Three Secrets from Game of Thrones: How to start writing epic content for your business faster than Emilia Clarke goes Mad Queen on King’s Landing!

Amy Matos
5 min readMay 9, 2019

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Photo Courtesy of Helen Stone / HBO

Emilia Clarke is about to go Mad Queen on King’s Landing, and there are millions of nerdy entrepreneurs who are dying to see it. You know what else the entrepreneur community is pleading for?!

Epic content for their business!

Entrepreneurs want epic content the way that Game of Thrones fans were begging for Jon Snow to jump on that ice dragon and freeze torch the Night King during the Battle of Winterfell.

(C’ mon, I’m not the only one who thought that was where they were headed, right?!).

The good news is, Sunday night will be here before you know it. Watch out, Cersei!

The better news, I am about to leak three secrets from Game of Thrones that you can use to start writing epic content for your business faster than Emilia Clarke goes Mad Queen on King’s Landing!

Before we continue, be warned.

This article has more references to the last two GOT episodes than there were dead people recently crawling around Winterfell.

If you don’t want to read any spoilers from the show, keep on clicking friend.

But if dragons, zombies, giants, and epic content are your thing, then let’s do this!

Secret 1. Tell your audience what’s in it for them.

HBO didn’t call episode three The Long Night for nothing. Who else stayed up until 3:00 a.m. that night, in full House Stark geek squad mode, watching the Battle of Winterfell for a second time, fist-bumping Arya, and taking goofy selfies for Instagram?

Just me?! Nah, you know you were there too. I saw you on Twitter.

You need to do the same thing with your content. Whether it’s your landing page, your website, the subject lines in your emails, or your blog posts, make sure you hook your audience with an epic-attention-grabbing-headline that speaks to the RESULT that your audience gains by reading.

Be direct and make it tangible.

Tell your audience how they will benefit from what you’re sharing. What will they learn or gain in exchange for giving you their attention? Entice them with the result that you already know they want, and make it impossible for them to change the channel… ahem, I mean click away.

GOT promised A Long Night and the absurd bags under the realm’s eyes the next day proved that they delivered.

Secret 2. Light your audience’s emotions on fire with detailed storytelling.

The beauty, the brilliance, of Game of Thrones is in the details and emotions of the storytelling.

Sam’s hands trembling in the opening scene. Greyworm visibly in anguish as he decided to light the trench and sacrifice his Unsullied brothers. The sound of Arya’s open wound dripping blood on the floor of the library. The tension, mounting with each additional note on the piano. The fear, palpable.

Details captivate audiences. It’s time for you to captivate yours with epic content.

How? With detailed and emotional storytelling.

Rewatch the latest Thrones episodes. They are overflowing with the elements fundamental to storytelling: hero, villain, challenge, action, tension, heartache, adversity, lessons learned, redemption.

Add that to the emotion.

Fear. Humor. Happiness. Guilt. Deception. Belonging. Love. Greed. Altruism. Pride. Envy. Shame. Sadness. Urgency.

Emotion builds connection, and drives purchasing and decision-making. You need to use powerful, emotionally-charged storytelling to create epic content.

Concrete details evoke an emotional response. Emotion is what makes your content memorable, like Arya killing the Night King memorable.

3. Have a strong call to action.

When Arya ducked into the library during the Long Night, I mean who didn’t need a breather at that point, the Red Woman gave her a call to action. As she told Arya that she was going to shut many blue eyes forever, Thrones watchers everywhere screamed, “OMG, Arya is going to kill the Night King.”

Perhaps a bit less subtle was Cersei begging Emilia Clarke to go Mad Queen after she broke our hearts with Missandei last week. If it was action you were looking to provoke, Lena Headey, you win.

The content that you’re writing for your business will have some call to action. Even if it’s not sales copy with an ask for a buy, there should always be an ask for engagement, like, follow, or subscription.

Whatever your call to action is, make it clear.

Take, for example, this article.

I want you to geek out with me, and tweet this throughout the realm like your life depends on it! So get yourself ready, because I’m not going to be all cryptic about it like Melisandre was; I guess I’m more Cersei in this regard.

Write epic content, for the love of the realm.

I bet you didn’t realize that when you watch Game of Thrones, that you are getting a lesson in content creation!

RIGHT NOW, is your time to take action, or risk content that scares people away like the White Walkers scare people away.

Take these three secrets learned from Game of Thrones and start writing epic content for your business faster than Emilia Clarke goes Mad Queen on King’s Landing!

  1. Start all content and copywriting with an epic results-focused-attention-grabbing headline.
  2. Then, give your audience all the tangible and emotional details that they can handle.
  3. Finally, close with a strong call to action.

Now, it’s your turn.

Scroll a little bit further and tell me… who do you think will be sitting on the Iron Throne next weekend?! Or if you really want to go all Arya on me, tweet your answer at me!

Dracarys! (AKA light the comments on fire with your predictions!)

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Amy Matos

Amy Matos is a bilingual content strategist and copywriter who is on a mission to elevate women’s voices! Learn more @ www.gleampeoplestrategies.com.