13 Lessons Stephen King teaches you about creating spine-chillingly good content (that holds readers spell-bound)

3. Lesson 1: Don't waste time trying to prove
how smart, or great you are. The harsh truth
is: Nobody cares.
They only care about what your content
gives them … Fulfillment … A great
experience … Knowledge that when they
read your content they will get something
out of it – and the immense feeling that they
were welcome, wanted and that they
should return.

5. Lesson 2: Your life history only really matters to
people if it shows them examples of how they
too can get to the solution you now enjoy.
Tell them how much you endured the struggle
they're now enduring, then show them how you
discovered a solution …
Show them the steps you took. Share the joy of
life after struggle you now live – and are going to
now share with them, so they can live struggle-
free too.
That's all they really want to know about you.

7. Lesson 3: Only publish content on your
blog that makes you proud. Content you
want to cut out and frame, stick on your
wall and admire all day. Because only
content like that deserves to get
readers.

9. Lesson 4: Nothing worth getting comes easy. You've
got to work at standing out and getting noticed
online.
Success online isn't about luck. Or having an unfair
advantage. It's about making a commitment to work
your butt off. TweetThis
After all, if you want to make money blogging then
you're asking people to trust you enough to hand
over their money to you in exchange for you giving
them something they want, something no one else
can give them. To do this you don't need luck – You
need to work hard at creating that something that
makes them want (beg almost) to give you their
money.

11. Lesson 5: Love changing your readers
lives. Love doing it. Make it the reason
your blog exists. Make it the reason
you write.
If you do all this, and love it for it's own
sake, you'll get all the traffic you need.

13. Lesson 6: Trust your gut. Write what feels
right. Don't follow the herd and copy
what everyone else writes. That's just a
path to mediocrity and invisibility.
Give your readers what you know in
your heart they want desperately.
Stand out by nurturing dreams.

15. Lesson 7: If you don't care about what you're
writing. No one else will care about it.
Your writing should move you emotionally. It
should come from your heart and flow into
your readers' hearts. If you cry. They should
cry. If you laugh. They should laugh. If your
writing makes you want to leap up and
change the world – Your readers should want
to leap up and change the world too …
Because your writing should be the
messenger who carries your ideas from your
heart to theirs.

17. Lesson 8: Never lose sight of who you're
writing for. Yes, your writing should move
you, but it should move your readers
more.
Don't clog up your writing with irrelevant
fluff. Don't write to clothe your ego in
messages of self-love, self-interest and
adulation. Nothing bores readers more.
Nothing condemns you to obscurity like
fooling yourself that your self-importance
will be admired by others.

19. Lesson 9: If you don't feed your genius it will die.
Reading is food for your writing.
Most bloggers don't read a single book. It shows.
Their ideas are dead. Their content mediocre.
Every successful blogger –
Corbett Barr of ThinkTraffic.net,
Jon Morrow of BoostBlogTraffic.com, and
Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com - reads to
feed their creativity and uniqueness that their
readers love. As such their content bathes in their
reading. I'd hazzard a bet that they wouldn't be the
successful bloggers they are, if they didn't read a
lot.
Wanna join 'em? Then freakin' read!

21. Lesson 10: Blog because you want to;
because you love it. Because the thought of
not doing it hurts. Because the thought of
readers being inspired, moved, provoked,
convinced, persuaded to stand up and get
what they want from life, fills you with
Happiness.
Do it because, given nothing else, you'd do
it for free just for the raw buzz. Do that, and
you won't help but “make a lot of dough”.

23. Lesson 11: Want to know why your blog will fail? It
won't be because you lacked talent. It's not
because you didn't strike it lucky. It's not because
you didn't get the traffic. It's because you passed
on the “hard work”.
You thought you could wing it. You thought you
could slap up some mediocre content that would
get people to your blog – that they'd be
persuaded by your lack of interest to open their
wallets and pay you.
But your blog isn't going to fail, is it? Because
you're going to do the work needed to make it
rock, right? Because you care.

25. Lesson 12: When you know what your readers
want because you've done the research: you
know what it is they want most, they will tell you
what they want you to write about so they can
share it on Twitter and Facebook.
They'll give you ideas by the questions they ask,
not just on your blog, but on other blogs.
They'll give you ideas by the content they show
you they want more of by commenting more on
it than the content they're not so keen on. Your
readers will help you keep serving them up
content they want to read.
That's what loyal readers do.

27. Lesson 13: Don't end your dreams in
mediocrity.
Don't end your readers' dreams; those
people still waiting for the awesome
opportunities, the ground-breaking, the
simple but powerful solution that made it all
possible for them … don't end their dreams
in your mediocrity. Not before you've even
started.
This is your chance to change the world …
For you. For your readers.

28. Bottom Line? Write because you love it. Love writing
because of what words can create.
Never lose sight that whatever reason compels you to
take up your pen, open up a Word doc, or whatever it is
you use to write with …
First and foremost, your message must move people
emotionally (no matter whether you're writing ficition or
non-fiction, or creating content for your blog).
People buy with their hearts long before they buy with
their credit card.

29. TrafficSmartMarketing.com
Thanks to Stephen King for the many and continuous lessons in
writing that he teaches me. Not just in his book "On Writing", but
in his novels (which I'm only just discovering to my shame).
And thanks to Jon Morrow for the inspiration behind this
SlideShare.net presentation. I borrowed the idea for its structure
and headline from Jon's killer post:
Stephen King’s 20 Tips for Becoming a Frighteningly Good Writer

30. Do you believe this too? Then join me here .