The Old Man and The Pen

This is a simple story about the life of a particular writer, and how he ignored the one thing about his craft that would have given him everything he truly wanted …

A young man in his late twenties decided to become a writer.

At the beginning of the pursuit of his craft, he sought out all the writing advice he could find. He attended writing workshops, went to many parties of a literary nature, drove far into the woods seeking the wisdom of writing retreats, and read countless books on writing by countless other writers.

After several years of this, he began to despair. He seemed to have found the correct knowledge, and a few seemingly valuable contacts along the way, but he hadn’t yet written anything of consequence.

He felt very validated by a number of his very nice friends in his Thursday night writing circle, but he couldn’t keep down the horror in his gut that something was going terribly wrong.

He was having a good time. There were the parties, the drink, the pills, and the long conversations about art and writing.

Then, somewhere in his mid-thirties, the not-so-young-anymore writer looked around and realized that he had wasted many years. This confused him, because his entire circle of friends were “writers” after all.

He had a decision to make.

On a particularly starry Thursday night, the phone rang — like it did almost every other night of the week — at 11:03 p.m. Pacific Time. Only this time, he didn’t answer it. It rang again, and again, and four more times before midnight. He did not pick it up.

Instead of going out with his “writer” friends, that night he just sat at his desk and stared at a blank sheet of paper. He did manage to get 133 words down before sunrise. It was a bad feeling to have accomplished so little — while also missing out on the booze — but it was a much better feeling than anything he could remember in years.

So, he did not answer the phone on the next night, or the next. Instead, he stayed in, staring at blank pages and slowly filling them up with words. And then he just … kept going like that … for another 42 years.

A few weeks before his death, a reporter asked the old writer for the secret to a great literary career.

The old man held up a worn Bic pen and said, “If there is a secret, it’s in here somewhere, swirling around in all that black ink. It spills down on the page, and something happens, or it doesn’t, and you spill more and more of it to try to find your way.”

“What if I use a keyboard instead of a pen?” the reporter asked.

“Don’t get cute with me kid, same damn thing,” the writer said. “Slow and steady.”

The old writer had not become famous or particularly wealthy; he hadn’t won any international awards or even made a single bestseller list. Those things, he said, were not up to him, not in his control, or yours. But, over the course of many years, he had built an unimpeachable reputation, a vast audience, and a very good living.

He could not say what had become of his old “writer” friends, but he was grateful that they had eventually driven him straight into the arms of his chosen craft.

“You can outlast the other guys if you try. If you stick at stuff that bores them, it accrues. Drip, drip, drip you win.”
– Seth Godin

Image source: Eli Francis via Unsplash.

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How to Know Exactly What Content to Deliver to Convert More Prospects

Back in the 1940s, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel conducted an experiment. They showed study participants an animated film consisting of a rectangle with an opening, plus a circle and two triangles in motion.

The participants were then asked to simply describe what they saw in the film. Before you keep reading, take a look at it yourself. I’ll be here when you come back.

So, what did you see? Out of all the study participants, only one responded with “a rectangle with an opening, plus a circle and two triangles in motion.” The rest developed elaborate stories about the simple geometric shapes.

Many participants concluded the circle and the little triangle were in love, and that the evil grey triangle was trying to harm or abduct the circle. Others went further to conclude that the blue triangle fought back against the larger triangle, allowing his love to escape back inside, where they soon rendezvoused, embraced, and lived happily ever after.

That’s pretty wild when you think about it.

The Heider-Simmel experiment became the initial basis of attribution theory, which describes how people explain the behavior of others, themselves, and also, apparently, geometric shapes on the go.

More importantly, people explain things in terms of stories. Even in situations where no story is being intentionally told, we’re telling ourselves a tale as a way to explain our experience of reality.

And yes, we tell ourselves stories about brands, products, and services. Whether you’re consciously telling a story or not, prospects are telling themselves a story about you.

Are you telling a story? And more importantly, does that story resonate with the way your prospective customers and clients are seeing things?

This is the key to knowing what your prospect needs to hear, and when they need to hear it, as part of your overall content marketing strategy. And in a networked, information-rich world where the prospects have all the power, this is your only chance to control the narrative.

What kind of story to tell?

You need to tell a Star Wars story. And by that, I mean you need to take your prospects along a content marketing version of the mythic hero’s journey.

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell identifies a “monomyth” — a fundamental structure common to myths that have survived for thousands of years. Campbell’s identification of these enduring myths from disparate times and regions has inspired modern storytellers to consciously craft their work following the monomyth framework, also known as the hero’s journey.

Most notable among those inspired by the hero’s journey is George Lucas, who acknowledged Campbell’s work as the source of the plot for Star Wars. As a content marketer, you can also consciously incorporate the monomyth into your launches, funnels, and general editorial calendar.

The image above shows the general elements of the hero’s journey, which can be broken down into much more detail than presented here. It’s important to note that not all monomythic stories contain every aspect, but the original Star Wars faithfully follows almost every element of the hero’s journey.

Let’s focus on the first two steps of the journey, in the “ordinary world” before the journey truly begins. Here’s how those elements occurred in the original Star Wars.

• Luke is living in the ordinary world of his home planet, working on the family farm.
• The “call to adventure” is R2-D2’s holographic message from Princess Leia, the classic princess in distress.
• Luke initially refuses the call due to his family obligations, until his aunt and uncle are killed.
• Luke meets his mentor and guide, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who convinces Luke to proceed with his heroic journey.
• Obi-Wan gives Luke a gift that determines his destiny — his father’s lightsaber.

How does this apply to content marketing? Simple. As I mentioned last time:

Your prospect is Luke. You are Obi-Wan.

The mistake most often made in marketing is thinking of your business as the hero, resulting in egocentric messages that no one else cares about. The prospect is always the primary hero, because they are the one going on the journey — whether big or small — to solve a problem or satisfy a desire.

• The prospect starts off in the ordinary world of their lives.
• The call to adventure is an unsolved problem or unfulfilled desire.
• There’s resistance to solving that problem or satisfying the desire.
• A mentor (your brand) appears that helps them proceed with the journey.
• You deliver a gift (your content) that ultimately leads to a purchase

By making the prospect the hero, your brand also becomes a hero in the prospect’s story.

And by accepting the role of mentor with your content, your business accomplishes its goals while helping the prospect do the same. Which is how business is supposed to work, right?

8 core steps in the buyer’s journey

I’ve been using the hero’s journey to teach marketing and sales since 2007. I’ve found that just the act of thinking of the prospect as the hero makes you a better content marketer.

When you think in terms of empowering people to solve their problem by playing the role of mentor, you’re naturally performing better than competitors who take an egocentric approach.

This is also the exact way we come up with content marketing strategies for our own launches, funnels, and general editorial calendar. After years of using this strategic process, I’ve found that every buyer’s journey contains key points where you must deliver the right information at the right time to succeed at an optimal level.

