Over the past few weeks, I covered the first two elements of great storytelling: relatability<\/a> and novelty<\/a>. Now, it’s time to explore the element of storytelling that separates the content you hate from the content you love: fluency<\/strong>.<\/p>\n If you grew up writing papers in Microsoft Word, you’re probably familiar with the Flesch-Kincaid Grade level index, which measures how much education you need to understand a text. Clippy was obsessed with it, which turned Microsoft Word into a game of getting the highest reading level possible.<\/p>\n A few years ago, Shane Snow\u2014who wrote The Storytelling Edge<\/em><\/a> with me\u2014ran the work of best-selling authors through a reading level analysis. Turns out, the most beloved storytellers on the list\u2014Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, J.K. Rowling, Hunter S. Thompson, etc.\u2014wrote for elementary school students.<\/p>\n The people who wrote at a high school or college level? Crappy business authors who had bought their way onto the bestseller list.<\/p>\n This tells us something important: We love writers who make it as easy as possible to get lost in their stories. They break down the barrier between us and them. They write with as much fluency as possible.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, marketers struggle to do this.<\/p>\n The digital age has broken down the barriers between brands and consumers. But with bad content, brands often put that barrier right back up\u2014through bad white papers, boring talking head videos, and jargon that just doesn’t make any sense.<\/p>\n That’s because many of the bad habits we develop in academia carry over into the business world. Over the past decade, I’ve had to read hundreds of corporate white papers and e-books for work\u2014let me tell you, they could be used as a mild form of torture.<\/p>\n The best content marketers do something different. They explain difficult to grasp concepts in a simple, colloquial way.<\/p>\n GE Reports does a fantastic job of demystifying science and engineering, regularly going viral on Reddit<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mint built its business<\/a> by making complex finance topics easy enough for a 4th grader to understand.<\/p>\n Cardinal Health does a fantastic job of demystifying healthcare technology,<\/a> and has seen a huge audience boost as a result.<\/p>\n But fluency isn’t just about the written word.<\/p>\n For whatever reason, way too many brands waste their time filming 20-minute clips of their boring CEOs talking in front of a camera. Not surprisingly, those videos get almost no engagement.<\/p>\n In an age in which we consume most brand video in-feed, fluency means capturing and holding someone’s attention in just a few seconds.<\/p>\n A few years ago, a neuromarketing firm called Neuro-Insight<\/a> studied social video, and found a few keys<\/a> to capturing attention: an early story arc, the presence of people, topical content, and text or subtitles.<\/p>\n You don’t need to make Uncle Drew commercials to put these principles into play. For instance, GE uses these keys to create social video around topics you’d normally find in a tedious whitepaper, like the impact of globalization.<\/p>\n These videos actually don’t have to cost half your budget. Andrew Davis creates entertaining, story-driven marketing videos for his Loyalty Loop series out of his own garage.<\/p>\nWhy you should write at an elementary school level<\/h2>\n
![\"Clippy](\"https:\/\/contently.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Screen_Shot_2020-02-29_at_9.34.58_PM.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Readability](\"https:\/\/contently.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/shane1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"bestselling](\"https:\/\/contently.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/shan3-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFluency matters for video too<\/h2>\n
![\"video](\"https:\/\/contently.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/neuroslide2-768x430.png\")
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