There's a Branch in My Tea Cup (Or, How to Get Someone to Read Your Blog Posts)

Did you know you can eat trees?

I'm not talking about a gourmet dish of stir-fried hemlock. More like pieces of trees. You probably knew that if you are, say, a cinnamon lover. I did too.

Except I didn't know I could eat pieces of trees that sit in my own back yard...

forsythia (for breakfast)

white pine (for tea time)

If you were tempted to click through to see how to eat a back yard tree, you may have just experienced a bout of curiosity piqued by what Heath & Heath call a "knowledge gap." Or, basically, you clicked through because you knew you didn't know, and it made you want to know.

Using knowledge gaps is one way to make a message stickier (besides adding pine sap, which I can attest is very, very sticky). It causes a person to want to find answers, and the extra effort they expend in doing so helps the final message stick.

The simplest tool for creating knowledge gaps is the question. So the next time you want to write a sticky blog post, just add an opening question. And see who stays for a little bloggy tea.


Pine Needle Tea photo, by L.L. Barkat.

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Over at HighCallingBlogs we're reading and discussing Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Want to join us? :) Also, feel free to leave your link here...