Remember, each journey is tied to a particular who that you have documented. Some people create content journeys for multiple personas, but my advice is that you pick one at first and focus. Even Apple stuck with one target persona for the entirety of the Get a Mac campaign.

You’ll notice I use the word “problem” below, rather than “problem or desire.” An unfulfilled desire is a problem in the mind of the prospect, so it works on its own.

1. Ordinary World: This is the world (and worldview) that your ideal prospect lives in. She may be aware of the problem that she has, but she hasn’t yet resolved to do something about it. You understand how this person thinks, sees, feels, and behaves due to the empathy mapping process.

2. Call to Adventure: The prospect decides to take action to solve the problem. It could be a New Year’s resolution, a longstanding goal, or a problem that rears its head for the first time.

3. Resistance to the Call: At this point, the prospect starts to waver in her commitment to solving the problem. Maybe it seems too hard, too expensive, too time consuming, or simply too impractical. As we’ll discuss in a bit, this is a key content inflection point.

4. The Mentor and the Gift: This is the point that you are initially accepted as a mentor that guides the buyer’s journey. The prospect accepts your offer of a gift, in the form of information, that promises to help her solve the problem.

5. Crossing the Threshold: This is the point of purchase where the prospect believes that your product or service will lead to the problem being solved, which will lead to transformation. The most important thing to understand is that, unlike flawed funnel metaphors, the journey does not end at purchase.

6. Traveling the Road: The customer begins using the product or service with the goal of achieving success in the context of the problem. Who cares if the customer stops the journey right after purchase, right? Wrong — too often this leads to a refund request; plus you miss out on the huge benefits that accompany a happy customer.

7. Seizing the Treasure: The customer experiences success with your product or service. What does this look like for them and you? How will you know when it happens?

8. The New Ordinary: The customer has experienced a positive transaction with you, and yet we’re just now getting to the really good stuff. This is a perfect time to prime them for repeat or upsell purchases or referrals. At this point, deliver content that aims at retention for recurring revenue products, and make savvy requests for direct referrals, testimonials, and word of mouth.

Of the eight, only Traveling the Road isn’t universal — if you’re an electrician, you show up and either fix the problem or don’t. But if you’re selling software-as-a-service, for example, content that gets users engaged with the platform is critical to reducing churn.

These core steps can provide you with a beginning framework for a detailed map of the buyer’s journey. The next step is to add the touchpoints that are unique to your product or service.

Your unique journey map

You may be thinking about how exactly you’re supposed to map this out. Fortunately, there’s already an established procedure for this, just as during the who phase.

An experience map is a visual representation of the path a consumer takes — from beginning to end — with your content, and then with your product or service.

By mapping the journey, you know where the additional crucial touchpoints are, and what content can empower the journey to continue.

Here’s an example from Adaptive Path for Rail Europe:

This map demonstrates the journey a consumer would take while riding the trains in Europe. It follows her from the early stages of research and planning to the end of her trip.

You see what she is doing (searching Google, looking up timetables), what she is thinking during each action (do I have everything I need, and am I on the right train?), and what she is feeling (stressed: I’m about to leave the country and Rail Europe won’t answer the phone).

Do you see the correlation with the empathy mapping exercise you did back when developing a snapshot of your ideal customer? It’s no coincidence that we’re now applying what the prospect is “Thinking,” “Seeing,” “Doing,” and “Feeling” in their ordinary world to the journey they need to travel.

In a piece called the Anatomy of an Experience Map, Chris Risdon at Adaptive Path suggests your experience map should have these five components:

1. The lens: This is how a particular person (or persona) views the journey. Keep in mind, this journey will not be the same for everyone. You will more than likely have more than one experience map.
2. The journey model: This is the actual design of the map. If all goes well, it should render insight to answer questions like “What happens here? What’s important about this transition?”
3. Qualitative insight: This is where the Thinking-Seeing-Doing-Feeling of an empathy map comes in handy.
4. Quantitative information: This is data that brings attention to certain aspects of your map. It reveals information like “80 percent of people abandon the process at this touchpoint.”
5. Takeaways: This is where the map earns its money. What are the conclusions? Opportunities? Threats to the system? Does it identify your strengths? Highlight your weaknesses?

You can find more detailed information on creating a customer experience map here. Like empathy mapping, it can be done solo, but works even better as a collaborative process, so that everyone on your team understands the journey from the perspective of the prospect and subsequent customer.

Mapping the 7 key influence principles

When you consider influential content, you may naturally think that it’s about how your present the information. While that’s true from an engagement standpoint, which principle of influence to apply and when to emphasize it is an exercise in what as well.

In other words, beyond the raw information of the what, you’ll also want to identify the order of emphasis for things like reciprocity, social proof, authority, liking, commitment and consistency, unity, and scarcity.

Every successful digital marketer I know purposefully applies those seven principles in their content and copy, because they all treat Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini as their bible. If you haven’t read it, you should — but in the meantime check out this six-page PDF that explains the original six principles, and here’s an article by Sonia Simone on the all-important 7th principle of unity.

At Rainmaker Digital, we think in terms of four different types of content when mapping the buyer’s journey. Keep in mind that great marketing content contains all of these elements; you’re simply selecting a category based on the primary aim of the individual piece at the appropriate time.

First up we have Attraction content, otherwise known as “top of funnel” information. This corresponds best with the Resistance to the Call point of the journey — it addresses the problem while also addressing common objections to moving forward. In addition to creating the feeling that “you’re reading their mind,” you’re also invoking early influence through reciprocity, social proof through share numbers, and establishing authority.

Next up, you have your cornerstone influence principle thanks to Authority content. The important thing is that you demonstrate authority, rather than claim it. Your Attraction content sets the stage, and your Authority content should be gated behind an email opt-in. At this stage, you’re establishing clear authority, continuing to leverage reciprocity and social proof, and adding liking, plus commitment and consistency thanks to the opt-in.

Affinity content solidly positions you as a “likable expert,” but it goes beyond that. This is where you let your core values shine. You reflect the prospect’s worldview back to them in a completely authentic way, prompting the powerful principle of unity. Never underestimate how often people choose to do business with people they like, and who also see the world like they do.

Finally, it all comes down to Action. Unlike Phil Connors, you don’t look for ultimate action at the beginning of the journey. But you do rely on smaller actions along the way, especially at the bridge between Attraction content and Authority content. That said, the key influence principle at this stage is scarcity, which you’ve earned the right to employ thanks to the other six principles. People fear missing out more than they desire gain, so make sure to use it ethically.

This is the outline of your story

It’s tempting at this point to try to imagine how you’re going to execute on your strategy, but you’re not quite there yet. Soon, I’ll share with you a “real world” example of how this looks in action.

