by Julia D. Stege

A lot of my clients get stumped when it comes to crafting their heart-felt message for blogs, sales letters, websites and the like. It’s not unheard of that someone will tell me they have been stumped on this for over a year or even years!

I have a theory about why this happens to otherwise prolific and intelligent thought leaders who are venturing to give their message to the world. I believe it happens because somewhere along the line they were told there is a certain way to approach marketing and it doesn’t have anything to do with what YOU love or what YOU are inspired to share. They say it has to do with some marketing technique that ultimately doesn’t match your style and is possibly too hype-y for you.

When I give folks permission to write stream-of-consciousness about their passion and remind them that their passion is the most compelling thing about them, the floodgates open and the brilliance pours out.

My suggestion for getting over a writers block is to

1) Put the inner gremlins in an imaginary locked sound-proof jar. I learned this technique from Ann Lamott in “Bird by Bird” her book on writing. Make those gremlins mute before you do this excercise. No self criticism allowed.

2) Choose an aspect of your business that you are the most passionate about, that you love talking about. Just thinking about this aspect of your business and people actually paying you for it blisses you out. Write down the topic at the top of your page.

3) Now that you have your topic, go through your memory to find times you helped people using this technique. What was their challenge at the time? Write an introductory paragraph about the challenge folks had and introduce them to your brilliant method to solve that problem.

4) Now just tell the story of what happened. Write it as though you were talking to a very close friend who loves everything you say. Don’t indulge in too much self-editing. Just let it flow.

5) Look back over what you wrote and if it needs editing, edit it for the purpose at hand. Blog posts can be very informal and story-like. Sales copy generally starts by identifying your customers’ challenge, empathizing with it, then showing how you an solve that problem. Either way, this excercise will give you compelling, heart-felt content you can include in any of your marketing pieces.

Feel free to post links below to any marketing pieces you create using this process. I want to know how it goes for you!

by Julia D. Stege, MFA