Guess what? I, Jon Butt of Marketing for Owners podcast, am about to ramble on in a short and less boring podcast about how not to ramble on for a long time.
Anybody who knows me knows I don’t ramble on in a boring way. So, I’m going to try and keep this short; I will do my best.
Very simply, the reason I’m saying this, a lot of this is from my experience. I get messages from people, some are short, to the point, and they may be annoying and they may be deleted, or they may get replied just saying, ‘No, thanks, Jon.’
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However, that saves me time. We are all busy, it’s not just you. I’m busy, she’s busy, he’s busy. I’m looking at imaginary people, there is no one here. Even a fly who just went past is busy. The ducks are busy; you can hear them.
We don’t have time to mess about. We don’t have time to waste. So, you need to keep it on topic, and keep it short, and keep it precise.
My mate, Chris Ducker, has a thing — he has a P.S in his emails, he says something like, ‘Keep it to three sentences,’ so he says something like that.
He has a whole system, or he has a post on his website that explains why an email should be three sentences or less, or otherwise, he is not reading them.
When you are telling somebody about something, first of all, you need to tell them what you are going to tell them, and then tell them what you told them.
Now In a post, in a speech, in anything, that works. So, in effect, an introduction, then the thing, then a summary or conclusion. That’s it.
Now, if you are sending an email, you might not even need the summary because you’re going to keep the meat pretty short. That three step process can be really, really short.
It can be, just with the introduction to a post or to something, it doesn’t have to be long at all. It can be, that can cover two paragraphs, you can still get that all out.
In copywriters, in their new material, they spend all their effort on the headline. So, in your email, that would be the subject line. In a sales letter or in a blog-post or something, that would be the headline.
And then there is a step called ‘the lead’ which is pretty much the opening paragraph, which is the part, if you imagine, that leads from the headline, then it leads into the material, and it is the part where someone has read the headline, they thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting, I’ll have a look.’
The next part has to keep them interested and make them subliminally want to go on and read the rest of the post or the next part of the post. So, it’s very important.
But that’s the same in yours; you need to keep people’s attention, alright? When you ramble on, when you think you’ve got to fill it with fluff and filler, then it does not work. The person at the other end didn’t need the filler.
Jon Morrow, again, fantastic blogger. When I had him on the podcast, the guy was brilliant and I love reading his material.
He would explain, if you’re going to guest post for him, he expects posts to be something around 3000 words long. Now, that’s a pretty big post but he only has quality, and he says, ‘3000 words – don’t think of that as a 2000 word post fluffed up to 3000,’ he says, ‘think of that as a 5000 word post compressed down to the important bits.’
And that’s a good way of doing it. Whatever you write, whatever you say, shorten it. Take it back a step, shorten it, keep it brief, keep it, keep it ‘there’, alright? And that’s pretty much it.
The funny thing is: I’m going to purposefully cut this one short because you could say, ‘Oh, but Jon, all your little podcasts, not the interview ones, are about ten minutes.’
Well, if I haven’t got ten minutes of stuff worth saying, I’m not going to say it. You might of course say, ‘But it’s always like that, Jon. You never have ten minutes worth,’ and I would say, ‘Oi, get off my show. Don’t be rude, it’s my show. I’ll take as long as I want.’
But, anyway, remember that. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them and always add a call to action or a something at the end. Just think of it as a ‘What now?’ ‘Now what?’ ‘What next?’ Think of that, stick it on.
Drive Time Podcast
Okay, it is drive-time podcast. Honestly, this is going to be one of the shortest ones I’ve done for ages. Just to make a point and it’s still too long, and I still waffled or rambled.
Sorry, you don’t say waffled in America, do you? Because we don’t have waffles, we call it waffling but you call it rambling, same thing. Although, we have a different ramble. Oh no, now I’m rambling again.
So, it is Drive-Time podcast, it’s from Brian Johnson. Now, this guy is brilliant. It’s called ‘Optimal Living’ and his website, he has a website, membership is, is it $10 a month or $7 a month? It is, I strongly recommend it but his podcast is great.
What he does is, in effect, he takes books on optimal living, that’s what he does. He wants to make your life easier.
So, great books. And it’s not all woo-woo stuff, he’s got some fantastic books. Brian Tracy stuff and all that. And things like, so the book ‘Eat that frog’, he takes the book and he has cliff notes; he explains what’s good about it, what he likes about it and he gives a summary.
Saves you having to go and read the whole book, makes life easier. Cheaper than audible, you’d save and it’s got an app and everything.
Anyway, go listen to his podcast, right? ‘Optimal Living’ Sorry, he calls it optimal living. ‘Optimize’ by Brian Johnson and then look up his website and everything. Great bloke.
Tomorrow, by the way, Friday. We have Tom Corson-Knowles. He has, I’ve talked to lots of people about how to write a book and so on, but this is some of the best information I’ve ever had.
Please, do not miss it. You may not know Tom Corson-Knowles but you’ll want to see to him afterwards. Absolutely brilliant. See you then.