For now, map the journey experience. In addition to your character, you’ve now got the plot points in the narrative you’re weaving.

All that’s left is to figure out how to tell the story. That’s up next week.

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‘What Kind of Content Should I Create?’

Last week, we talked about how to really understand who is in your audience.

This week, we’re shifting into what kind of message they want and need from you. Brian kicked off on Monday with a piece of classic marketing advice (exemplified by a classic American comic film):

It’s not enough to just know your audience. You also need to put their interests and desires ahead of your own.

That might sound impossibly idealistic — but in fact, it’s pure pragmatism.

On Tuesday, Beth Hayden gave some specific thoughts on how to do it, by creating extraordinarily generous content that can open all kinds of doors for your business.

The Copyblogger FM podcast this week talks about your customer’s path to purchase and how to make it a little more appealing (and effective). I talk about the right places to ask for a sale and how you can discover what kinds of content to create.

In Wednesday’s post, I continued that theme of the content marketing path — taking a winding road through a new persuasion “formula” I’m calling ECUBED. I’d love your thoughts on how you’d tweak or add to that formula — drop by and leave a comment?

Last chance to get an exceptional price on the Rainmaker Platform

By the way, I wanted to remind you that this Friday (that’s tomorrow), January 27, 2017 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, the price of the Rainmaker Platform is going to rise significantly.

Sign up at the current lower price and we’ll lock that in for you as long as you keep your site on Rainmaker.

Get started here.

In February, we’ll be holding a special series of educational webinars tailored to Rainmaker owners. So if you do decide to join us on the Platform, you’ll have some very specific, tactical business help to get traction and get your business moving.

Catch you next week!

— Sonia Simone
Chief Content Officer, Rainmaker Digital

Catch up on this week’s content

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The Art of Seductive Content Marketing

by Brian Clark

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3 Ways to Become More Generous and Grow Your Audience

by Beth Hayden

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Don’t Get Flattened on the Attention Superhighway

by Sonia Simone

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3 Content Marketing Strategy Fails (and How to Fix Them)

by Sonia Simone

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Enhance Your Freelance, with Jennifer Bourn

by Brian Clark

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How Screenwriter and ‘All Our Wrong Todays’ Author Elan Mastai Writes: Part One

by Kelton Reid

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A Crash Course in Copyright for Creators

by Brian Clark

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One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic (Two Attempts)

by Jerod Morris & Jon Nastor

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Don’t Get Flattened on the Attention Superhighway

When we talk about content marketing strategy, it’s amazing how often people think that means:

Can I Haz Moar Peoples!!!

(English translation: How can I get more traffic to my site?)

That’s not new — the quest for eyeballs is as old as online business.

And it does matter. It’s important to have a critical mass of folks who know you exist. Ask anyone trying to get a business off the ground with an email list of 34 people, 8 of whom they’re related to.

You need a big enough audience to allow for a meaningful response when you try out a new content idea, or craft an offer for your product or service.

But there’s no shortage of online publishers with big audiences and tiny businesses. If all you do is stand on the Information Superhighway trying to flag people down, you’re going to get flattened.

Instead, craft a thoughtful, well-designed path. Lead prospects from the noise and clutter of the larger web to a sustained and valuable connection that solves the problems they care about.

Smart business isn’t about gaining a massive amount of attention. It’s about gaining the right kind of attention from the right people … and continuing the journey from there.

Copywriting formulas

When you want to persuade, it’s useful to take a look at the classic “formulas” of copywriting — because copywriting is simply persuasion that takes place (partly or completely) without the help of an individual human salesperson.

Most of these formulas begin with the letter A — which stands for attention. And that’s what most marketing strategy tends to focus on: how to get the attention of all those distracted folks zooming around the web.

The granddaddy of persuasion formulas is AIDA. That stands for:

Attention — Interest — Desire — Action

Back when copywriting was very, very hard, you had to do all of those steps with one piece of content, often something printed on paper and delivered by post.

Today, we get a lot more shots. We can handle each of those elements with individual content. Even better, we can craft multiple pieces of content to serve different functions.

So if you need to spend more time addressing a topic that interests your audience, you can craft a content series, or even an entire content library.

Another time-tested formula is P-A-S.

Problem — Agitate — Solve

This one doesn’t start with A, but it does kick off with a compelling audience problem, which inherently tends to grab attention. Agitation means getting into the problem in a deeper, more emotionally resonant way … and then the business can step in to solve the problem.

These are good formulas, and they still have their place. But in a content marketing environment, they tend to dramatically underestimate the complex role of those middle letters.

What happens in the middle?

Attention strategies are fun to learn about. Potent headlines, exciting images, killer hooks.

But when you’re working on a landing page, a video sales letter, an infomercial, or a 15-second radio ad, the middle can be the toughest part.

The middle starts to look like actual work.

You’re cultivating the relationship. That means a significant part of the “middle” of your content marketing is about offering value generously and being a decent human.

You nurture the relationship with the audience by offering:

• Interesting educational material that helps them do things they want to do
• Content that shows your audience who you are and what you believe
• Opportunities for small, low-risk commitments, to test the waters and experience what you have to offer

Where are the rough patches?

Most paths have some rough spots — places that aren’t as easy to navigate.

When we’re talking about your content marketing path, these include the objections your audience will have to moving forward with your offer. These are things like:

• It seems expensive.
• It seems complicated.
• It seems like it only works for other people.
• It seems hard to get started.
• It seems like a long time before I’ll see results.

A smart, well-structured content path will include work that speaks directly to these objections.

You might tell stories that show the audience how someone else wrestled with the issue. Or offer clear, simple explanations of product features — perhaps an infographic or explainer video — to show how your solution overcomes the problem.

If I were going to write a persuasion formula

If I wanted to craft a persuasion formula for the 21st century, what would it look like?

I’d need to start by knowing who I wanted to speak with. What do they care about? What kinds of problems could I help them with? So the first letter might be K for Knowledge or E for Empathy.

From there, I think I’d go to Connection rather than Attention — simply because attention today is so fleeting. I’d try to spark a moment of connection instead, to have some chance of a more enduring relationship.

In my experience, building connection usually combines speaking to a problem the audience cares about and speaking from a position of shared values.

That kind of principled problem-solving constructs a content path that is marked by Usefulness. What kinds of content could I create that my audience would find valuable? What problems could I solve? Is there some “low hanging fruit” I could help my audience pick?

What Objections could I address? What risks could I manage for my audience?

Along the path, I’d try to craft some introductory Offers that helped people try my ideas out for themselves. In other words, some inexpensive ways they could pick up products or services — maybe even free products or services — that would help them get something they want.

If there were key Beliefs, assumptions, or convictions that the audience needed to adopt to go further, I’d also talk about those. For example, at Copyblogger, we believe it’s unacceptably risky to put your entire business on a platform someone else controls, like Facebook or Tumblr.

