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The Secret Fairytale Magic to Irresistible Blog Posts

Posted By Guest Blogger 30th of June 2011 Writing Content 0 Comments

This guest post is by Amy of Harrisonamy.com

From Jack and the Beanstalk, to Little Red Riding Hood, to Cinderella, fairytales have been enchanting audiences for thousands of years. They are constantly being retold, modified and even made into blockbuster movies. Despite their apparent simplicity, they enrapture and engage audiences time and time again.

The Secret Fairytale Magic to Irresistible Blog Posts

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By using the following five key elements of a fairytale, you can harness the secret storytelling magic to write irresistible blog posts and keep your readers coming back for more.

1. Create desire

Every fairy story starts with some desire. Whether it’s Cinderella wanting to go to the ball, a poor man wanting to be king, or a girl taking some food to Grandma’s house, the story starts with a desire for something.

No enchanting tale starts without some kind of hope, dream, want, or wish. Even if it’s the wish for things to stay the same, the characters have to want something.

So how does this relate to your blog? Well your customers are reading your articles because they also want and are hoping for something, whether it’s entertainment, advice, or tips on a particular subject.

One of the best ways to stimulate that desire is by using your headline to show them that you have something they will want. For example:

  • 7 Ways To Go To The Ball If You Are A Beautiful But Poor Step-Sister
  • The Best Way To Get To Grandma’s House While Avoiding Wolves
  • How To Get Your Magic Beans To Grow In Just 2 Days

2. Overcome challenges

In every good story, there’s some kind of challenge or obstacle and your blog readers are experiencing the same thing.

The challenge is usually stopping them achieve what they truly desire. Red Riding Hood had to face the wolf, Cinderella had to get past her wicked step-sisters and Jack had to try and get round the giant to get his treasure.

So what is it that your blog readers desire and what is their ugly step-sister, wolf, or ogre that stops them? Perhaps your blog readers desire more traffic but are confused by the different methods to attract more readers. Or perhaps they want to write a novel but are getting stuck with writer’s block.

When writing a blog post, ask yourself what challenges come between your audience and what they desire, and how you can help overcome them.

3. Give them a hero to help

You might not be a woodcutter, a fairy godmother, or a king, but on your blog, you are your reader’s hero!  Heroes have experience, knowledge, and special skills, and your blog is the perfect place to show your readers that you are the right person to help them on their adventure by:

  • explaining how you’ve done something that they want to do
  • pointing out mistakes you’ve made on the way so others can avoid them
  • giving them shortcuts and tips to get results quicker than learning first hand.

If your audience grows to see you as their own fairy godmother of marketing, crafts, or blogging, they’ll want to keep coming back for more.

4. A transformation

Fairy tales always include some kind of transformation. It might be a pumpkin into a chariot, or a wolf into an old lady, but the most popular transformations are the ones that satisfy our desire for the fairytale ending.

So we love Cinderella becoming a princess, or Aladdin becoming a prince, and your readers are also looking for a positive transformation when they visit your site.

For example, after reading your blog post:

  • Can they do something they didn’t do before?
  • Do they feel better and inspired, or not so alone?
  • Do they have access to resources that will give them results?

Try and give some form of transformation, and your reader is more likely to not just enjoy your post but bookmark it and come back to it again and again.

5. A happy ending

Most fairy tales have happy endings. Now that doesn’t mean every blog post you have has to end on a high note, what it means is that your reader should be satisfied that they got what they were looking for.

So if they were coming to your blog for satirical remarks on celebrity relationships, then a photo casebook of embarrassing shots of the latest A-list couple is going to be their happy ending. If others are looking for mediation advice, finding out how to turn their office into a centre of calm is going to be their happy ending.

Consistency in delivering to your audiences expectations is important when writing a blog. You are essentially writing stories every time that you publish and just as we want a happy ending when we decide to read a fairy tale, your customer wants that same consistent experience when reading your blog.

