This is Part Three of the Brain Rules for Bloggers series, based on John Medina’s Brain Rules. More links at the bottom of the post!

Brain Rules #5 and #6: Short and Long Term Memory - Repeat to Remember, Remember to Repeat (and become an unforgettable blogger)

What’s memory got to do with being a better blogger, you ask? I’d tell you, but I seem to have forgotten..

Ahem. Seriously.

Repeat visitors are essential for a successful blog - and that means you need your readers to remember to visit again, and again. Even in this age of RSS feeds, your audience needs to remember why they stay subscribed, why they click on your post titles, why they follow you at all. Both your branding and your content need to hit the “save” buttons in your reader’s brains, because, well… You may offer the best advice in the world, but if your readers forget about it as soon as they leave the page , the advice will never be applied - and your readers likely remember to come back, either.

By applying a little bit of knowledge about how our brains handle memories, you can make your blog and your content “unforgettable” - or at least, less forgettable.

The bad news is that your readers forget most of the information they’re exposed to very quickly - within minutes.

The good news is that a bit of info DOES hit the old memory banks, we have a chance to strengthen the memory further, with repetition, use, and.. Did I mention repetition?

So as bloggers, we need to become especially aware of those first few moments of impact on our readers, because those are the moments that decide if our posts will be remembered at all. To make the best use of that first impression, memory wise, learn to exploit the brain’s own system of encoding information into memories. Involve as many sensory and emotional tags as you can, repeat the important and core elements often, and introduce new material gradually.

A much fuller explanation can be found in Brain Rules, explanation, but… for now…

I’d like you to stop reading for just a moment…

Stop reading, and notice what’s going on around you. Can you hear the background hum of your computer, feel the air flow of the AC unit on your skin, your weight in the chair? Are you hungry, edgy, or calm and comfortable? Is your cubicle neighbor wearing too much perfume or typing annoyingly loud? Is, perhaps, the scent of honeysuckle wafting in through an open window somewhere?

Each of those elements is tied into your experience of reading this blog post. Each one of them is now part of your memory of this post.

These elements ( including the scent of honeysuckle, lovely though it may be) aren’t important parts of your memory for our blog-improvement purposes but your brain doesn’t know that. Your brain’s wiring has no way of knowing what bits of the experience are important, and what bits aren’t - once alerted that something may be important, it simply takes the entire experience, slices and dices it into different segments, then stores the pieces in different parts of the brain, with a series of connections between them that tiese the memory together.

And here’s the trick : the more complex that slicing and dicing of the memory is, the more bits and pieces are stored in different parts of the brain, the more likely you are to remember the experience of reading this post, including the information included in it.

Further, if you could recreate that environment, from the honeysuckle to the computer hum, the entire memory of this post is more likely to come flooding back. Cool, huh?

But how do you apply that in a blog post?

You can’t control your reader’s environment to make it multi-sensory, and you probably shouldn’t be asking readers to stop and smell of honeysuckle with every post.

But you *can* engage as many parts of your audience’s brains as possible. Use your core web design to set the environment, create continuity, and a sense of the familiar. Grab visual attention with repeated graphic elements, use images and typography to engage your readers visually, even when they’re reading via RSS. Include stories and anecdotes, humor and unexpected elements to engage them emotionally, and get them visualizing, feeling, relating. Verbally associate a smell, a sound, a sensation with the information.

Many of the same ideas used in the Attention! rule apply here, as well… If you can get the brain’s attention, make your reader’s subbconscious brains take note of the post, your chances of getting your information brain-tagged as “something to remember” increase.

And AFTER those first few moments?

That’s when repetition becomes key to locking information in, longer term. It can take the brain years, evenas long as decade, to fix information in long term memory. Until that long-term memory point is reached, the information bounces between the areas of the brain that handle short and longterm memory, creating a sort of constant inner cranial conversation. The more frequently the information is accessed, and then re-encoded, the louder the conversation gets… With each repetition, each episode of recall, that network supporting the memory bits is strengthened. So if you have a core concept or message to get across, repeat it.

Repeat it, but keep the lessons of “Attention” in mind - don’t let the repetition get boring. And try to engage as many different aspects of the brain as possible. Repeat the message in different ways, in different forms. Make a graphic, an audio file, a sidebar note or quote.

A series of related blog posts is especially effective; each exposure to the information (especially in slightly different forms) reinforces the memory and recall of the previous posts.

And to further increase recall - create a consistent and familiar environment in your blog. Just like the scent of honey suckle will bring back memories, using a consistant theme, related graphic sets, keeping a stable design style, and so on will also help trigger recall from one post to another.

So, in summary?

Building a blog your readers will remember means:

…. Making your blog as memorable as possible in the first few moments you have a readers attention.

….Engaging as many elements of your reader’s minds as possible, from their emotions to their senses.

….Repeat the core information often, and in a variety of ways, but don’t be boring (See the Attention! post)

….Develop a posting style that is comfortable and familiar, but includes elements of the unexpected.

….Feed your readers bits of information, one paragraph at a time, one post at a time, referring back to previous information often.

….Lather, Rinse, Repeat!

Following these tips may not make your blog unforgettable, but they *will* make you more memorable to your readers.

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MindTweak: ‘Cause it’s long gone, and it’s in my past,
I can close my eyes when I want to go back
To the days when life could be…
Honeysuckle sweet, honeysuckle sweet.
(from Honeysuckle Sweet, by Jessi Alexander)
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Next up in the Brain Rules for Bloggers series? Sleep, Stress and The Senses. For more information on these or any of the Brain Rules topics, be sure and check out the book that inspired this blogging bonanza — Brain Rules, by John Medina. It’s available on Amazon: Brain Rules (Book & DVD) or you can just hop on over to www.BrainRules.net for a multimedia mind melding experience.