Period.

by Patricia Mayo

Of course you’re not. What, you - afraid to read a blog post? Pshaw. No way. Couldn’t happen.

Photo by Sophie

Yet if I had titled this “Ambiguity Aversion” and just left it at that, I bet you wouldn’t be reading this right now. That’s because of a hard-wired fact of humanity - we’re fully-trained trained skeptics of anything unfamiliar.

And I’m willing to bet that if I didn’t tell you I’m about to detail how to overcome ambiguity aversion to increase any metric, you probably wouldn’t read beyond this point. But since I just did - well, let’s move on, shall we?

Layering even boring statements in catch phrases from pop culture grabs a lot more attention than even a great point could have otherwise. The key is giving people something they can click with and relate to in your writing.

“Effective leaders have the courage to say what they’re thinking - and that usually turns out to be what everyone else is thinking.” - William Isaacs, author of Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together

“At the first gate the gatekeeper asks, Is it true? At the second gate, he asks, Is it necessary? And at the third gate, Is it kind?”

Make sure every word passes all three gates before you speak them.