I’d use my useful content path to make the Case for my solution to my audience’s problems — keeping an eye open for the audience’s responses and desires, not just my own assumptions about what they need or want.

Along the path, I’d remember to Ask for the audience’s action on a more significant offer and Measure how they respond.

Put another way, I’d measure their Engagement by seeing if there’s a product or service they feel ready to buy.

Did they like the offer a lot? Did lots of folks complete the transaction? I’d Iterate and craft more offers like that one. Did they hate it? Did just a few or no people take me up on the offer? Again, iteration would lead me to put something together that was better aligned with the audience’s desires.

Finally, I’d work on Sustaining the relationship. It’s great to do business once — but it’s more satisfying (and makes better business sense) to create long-term relationships in which the audience and the business grow together.

To that end, I’d make a commitment to Delivering value over time and keep looking for new ways to serve that audience.

That leaves me with something like ECUOOBCAMEISD. Hm.

ECUBED?

OK, how about ECUBED?

• Empathize
• Connect
• Useful, make myself (Yoda-talking I am)
• Beliefs, speak to
• Engage audience action by making an offer
• Deliver value over time

I definitely had to massage a few things to come up with a decent acronym. So, how would you tweak it?

Let us know your thoughts and suggestions on what this kind of “formula” might look like in the comments.

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3 Ways to Become More Generous and Grow Your Audience

Giving to your audience is one of the foundations of any smart content marketing strategy.

To grow your audience and get better results for your business, it might be time to expand your content beyond blog posts, podcast episodes, or newsletters and find more ways to be truly generous.

The idea is:

Don’t hold back, don’t be stingy, and don’t cut corners. Just give, and give freely.

Looking to become a “giver,” rather than a “taker?” Let’s talk about why generosity works and how you can give your audience more value.

Why giving generously works

You might be thinking:

“How in the world does giving generously help my business grow?”

Generosity works when you’re marketing your business because it:

• Pulls people toward you and your message. Instead of chasing down prospects and begging them to pay attention to you (with advertising or other traditional marketing methods), you attract your perfect customers and clients to what you give away. They come to you.
• Establishes you as a go-to expert and trusted advisor in your field. When people know you are a giver — and they like what you give away — they recognize you as someone who can be trusted and relied upon.
• Helps you get more referrals. Giving generously puts you in front of your audience regularly — which means they will remember your company name when they need (or someone they know needs) a product or service like yours.
• Gives you the opportunity to interact without pitching. This one is big. If you don’t give generously, your options for conversations with your customers are limited to one extremely limited theme: SELL, SELL, SELL. That’s boring and aggravating for your audience members, and uncomfortable for you, too.

What to give away

Wondering what you should give to your audience?

There are the usual content marketing possibilities, like blog posts, videos, podcast episodes, webinars, and ebooks. These are all great choices.

Also consider giving:

• Live presentations, or hosting group discussions and Q&A sessions
• Short consultations, if you’re a service provider
• Introductions to other helpful people in your community (or in your strategic partner network)
• Advice and support in social media groups, like Facebook or LinkedIn groups
• Lists of recommended resources, tools, websites, and blogs

Think about your perfect client or customer and ask yourself:

“What could I give her that would really improve her life?”

With some creativity, you’ll be able to create high-value resources that don’t hurt your business model.

The three methods below will help you become extraordinarily generous.

1. Don’t err on the side of caution

Chris Garrett’s article, How to Decide Which Content to Sell and What to Give Away for Free, answers a lot of common questions about this topic.

The entire article is helpful, but what I like best about the post is that Chris advises content marketers to not be concerned about giving away too much:

“People worry about this issue of which content to sell and what to give away for free.

And yes, it involves a lot of subjective judgment.

But the good news is that I have yet to find someone who has given away too much.

I don’t believe it is possible to be too helpful or too generous … provided you manage your time and energy, and that people know you are in business.”

Don’t be afraid to give generously on a regular basis. No matter how much you give away, there will still be people who need implementation advice or additional products and services.

Before you sell to your prospects, they must see you as an authority — and giving freely helps you achieve that.

2. Try content curation

Your prospects — regardless of what niche or industry you’re in — are most likely swimming in a giant river of content. They need someone to help filter out the noise and gather the best resources, tools, and content on a particular topic.

That’s exactly what smart content curators do. They pick the most useful articles, videos, and podcast episodes on the web and compile them together into an easy-to-consume format (like a blog post or email newsletter).

When you publish your curated content regularly, people will learn to count on you as a reliable source of up-to-date, useful information, and you’ll become their go-to person for that topic.

Ryan Hanley’s weekly newsletter is a great example of how to practice smart content curation. Each week, Ryan sends his subscribers seven important articles on content marketing that he’s selected, along with a little insight of his own to help people understand and integrate the information in the articles.

For more advice on curated email newsletters (and a decision tree that helps you assess if curating content is right for you), check out this Copyblogger article and infographic.

3. Adopt a policy of generosity

Adam Grant, author of the extraordinary book Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, said:

“Givers see interdependence as a source of strength.”

The way I look at it, we all want our businesses to grow stronger. If you adopt an attitude of generosity with your prospects, you’ll be positioned to grow stronger and more profitable.

Seek out opportunities to improve your prospects’ lives.

Always ask yourself, “Is this something my community would find useful?”

For example, you can shine the spotlight on a community member who is making great progress or collaborate with a strategic partner on a project that benefits your audience.

Gather your ideas in a computer file or notebook, so you always have a list of content options to pull from.

Become a radically generous content marketer

As content marketers, we already provide value for our audience members. But taking your giving game up a notch could help spark new breakthroughs for your business.

So ask questions. Pay attention. Stay open. And keep giving, over and over and over again.

Your prospects lives will improve dramatically, and so will yours.

Ready to discover what a winning content marketing strategy actually looks like?

Check out our new series that walks you through the Who, What, and How of focused and effective content marketing:

The Simple 3-Step Process for Creating a Winning Content Marketing Strategy

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The Art of Seductive Content Marketing

Phil Connors is having a bad day … over, and over, and over.

The arrogant Pittsburgh weatherman has once again been sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He soon discovers that visiting once a year wasn’t all that bad, given that he’s now living this particular Groundhog Day again, and again, and again.

It all begins at 6:00 a.m., the same way each day. The clock radio clicks on with Sonny & Cher’s I Got You Babe, followed by the declaration, “It’s Groundhog Day … and it’s cold out there!”

After the initial shock wears off, Phil (played by national treasure Bill Murray) realizes he’s in a time loop. No matter what he does each day, there are no lingering consequences for his actions, because he wakes up and starts over again fresh the next morning.

This initially leads to hedonistic behavior, such as binge eating and drinking, manipulative one-night stands, and criminal acts. Eventually despair sets in, and Connors repeatedly attempts suicide.

