Today I’m reviewing a post by Greg Fearon (with his permission).
You can find his post here.
This is part of a new series of posts where I point out what people can change about their content so that they get at least one new client for their high-ticket program every week when they’re posting daily.
Let’s get to it!
Greg’s post does start out by talking about a clear problem: “the belly just won’t flatten.”
This is good! A lot of posts start out in a way that’s confusing where you can’t tell what their point is or what problem they’re talking about solving (or if they ARE even talking about a problem).
But that’s not the case here. We know what Greg is addressing.
What I do notice, though, is that he goes into a bit of what’s often called “problem agitation” or describing the problem more.
“You’re a career driven woman. You can’t spend hours in the gym, you are looking for a way to get that tummy flat. You’ve been told to do exercises…”
In my framework, we cut out this sort of thing entirely.
That’s because we want to get to the juicy part of the post as quickly as possible.
Juicy meaning the part where you tell the reader what causes their problem and how to solve it. 😉
Ideally, we want to start talking about that juicy stuff BEFORE the “see more” break where Facebook cuts off the post – which usually means in the first few sentences.
This means we’ll have a chance to grab people’s attention before they subconsciously decide it’s too much work to figure out where we’re headed with the post and scroll to the next thing in their feed.
With Greg’s post here I definitely felt myself starting to space out and needing to kind of “force” myself to read beyond the first sentence.
So what I’d advise Greg to do instead here is to immediately go from stating the problem to talking about either (1) what causes it or (2) how to solve it.
(or (3) both – sometimes it’s possible to state both things in one sentence or one thought)
Ideally, each post focuses in on just ONE cause and ONE solution.
(Though that’s not an absolute rule… sometimes I write posts that break down multiple causes and solutions. But those tend to be longer than average and they have to be really well-organized with numbering, connective sentences, etc. in order for the reader to not get lost in all the different points.)
With Greg’s post here, I had to re-read a few times to identify what his ONE cause and ONE solution would be.
And even then, I wasn’t sure that I really grasped it.
So, to me, that’s a sign that these two points need to be boiled down more clearly and then stated more succinctly at the beginning (at least one – maybe both).
At one point he says that stress can be linked to cortisol levels in the body, and belly fat and cortisol levels are linked.
Later he says exercise is a stress on the body and can increase fat storage.
And then, says that staying up late at night will increase cortisol levels.
This actually sounds like it might be several different points/problems and he might want to break this up into a few posts so he can expand on each one. Although I’d need to have a more in-depth discussion with him to be sure.
Here are some ideas that I have for how to start the post – though, not being an expert in this subject matter, I’m not sure if they’re stated 100% correctly. Greg would have to check me on that.
(and that’s the nice thing about hiring me to help you with this stuff – when we meet together on a call, we can easily have back-and-forth conversations where I ask you what you mean or what’s true and you tell me, and then we work it out together so that the wording is both accurate from your perspective and clear/understandable from my perspective)
Back to my ideas for how to start the post:
“Belly just won’t flatten? This can be due to elevated cortisol.”
“Belly just won’t flatten? Reducing your stress might actually be the answer if dieting and exercise haven’t worked.”
“Belly just won’t flatten? This can be related to stress, which can actually come from exercising too much!”
Naturally, he’d need to decide what he actually wants the focus of this post to be before he could decide how the beginning should read.
Now, as for the body of the post… the explanations of each of these points are a bit thin.
He sticks to just a sentence or two about each point and then moves on.
Like, I found myself really curious about his claim regarding the association of belly fat and cortisol levels – but he didn’t explain that any further.
For example, If I were his ideal client, how would I know if cortisol were really the issue for ME, versus something else?
Is there a hypothesis as to WHY cortisol and belly fat are linked? If so, what is it? Can this be explained more?
These are the kinds of things we want to unpack in these posts, so the reader can be more convinced that what you’re claiming causes their problem is ACTUALLY what’s causing (or partially causing) their problem.
Ideally, we also want to try to give some KPIs (key performance indicators) for the things we’re talking about – like, how often to do things and for how long.
So when he’s talking about reducing stress and whatnot, can that be quantified in some way? Like, if you stop doing __ X stress-causing thing for X amount of time, should you notice a difference in your belly fat if this is in fact a cause?
This, too, can help convince the reader that what you’re saying is the cause of their problem is actually the cause of their problem.
Sometimes they’ll go off and try your proposed solution for a bit before they come back to you, and sometimes they’ll just take your word for it because the very fact that you make such a specific claim makes you sound more credible.
Now, one more word about how this post is written.
Greg seems to be writing from the perspective of how he would work with you if you were a client.
“We’ll look at your stress levels… we’ll look at your sleep…” etc.
The whole post is looking through the lens of what logistical steps he takes when he works with clients.
Typically, in my framework, you wouldn’t mention anything about working with you until the end.
(these post reviews that I just started doing are an exception to that – they’re a new type of post I’m trying!)
If the whole post is about logistics, it kind of reads more like a sales post than an informative value/teaching post.
So I’d advise Greg to just focus on describing the problem and how to solve it from a conceptual point of view (like explaining why cortisol can be a problem), rather than the steps of how he coaches someone. If that makes sense.
If he takes that approach, I think he’ll naturally beef up the explanations of his concepts more, as I noted earlier.
This post is only around 550 words, and posts that feel satisfying to the reader (as far as getting a good amount of explanation/information) tend to be more like 1000 words, so there’s definitely room to expand.
The call-to-action in this post followed my framework pretty well – he talked about the other parts of his program that this post didn’t focus on.
(“These are only a few of the incremental changes I work with you to implement, along with exercise, nutrition and developing a sustainable health mentality to get you those results.”)
This part is key – because it prevents your readers from being confused about all the different topics you’re writing about in your posts. They can see how they all tie together and how they’re all part of your program.
In his CTA Greg also included a clear starting/ending point to his offer (“losing up to 20lbs”) and a mention of who is a good fit for the program (“women who are successful at work and feel like they want to perform better in all aspects of their life and health”).
Though if he were a client of mine, I’d learn more about his best-result-getting clients in my intake process and we might uncover some more distinctions that would be helpful to mention.
…
So those are my thoughts on Greg’s post. Greg, thank you so much for allowing me to review it. I would love to know more about cortisol, stress, sleep, and how they relate to belly fat. Hope to see future posts from you that go deeper on these topics. 🙂
For the rest of you, if you’ve read this far, I hope you learned a lot from this review.
If you want me to write a post giving feedback on one of YOUR posts – here is the info on how to be considered.
If you want my step-by-step teaching on how to construct posts according to my framework, here is a link to a free video training I did in my Facebook group.
And if you want the info on my 30-day program and how to become a client of mine, here’s what you need to know.
DM me on Facebook if interested in working together, and comment here with any questions about the writing method or the feedback I gave in this post. 🙂