The Desert of Arizona
Partly Cloudy 62 Degrees
One of the greatest benefits of the internet in business is that I can “sell” a customer or client something a full year after they first hear about me, after sending a gazillion “marketing pieces” (from the platform) at pretty much zero cost to me.
In other words, if you’re willing to do the work, you can forever banish from your business having to sell your wares to “strangers.”
When you figure out how to turn strangers into people who feel like they know you (because, on some level, they do), then you can market very differently to them.
But you still have to show up. And you have to say things in a way that they are drawn closer to you and not pushed away from you.
If you’re not hard selling though, what are you doing when you’re writing to your prospects, clients and customers?
You are building, expanding and deepening a relationship. So how do you do that with words?
Over the past few years, I’ve realized that writing represents an interesting challenge for some people.
You can talk with them on the phone and in person and they are very interesting. But put a pen in their hand (or a keyboard) and they go cold. Like ice. Words come out but there’s no life there.
It reminds me of the music world. There are plenty of people who are really “good” at playing their instrument. And by that, I mean that they are technically very capable. They can put the notes together.
But music, like writing, is a form of communication. So while you can have all of the “notes,” that still doesn’t mean you are saying something. And when you’re trying to move and/or motivate people, you really want to SAY something.
The trick is to stop trying so hard to write and simply do your best to communicate. Think of how you talk.
As Seth Godin always says (I’m paraphrasing), “I’ve never met someone with talker’s block. It just doesn’t exist.”
The trick really is that you have to stop viewing writing as something different than talking. No one has problems talking.
So just write like you talk. This is such a simple idea but it’s obvious from some people I’ve worked with that it is hard to accept.
The next time you have an email, webpage to write, ask yourself, “What is the ONE idea I want to get across?” Then imagine yourself delivering that to a single individual in the form of talking. Then write that down!