Burping and boring your way into your subscribers or customer's life, with dull, uninteresting, uninspiring promotional content and written copy, won't create the kind of eagerness, happiness and eagle-eyed readability you most probably want.
Many groan at this yet if you squash all the fun and enjoyment when writing and creating your marketing and sales materials, then it'll automatically show in the deflated, finished output. It has to. It's simple logic.
There's no black hat mystery, sleight of hand magic or secret handshake to this.
Have fun and joy writing, in being entertaining, in being a fresh voice, and you'll have more people reading and engaging and buying than if all you did was do what most business and marketers do - hastily churn out bland, uninteresting, plain vanilla content and communications that are simply -- no fun to read.
And let me caveat something here before someone reading this takes offence to the idea of having fun and enjoyment in their communications, because look, they sell serious products and services relating to serious subject matters.
Of course, serious subject matters need treating differently. This is not a wholesale, one size fits all solution. Let's not be silly about it. Like for example, death, divorce, bullying, eating disorders, child abuse, animal cruelty, bankruptcy.
Now I'm not saying one has to preen and prattle, be comedically clowny, flippant or obnoxiously accusatory in order to get their message across on such subject matters. No. Not at all. Yet, one can be interesting, articulate, and communicate with a sense of compassionate energy in order to have a specific message hit home, no matter what the topic. Making it readable, compelling readable, must be the ultimate driving goal.
For numerous businesses where their products and services aren't of lifechanging seriousness, there's an unwritten obligation of sorts to ensure that your readers and recipients are put in a happy, joyous, smiley frame of mind.
Because what happens when the joyful, fun, entertaining light filters into the heart and mind of a person? They're a different beast. They're more open. They're more willing. They're more cheerful. They've a more receptive mind. And that means, they'll be more readily inclined to want to inquire, to connect, to buy.
And that's what we want, isn't it?
Don't fall for the drab and lazy school of communications that says -- only say what you have to say, and leave it at that. Economy and brevity being the order of the day. Why do they say that? Because they think most people have rather short and limited attention spans.
Facts are all of us DO have low attention spans, on things that do not interest us. Or, if it's something that is of some interest, though it's communicated in a dull and uninteresting way. I've no interest in pot belly pig farming so no amount of information or material will get my attention. Unless however, if the smart marketers link pot belly pig farming to something that IS of interest to me, AND, if it's communicated in a fresh, new, interesting and entertaining way! (That's a highly valuable business changing idea and strategy for you if you're alert and willing to adapt and apply it to your products and services.)
There's nothing wrong in making the buying experience from you, a happy and joyful one. There's nothing wrong in bringing a smiling joy to the lips of your audience. There's nothing wrong in wanting to entertain them and put them into a happy and joyful frame of mind. Nothing wrong in any of that.
Shockingly, and the great news is, you do not need to be Ken Dodd or Robin Williams or Joan Rivers or Eddie Murphy in order to pull this off.
Because believe it or not, everyone of us has our own personality and our own sense of humour. We all have our own way of seeing the world. Our own way of using language.
And so here's a novel idea... USE IT ALL!
Don't compare yourself and your business's 'voice' to any other. Use what you've got. Amplify and expand on it. Because that's when your unique and authentic self expression will fully come out to play.
And that's what's missing in the world.
What's the alternative?
Be pretty much the same as everyone else operating in your category or industry. Boring, limp, and lukewarm. Just look at the businesses in your own category and industry and you'll see there isn't much difference; similar ideas, language, offers. Nothing noteworthy in their communications, their promotions, their service levels.
There's a world of difference that'll open up when you begin infusing and incorporating your own personality, and spread that across your entire communication portfolio and across all your media platforms.
Take for example a consumer Electronics business. Not much personality in most of it. Yet Drew Kaplan of DAK Industries turned all that around. He built his electronics business based on pure personality, exemplar service and superior products.
How was he able to do that? He lovingly tested each and every product, snapped every single product picture, wrote the selling copy for everything sold in his catalogues, he was intimately familiar with the match of his products to his customer's wants and desires.
His customers, over 600k of them, drooled over his products, because of his descriptive, alluring advertising copy.
For example, here's some advertising copy selling a Stereo Frequency Equalizer/ Spectrum Analyzer.
"Close your eyes. Touch a button, and you'll hear your stereo system literally explode with life. You'll hear the gentle brushes on a snare drum, the startling bone-jarring realism of a thunder clap or the excitement of a full cymbal crash. You'll hear string basses and other deep low instruments emerge from bass (that will sound murky by comparison) with such clarity and such definition that you'll feel you can almost touch each instrument."
You can't but help be drawn in a captivated by such interesting descriptive copy, even if you have no idea what a Stereo Frequency Equalizer/ Spectrum Analyzer was in the first place!
Doesn't matter what you ultimately sell and promote; you'll hit the literal jackpot when you can turn your business, your enterprise, your companies' products and services, in to an unduplicatable, can't-put-down series of interesting, intoxicating, wonderful descriptions, stories and summaries. And that can only happen when you invest time and effort in choosing the right words, the right phrases, the right mental pictures. It takes work. It's not something that's just pieced together on a whim and a grunt and a puff of the funny stuff.
Now saying all that, you might be lured into thinking that it's easier to pummel and sledgehammer your audience into painful submission, to beg, implore or beseech them, to delude, hoodwink or befuddle them... just to get your message across. You don't need to do any of that. Nor do you need to be Shakespeare or Hemmingway. Just tell the truth in a fun, inviting and interesting way. And when you do that, you'll be delightfully surprised at the results that show up. It's a cage rattling antidote to a blur of marketplace sameness.
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