Making human connections on digital devices is what we do at WhatcomTalk.
We are seeing you serve our community in creative, inspiring, and tenacious ways. Thank you.
Is turning personal contact into digital outreach a new chore for you? We’ve been offering how-tos and infrastructure tips and tools, and now we’re focusing on effective writing in this “make connections, not content” series.
Copywriting and marketing veteran Amy Guerra shares tools from her many years of experience along with some bite-sized tasks to try.
Please stay safe. –The WhatcomTalk Team
P.S. Learn how to reach Whatcom County with our help here.
Today’s Topic: Cross a River on a Hippo
How do you make a connection instead of “content?” In the last part of this series, I said to picture a conversation.
Seem too hard? It can be frustrating to have to think about writing when you want to focus on your business. Things like this happen:
You: “Hey, by the way, did you know our flywing gizmo modulator is preferred by 80% of mechanics?”
Yeah, that probably won’t trend on social or light up the cocktail party.
If it feels impossible to picture how to get across the digital river from yourself to your customer…maybe enlist the help of a hippo.
The hippo, in this scenario, is the thing you have in common—the shared association of your environment (okay, maybe I just wanted to daydream about riding a hippo in a river).
You do this naturally in regular conversation. You talk about the weather:
“Have you gotten out in this sunny weather?”
Or, you talk about a shared environment like the weather:
“Are you enjoying the conference?”
– or –
“Can you believe we’re talking about a hippo?”
The good news: It is that easy in your written outreach, as well.
Ask yourself: What is “the weather” both you and your customers share?
Lead with that.
Your outreach on gizmos becomes:
“Have you noticed how so many streets are now being paved with molasses? We think this could lead to serious bounce in your flywing gizmos. Did you know our flywing gizmo modulator is preferred by 80% of mechanics? What problems are the molasses streets causing for you?”
If you want to build amazing interactions with a digital audience, you need to establish things you have in common, become their advocate, solve their problems, hit their heartstrings—and really mean it. Just like you do when you talk to your customers in person.
In this email series, I’m going to touch on some tools to use.
Today’s task to try:
Look at your current content and ask yourself how you could reach your customers by talking about “the weather.”
Hint: start with your customer’s frame of reference, not your product’s.
–Amy Guerra, MBA
Business Development, WhatcomTalk
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