Now it’s over to you. Are you already using these five fairytale elements, or do you have a different approach in writing irresistible content? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

Amy is a copywriter for entrepreneurs and in addition to writing for clients, she coaches others to smash through their copy obstacles and get their message out to their audience. She provides free copywriting and content marketing advice on her website Harrisonamy.com

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Comments
  1. Amy, thanks for this outstanding blog post. What a great, unique angle!

    I still can’t stop laughing when reading your titles “The Best Way To Get To Grandma’s House While Avoiding Wolves” and “7 Ways To Go To The Ball If You Are A Beautiful But Poor Step-Sister”. What a nice way to illustrate a good point!

    Your post also shows us how important it is to build the confidence needed to display ourselves as “heroes” (or any version thereof).

    Again, thanks!

    Lucas

    • Thanks Lucas! I did chuckle to myself about the blog posts. I swear it’s only a matter of time before fairy-tales include navigating the twittersphere, and going on a blogging adventure (though we’ll always have to battle trolls I guess…)

  2. Can I just say how brilliant those example titles were. I was LOLing after reading them and a coworker looked at me like I was nuts. Good stuff.

  3. I just skimmed your post and picked up #1 and #5 and immediately had naughty thoughts. Start by creating desire and conclude with a happy ending.

    Here’s my tip for making awesome posts:

    Find out what people want most and give it to them. Then find out what makes what you just gave them better, and charge them money for it. Done.

    Follow me on twitter [linked]

  4. I’ll always be a hero to my readers, though I can’t say if there’ll be a happy ending or not.

  5. And the last action is succes full time

  6. Those are some great tips on creating an impactful story. I especially like the part about being your audiences hero. Great stories are everlasting and are more about how it will make the reader feel than using lame pitches or emotionless antidotes.

    Thanks for providing a great framework that can be used for many different areas of business and blogging, as well as for our own personal lives.

    • You’re welcome, and you’re right, blogging is more than just “how-tos” and free content, it’s about looking for that voice on a blog that resonates with you and can be your hero as well as delivering the goods. :-)

  7. Amy,

    I love the angle that you’ve come at this from! A link to this article is definitely going in my newsletter under “best of the week on the web”. Great read!

    Tom

    • Hey Tom, great to meet you on Twitter as well! Thrilled you liked this and thanks so much for sharing, I really appreciate it :-)

  8. That’s a really great way to see post writing! I’ll try to follow those rules in the future! I’ve never used those fairytales elements but it really seems like it could improve my blog to use them! Thank you so much!!

    • Hey Marie, they have such addictive elements to them that works so well in blog posts which I suppose makes sense as they’ve been around for hundreds of years. I just found it a really useful and fun way to look at things!

  9. I suppose you could also put a moral into it like “Why Greedy Children Always Get Cooked” too. Fun stuff Amy. Kudos to you for using your fun-ny bones!

    • Of course! There’s always room for a good parable approach in blogging. Thanks for your comment, so pleased you enjoyed it!

  10. I hadn’t thought of it like that! Nice, Amy. I thought the fairytale aspect of my posts was limited to “come away with me” escapism, but your perspective is enriching.

    I especially find it refreshing that your post wasn’t another tired marketing spiel on how to solve our readers’ problems. It always hit me as presumptuous to frame it like that—”You know what your problem is? I do! And I’m creative, I can problem solve!”

    • Thanks! That’s the endless challenge as a blogger is finding different ways to solves our customer’s problems, or rather just give them what it is they want from us.

      I’m really glad you liked the fairytale angle, it just seems to fit so well with blog posting!

  11. I just love the title of this post. I would like to test them out on my brand new 18 day blog. I really want to make it into something and I just love writing articles at my blog.
    I know people that give up on the second month, I think it usually takes 1-2 years to get a blog to the next level. I don’t if it is me thinking that, but when you think about it all of the famouse websites and blogs are old. The other thing is that Google really takes in mind the years of the webpage.

    Darren Rowse is a magical person. He has created a place from where we can win the best kind of information. THANK YOU DARREN ROWSE!

  12. What an excellent and refreshing take on some of the best cardinal rules of all. At the heart of all you wrote and in keeping with the best blogging advice is being a source of ideas, news, perspectives, solutions and entertainment.

