Do Your Titles Encourage Ear Reading?

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“We actually we read with our ears and our eyes, so we need to activate multiple senses,” the Integrated Learning Academy points out. In fact, as Psychology Today explains, “we don’t experience our senses individually. Rather, our brain meshes with our vision and hearing to create our conscious experience of the world.”

In reading through my copy of Kiplinger Personal Finance May 2025 issue this morning, I saw many illustrations of the power titles have to “catch” readers’ attention through sound.

In alliteration, a consonant sound is repeated. The words don’t need to be directly next to each other in the sentence, but when you read the line aloud, you “hear” the repetition. Three examples I noticed right away in the magazine were:

  • Staff Cutbacks reach the Social Security Administration
  • Walmart Woos Wealthy Shoppers
  • A Broad Bet on Innovation

The repeated sound can be a vowel, rather than a consonant; the term for that is “assonance”. In both these Kiplinger titles, the repeated sound is the “a”.

  • A Cap on Overdraft Fees Faces the Axe
  • Get Back on Track After a Divorce

Of course, I didn’t need to peruse that financial news publication in order to find alliteration and assonance – they’re everywhere. The title of an advertisement for children’s clothing at the Lunch Money Boutique, “Elevating Style and Celebrating Childhood” catches our ear with those “short E” and “long A” sounds. Many popular consumer product names are alliterative (think Coca-Cola, Dunkin’ Donuts, PayPal).

As content creators, we teach at Say It For You, we can take advantage of the sounds of words to make titles of posts and articles more “catchy”, tempting readers to use both their ears and their eyes to engage with our messages.

Take time to create titles that encourage ear reading!

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Target Content But Leave No One Aghast

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The Certified Financial Planners Board ‘Perfect Job” ad campaign has apparently left Certified Financial Planners aghast, Tracy Longo reports in Financial Advisor Magazine. Meant to encourage young people to embark on “perfect” careers in financial planning, the ad depicts prospective CFP®s as snoozing, taking bubble baths, and competing in burrito-eating contests. The apparent intent was showing that careers in financial planning offer life-work balance, but the content ended up offending rather than informing.

As a CFP Board Emeritus® and now owner of a content marketing company, I view this “Perfect Job” marketing fiasco as a cautionary tale. Certainly, when building a plan to connect with an audience, we need to consider not only age, gender, and nationality, but where members of  the target audience are “hanging out” on social media, Interviews, and focus groups. The creators of “Perfect Job” were obviously aware of the high value the younger generation places on work-life balance. But, because they were clumsy in using exaggeration to create a humorous effect, their ploy failed.

A number of years ago, I found material on some research done at the Saimaa University of Applied Sciences on the impact of humor in advertising. The researchers concluded that, while humor is an effective method of attracting attention in advertisements, it offers no advantage at increasing persuasion.

For the content writers at Say It For You, our “employers” are business and practice owners whom we work to connect with their target audiences, positioning those owners and practitioners as Subject Matter Experts in their respective fields. Because we are figuratively “putting words in their mouths”, it is they who must embrace the messaging prior to our “sending it out” to their target readers.

In the case of the “Perfect Job” campaign content, the marketers failed to consider the very financial planners they were positioning as models in the eyes of future entrants into the profession.

In defense of the campaign, CFP Board officials said the ads were “facetious portrayals” intended to help student audiences think about “what their dream job might look like”.

As a longtime content creator, I have learned that “facetious” marketing content too often combusts. As content marketers, the “trick” lies is targeting our content while leaving absolutely no one aghast.

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Telling Your Business Story Through a Brand New Lens

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“There are no original stories, but there are always original ways to tell old stories,” Mariah Richards encourages authors in Writer’s Digest. A “new voice” has the power to change the “old voice” for the better, or at least in a way that might appeal to different readers, she explains. Kali Rose, in Oh Reader magazine, agrees. In fact, she loves to revisit her favorite books, with subsequent readings allowing her to see things she missed the first time around.

In the field of content marketing,  one concern I hear a lot from business owners or professional practitioners is that sooner or later, they (and we, their writers) will have depleted the supply of new and different ideas to write about. “What else is left to say?” is the common thread in the questions I’m so often asked.

At Say It For You, our content marketers have long ago learned that there are many subsets of every target market group. Not every message will work for every person, so coming at a topic again and again, each time from a different angle, is the secret to assuring readers we’re “on the same page” with their very specific issues and approaches.

By its very nature of periodic messaging, blog marketing is going to be centered around key themes. As you continue posting content about your industry, your products, and your services, you’ll naturally find yourself repeating some key ideas, adding detail, opinion, and story around each.

