Newsletters

3 Reasons to Include Yourself in Content

The holidays are coming up fast, and for most people, that means a lot of time with family. Shopping, decorating, cooking, wrapping, and attending concerts and events can make it hard to find time to focus on work.

The good news is, you don’t have to keep your personal life completely out of your content. In fact, in many cases, it helps to say something about what’s going on in the rest of your life.

This isn’t appropriate for everything, of course. You wouldn’t mention your family or pets in a white paper or technical guide.

But for blogs, newsletters, social media posts, and videos, including something small about yourself is often a benefit. Here are three reasons why this helps.

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The Horizon19 conference held on September 18-19 wasn’t planned so that it would overlap with the climate strike on September 19. But in many ways, the timing couldn’t have been better.

The conference focused on innovations and solutions to the problem of climate change. Knowing that young people were out in protest gave everyone an added incentive.

The climate strike also proved the point Nick Sprague of Braskem made in a session on moving towards a circular economy.

“The most innovative thing is the power of the people.”

Innovation and the will of the people will be key to solving the challenge of climate change, but the conference also made two other important points. We need to view sustainability as an opportunity, and we need to collaborate.

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I’ve been thinking about company promises lately, and what a fine balancing act this is. Promise too little, and no one will be interested. Promise too much, and you risk having unsatisfied customers.

This matters a lot in a time when social proof has a high level of influence, with 80% of shoppers considering reviews as meaningful as personal recommendations.

Those comments are also very easy to find, which is why it’s important to have satisfied customers who leave positive reviews. Getting those happy customers starts with setting the right expectations. No one likes to be disappointed, but that’s what happens if you promise something you can’t deliver.

How, then, do you find the right balance in your promise? Here are 3 tips to keep in mind.

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I’ve been busy the past week taking advantage of all the wonderful produce available in Maine in August – I’ve made blueberry ice cream, ratatouille, zucchini bread, and pickled beets.

When I get into cooking modes like this, I’m often reminded of Julia Child, who’s inspired so many home cooks and helped them become heroes in their own kitchen.

It got me thinking about how anyone with a business can learn from her – because as a business owner, your goal should also be to make your customers the heroes of their own stories.

Your Customer Wants to Be the Hero

As Donald Miller notes in Building a Storybrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen, people who are interested in your product or service aren’t looking for a hero. They don’t want to hear about all your wonderful deeds – they want to know what they can do to help their business.

This makes sense when you consider that people waiting to be rescued are quite passive. If someone goes out of their way looking for help, though, they’re taking a more active role.

Instead of wanting someone to save them, they’re looking for someone to help them become their own hero.

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One of the challenges with written communication is remembering who your audience is, and what they’re likely to experience when they read your words.

This is even harder in a business situation because for most jobs, you’re told to leave your emotions at the door, which makes empathy challenging.

But as Jerry Colonna pointed out in a recent On Being podcast, leaving behind the “messy parts of ourselves” has a negative impact. “The result is that our organizations are actually less productive, less imaginative; not just poor workplaces for individuals to be, but poor places for collaboration … and spontaneity and laughter and humor.” <https://onbeing.org/programs/jerry-colonna-can-you-really-bring-your-whole-self-to-work/>

Plus, even if you try to shut those emotions out, it doesn’t usually work. More often, you end up being influenced by how you’re feeling without being aware of what’s driving you. You also have a harder time understanding why people you work with act a certain way.

If you’re looking for ways to better connect with the people you’re writing to and work with, here are 5 tips to get you started.

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Like many kids, I grew up thinking I should always do my best to make everyone like me. It therefore came as something of a shock to realize that approach backfires with marketing. (This isn’t always a good approach in personal life, either, but that’s another story.)

Why doesn’t this work? Here are three reasons why trying to make everyone like your business backfires.

#1: You’ll Be Bland

You may have seen or heard people who try not to offend anyone. This typically involves them dancing around subjects without ever saying anything too detailed because they’re afraid it will upset another person.

Unfortunately, the end result is that they also don’t say anything particularly interesting. Their message is so vague and general that it could apply to everyone – and it’s therefore not specifically relevant to anyone.

The same is true of your marketing. If you write something so generic that it can apply to almost everyone, you’ll miss pointing out benefits that apply to the smaller group you’re trying to reach.

#2: You’ll Disappoint People

Whatever product or service you’re offering is specific to the needs of a subset of people. Nothing you can sell will appeal to all people, or at least not in the same way.

If you try to attract multiple groups of people with the same message, you won’t get more customers.

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Did you know that for some people, making good choices for the environment can result in other behavior that’s less virtuous?

I’d never heard of this until I read The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal. She writes about many aspects of self-control, and one of the most fascinating to me is about moral licensing.

This doesn’t only apply to environmental choices – this can happen after behavior we consider good. It was eye-opening, and it also got me thinking about what this means from a marketing standpoint.

What is moral licensing?

But first, let’s take a step back to understand what moral licensing is.

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Even if you’ve never heard of the photographer Platon, you may have seen some of his portraits. His pictures have appeared in Time, Rolling Stone, and Esquire, among others, and they include images of all living U.S. Presidents, Mohammed Ali, and Stephen Hawking, to name a few.

Those experiences have given him a somewhat unique perspective on what makes a great leader, an idea he shared at a recent talk. And the quality he mentioned is something great writers have, too.

Empathy.

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Knowledge is often good, but in terms of communication, it can also be a curse.

This is one of the key takeaways in the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck by Chip and Dan Heath. The problem comes when you assume that your readers or listeners have as much knowledge as you do, when that’s not necessarily the case.

To illustrate this point, let me tell you about my grandmother’s peanut butter fudge recipe.

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