No dice — he still wakes up the same way the next morning. It’s not until Phil commits to bettering himself and serving others that he achieves redemption and breaks out of the loop.

The film Groundhog Day is regarded as a contemporary classic. In 2006, it was added to the United States National Film Registry and deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Further, the movie has been described by some religious leaders as the “most spiritual film of our time,” in that it represents the concept of transcendence.

Buddhists and Hindus see the repeated day as a representation of reincarnation on the long path to enlightenment. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the time loop can be thought of as purgatory.

Don’t get me wrong. Groundhog Day is a hilarious film, and Bill Murray considers it his finest performance. But it’s also seriously deep. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review said, “… we have what many believe is the best cinematic moral allegory popular culture has produced in decades.”

Groundhog Day also contains an example of marketing gone terribly wrong. This travesty happens all too often in the real world, which means it’s what you want to avoid at all costs.

A tale of a data-driven marketing fail

In between his hedonism and subsequent despair, Phil decides to achieve a different goal. He begins romantically pursuing his news producer, Rita Hanson (played by Andie MacDowell).

He starts by being uncharacteristically kind to her, and then asks her to describe her ideal man. Through day after day of similar encounters, he amasses an amazing amount of information about her.

Phil finds out her favorite drink, and her ideal toast to drink it to. He knows she hates white chocolate and loves Rocky Road ice cream. He even quotes from Baudelaire after finding out she majored in 19th-century French poetry.

Through his unique situation, Connors discovers all the right information in order to arrive at the “perfect” romantic evening with her “ideal” man. It takes weeks, but as far as Rita knows, Phil has simply transformed from the jerk she works with to an amazing person in a single day.

Talk about marketing research, huh? He’s got his “who” down cold.

Except there’s one problem — Phil’s only goal is to have sex with Rita. There’s literally no tomorrow for him, so he has to close the deal on the first date, or not at all. Hence, he can’t contain his insincerity despite all the valuable intelligence he has on her.

Phil even stoops so low as to tell her he loves her when she resists his advances. Each evening invariably ends with Rita slapping Phil’s face, and what she says to him is especially telling:

“I could never love you, because you’ll never love anyone but yourself.”

Content marketing as seduction

In marketing and sales circles, there’s a running joke about losing a prospect thanks to the equivalent of trying to propose marriage on the first date. And yet, it doesn’t stop it from happening, even with people who should know better.

Phil has a treasure-trove of data about Rita, just as modern marketers have big data about you. And yet Phil tries to fake authenticity, engagement, and connection, which Rita sees right through.

The same thing happens every day at all levels of the marketing spectrum.

Think of it this way — Rita reveals her core values, and Phil tries to reflect them back to her. It works, up until the point that Phil’s desire to close the deal on his terms, based on his own desires, tramples all over Rita’s core values.

I’ve described content marketing as a story you tell over time. If that story places the prospect at the center of the story and delivers the right information at the right time, you have a courtship.

If you take it a step further and deliver the information in a way that delights the prospect at each step, you have something even more powerful. You have a seduction.

The word seduction can certainly have a manipulative connotation. But when you truly know your prospect, and your core values truly do align with theirs, and you truly do communicate based on their needs first, well …

They get what they want, and you get what you want. That’s not manipulation; that’s just good business.

Empower the journey

Before the internet, inadequacy marketing ruled. Without access to alternative perspectives, prospects were targeted by marketers with messages that positioned the brand as the hero, which promised to save the poor prospect from the anxiety manufactured by the message.

The imbalance in access to information favored the seller. Now, prospects are empowered to self-educate, which means the buyer’s journey is well underway before any particular seller is even aware of it.

Today, prospects face a different form of anxiety. The abundant access to information from thousands of competing sources threatens to overwhelm the prospect. That’s where you come in.

Your brand becomes heroic in the sense that you arrive to further empower the prospect to solve their problem. You help them make sense of the relevant information. And in the process, you demonstrate — rather than claim — that your product or service is the perfect solution for that particular person.

So yes, your brand can become a hero. As long as you never forget that the prospect is the main hero, or protagonist, of a journey that they are at the center of.

This is why Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, or hero’s journey, provides the perfect metaphor, and map, of a content marketing strategy that succeeds. It forces you to keep your focus on empowering them, with you and your content playing the role of the mentor, or guide.

The easiest way to understand this is to look at the character relationships in some of the best-known examples of Campbell’s hero’s journey in popular culture — films such as Star Wars, The Matrix, and The Wizard of Oz.

• The prospect is Luke Skywalker; you’re Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• The prospect is Neo; you’re Morpheus.
• The prospect is Dorothy; you’re Glinda the Good Witch.

Structuring your content marketing strategy in this way leads to success. By understanding your prospect as well as possible, you’re now in a position to guide and empower her to solve the problem with you.

What you say matters most

“What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.”
– David Ogilvy

It might come as a surprise to hear that from Ogilvy, a famous “Mad Man” and copywriter who made millions by finding just the right way to say things. But he’s right … if what you’re saying is wrong, it doesn’t matter how well you say it.

Next week, we’re going to get into actually mapping the buyer’s journey, so that we know what to say, and when.

The key point of this article is for you to understand that because we’re guiding the prospect on a journey, when is an inherent aspect of the what.

You can choose to rush things and lose, or travel alongside the prospect and eventually win.

Phil Connors does end up with Rita, but only when he actually becomes her ideal man instead of trying to fake it. The time loop ends thanks to an authentic seduction.

Here’s to not making the same mistake over, and over, and over again … at least with your content marketing. Mapping the buyer’s journey is the next step in getting it right sooner.

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Connect with Your Audience, Connect to Your Power

You may have noticed that our content this week shifted forward a day — we took Monday off to honor the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Then on Tuesday, we started talking a lot about connections — especially the connection with our audiences. Brian kicked things off with a post about one of my favorite topics — our ability to attract the kind of customers and clients we want, by thinking carefully about the type of messages we create.

The first step is to get very clear about who your people are (and aren’t). Brian has some specific exercises for you on how to do that.

Fear is the great enemy of connection. On Wednesday, I offered — from my viewpoint as a lifelong coward — some ideas about how to find the courage to be more genuine and how to handle some of those tricky days in a healthy way.

On Thursday, Robert Bruce, who’s been working hard behind the scenes at Rainmaker FM, emerged to break his long, public silence. If we’d thought this through, we would have timed it for Groundhog Day. Never mind — he shared his thoughts on some of the deep habits to cultivate when we want to create something worthwhile.

Over on the Unemployable podcast, Brian talked with Andrew Warner about how to become a (much) better interviewer. On Copyblogger FM, I gave some detailed thoughts on how to leave blog comments that truly build connection. (Sounds simple, but a lot of folks need a refresher.) And on The Showrunner, Jon Nastor and Jerod Morris discussed the value of emerging from behind the microphone and meeting your audience at face-to-face meetups.