In writing for business, as blog content writers soon learn, the variety comes from the “e.g.”s and the “i.e.”s, meaning all the details you fill in around the central “leitmotifs”. Case studies and testimonials illustrating specific instances of the company’s products and services became solutions to various problems.  It’s these examples that lend variety to the blog, even though all the anecdotes reinforce the same few core ideas.

In fact, at Say It For You, I’m always on the lookout for different “templates”, not in the sense of platform graphics, but in terms of formats for presenting information about any business or professional practice, including how-to posts, list posts, review posts, and op ed opinion posts.

There may be no original content, but you can always help them see your business content through a brand new lens.

 

 

 

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Writing About WIne and Other Difficult Content Tasks

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“Using words to describe wine is fraught with peril and leaves wine writers exposed to ridicule,” Gus Clemens writes in an article  I found reprinted in my Indianapolis Star the other day. “Writing about wine is like dancing about architecture,” he complains. Although many familiar terms about wine tastes and smells are delicious to imagine and easy to understand because we know them from the fruit we eat, other terms, such as “leather”, “granite” or “green bell pepper” sometimes make us ask, “Are they just making stuff up to appear superior?”

Interesting. Just a couple of months ago, I posted a piece on introducing “insider terminology” to blog readers. The point I was making is that, in content marketing, once you’ve established common ground, adding new vocabulary  or “in-words” actually adds value to readers’ visit, giving them a sense of being “in the know”.

Offering online readers more than a description, but an “experience” is, in fact, one of our biggest challenges as content writers. Our goal is, through what they see on the page, to give visitors a “taste” of the benefits and satisfactions they stand to enjoy when using your products or services. 

“Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story,” observes Seth Godin in his book All Marketers Tell Stories. While effective stories have authenticity and an implied promise of satisfaction, they must also, he stresses, appeal to the senses rather than to logic

With readability being a critical yet often-overlooked aspect of writing (as StraightNorth.com explains, content  must be matched to the education and sophistication level of your intended audience. In the case of a wine vendor, is the content targeted towards experienced wine consumers or is it intended to draw in “newbie” enthusiasts?

Humanizing your marketing content is a way of bringing readers “backstage”, keeping the company or professional practice relatable. Building a story around the “leather” or “granite” element in the services and products you have to offer can mean turning information-gathering into an experience!

 

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Don’t Just Make It Work – Make It Happen!

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On a recent episode of Project Runway (one of my very favorite TV shows), designer Isaac Mizrachi offered the following gem of a statement (meant as a take-off on mentor Tim Gunn’s encouraging “Make it work!”).  To be an all-star, Mizrachi insists, it’s not enough to “make things work” – you need to make things happen!

“By developing a unique and recognizable brand identity…you can ensure that your brand stands out from the competition and is remembered by customers,” Brittany Bettini of the Forbes Business Council writes. Just as, on the fashion runway, designers strive to stand out (rather than blending in), business owners and professional practitioners need to establish a “brand” that stands out in the marketplace. Your brand identity:

  1. differentiates you from competitors
  2. creates a lasting impression on potential customers

It’s going to take more than offering exceptional customer service, JP Van Steertgeghem cautions in a LinkedIn piece. There are no shortcuts to greatness, but it’s important to create and share engaging, interesting, and valuable content.

Just as Mizrachi was stressing to the fashion design contestants, Kasey Murphy tells entrepreneurs in the the wesayhowhigh.com blog to “be bold” in their marketing campaigns. In a crowded marketplace, Murphy stresses, it’s essential to make your brand stand out through bold marketing campaigns that “shine brighter”.

“The one that stands out is in essence the one that is not like the rest,” onsightapp.com agrees. “When people cannot distinguish brands from each other, they cannot form reliable relationships with those brands.” Not only does an effective brand have a well-outlined target audience, it may even offer a service or product exclusively to that target audience.

As a frequent viewer of the show, I couldn’t help noticing a recurring theme in the conversations among the designers and the judges of project runway challenges about designers “staying true to their own aesthetic in developing runway-worthy garments. In marketing content, we understand at Say It For You, it’s crucial to let the personality of the owners and providers “shine through”. 

In my 2020 post “Don’t keep yourself a secret in your blog,” I was alluding to showcasing  the “aesthetic” of the people behind the brand, revealing not only what they have, what they do, and what they know how to teach others to do, but offering a glimpse into their  personalities..

In content marketing, in short, it’s important to do more than just “make it work”.  We have to make it happen!

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