Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Why I Write

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Sybil Stershic is one of the smartest people I know on the subject of how to treat your employees right, so they will treat your customers or clients right, so your reputation will glow. She’s also a terrific writer.

So, when Sybil wrote about “Why I Write,” and invited me to do the same, I was flattered.

I started writing when I was seven years old. I cut up pieces of paper, folded them in half, got my mom to thread a needle for me, and in crayon, I wrote a mystery involving my favorite cartoon characters.

I still think there’s a mystery in me waiting to get out. But these days, I write mainly to make sense of things, for myself and others.

On my Communicate! blog, and in guest blogs I’ve been honored to write, I explore how to build relationships through words. Nonprofit organizations and small businesses need friends. Writing to entertain, inspire, amuse, inform, provoke, outrage, build trust and spur action is still the best way to win loyal friends, even in an increasingly visual age. (Look how Sybil and I have become friends online!)

“Communicate” means “become one together.” At my best, I write to make sure you and your organization understand things as well as I do…and then some. That’s why I consult to nonprofit organizations as well: through my relationship with them, I help them create human ties with their supporters.

When I write for Welcome to My World, I am musing about the injustice and oppression of the world we live in and thinking how to change at least the nation for the better. That’s something I’ve been doing since graduate school, when I used to joke I was getting a Ph.D. in changing the world. I wrote a dissertation back then that turned into a book, and it’s still in print.

I’m also being struck by thoughts from the Jewish tradition. Some of those relate directly to changing the world. Some of them are about the kind of life we could live if only we didn’t have so many things to change.

And of course, there are the sly little tweets I compose for Twitter. Here’s one, in the form of a haiku:

Writing, old is new.

Twitter teaches brevity

to those who will learn.

 

Thanks for reading! Next up is Diana Schwenk, who blogs at The Other Bottom Line. Diana is an accomplished fundraiser, and The Other Bottom Line empowers non-profit organizations to ignite the passion and solicit the support of their community.  I hope you enjoy her writing as much as I do.

Listen like Austen. Write Like Hemingway

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Jane Austen was one of the most beloved authors of the 19th century.  She wrote all her novels by sitting in company and paying attention to what people said.

Be like Jane Austen. Before you start to write, listen. On social media, in person, every way you can: find out about your audience and what  moves them.

Ernest Hemingway was one of the most read authors of the 20th century. When he sat down to write, he chopped away adverbs, adjectives, and description. He told the whole story through dialogue and action.

Be like Ernest Hemingway. Whether you’re writing a newsletter, blogging, using social media, or asking for money, be brief. Leave out everything your audience doesn’t care to read.

Listen like Austen, to catch every detail. Write like Hemingway, to be read.

Youtility: Creating Marketing that People Actually Want

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Jay Baer has some bad news for us…and some good news.

Bad news: In the age of information overload, you’re not going to keep your company at the top of people’s minds by constant advertising.

Good news: You don’t have to.  Getting the ear of the right audience is  better than paying for name recognition by the masses.

Bad news: Just because people can find you online, it doesn’t mean they’ll become your customers.

Good news: Recommendations from their friends influence people’s decisions.  Word of mouth has always been important, and today, it has a new address: on social media.

Bad news: Getting people’s attention is hard. You’re competing with their friends, the latest cute cat video, and photos of their grandchildren (who are probably a lot cuter than you!)

Good news: People will pay attention when you solve problems for them or provide them with information they need.  That’s what Baer calls “Youtility.”

Help, Not Hype

If you have the resources, you can help people exactly when they need it.  Baer talks about the @HiltonSuggests program, where Hilton employees who really know the city they work in will go on Twitter looking for questions they can answer or recommendations they can make…for free.

They are not trying to make a customer today.  They are trying to win a customer for life.  The return on investment is huge.

Not all of us can be Hilton, but could you be Taxi Mike?  This Canadian cab driver personally creates a “Where to Eat in Banff” brochure with his personal recommendations and delivers them to hotels, bars, and tourist traps all around his city.  When visitors need a taxi and they have this guide in their pockets, who do you think they’ll call?

What Does It Take to be Useful?

I hope you’re thinking just about now, “What about me?  How can I help the people who I want to be calling me?”  Baer suggests three ways you can make yourself useful to your audience.

  • Self-serve information.  Be like Angie’s List. Put the information out there in a ways that’s easy for people to find and use for themselves.
  • Radical transparency.  Be like Holiday World. Answer every question people ask. Answer questions they haven’t thought yet of asking.  Answer the tough questions.  Do it where everyone can see it.
  • Real-time relevancy.  Be like Scotts Miracle-Gro. Provide information that’s keyed to the location or the situation of the customer or what’s going on at that season.

How Do I Start?

Read Baer’s book for details about the six blueprints you can use to build Youtility.

  1. Identify customer needs.
  2. Map customer needs to useful marketing.
  3. Market your marketing.
  4. “Insource” Youtility.
  5. Make Youtility a process, not a project.
  6. Keep score.

The Value of this Book

My take: this is a great book because it pulls together a lot of lessons learned over the past few years.  If you are not getting what you want out of your marketing or communications, read the book, and think about how to give others what they want.

Two reservations: Baer doesn’t often address nonprofit organizations.  His idea of a small organization is still a lot larger than many community-based businesses and nonprofits I know.  I’ll try to translate Youtility for these audiences in other posts.

Have you read Youtility? Do you plan on reading it?  What do you think of Jay Baer’s approach?

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