As always, we love to connect with what you’re up to! Drop us a comment on the post (or posts) that most resonated with you … and I’m looking forward to connecting with you next week!

— Sonia Simone
Chief Content Officer, Rainmaker Digital

Catch up on this week’s content

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How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content

by Brian Clark

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Practical Tools for Finding Courage and Revealing Your True Voice

by Sonia Simone

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The Subterranean Foundations of Any Good Content Marketing Strategy

by Robert Bruce

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How to Write (Much Better) Blog Comments

by Sonia Simone

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The Four-Step Process that Transforms Your Business (Without Knocking Yourself Out)

by Brian Clark

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How the Editor of ‘Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living’ Manjula Martin Writes: Part Two

by Kelton Reid

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Why Doing Less Can Generate More for Your Online Business

by Sean Jackson

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Become an Expert Interviewer, with Andrew Warner

by Brian Clark

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The Value of Meeting Your Audience in Person

by Jerod Morris & Jon Nastor

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The Subterranean Foundations of Any Good Content Marketing Strategy

Let’s go deep for a moment.

Below the surface, not in the 20th-century French existentialist sense, but to a much more simple understanding of depth that can actually start to make things happen for your content marketing strategy … whatever it is you’re trying to do online.

As Mr. Sartre once said, “Words are loaded pistols.” I happen to believe that is a true statement. But today, without a largely invisible foundation that amplifies your words, they may as well be as impotent as an unloaded .38 Special.

Here are three simple “subterranean” lessons I’ve learned (and imperfectly used) over the years, that you’ll find might make all the difference in the visible strategy you employ out there in the world.

1. Be consistent

Take a minute to think about your favorite TV show.

It airs once a week (I’m not talking about binge-watching Netflix shows here) and in some small sense, you really look forward to it.

At the appointed time, you’ve got your setup ready on the couch or in bed, happy to just check out for an hour after a long day. You click the box on … only to find that it’s not airing tonight. It’s a rerun. Or worse, it was preempted by some “special” political event.

No question this is a first-world problem, but it’s also annoying. Maybe a better example for you would be a canceled lecture or concert, or some other live event you got tickets for that’s since been rescheduled.

You get the picture. You’re a fan, you’re looking forward to this thing, and it’s not happening at the time you expected it to.

Now multiply this scenario by two or three times … if your favorite show didn’t air as scheduled for weeks on end, you might even give up on it, or forget about it.

You need to remember that when it comes to your own media strategy … however small in comparison to cable television.

Your audience, or the people who will become part of your audience, eventually come to rely on you in small and/or large ways, depending on what you provide.

If you can’t be reliable for them, they’ll find that information, entertainment, or education elsewhere. In the blink of an eye.

Be consistent, dear reader.

2. Repetition, repetition, repetition

Somewhere back a few years ago, Guy Kawasaki made a pretty good point.

It was about republishing content, and he said something about the fact that if you turn on the TV at any given time you’ll see cable and network channels repeating the episodes of television shows you’ve already seen over, and over, and over again.

Reruns.

The networks aren’t the least bit ashamed or nervous to re-air these episodes … hell, they spent hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars producing the stuff!

They want to make sure that these shows — and the attached advertising — are seen. So, Mr. Kawasaki argues, we should do the same with our content.

On Twitter, retweet your stuff multiple times.

On your blog, update and repost articles from your archive.

Same for podcasts.

And if you don’t “rerun” old stuff, at the very least you should constantly be looking for syndication opportunities.

Does it piss you off when you see a rerun on television? Sometimes … see the “Be Consistent” section above.

But sometimes you want to watch the same thing again. Sometimes, you’re even grateful for that 3:00 p.m. Saturday airing of a “Sopranos” episode that you’ve already seen 11 times.

And, don’t forget that old advertising line:

“Until somebody sees it seven times, they haven’t seen it at all.”

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

3. Be patient

This is likely the most important point to understand and internalize as you begin to publish.

No matter how good you are — no matter how hard you work — this thing of yours is going to take time to spread. A lot of it.

There’s no shortcut here; there’s no quick way around. You’ve got to publish your stuff over a very long period of time.

You have to be good and you have to be patient.

Nothing is going to happen in the first year. It’s likely that nothing will happen in the second or even third year.

The sooner you understand this, the better off you’ll be. As powerful as the internet is, there is no such thing as overnight success.

You need to start with the clear understanding that you’ll be publishing into the void — with no results at all — for at least two years.

Counterintuitive as it sounds, if you can do that, it’ll make things a lot easier for you. Sean McCabe has a good, short essay on this topic that you should read (or watch) right now.

Simple, but not easy

There’s a good chance that many of you will read this and think it’s way too simple for where you’re at. That’s fine, good luck to you, and Happy Halloween.

Looking back on my nearly 13 years posting stuff to the internet, I wish someone would have put a blog post like this in my face and made me read it.

Which is precisely why I wrote it.

Image source: Joshua Stannard via Unsplash.

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Practical Tools for Finding Courage and Revealing Your True Voice

In 1911, a man known as “Ishi” (the name just means man in his language), believed to be the last of the Yahi people, emerged from the wilderness after 44 years.

He was taken from Oroville, California to San Francisco by an anthropologist, to work with a group that wanted to learn more about Ishi’s language and culture.

When the train came into the station to take him to San Francisco, Ishi went to stand quietly behind a pillar. Puzzled, the researchers beckoned to him, and Ishi joined them and got on the train.

They asked him about it later, and he said his people had seen the smoky, noisy train snaking through the valley for many years, with faces visible through the windows. The Yahi had always believed it was a demon that ate people.

The researchers asked, if that is what he believed, how could he have possibly gathered the courage to get on board?

Ishi’s response was:

“Well, my life has taught me to be more curious than afraid.”

I first read that story in Pema Chödrön’s book Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living. Ishi’s story is sad and complex, but he struck the people who knew him at the end of his life as being markedly calm, measured, and kind.

His words have never left me — they strike me as being a true motto for a life worth living.

Fast-forward a few decades. Last summer, I was doing an “ask me anything” session in Chicago with Andy Crestodina, and someone asked me:

“Where do you get your courage?”

I genuinely thought it was a funny question. I told her that I don’t think of myself as particularly courageous at all. In fact, I’d say I’m scared most of the time.

But if Ishi, who had survived so much that he outlived all of his people, could be more curious than afraid, I’ve never thought I had much of an excuse for holding back just because something scared me.

Pursue the beautiful and rocky path

When you’re finding the courage to share your authentic voice, I can almost promise you’ll have days when you ask yourself:

What on earth was I thinking?

There will be trolls, creeps, delusional people, and the occasional idiot.

People will question your motives, your competence, your scruples, your beliefs, your body fat composition, and what you’re wearing.

