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Let me preface this by reminding you that the greatest selling tool in all the world isn’t the internet, or sales letters or sales videos or even word of mouth. It’s stories.

Stories sell like nothing else because we are hard wired to listen to and love stories. It’s in our genes. There was a time when storytelling could literally save our lives. Think of primitive man coming back from a hunt and telling everyone in camp the story of how ‘Bob’ was killed by a saber tooth tiger in the sixth valley to the south.

Do you think anyone would venture into the sixth valley to the south after that? No way, because they knew the story of how Bob got killed by the tiger who lives there.

Now then, here’s how to get experts to practically write your blog posts for you AND get them to do it in story form:

Ask them a question that invites a personal story.

For example, your blog is about investing in commodities. This week you want a blog post on pork futures (I’m making this stuff up right now) so you send out an email to every commodities expert you know of, asking them about their most memorable pork futures story. It doesn’t matter if they made or lost money, you just want to hear their story. A dozen of them write back and you put those stories together into a post.

You’re doing a few things here:

First, you’re getting experts to weigh in on an interesting question, which means you get to ‘borrow’ on their credibility, making you look good to your readers and customers.

Second, you’re doing this in story form, and since people love stories, they are coming back to your blog every week for more of these stories.

Third, you’re building a relationship with these experts. Sure, some of them won’t respond to you, but others will be eager to share their stories. And down the road, who knows what might happen. They could end up promoting your product to their lists, or asking you to do a JV, or even becoming good friends with you.

Fourth, blog posts like these tend to get shared on social media which brings in more traffic.

Fifth, your experts might also share your posts with their followers. “Hey, my hog futures story is featured in this post, check it out.”

The trick here is to phrase your questions in such a way that it invites personal stories.

And don’t forget to ask your readers the same questions. Sometimes it’s the everyday guy or gal you don’t know who has the best story – the one that makes your article go viral or even get referenced on other major sites.

One little notebook could be worth a million dollars to you. Or more. Here’s how…

Keep track of everything you do and especially all of your ideas. When you start something new, keep a running record of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

Two things will happen:

First, you’ll have more and more ideas, and better ideas, too. The simple act of writing ideas down drives your subconscious to create more ideas. Review your ideas weekly and find the gems. Test out the best ones, choose one and run with it. It could be a million-dollar business.

Second, teach others how to do that business. If you find an awesome new way to build an email list, build your own lists and then teach others to do the same. If you discover how to launch a product from start to finish in 3 days, teach others to do the same.

Keep your notebook with you at all times. Write in it when the mood strikes, and even when it doesn’t. Resort to an online journal only when necessary. There’s something about the brain and handwriting connection that inspires more creative thinking than simply tapping keys.

So, do you have your million dollar journal yet?

If not, get one and get started.

Your future self will thank you for it!

I know firsthand how difficult it can be to continually come up with new topics for your emails. The first 20 are easy. The next 30 aren’t too difficult. The next 50 take work. And once you’ve done a few hundred emails, you’re pretty sure you’re just writing the same things over and over again – most likely because you are. If you want to keep your emails fresh, interesting and even exciting for your readers, then it’s time to step up your game and find something new to offer. Which is why I thought of… jokes.

Because who doesn’t love to hear a joke? Even if it’s one that makes us groan, we still enjoy the anticipation of seeing whether or not it’s funny, whether we laugh, and maybe even whether or not it’s good enough to share with others. I know that when I receive an email from an individual or a business that says, “Joke enclosed,” I almost always open it, because… why not? I need more laughter in my life, and I’ll bet your readers do, too.

So how do you turn a joke into a marketing email?

That is the question.

First, let’s find a joke. I just did a quick search and found this one…

“When I asked my 3 year old niece Anna what she wanted for her birthday, all she’d say was “reading glasses.”

Thinking it must be some sort of preschool fashion trend, I bought her a pair with plain glass lenses. A week later, I picked Anna up from daycare and asked where her glasses were.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But they don’t work anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I still can’t read,” she sighed.

Ha!

Okay, I thought it was pretty funny.

How do we segue this into an offer? Let’s use the online marketing niche for our examples:

1: We could say something like, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could put on a pair of marketing glasses and suddenly know how to make sales on autopilot? This product is the next closest thing because…”

2: Or we could say, “As you see Anna took ‘reading glasses’ quite literally, which is exactly how I want you to take my guarantee on this product. I 100% absolutely, positively guarantee that when you follow the program, this is what will literally happen for you: …”

3: Perhaps we might go with, “Poor kid. Obviously, the glasses didn’t perform like the name, ‘reading glasses’ promised her. Have you ever purchased one of those, “Make X Money in X Days” programs, only to discover that what they really meant was, IF you have a website and IF you have a list and IF you have a product, then this will work?”

“Well with my $10,000 in 30 Days program, you don’t need any of that in place. In fact, you can be a total beginner and this program will still perform exactly as the name implies, with no catches and no disappointments.”

4: Last example: “I can’t promise you reading glasses, but I can do one better than that. This course will open your eyes to an entirely different way of thinking and doing business, resulting in you being more excited about your future than you have been since you were Anna’s age.”

All 4 examples need a little polish but you get the idea.

I took a random joke, typed it out and then came up with four segues into offers. Of course, there is no right or wrong way to do this and there are an infinite number of possibilities. In fact, if everyone reading this tried this exercise, we would have thousands of examples and no two would be exactly the same.

Here’s your assignment: Go online and find 3 jokes that make you chuckle or even laugh out loud. Copy and paste them into your writing program and then come up with 3 segues into any product you are currently promoting or plan to promote in the future. If you don’t have a product, make one up.

The point is to see that you can indeed use almost anything interesting or entertaining to begin your emails, and then segue that into the message you want to convey. It might not even be to sell something, but rather to teach a tip, make an announcement or simply remind them that you stand ready to help when they need it.

Taking this to the next level: Keep a file of everything that catches your eye, whether it’s humor, news, off-the-wall ideas or whatever, and dig through this file when you need an opener for your next email to your list.