What are the best times to post on social media
Infographic by Neil Patel
Landing page
Create a link to your landing page. For each landing page you can attach various soundbites.
Soundbites
Attention spans have never been shorter … and if you want your ideas to spread, you must create sound bites.
“What’s a sound bite,” you ask?
A sound bite is a short message, often no longer than 10 words, that describes the main idea of your content or sales message.
It’s easy-to-remember, easy-to-quote, and often get shared by bloggers and by journalists.
How Can You Create Sound Bites?
Sound bites don’t happen on accident.
As a matter of fact, sound bites are often rehearsed, tested, and then delivered at opportune moments (like media interviews or presentations, for example).
As people who create content, you know the power of sound bites in your content—I showed you my results.
But how can you create sound bites that work?
That’s where these three sound bite examples come into play:
Sound Bite Example #1: The Power of Contrast
To this day, people still quote and remember John F. Kennedy’s famous sound bite “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Why is this quote so popular?
It’s all about the contrast between the two points, and that contrast between the former and the latter, create a ‘black and white’ situation that’s easy to remember.
(Note, contrast is perfect for creating memorable web designs)
As Dr. Atkinson, the author of Speech-Making and Presentations Made Easy, said “using contrasts is a real winner. Research shows 33% of the applause a good speech gets is when a contrast is used.”
How can you create this specific type of contrast?
You’ve got to think about things in the “black and white.” You’ve got to create a dichotomy, and you’ll be good to go.
Sound Bite Example #2: The Rule of Three
You’d be hard-pressed to say you’ve never heard of the phrase “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” or as the english translation goes, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
It’s easy to remember, and easy to quote.
Why?
The rule of three is at work. The first item creates tension, the second builds it up, and the third releases it.
And as Dr. Atkinson points out in his book “Our Masters’ Voices,” he calls these ‘claptraps’ because an audience often applauses at the completion of the third point.
But more important, our brain is hardwired to remember three items, which is why this sound bite example works so well.
To create this sound bite yourself, it’s simple. Now that you know that it exists, instead of describing ideas with two or four adjectives, you should shoot for three.
Sound Bite Example #3: Violate Expectations
For as long as you can remember, you were told that size 12 was the RIGHT size font…
…and that’s why my sound bite “Size 16 is the NEW size 12” worked so well.
It violated expectations, and thus, was easy to remember.
If you want to create a sound bite like this, you’ll just need to find something people deem true, and counteract it (assuming you can back it up).
Unfortunately, this type of sound bite is one of the toughest to create, but the best way to create ’em is to test ’em.
For example, I stumbled on my sound bite by accident when I dropped that phrase during a speaking engagement. The audience loved it, and thus I wrote it down.