I’m not going to tell you that it doesn’t matter, because that probably won’t help. If you could shrug these things off so easily, you probably wouldn’t have clicked through to read this article.

But I will tell you that courage is a habit, and you can get better at it.

Allow me, a lifelong coward, to share some of the techniques I’ve learned for being more curious than afraid.

Discover the biology of courage

I’ll start with a resource I discovered not too long ago. If you haven’t picked up Kelly McGonigal’s book The Upside of Stress yet, I found it fantastically useful.

It pulls together a lot of research to support a single point: Despite what we believe, stress is not always harmful.

How we think about our stress affects how our bodies react to it. For example, when people perceive stress as a sign that they’re doing something that matters — something hard but rewarding — their stress-related health risks drop dramatically.

“How you think and how you act can transform your experience of stress. When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage. And when you choose to connect with others under stress, you can create resilience.”
– Kelly McGonigal, “How to Make Stress Your Friend” (TED talk transcript)

But “embrace your stress” only goes so far. You’ll also want to take some practical measures to neutralize it.

Protect your privacy

One concrete thing you can do is reduce the number of things you need to worry about.

If you’re going to claim a public voice, it just makes sense to be smart about keeping yourself secure. There are sensible actions everyone can take to keep our sanity and protect our privacy.

Before you explore the technical solutions, start by making a commitment to be intentional about how much personal information you share.

Decide how many details you want to share about your family. You can draw this line wherever you feel is best for you — there are plenty of folks with successful online businesses who share pictures of their kids. Just be conscious about it, and be consistent.

Protect your website. Use hosting, themes, and plugins that have a good security reputation. Subscribe to a monitoring service like Sucuri to make sure bad guys aren’t doing anything weird to your site.

Protect your online privacy. It’s always smart to use free, legal privacy protections.

For most of us, trolls aren’t much more than an annoyance. But if you were lying awake at night worrying about burglars, it would make sense to get up and lock the door. These are straightforward measures that can help prevent problems.

When you do encounter trolls, block and report them promptly. Don’t engage with them, and don’t try to convince them to be good people.

At first, you’ll be sorely tempted. You’ll think that if you just calmly explain to them that you are not, in fact, possessed by Satan, surely they’ll see reason.

I can tell you from annoying experience, it doesn’t work. Worse, it’s an invitation to the troll to live rent-free inside your head. Block them so they can’t keep spewing their nonsense at you, report them if it’s an option, and move on to more important things.

If you’d like more thoughts on how to deal with trolls, you might benefit from this podcast episode, in which I compare trolls to flaming bags of poop.

But courage is about more than protecting ourselves against creeps.

Focus on service

You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating: When you know why you’re doing what you do, you’ll have more courage, more power, and more resilience.

Making a living is a perfectly good place to start. It’s where I started, and it’s still important. I have bills to pay, like anyone else does.

But a life spent just paying the bills becomes a grind.

Business, and especially online-based business, is built on helping people.

When you know who you help, and why it matters, it will give you an energy and resilience that’s hard to describe.

The first time you get a heartfelt message from someone telling you that you meaningfully changed their life, you’ll realize:

This is why I do this.

And, unlike so many things in life, it never gets stale.

Find your people

Are you going to have tough days? Maybe even serious crises of faith?

Sure you will.

Most of those outwardly ultra-confident people you see have moments, or days — or whole years — when they feel afraid and small. Being fearless is not normal, and it’s not beneficial.

The handful of genuinely fearless people are usually fearless because they lack empathy. Their ability to help others is seriously compromised, because trying to help without understanding tends to do more harm than good.

Nothing is better for getting through the rough days than having a crew who understands you.

It might be an official mastermind group, a community of business owners, or just a few friends who get it. Assemble a Council of Allies who are in the same game you are. Lean on one another when the days get tough.

Another thing I learned from McGonigal’s book is that oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone,” is also a stress hormone.

When we’re afraid, we can choose to “Tend and Befriend” — seeking the comfort and company of people we care about — over the more common “Fight or Flight” response.

Not only is Tend and Befriend more comforting, it’s also actually healthier. Here’s another quote from McGonigal’s TED talk:

“… oxytocin doesn’t only act on your brain. It also acts on your body, and one of its main roles in your body is to protect your cardiovascular system from the effects of stress. It’s a natural anti-inflammatory. It also helps your blood vessels stay relaxed during stress. But my favorite effect on the body is actually on the heart. Your heart has receptors for this hormone, and oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate and heal from any stress-induced damage. This stress hormone strengthens your heart.”

Reaching out to your community will not only help you feel better and manage your stress, it actually creates a physiological response that benefits your heart health and keeps your stress on the “healthy” side of the equation.

Live a life worth living

Why put ourselves through it?

Why stand up and speak with a true voice, about something that matters, even when we know that we may have some rocky days because of it?

Because, whether your life is long or short, it’s a good idea to spend it on worthwhile things.

Spend your life creating meaning. Spend it helping other people. Create a satisfying life, not just an easy one.

Take reasonable measures to protect yourself. Remember the rewards of service. And get your crew together to Tend and Befriend on the rocky days. Finally, realize that stress is a sign that you’re doing something you truly care about.

Be more curious than afraid.

How about you? What’s your best tip for finding your courage? Let us know in the comments!

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How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content

“Hello, I’m a Mac.”

“And I’m a PC.”

You remember Apple’s “Get a Mac” series of commercials that ran from May 2006 to October 2009?

The commercials were short vignettes featuring John Hodgman as the sweet-yet-bumbling PC and Justin Long as the creative, hip Mac.

Those 66 short spots were named the best advertising campaign of the previous decade by Adweek.

The success of the long-running campaign leads one to believe that Apple certainly knows who its ideal customer is. Of course they do … because they chose their ideal customer, right from the birth of the Macintosh itself.

That doesn’t mean that everyone responded favorably to the ads. While researching for this article, I ran across a commenter who maintained that the campaign had “backfired” because the PC character had actually been more appealing to him.

No, the campaign didn’t backfire (no one runs a series of ads for three years if they’re not working). Instead, Apple chose who not to attract as much as they chose who they hoped to convert.

Apple knew they were never going to get hardcore PC people to switch to a Mac. Instead, Apple used these 66 humorous little stories to target those who were more likely to “swing” toward Apple, after being educated about the benefits by the contrast between the two characters.

Sounds like really great content marketing to me. In fact, given the nature and duration of the Get a Mac campaign, it resembled serial online video marketing more than traditional advertising.

So, the first (and most important) step in our 3-step content marketing strategy is determining your “Who.”

Who do you want to attract and speak to, and just as importantly, who do you want to drive in the other direction? It all comes down to your values, first and foremost.

What are your core values?

Apple’s values were well reflected in the Get a Mac campaign — creativity, simplicity, and rebellion against the status quo. These core values were consistently present in the prior “Crazy Ones” campaign, and before that, the iconic “1984” ad.

