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Love Your Audience

February 12, 2015 by Dennis Fischman 3 Comments

peasants in a tavern

Do you know what hurts me?

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev in the Ukraine, used to say that he had discovered the meaning of love from a drunken peasant.

The rabbi was visiting the owner of a tavern in the Polish countryside. As he walked in, he saw two peasants at a table. Both were gloriously in their cups. Arms around each other, they were protesting how much each loved the other.

Suddenly Ivan said to Peter; “Peter, tell me, what hurts me?”

Bleary-eyed, Peter looked at Ivan: “How do I know what hurts you?”

Ivan’s answer was swift: “If you don’t know what hurts me, how can you say you love me?”

Love your audience.  Know what hurts them.

Know what excites them, frightens them, makes them happy, makes them proud.  Know what they want and what they detest.

Love your audience and you will frame messages just for them.  They won’t read your messages if they don’t feel the love.

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Sharing the Season’s Greetings with Your Community

September 11, 2014 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Sending holiday greetings to your customers and community is a great way to let them know you’re thinking of them. But not everyone celebrates the same holidays.

Pagans will celebrate the autumnal equinox, or Mabon, on Tuesday, September 23.  Jews have a whole season of holidays, beginning with Rosh Hashanah starting at sundown on Wednesday, September 24; continuing with Yom Kippur (sundown on Friday, October 3), and culminating with Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah (sundown on Wednesday, October 8 through nightfall on Friday, October 17). Hindus will observe Navaratri September 25-October 3. Muslims will mark Eid ul Adha on Saturday, October 4.

How do you greet them all?

Ideally, you keep a record of which holiday each person on your list celebrates. Then, you send personalized email to each one. (If you’re not sure how to do that, I can help. Write me and let me know.)

If you haven’t kept those records, now would be a good time to start! In the meantime, feel free to cut and paste the second paragraph of this message into your email and social media. Add, “To all our friends who celebrate these holidays, we send our warmest greetings.”

Shanah tovah to my fellow Jews, and a good and liberating holiday to everyone.

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“Transparency is the New Black”

May 29, 2013 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

 

 
Review of Share This!
Deanna Zandt has written a wonderful guide to social networks for people who don’t feel at home there.  She explains what’s new about building relationships through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like, and she encourages us all to participate. 

“Sharing is daring,” she says.  By putting more of yourself out there, within limits that you consciously set, you increase your credibility with people who are just getting to know you.  As you become more well known, you win people’s trust.  At the same time, she argues, sharing personal and professional information helps build a better world.  If someone reads and enjoys a tweet I send out about good communications AND they go to my blog and find my Jewish musings, then it registers that a person they respect can be serious about being Jewish (or gay, or a feminist, or…whatever you are.  Fill in the blank.)  It may be overstating things to say that this will change the world, as she does in her subtitle, but at least it will show what the world is already.

In any case, sharing more about ourselves is the direction we are all heading.  “Transparency is the new black.”  So, better try it on and find a style of social networking that compliments you.  In the Resources section of the book, you’ll find tips for individuals and tactics for organizations that she recommends.  Try a couple and see how they work for you.

Reading this book, I felt as if I were a traveler in a new and foreign country, with a helpful guide pointing out the landmarks and explaining local customs.  At the same time, paradoxically, I felt as if I’d come home.  Really being interested in other people, helping them with what they’re doing, and offering them ways to help me too (or promote a cause we both care about): this is what I’ve always done.

Back in 1986, when Rona answered a personal ad I’d placed in a newspaper, I realized that we already had met through the local chapter of a progressive Jewish organization.  It would have been very awkward if I had kept that to myself and didn’t tell her that right away when I wrote her back.  By letting her know, not only did I show that I cared about honesty in relationships right from the start.  I also (not realizing it at the time) let her see that she knew people who knew me and shared some of the same values that moved me.  That was the basis for beginning to trust me.  Reader, she married me. 

Organizations are also looking to woo people, and they will have to open up more to build lasting relationships with volunteers, supporters, donors, customers, or investors.  I would like to focus on helping them do it, online and off.

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