    You also can’t be shy about being yourself, warts and all.

    • It’s finding that new perspective which really keeps you on your toes. I’ve got so much admiration for bloggers who can take everyday situations or incidents and tie it seamlessly into a lesson for their readers. It takes a whole heck of a lot of passion and focus to do that.

  13. This stuff is good! I really like the metaphor.

    It made me thinking t’s also good for applying to your OWN life and not just others. For example one can find his own desire or purpose, ways of overcoming obstacles to move towards the desired goal, finding heros to help (this could be friends or mentors, or just people that inspires you).

  14. Thanks for the article! I’m always trying to hone my writing skills in such a way as to draw readers. This is definitely a good approach.

  15. That’s a really great way to see post writing! I’ve never used those fairytales elements but it really seems like it could improve my blog to use them! Thank you so much!!

  16. Amy this is a great post written with a unique twist.This for sure gets more interest
    than 5 steps to great blog posts.Most people concentrate to much on keywords leaving
    their articles boring The post explains what to do but adds humor at the same time.

  17. I love this post, it appears so whimsical and yet is really a very practical “how to guide.” Good job, really well written!!!

    • Whimsical and practical. I like those quaities, they might just be my new super-hero powers (replacing the current power of the ability to nap anywhere)

  18. I like the fact that every fairy tales have a happy ending. Try to look negative.. So there will be a twist. Thats one of my taste.

  19. Love your writing style Amy. Your points are crisp and clear. I had some take away from this post. Thanks for telling me such a lovely story.

  20. I can be your hero…. Amy thanks for highlighting the essentials. Surely this kind of thing will be really helpful in attracting traffic and also the readers will love it. But this will demand extra brain activity which might be a bit difficult at first as it’s not easy to change the style abruptly. However this is the perfect way to write a blog and snazzy titles and adventurous context is the real life of a blog.

  21. Love this. I belong to a chapter of “Romance Writers of America” and of course to be a romance there must be a happy ending. I keep telling my fellow writers that writing my blog is like writing and publishing a story every week. But my blog is about parents of kids with disabilities and there often isn’t a happy ending. Your article helped me bring the two together and I’m going to try and do exactly that in my next post. Thanks.

    • Thank you Mary for your comment. I just read your latest post. I know that the stories that you share don’t always have “traditionally” happy endings, but the support that you give to your readers in sharing your experience will be their “happy ending.” The fact that you are sharing difficult experiences will provide happiness, encouragement and empathy to the people who visit your blog which is why they will want to keep coming back.

  22. Hey,

    that is really a fresh perspective! :-)

    It’s a little like writing sales copy:
    Create desire
    Show them the problem that “THEM” have caused
    Offer a solution

    Happy end = They buy.

    ;-)

    Thanks a lot for this great article!

    André

    • Absolutely, there’s a lot of compelling story techniques when writing sales copy. If they don’t want to read what you’ve written, you’ve already lost. Thanks so much for your comment!

  23. Following the steps mentioned above, you will surely become a successful blogger.

  24. I believe @happy ending@ will definitely act as fairytale magic.

  25. Hi Amy! This is beautiful! Classic storytelling technique that always works!

    I also tend to read and get hooked to blogs with this formula!

    Blessings!

  26. Amy, great article. I am new to blogging realm and trying to “soak” in as much as I can. Right now I am honing in on the “hooked” effect. I can’t wait to work the fairytale magic into my own writing! Thanks again!

  27. Lol, great article with a little bit or humor thrown in too! How cool! Anyways, i’ve just started a new blog and I’m having ALOT of trouble getting traffic. I mean it’s kind of pitiful actually (hence why I’m here). So here goes…please go to my blog. There are some really nice posts and a neat pole to take part in. It’s a technology blog I think you guys will enjoy…and let’s be honest…I could really lose your help…

  28. Really Great post and very inspiring ideas presented. Fairytale ideas are always been effective and the happy ending part is always been favorable.

  29. Great inspiration,thanks a lot.

  30. Wow, what a great analogy for writing blogposts! Love this structure. Thank you very much.

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