Some feel that Apple has lost the ability to innovate since Steve Jobs passed. Whether or not that’s true, I think the perception of Apple has changed among those of us who were initially strongly attracted, because their advertising now, for the first time, tries to appeal to a more general audience.

Steve would definitely not approve.

Modern marketing is about matching up with the worldview of your ideal customer. Outside of a monopoly, there is no such thing as marketing that appeals to everyone, and yet, companies still try and routinely fail.

On the other hand, think of Patagonia. The founder of the outdoor clothing and gear company invented an aluminum climbing wedge that could be inserted and removed without damaging the rock face. This reflects Patagonia’s founding core value:

“Build the best products while creating no unnecessary environmental harm.”

Of course, not every company has a core value built into the founding story. Most businesses exist to simply sell things that people want, so it’s up to management to find the core values that they want to reflect in their marketing to attract the right kind of customer.

For example, there’s nothing inherently ethical about ice cream, beyond ingredients. So Ben & Jerry’s adopted the values of its two founders, which had nothing at all to do with ice cream.

Not everyone who likes ice cream necessarily agrees with reduced Pentagon spending and the fight against climate change, but the people who do care about those things turned Ben & Jerry’s into an iconic brand.

It doesn’t have to be all sunshine and light, either. If your core values fall in line with a “Greed is good” mentality, you’ll certainly find people out there who share this worldview. You just have to unflinchingly own it.

You need to understand who you’re talking to, yes. But you don’t just accept who you find — you choose whom to attract.

What does your character look like?

In the Get a Mac campaign, Apple literally created a character that personified what their ideal “swing” customer aspired to be. It’s time for us to do the same.

You can call them personas or avatars if you like — I prefer character. That’s because the first step is the research that allows you to create a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal customer.

As far as fiction goes, we’re creating a character that will be the protagonist in their own purchasing journey that your content will help them complete. Since this journey is based on as much reality as we can glean from our research, it’s more like a fictionalized drama “based on actual people and events.”

When I say the prospect is the protagonist, that means the hero. Your content is a powerful gift that positions your brand as a guide that helps the hero complete the journey that solves their problem. If this sounds like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to you, nice work — we’ll elaborate on this aspect in the “What” portion of the strategy.

This journey does not take place in the context of you wanting to sell more stuff. It’s understanding how the prospect thinks, feels, sees, and behaves in the context of solving the problem that sets them on the journey in the first place.

And don’t forget about instilling them with your shared core values. Why would this person choose you to assist them on the journey, out of a sea of other choices?

Because you already see the world like they do in an important way, and they’ll pick up on that shared worldview immediately upon coming across your content. Your core values are your secret attraction spell.

Instead of hiding your world views in the hope of never offending anyone, you now realize the power of being loud and proud — and attracting like-minded people who see you as the only reasonable choice.

Now, most people don’t end up using this representative character in their content, like Apple did with Justin Long in the Get a Mac commercials. It’s really a composite to refer back to so that you never lose sight of whom you’re talking to, what you should say, and how you should say it.

On the other hand, the Get a Mac commercials were just two guys standing and talking in front of a minimalist, all-white background. If you’re thinking in terms of online video marketing, you could do a lot worse than looking to this campaign for inspiration.

And think about your explainer videos. Wouldn’t a character that represents who you’re talking to give you an edge over competing marketing approaches?

At a minimum, contemplating the actual use of the character in your content will force you to get things just right. Let’s look at a method for doing that.

You are not your audience

Given that you’re seeking to attract people who share your values, it’s tempting to overly identify with your audience. While you’re going to have things in common, it’s dangerous to think your ideal customer is similar to you in other ways.

You’re a subject matter expert at what you do, for starters, and they are not.

You need to make sure you don’t fall victim to the curse of knowledge, a cognitive bias that occurs when a person with expertise unknowingly assumes that others have the background to understand.

This one assumption alone can sink your content marketing efforts. Plus, you don’t want to assume that the audience shares other characteristics that you have — you want to know, as well as you can, what they’re thinking, feeling, seeing, and doing.

In other words, for you to have the empathy to walk the buyer’s journey in their shoes, you must first see things from their perspective. Then you’ll be in a position to create the content that “coaches” them along the journey.

Let’s take a closer look at empathy, the definition of which consists of two parts:

1. The intellectual identification with the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
2. The vicarious experiencing of those feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.

It’s often said you want to enter the conversation that’s already playing in your prospect’s head. By matching up values and worldviews, you’re also aiming to enter the conversation in the prospect’s heart, and that’s how your marketing triggers the right motivation at the right time.

The process we use for achieving this is called empathy mapping. At the foundation of the exercise is this statement: “Our ideal customer needs a better way to ____ BECAUSE ____.”

Empathy maps vary in shapes and sizes, but there are basic elements common to each one:

• Four quadrants broken into “Thinking,” “Seeing,” “Doing,” and “Feeling”
• Two optional boxes at the bottom of the quadrants: “Pains” and “Gains”

To get started, you can download and print a large version of the empathy map above here.

The map allows you to easily organize all of your research and other relevant materials. The four quadrants represent the sensory experience of your ideal customer while in the prospect phase.

Ask yourself questions such as:

• What does a typical day look like in their world?
• How do they think about their fears and hopes?
• How do they feel about the problem your product solves?
• What are they thinking when they resist solving the problem?
• What do they hear when other people solve the problem?
• Whom do they see as viable options to solve the problem?
• What do they see when they use your product? What is the environment?
• What do they say or feel when using your product?
• What are their pain points when using your product?
• Is this a positive or a painful experience for them?
• Do they hear positive feedback about your company from external sources?
• What do they hope to gain from using your product?

Jot down needs and insights that emerge as you work through this exercise. Then simply paste those notes in the proper boxes on the large empathy map.

At the bottom of your empathy map, you can also draw two boxes: “Pains” and “Gains.”

In the “Pains box,” you can put your customers’ challenges and obstacles. Ask, “What keeps my customer up at night?”

In the “Gains” box, include the goals your customers hope to accomplish. Ask, “What motivates my customer to solve their problem?” and “What are their hopes and dreams?”

Now … describe your character in detail

You’re now ready to create a written composite of your character. Some people do several paragraphs, or perhaps a page of description. You, being the smart person that you are, might consider taking it further by creating a character bible, just like novelists and screenwriters do.

In this context, a character bible is a detailed outline that lays out everything about your prospect in one place, so you can easily access their personality, problems, and desires. It may seem like a lot of work, but you’ll be happy you did it once you start coming up with the “What” and the “How” of your content marketing strategy.

Next week, we’ll look at figuring out “what” information your prospect must have to complete their journey with you. You’ll go from stepping into your prospect’s shoes to walking the buyer’s journey with them.

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