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This article is intended to be a viral piece targeting females, specifically playing up their desire to be skinny and wealth. While there have been so many things written regarding diets, what is unique about this is that it’s directional and motivational, with credible scientific backing.
Dieting has always been on the forefront of any woman’s mind. This viral article employs a Vogue–style (and font) article to add credibility in explaining which diet plan to choose. The two important factors that are chosen are weight/body-image as well as cost. In accordance with Berger and Milkman’s research, these are also two emotion-evoking factors (which can also spur either positive and negative emotion, which is a double plus eliciting response from the user). Putting those two together, the article utilizes pictures and words to succinctly describe which diet plans can make the user lose the most weight cheaply.
Credibility is established via the mention of Harvard School of Public Health and the use of complex algorithms to add scientific backing to the article. Instead of focusing on spurring just positive or negative emotion, the choice is left to the user (also partly to make sure that the piece doesn’t read like a commercial for diets). Thus, for each diet, there is a good and bad section usually utilizing before and after pictures to elicit a reaction from the user. For the before and after pictures, a mix of celebrity and civilian pictures were utilized. This appeals not only to people wanting to be like a celebrity but also adds relatability by putting in real people weight loss pictures in the mix. These before-and-after are thus utilized to elicit a desire and positive motivation for those reading the piece.
Neil Patels insights were incorporated when writing the title and the lead, making the headline brief and keyword-rich and the overview and lead enticing for the reader to want to continue on. Regarding the content, not much is written regarding each diet because this article is a results-driven piece. Thus, what we want the reader to focus on is exactly just the intersection of results and cost of diet, not the nitty gritty of how the diet actually is. Some concern is put regarding the health aspects to make sure that this article is balanced but most of what is focused on is results, which is instructional and motivational for the reader.
